PART III. Children

able with

death.

He saith, "the Bishop would make but an ill judge of innocent children;" and that he "hopeth we shall never have 834 not punish- the administration of public justice in such hands as his, or in the hands of such as shall take counsel from him";" because I said, that "if a child, before he have the use of reason, shall kill a man in his passion, yet, because he wanted malice to incite him to it and reason to restrain him from it, he shall not die for it, in the strict rules of particular justice, unless there be some mixture of public justice in the case"."

Si ego dignus hac contumelia

"Sum maxime, at tu indignus qui faceres tamena.”

If I deserved a reproof, he was a most unfit man to be my reprover; who maintaineth, that "no law can be unjust," that in the state of nature it was lawful for any man to kill another, and particularly, for mothers to expose or make away their children at their pleasure-" ita ut illum vel educare vel exponere suo arbitrio et jure possit;"-that "parents to their children," and "sovereigns to their subjects," cannot be “injurious," whether they kill them or whatsoever they do unto theme. But what is it that I have said? I have delivered no judgment or opinion of mine own in the case. I know what hath been practised by some persons, in some places, at some times. I know what reasons have been pretended for such practices; sovereign dominion, the law of retaliation (Psalm cxxxvii. 8, 9.), the common safety, the satisfaction or contentment of persons or families injured. But if I have delivered any opinion of mine own, it was on the contrary ;— though I affirm not but that it may be sometimes lawful to punish parents, for acts truly treasonable, in their posterity with lesser punishments, as loss of liberty, or the loss of the father's estate, which was at the time of the delinquency in the father's power to dispose, that they who will not forbear to offend for their own sakes, may forbear for their posterity's sakes; though I know the practice of many countries, even in this, to be otherwise. But for death, I know no warrant.

II.

Pliny observeth of the lion, that he preyeth first upon men, DISCOURSE more rarely upon women, and not upon children, except he be extremely pressed with hunger.

and public

Private right and private justice is between particular men; [Private public right and public justice is either between common- justice. ] wealths, as in foreign war, or between commonwealths and subjects, as in case of lawgiving or civil war. Many things are lawful in the way of public justice, which are not lawful in the way of private justice. But this inquisition hath no relation to our present controversy. My exception—" except there be some mixture of public justice in the case"-is as much as to say, unless there be something more in the case, that doth nearly concern the safety of the commonwealth. It is not impossible, but before the ordinary age of attaining to the perfect use of reason, a child may be drawn into very treasonable attempts, so far as to act a ministerial part; and in such cases there is a rule in law, Malitia supplet ætatem.' He hath confessed here enough to spoil his cause, if it were not spoiled already ;—that "want of reason takes away" both "crime" and "punishment, and maketh" agents "innocents." If "want of reason" do it, without doubt antecedent extrinsecal necessity doth much more do it. How then hath he taught us all this while, that voluntary faults are justly punishable though they be necessary? A child's fault may be as voluntary as a man's. How a child may justly be put to death to satisfy "a vow," or "to save a great number of people," or " for reason of state," I know not. This I do know,

III.

PART mind," to be "imaginations);" and by some other passages in this treatise, where he attributeth to bees and spiders "not only election, but also art, prudence, policy, very near equal to that of mankind;" and where he denieth to man all "dominion over the creatures," making him like a "top," or a "football," or a pair of "scales," and his chiefest difference from brute beasts to consist in his language and in his hand, and his liberty to consist in "an absence of outward impediments," ascribing to brute beasts deliberation such as (if it were constant) "there were no cause to call men more rational than beasts';"-that he maketh the reason and understanding of men to be nothing else but refined and improved sense, or the sense of brute beasts to include reason. It was an old 835 Stoical opinion, that the affections were nothing else but imaginations; but it was an old groundless error. Imaginations proceed from the brain, affections from the heart. But to make "reason" and "understanding" to be "imaginations," is yet grosser. Imagination is an act of the sensitive phantasy, reason and understanding are proper to the intellectual soul. Imagination is only of particulars, reason of universals also. In the time of sleep or some raging fit of sickness, when the imagination is not governed by reason, we see what absurd and monstrous and inconsistent shapes and fancies it doth collect, remote enough from true deliberation. Doth the physician cure his patient by "imaginations?" Or the statesman govern the commonwealth by "imaginations ?" Or the lawyer determine differences by "imaginations ?" Are logical arguments, reduced into due form and an orderly method, nothing but "imaginations?" Is prudence itself turned to "imagination?" And are the dictates of right reason, which God hath given as a light, to preserve us from moral vices and to lead us to virtuous actions, now become mere "imaginations?" We see the understanding doth often contrary and correct the imaginations of sense. I do not blame the " puzzled Schoolmenm," if they dissented from such new-fangled speculations. And the ground of all these vain imaginations is imagina

[And this upon the ground of imagination.]

