The English works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury, Volume 05 (of 11)
Thomas Hobbes · en
necessitate her to satisfy his lust, and incline her effectually, and
draw her inevitably and irresistibly, to follow him spontaneously,
Lucretia in both these conditions is to be pitied. But the latter person
is more guilty, and deserves greater punishment, who endeavours also, so
much as in him lies, to make Lucretia irresistibly partake of his crime.
I dare not apply it, but thus only: take heed how we defend those secret
and invincible necessitations to evil, though spontaneous and free from
coaction.
“These are their fastnesses.”
_T. H._ In the next place, he bringeth two arguments against
distinguishing between being free from compulsion, and free from
necessitation. The first is, that election is opposite, not only to
coaction or compulsion, but also to necessitation or determination to
one. This is it he was to prove from the beginning, and therefore
bringeth no new argument to prove it. And to those brought formerly, I
have already answered; and in this place I deny again, that election is
opposite to either. For when a man is compelled, for example, to subject
himself to an enemy or to die, he hath still election left in him, and a
deliberation to bethink which of these two he can better endure; and he
that is led to prison by force, hath election, and may deliberate,
whether he will be haled and trained on the ground, or make use of his
feet.
Likewise when there is no compulsion, but the strength of temptation to
do an evil action, being greater than the motives to abstain,
necessarily determines him to the doing of it, yet he deliberates whilst
sometimes the motives to do, sometimes the motives to forbear, are
working on him, and consequently he electeth which he will. But
commonly, when we see and know the strength that moves us, we
acknowledge necessity; but when we see not, or mark not the force that
moves us, we then think there is none, and that it is not causes, but
liberty that produceth the action. Hence it is that they think he does
not choose this, that of necessity chooseth it; but they might as well
say fire does not burn, because it burns of necessity. The second
argument is not so much an argument, as a distinction, to show in what
sense it may be said that voluntary actions are necessitated, and in
what sense not. And therefore he allegeth, as from the authority of the
Schools and that which “rippeth up the bottom of the question”, that
there is a double act of the will. The one, he says, is _actus
imperatus_, an act done at the command of the will by some inferior
faculty of the soul, as to open or shut one’s eyes: and this act may be
compelled. The other, he says, is _actus elicitus_, an act allured, or
an act drawn forth by allurement out of the will, as to will, to choose,
to elect: this, he says, cannot be compelled. Wherein letting pass that
metaphorical speech of attributing command and subjection to the
faculties of the soul, as if they made a commonwealth or family among