ly; which kind of determination is consistent with true Liberty—Admitting that the will follows necessarily the last dictate of the understanding, this is not destructive of the liberty of the will; this is only an hypothetical necessity. So that Liberty, with him, consists in chusing, or refusing necessarily after deliberation; which chusing or refusing is morally and hypothetically determined, or necessary by virtue of the said deliberation.
Lastly, a great Armenian Theologer, who has writ a course of Philosophy, and enter’d into several controversies on the subject of Liberty, makes Liberty to consist in [1] an indifferency of mind while a thing is under deliberation. For, says he, while the mind deliberates, it is free till the moment of action; because nothing determines it necessarily to act or not to act. Whereas when the mind ballances or compares Ideas or motives together, it is then no less necessarily determin’d to a state of Indifferency by the appearances of those Ideas and motives, than it is necessarily determin’d in the very moment of action. Were a man to be at liberty in this state of indifferency, he ought to have it in his power to be not indifferent,
- ↑ Le Clerc Bibl. Chois. Tom. xii. p,10.3, 104.