[Qu., Animadv. upon Numb. xxvi. p. 278.]

d, e; pp. 339, 341; and below pp. 441. note o, 445. note h.]

II.

tion ;-"As any man may perceive as easily as he can look DISCOURSE into his own thoughts"." His argument may be thus reduced,―That which we imagine is true, but we imagine all these to be imaginations. I deny both his propositions. First, our imaginations are not always true, but many times such as are suggested to us by our working phantasies upon some slight grounds, or by our fond or deceitful instructers, or by our vain hopes or fears. For one Whittington, that found his imagination to prove true, when the bells rang him back to his master, "Turn again, Whittington, thou shalt be Lord Mayor of London," a thousand have been grossly abused by their vain imaginations. Secondly, no man can imagine any such thing, who knoweth the difference between the reasonable and the sensitive soul, between the understanding and the phantasy, between the brain and the heart; but confident assertions and credulity may do much among simple people. So we have heard or read of some, who were contented to renounce their eye-sight, and to affirm for company, that they saw a dragon flying in the air, where there was not so much as a butterfly; out of a mannerly simplicity, rather than to seem to doubt of the truth of that, which was confirmed to them by the testimony and authority of such persons, whose judgment and veracity they esteemed.

We have had enough of his "understanding understandeth," and "will willeth";" or too much, unless it were of more weight. What a stir he maketh every other section about nothing! All the world are agreed upon the truth in this particular, and understand one another well. Whether they ascribe the act to the agent, or to the form, or to the faculty by which he acteth, it is all one. They know, that actions properly are of individuums. But if an agent have lost his natural power or acquired habit (as we have instances in both kinds), he will act but madly. He that shall say, that natural faculties and acquired habits are nothing but the acts that flow from them, that "reason" and "deliberation" are "the same thing" (he might as well say, that wit and discourse are the same thing), deserveth no other answer but to be slighted.

n [Qu., Animadv. upon Numb. xxvi. p. 279.]

[Ibid. And see above p. 287; and

Qu., State of Quest., p. 4.]

P[Qu., Animadv. upon Numb. xxvi. p. 279.]

PART

III.

That a man, deliberating of fit means to obtain his desired end, doth "consider the means singly and successively," there is no doubt. And there is as little doubt, that both the inquiry, and the result or verdict, may sometimes be definite, or prescribe the best means or the only means, and sometimes indefinite, determining what means are good, without defining which are the best, but leaving the election to the free agent.

The faculty of willing

CASTIGATIONS OF THE ANIMADVERSIONS;-NUMBER XXVII.

I do not know what the man would have done but for his is the will. trifling homonymy about the name of "will," which affordeth him scope to play at fast and loose between the faculty and the act of willing. We ended with it in the last section, and we begin again with it in this section:-"The faculty of the will" (saith he) "is no will, the act only which he calleth volition is the will; as a man that sleepeth hath the power of seeing and seeth not, nor hath for that time any sight, so 836 also he hath the power of willing, but willeth nothing, nor hath for that time any wills."

What profound mysteries he uttereth, to shew that the faculty of willing, and the act of willing, are not the same things!-did ever any creature in the world think they were?—and that the faculty doth not always act!-did ever any man think it did? Let him leave these impertinencies, and tell us plainly, whether the faculty of willing and the act of willing be not distinct things; and whether the faculty of the will be not commonly called the will by all men but himself; and by himself also, when he is in his lucid intervals. Hear his own confession ;-"To will, to elect, to choose, are all one, and so to will is here made an act of the will; and indeed, as the will is a faculty or power of a man's soul, so the will is an act of it according to that power"." That which he calleth the "faculty" here, he calleth expressly

9 [Qu., Animadv. upon Numb. xxvi. p. 279: to prove, that "there is no such thing as an indefinite consideration of what are good and fit means."]

[Pers., Sat., i. 1.]