should have been agreed upon among the disputants; and our enquiries, in
the course of two thousand years, been able to pass from words to the
true and real subject of the controversy. For how easy may it seem to
give exact definitions of the terms employed in reasoning, and make
these definitions, not the mere sound of words, the object of future
scrutiny and examination? But if we consider the matter more narrowly,
we shall be apt to draw a quite opposite conclusion. From this
circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot, and
remains still undecided, we may presume that there is some ambiguity in
the expression, and that the disputants affix different ideas to the
terms employed in the controversy. For as the faculties of the mind are
supposed to be naturally alike in every individual; otherwise nothing
could be more fruitless than to reason or dispute together; it were
impossible, if men affix the same ideas to their terms, that they could
so long form different opinions of the same subject; especially when
they communicate their views, and each party turn themselves on all
sides, in search of arguments which may give them the victory over their
antagonists. It is true, if men attempt the discussion of questions
which lie entirely beyond the reach of human capacity, such as those
concerning the origin of worlds, or the economy of the intellectual
system or region of spirits, they may long beat the air in their
fruitless contests, and never arrive at any determinate conclusion. But
if the question regard any subject of common life and experience,
nothing, one would think, could preserve the dispute so long undecided
but some ambiguous expressions, which keep the antagonists still at a
distance, and hinder them from grappling with each other.

63. This has been the case in the long disputed question concerning
liberty and necessity; and to so remarkable a degree that, if I be not
much mistaken, we shall find, that all mankind, both learned and