was an able judge, a friend to him, and a defender of him in other respects, I hope I may, without being liable to exception, produce Father Malebranche as an example. He has in several books treated of, and vindicated, the opinion of seeing all things in God; and yet so acute a person as Mr. Bayle, after having read them all, declares that he less comprehends his notion from his last book than ever.[1] Which plainly shows a defect in F. Malebranche to write upon a subject he understood not, and therefore could not make others understand.
You see, I bespeak no favor in the question before me, and take the whole fault to myself, if I do not write clearly to you on it, and prove what I propose.
And that I may inform you, in what I think clear to myself, I will begin with explaining the sense of the question.
The question stated.
Man is a necessary agent, if all his actions are so determined by the causes preceding each action, that not one past action could possibly not have come to pass, or have been otherwise than it hath been; nor one future action can possibly not come to pass, or be otherwise than it shall be. He is a free agent, if he is able, at any time under the circumstances and causes he then is, to do different things; or, in other words, if he is not unavoidably determined in every point of time by the circumstances he is in, and the causes he is under, to do that one thing he does, and not possibly to do any other.
First argument, wherein our experience is considered.
I. This being a question of fact concerning what we ourselves do, we will first consider our own experi-
- ↑ J’ai parcouru le nouveau livre du Pere Malebranche centre Mr. Arnauld: & j’y ai moins compris que jamais sa pretention, que les Idées, par lesquelles nous connoiffons les Objets, sont en Dieu, & non dans notre Ame. Il y a là du mal-entendu: ce sont, ce me semble, des equivoques perpetuelles. Letter of the 16th of October, 1705, to Mr. Des Maizeaux.
