No agent can be conceiv'd indifferent as to pain or pleasure.
_We_ do not, properly speaking, in a strict philosophical sense, make objects more or less pleasant; but the laws of nature do that.
(M372) A finite intelligence might have foreseen 4 thousand years agoe the place and circumstances, even the most minute & trivial, of my present existence. This true on supposition that uneasiness determines the will.
(M373) Doctrines of liberty, prescience, &c. explained by billiard balls.
Wt judgement would he make of uppermost and lowermost who had always seen through an inverting glass?
All lines subtending the same optic angle congruent (as is evident by an easy experiment); therefore they are equal.
We have not pure simple ideas of blue, red, or any other colour (except perhaps black) because all bodies reflect heterogeneal light.
Qu. Whether this be true as to sounds (& other sensations), there being, perhaps, rays of air wch will onely exhibit one particular sound, as rays of light one particular colour.
Colours not definable, not because they are pure unmixt thoughts, but because we cannot easily distinguish & separate the thoughts they include, or because we want names for their component ideas.
(M374) By Soul is meant onely a complex idea, made up of existence, willing, & perception in a large sense. Therefore it is known and it may be defined.
We cannot possibly conceive any active power but the Will.
(M375) In moral matters men think ('tis true) that they are free; but this freedom is only the freedom of doing as they please; wch freedom is consecutive to the Will, respecting only the operative faculties(220).
Men impute their actions to themselves because they will'd them, and that not out of ignorance, but whereas they have the consequences of them, whether good or bad.
This does not prove men to be indifferent in respect of desiring.
If anything is meant by the _potentia_ of A. B. it must be desire; but I appeal to any man if his desire be indifferent, or (to speak more to the purpose) whether he himself be indifferent in respect of wt he desires till after he has desired it; for as for desire itself, or the faculty of desiring, that is indifferent, as all other faculties are.