The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 05 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
“To the second reason, I confess that God and the good angels are more
free than we are, that is, intensively in the degree of freedom, but not
extensively in the latitude of the object; according to a liberty of
exercise, but not of specification. A liberty of exercise, that is, to
do or not to do, may consist well with a necessity of specification, or
a determination to the doing of good. But a liberty of exercise, and a
necessity of exercise, a liberty of specification, and a necessity of
specification, are not compatible, nor can consist together. He that is
antecedently necessitated to do evil, is not free to do good. So this
instance is nothing at all to the purpose.”
_T. H._ But the distinction of free, into free from compulsion, and free
from necessitation, I acknowledge. For to be free from compulsion, is to
do a thing so as terror be not the cause of his will to do it. For a man
is then only said to be compelled, when fear makes him willing to it; as
when a man willingly throws his goods into the sea to save himself, or
submits to his enemy for fear of being killed. Thus all men that do
anything from love, or revenge, or lust, are free from compulsion; and
yet their actions may be as necessary as those which are done upon
compulsion. For sometimes other passions work as forcibly as fear; but
free from necessitation I say nothing can be. And it is that which he
undertook to disprove. This distinction, he says, useth to be fortified
by two reasons. But they are not mine. The first, he says, is, “that it
is granted by all divines, that an hypothetical necessity, or necessity
upon supposition, may stand with liberty”. That you may understand this,
I will give you an example of hypothetical necessity. _If I shall live,
I shall eat_; this is an hypothetical necessity. Indeed, it is a
necessary proposition; that is to say, it is necessary that that
proposition should be true, whensoever uttered; but it is not the
necessity of the thing, nor is it therefore necessary, that the man
shall live, or that the man shall eat. I do not use to fortify my
distinctions with such reasons. Let him confute them as he will, it
contents me. But I would have your Lordship take notice hereby, how an
easy and plain thing, but withal false, may be, with the grave usage of
such words as _hypothetical necessity_, and _necessity upon
supposition_, and such like terms of Schoolmen, obscured and made to
seem profound learning.