(_b_) “His second argument is _ex concessis_: ‘It is out of controversy’, saith he, ‘that of voluntary actions the will is a necessary cause’. The argument may be thus reduced: necessary causes produce necessary effects; but the will is a necessary cause of voluntary actions. I might deny his major. Necessary causes do not always produce necessary effects, except they be also necessarily produced; as I have shewed before in the burning of Protagoras’s book. But I answer clearly to the minor, that the will is not a necessary cause of what it wills in particular actions. It is without _controversy_ indeed, for it is without all probability. That it wills when it wills, is necessary; but that it wills this or that, now or then, is free. More expressly, the act of the will may be considered three ways; either in respect of its nature, or in respect of its exercise, or in respect of its object. First, for the nature of the act: that which the will wills, is necessarily voluntary, because the will cannot be compelled. And in this sense, ‘it is out of controversy, that the will is a necessary cause of voluntary actions’. Secondly, for the exercise of its acts, that is not necessary: the will may either will or suspend its act. Thirdly, for the object, that is not necessary, but free: the will is not extrinsically determined to its objects. As for example: the cardinals meet in the conclave to choose a Pope; whom they choose, he is necessarily Pope. But it is not necessary that they shall choose this or that day. Before they were assembled, they might defer their assembling; when they are assembled, they may suspend their election for a day or a week. Lastly, for the person whom they will choose, it is freely in their own power; otherwise if the election were not free, it were void, and no election at all. So that which takes its beginning from the will, is necessarily voluntary; but it is not necessary that the will shall will this or that in particular, as it was necessary that the person freely elected should be Pope: but it was not necessary either that the election should be at this time, or that this man should be elected. And therefore voluntary acts in particular have not necessary causes, that is, they are not necessitated.” ANIMADVERSIONS UPON THE ANSWER TO NO. XXX. I had said, that nothing taketh beginning from itself, and that the cause of the will is not the will itself, but something else which it disposeth not of. Answering to this, he endeavours to shew us the cause of the _will_.