Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/55

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Human Liberty.
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than they do; being sometimes mov’d with notions of honour and virtue, as well as with those pleasures he has in common with them. He is also more mov’d by absent things, and things future, than they are. He is also subject to more vain fears, more mistakes and wrong actions, and infinitely more absurdities in notions. He has also more power and strength, as well as more art and cunning, and is capable of doing more good and more mischief to his fellow-men than they are to one another. But these larger powers and larger weaknesses which are of the same kind with the powers and weaknesses of sheep, cannot contain liberty in them, and plainly make no perceivable difference between them and men, as to the general causes of action, in finite intelligent and sensible beings, no more than the different degrees of these powers and weaknesses, among the various kinds of beasts, birds, fishes, and reptiles do among them. Wherefore I need not run thro’ the actions of foxes or any of the more subtile animals, nor the actions of children, which are allow’d by the Advocates[1] of liberty to be all necessary. I shall only ask these questionsconcerning

  1. Bramhall’s Works, p. 656, 662.