Free stuff

Timber without knots. Free'town Corners, in New York , a post-village of Cortland co., abt. 135 m. W. by S. of Albany. Free'-trade, n. Trade or commerce free from restrictions; a free interchange of commodities. Free Union, in Virginia , a P. O. of Albemarle co. Free'ville, in New York , a post-office of Tompkins co. Free'-will, n. (Ethics.) Free will, freedom and nece ity, liberty and nece ity, are terms employed to denote one of the most difficult questions in the whole field of the mental sciences; - the power of a man over the determination of his own will. "If," says Reid, "in any action he had power to will what he did, or not to will it, in that action he is free. But if in every voluntary action the determination of his will be the nece ary consequence of something involuntary in the state of his mind, or of something in his external circumstances, he is not free; he has not what I call the liberty of a moral agent, but is subject to nece ity." Freedom has commonly been distinguished into freedom from coercion, and freedom from nece ity. Freedom from coercion implies on the one hand, the absence of all impediment or restraint, and on the other, the absence of all compulsion or violence. Thus, if we are prevented from doing what is in our power when we desire or will to do it, as if we were compelled to do it when we desire and will not to do it, we are not free from coercion. Freedom from nece ity, called also liberty of election, implies freedom from anything invincibly determining a moral agent. This freedom from nece ity, however, does not mean that the agent has no motive or no more inclination towards one course of action than another; for he may have motives prompting him more urgently to act in one direction rather than in another, and still have liberty of election, if he has the power of determining in favor of another course of action. The universal language and practice of mankind is founded upon a belief in a kind of free-will. To choose, to deliberate, to determine, are expre ions in every man's mouth; and the whole of our penal code is founded upon the conviction that men have the power of doing or abstaining from certain acts. But if we examine the matter more closely, and look at the particular acts of one's life, we shall find that this freedom of choice does not actually exist to the extent that we might at first sight be inclined to suppose. We find that if we know the circumstances and character of an individual, we can calculate pretty correctly how he will act in a given case. A man's habits, his education, his character, all go in some measure to determine his acting in a given case in a particular way. Hence, therefore, every act of the will, in some degree at least, depends upon something going before, or in the circumstances of the individual; and in so far it is not absolutely free. "What," says Cole ridge, "determines the man to a good and worthy act, we will say, or a virtuous course of conduct? The intelligent will or the self-determining power? True, in part, it is; and the will is pre-eminently the spiritual constituent in our being. But will any man admit that his own will is the only and sufficient determinant of all he is and of all he does? Is nothing to be attributed to the harmony of the system to which it belongs, and to the pre-established fitne of the objects and agents, known and unknown, that surround him, as acting on the will, though doubtle with it likewise?" The whole question, however, is involved in difficulties which defy our limited faculties to solve. "How the will can po ibly be free," says Sir W. Hamilton, "must remain to us, under the present limitation of our faculties, wholly incomprehensible." "The a ertion of absolute nece ity is virtually the negation of a moral universe, consequently, of the Moral Governor of a moral universe, -in a word, atheism." "It would have been better," he said, in speaking of the view of the question as taken by the Scottish school of philosophers, " to show articulately that liberty and nece ity are both incomprehensible, and both beyond the limits of legitimate thought; but that, though the free agency of man cannot be speculatively proved, so neither can it be speculatively disproved, while we may claim for it, as a fact of real actuality, though of inconceivable po ibility, the testimony of consciousne , that we are morally free, as we are morally accountable for our actions."