actions of this class; and I cannot think of any better name than that of “voluntary” actions. If we require further to distinguish from among them, those which are also voluntary in the sense that we definitely willed to do them, we can do so by calling these “willed” actions.
Our theory holds, then, that a great many of our actions are voluntary in the sense that we could have avoided them, if, just beforehand, we had chosen to do so. It does not pretend to decide whether we could have thus chosen to avoid them; it only says that, if we had so chosen, we should have succeeded. And its first concern is to lay down some absolutely universal rules as to the conditions under which actions of this kind are right or wrong; under which they ought or ought not to be done; and under which it is our duty to do them or not to do them. It is quite certain that we do hold that many voluntary actions are right and others wrong; that many ought to have been done, and others ought not to have been done; and that it was the agent’s duty to do some of them, and his duty not to
