A treatise of freewill / by Ralph Cudworth ; now first edited from the original MS and with notes by John Allen.

  • Cudworth, Ralph, 1617-1688.
Date:
1838
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: A treatise of freewill / by Ralph Cudworth ; now first edited from the original MS and with notes by John Allen. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by Royal College of Physicians, London. The original may be consulted at Royal College of Physicians, London.

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    action. From whence it is plain that tliere is some- thing in us superior tliereunto, something more universal and comprehensive, and yet withal more simple, which is hegemonic to it, and doth manage and determine the same. X. I say, therefore, that the to ■^yefioviKov in every man, and indeed that which is properly, we ourselves, (we rather having those other things of necessary nature than being them), is the soul as comprehending itself, all its concerns and interests, its abilities and capacities, and holding itself, as it were, in its own hand, as it were redoubled upon itself, having a power of intending or exerting itself more or less, in consideration and deliberation, in resisting the lower appetites that oppose it, both of utility, reason, and honesty; in self-recollection and attention, and vigilant circumspection, or standing upon our guard, in purposes and resolutions, in dili- gence in carrying on steady designs and active endeavours, in order to self-improvement and the self-promoting of its own good, the fixing and con- serving itself in the same. Though by accident and by abuse, it often proves a self-impairing power, the original of sin, vice, and Avickedness; whereby men become to themselves the causes of their own evil, blame, punishment, and miseiy. AVherefore this hegemonicon always determines the ])assive capa- bility of men’s nature one Avay or other, either for better or for Avorsc ; and has a self-forming and self-