obligation to an action, there must also be external obligation to it. It supposes that done, and proceeds to enquire into internal obligations; or to unfold the goodness and pravity of actions, and from hence to deduce general rules or laws of conduct. Now if the preceding propositions be attended to, and the difference between a rule and a law, or between internal and external obligation, according to our author’s definition, be kept in mind; it may be asserted without any ambiguity, that abstractly from all consideration of the will of the supreme Being, there is no law for our conduct; there is a rule, but that rule is not a law, in the strict sense of that word. It would have prevented much jangling about the foundations of morality, if writers had carefully distinguished, with a late excellent writer, Dr. Sykes,2 in his <18> Essay on the Connexion of Natural with Revealed Religion, between the law and the sanction of the law. cap. 2.
Our author’s reasoning will proceed very clearly, if we understand the meaning of his 8 § to be to this purpose. “A rule of conduct while it is merely apprehended under the notion of reasonable, will not be sufficient to influence men; in order to have due influence upon them, it must be considered as having external, as well as internal obligation, arising from the will of God which never changes.” See how Puffendorf reasons, b. 2. of the law of nature and nations, ch. 3. §20. “But to make these dictates of reason obtain the dignity and power of laws, it is necessary to call into our consideration a much higher principle, &c.”
With respect to what is said, §22. of the law of nations, ’tis well worth while to add an excellent remark of the author of the Persian Letters, 94 and 95.3 “As the law of nature and nations is commonly doctored, one would imagine there were two sorts of justice; one to regulate the affairs of private persons, which prevails in the civil law; the other to compose the differences that arise between people and people, which plays the tyrant in the law of nations: as if the law of nations were not itself a civil law, not indeed of a particular country, but of the world. The magistrate ought to do justice between citizen and citizen; every nation ought to do the same between themselves and another nation. This second distribution of justice, requires no maxims but what are used in the first. Between nation and nation, there is seldom any want of a third to be umpire; because the grounds of dispute are almost always clear and easy to be determined. The interests of two nations are generally so far separated, that it requires nothing but to be a lover of justice to find it out: it is not the same with regard to the differences that arise between private persons as they live in society, their interests are so mingled and confounded, and there are so many different sorts of them, that it is necessary for a third person to untangle what the covetousness of the parties strives to tie knots in, &c.”
Concerning the nature and distinguishing qualities or characteristics of human actions.
SECTION XXIV
Transition to treat of human actions.
From what hath been said of the foundation and origine of the law of nature and nations, it is obvious, that it hath for its object and <19> scope the direction of human conduct; and therefore order makes it necessary to enquire accurately into the qualities and characteristics of human actions.
SECTION XXV
What is meant by action and what by passion? What by external and what by internal action?
Experience, the fountain of all knowledge, teaches us, that various motions and changes happen in the human mind; but since no motion can be produced or conceived without a sufficient moving cause, the motions which happen in the mind of man must have some sufficient cause, which must either be within or without man. And therefore motions, the sufficient cause of which is in man himself, are called actions; and those the cause of which must be sought after without man, are termed passions. But because the motion called action, either produces nothing without the mind, but rests there, or produces by will some effect in the body, the former are denominated internal, the latter external actions.
SECTION XXVI
Passions of what kinds are they?
Passions not proceeding from us, but from some external cause, are so far without our power, and therefore are not unfrequently excited in us against our will or inclination; yet they may sometimes be as it were repulsed and prevented, if we are provided with sufficient force to resist the external exciting cause; and on the other hand, in certain circumstances we can assist the external mover, so as that the motion it tends to produce may be more easily excited in us. Whence it follows that some passions are within our power, and others are not.* <20>
SECTION XXVII
Whether they are subject to our direction or not?
Because the law of nature hath only free actions for its object, (§4) it cannot have for its object, in order to be directed by it, passions which are not within our power. Tho’ it may lay down some rules relative to our passions, so far as they are in our power, yet, properly speaking, these rules are not directions to our passions, but to those free actions, by which we can resist or assist these passions, shewing what we ought to do with regard to hindering or forwarding them.†
SECTION XXVIII
Whether the law of nature extends to them?
The law of nature therefore only extends to our actions; but let it be observed, that tho’ the sufficient cause of all these be in man himself, (§25) yet experience teaches us, that of some actions we are conscious and are absolute masters; others are of such a nature that they proceed from some mechanical disposition, in such a manner that we are not always conscious of them, nor have them not wholly in our power.* <21>
SECTION XXIX
Actions are either human or natural. Whether the latter are the object of the law of nature?
Actions of which we are conscious, and which are within our power, and subject to our direction, are properly termed human or moral actions; those of which we are not conscious, or not masters, are called physical or natural actions; whence it is plain, that the former are free, the latter necessary; and therefore that human or moral actions alone can be directed by the law of nature (§4), and not natural ones, except so far as it is in our power to assist and promote, or contrariwise to avoid and prevent them.† <22>
SECTION XXX
The understanding and will are the principles of human actions.
Human or moral actions being free or within our power, and every thing being in our power which is directed by our will; it follows that human or moral actions are actions which may be directed by our will. But because the will never determines itself, unless it be excited to desire or reject by the understanding;* hence it is justly concluded, that the understanding likewise concurs in the exertion of free human actions; and therefore there are two principles of free human or moral actions; the understanding and the will.
SECTION XXXI
What the understanding is?
Understanding
