An Inquiry Into the Modern Prevailing Notions

An Inquiry Into the Modern Prevailing Notions Synopsis

Excerpt from An Inquiry Into the Modern Prevailing Notions: Respecting That Freedom of Will Which Is Supposed to Be Essential to Moral Agency, Virtue and Vice, Reward and Punishment, Praise and Blame

IT may possibly be thought, that there is no great need of going about to define or describe the will; this word being generally as well understood as any other words we can use to explain it and so, perhaps, it would be, had not philosophers, metaphysicians, and polemic divines, brought the matter into obscurity by the things they have said of it. But since it is so, I think it may be of some use, and will tend to the greater clearness in the follow ing discourse, to say a few things concerning it.

And therefore I observe, that the will (without any metaphysical refining) is plainly, that by which the mind chooses anything. The faculty of the will is that faculty or power, or principle of mind, by which it is capable of choosing; an act of the will is the same as an act of choosing or choice.

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