A Treatise of HUMAN NATURE: Being an Attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. London: Printed for John-Noon, at the White Hart, near Mercer-Chapel, Cheapside, 1739. Vol. II. Octavo. Pages 475-318.
I Do not recollect any Writer in the English Language who has framed a System of human Nature, morally considered, upon the Principle of this Author, which is that of Necessity, in Opposition to Liberty or Freedom. The Truth of the Principle itself has been often and very carefully discussed. Some have endeavoured to prove even the Impossibility of Liberty, while others have asserted it to be an essential Property of human Nature, the Basis of all Morality, Religion and happiness, which can subsist upon no other Foundation, and are utterly subverted by the Denial of it. To form the clearest Ideas we can have upon this abstruse Subject, we should read some Letters that passed thereupon between those tow acute Reasoners, Mr. Locke and Mr. Limborch, and the incomparable Dr. Clarke's Answers to several Pieces of Leibniz and Collins.
Our Author has sufficiently (he says) explained the Design of this Work of his in the Introduction. Perhaps he expects we should understand it by the following Passages.
It is evident, that all the sciences have Relation, greater or less, to human Nature; and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one Passage or another. Even Mathematicks, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in {354} some measure dependent on the Science of MAN; since they lie under the Cognizance of Men, and are judged of by their Powers and Faculties. It is impossible to tell what Changes and Improvements we might make in these Sciences, were we thoroughly acquainted with the ...