_T. H._ Fifthly, I conceive liberty to be rightly defined in this
manner:--Liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action, that
are not contained in the nature, and in the intrinsical quality of the
agent. As for example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have
liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no
impediment that way; but not across, because the banks are impediments.
And though water cannot ascend, yet men never say it wants the liberty
to ascend, but the faculty or power; because the impediment is in the
nature of the water and intrinsical. So also we say, he that is tied
wants the liberty to go, because the impediment is not in him, but in
his bonds; whereas we say not so of him that is sick or lame, because
the impediment is in himself.
[Sidenote: The Bishop’s reply.]
_J. D._ (_a_) “How that should be a right definition of liberty, which
comprehends neither the genus nor the difference, neither the matter nor
form of liberty, which doth not so much as accidentally describe liberty
by its marks and tokens; how a real faculty or the elective power should
be defined by a negation, or by an absence, is past my understanding,
and contrary to all the rules of right reason which I have learned.
Negatives cannot explicate the nature of things defined. By this
definition, a stone hath liberty to ascend into the air, because there
is no outward impediment to hinder it; and so a violent act may be a
free act. Just like his definition are his instances of the liberty of
the water to descend down the channel, and a sick or lame man’s liberty
to go. The latter is an impotence, and not a power or a liberty. The
former is so far from being a free act, that it is scarce a natural act.
Certainly the proper natural motion of water, as of all heavy bodies, is
to descend directly downwards towards the centre; as we see in rain,
which falls down perpendicularly. Though this be far from a free act,
which proceeds from a rational appetite; yet it is a natural act, and
proceeds from a natural appetite, and hath its reason within itself. So
hath not the current of the river in its channel, which must not be
ascribed to the proper nature of the water, but either to the general
order of the universe, for the better being and preservation of the
creatures: (otherwise the waters should not move in seas and rivers as
they do, but cover the face of the earth, and possess their proper place
between the air and the earth, according to the degree of their
gravity): or to an extrinsical principle, whilst one particle of water
thrusteth and forceth forward another, and so comes a current, or at
least so comes the current to be more impetuous; to which motion the
position of the earth doth contribute much, both by restraining that
fluid body with its banks from dispersing itself, and also by affording
way for a fair and easy descent by its proclivity. He tells us sadly,
that “the water wants liberty to go over the banks, because there is an
extrinsical impediment; but to ascend up the channel, it wants not
liberty, but power”. Why? Liberty is a power; if it want power to
ascend, it wants liberty to ascend. But he makes the reason why the
water ascends not up the channel, to be intrinsical, and the reason why
it ascends not over the banks, to be extrinsical; as if there were not a
rising of the ground up the channel, as well as up the banks, though it
be not so discernible, nor always so sudden. The natural appetite of the
water is as much against the ascending over the banks, as the ascending
up the channel. And the extrinsical impediment is as great, ascending up
the channel, as over the banks; or rather greater, because there it must
move, not only against the rising soil, but also against the succeeding
waters, which press forward the former. Either the river wants liberty
for both, or else it wants liberty for neither.
But to leave his metaphorical faculties, and his catachrestical liberty:
how far is his discourse wide from the true moral liberty; which is the
question between us? His former description of a free agent, that is,
‘he who hath not made an end of deliberating’, though it was wide from
the mark, yet it came much nearer the truth than this definition of
liberty; unless perhaps he think that the water hath done deliberating
whether it will go over the banks, but hath not done deliberating
whether it will go up the channel”.