Experience and Definitions in the Hobbes-Bramhall Debate on Liberty

3.1. Bramhall’s Scholastic Characterizations of a “Right Definition” and Hobbes’s Critiques

At the start of their published exchange, Bramhall clarifies what his operative notion is not: “by liberty, I do neither understand a liberty from sin, nor a liberty from misery, nor a liberty from servitude, nor a liberty from violence” (EW 5:56). He then situates his notion in relation to common scholastic notions:

But I understand a liberty from necessity, or rather from necessitation; that is, an universal immunity from all inevitability and determination to one; whether it be of exercise only, which the Schools call a liberty of contradiction…; or whether it be a liberty of specification and exercise also, which the Schools call liberty of contrariety. (EW 5:56)²⁰

Bramhall here uses distinctions to set the stage for his presentation of his understanding of “true liberty” (EW 5:66).

Hobbes dislikes this strategy. He summarizes Bramhall’s discussion thus:

In the next place he maketh certain distinctions of liberty, and says, he means not liberty from sin, nor from servitude, nor from violence, but from necessity, necessitation, inevitability, and determination to one. It had been better to define liberty, than thus to distinguish; for I understand never the more what he means by liberty. And though he says he means liberty from necessitation, yet I understand not how such a liberty can be, and it is a taking of the question without proof. For what else is the question between us but whether such a liberty be possible or not? (EW 5:56)

Hobbes suggests that two problems result from Bramhall’s presentation. As we have seen above, because proper definitions raise clear and perfect ideas of what is named in the minds of the listeners, Hobbes thinks providing a definition is more effective in making clear one’s own notion than using distinctions. Here, Hobbes says Bramhall’s distinctions don’t help him understand what Bramhall means by ‘liberty.’ Furthermore, in claiming about his notion of liberty that it is a liberty from necessity, Bramhall, Hobbes holds, is assuming what is at issue between them “without proof.”

When putting forward his own understanding of liberty, Hobbes defines the term: “I conceive liberty to be rightly defined in this manner: —Liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action, that are not contained in the nature, and in the intrinsical quality of the agent” (EW 5:367). Bramhall, of course, denies that Hobbes’s definition is the correct definition of liberty. More fundamentally, though, Bramhall objects to what he takes Hobbes to be assuming about what criteria a “right” or proper definition should satisfy:

How that should be a right definition of liberty, which comprehends neither the genus nor the difference, neither the matter nor form of liberty, which doth not so much as accidentally describe liberty by its marks and tokens; how a real faculty or the elective power should be defined by a negation, or by an absence, is past my understanding, and contrary to all the rules of right reason which I have learned. Negatives cannot explicate the nature of things defined. (EW 5:368)

Bramhall here implies that there are several ways one may provide a proper definition, none of which he says is true of Hobbes’s definition of liberty. Bramhall first puts forward the standard scholastic conception of definition according to which a definition provides the genus, which specifies what kind of thing the definiendum is, and the difference (differentia), which uniquely identifies the definiendum within the genus.²¹ Another way a definition may properly specify its definiendum is by providing the matter and form, which captures the essence of something, rather than “accidentally describing” it.²² Third, Bramhall also suggests that one cannot properly define something real by expressing it in terms of a negation or absence.

Hobbes allows that the first conception of a proper definition is adequate:

I confess the rule is good, that we ought to define, when it can be done, by using first some more general term, and then by restraining the signification of that general term, till it be the same with that of the word defined. And this general term the School calls genus, and the restraint difference. (EW 5:370–371)

And he claims, in opposition to Bramhall’s critique, that his definition of liberty satisfies this conception:

But it is to little purpose that he requires in a definition so exactly the genus and the difference, seeing he does not know them when they are there. For in this my definition of liberty, the genus is absence of impediments to action; and the difference or restriction is that they be not contained in the nature of the agent. (EW 5:371)

Hobbes here renders his definition of ‘liberty’ into the language of the traditional scholastic genus-species conception of definitions. This, he thinks, is akin to resolving a name into its most universal parts: in De Corpore, where he says that if we have names that are compounded conceptions, “the definition is nothing but a resolution of that name into its most universal parts…so that definitions of this kind always consist of genus and difference” (De corpore 6.14 / EW 1:83).²³

Hobbes rejects the second conception of a proper definition, which requires providing the matter and form: “Matter is body, that is to say, corporeal substance, and subject to dimension …. But it is impossible that matter should be part of a definition, whose parts are only words” (EW 5:371). This critique, relying on Hobbes’s materialism, would be rejected out of hand by Bramhall. But Hobbes provides a different critique of the scholastic conception in De corpore 2.5, which relies not on his materialism, but on his views about language and signification:

But seeing names ordered in speech (as is defined) are signs of conceptions [signa sunt conceptuum], it is manifest that they are not signs of the things themselves; for that the sound of this word stone should be the sign of a stone, cannot be understood in any sense but this, that he that hears it collects that he that pronounces it thinks of a stone. And, therefore, that disputation, whether names signify the matter or form, or composite [compositum], and other like subtleties of the metaphysics, is kept up by erring men, and such as understand not the words they dispute about. (EW 1:17 / DC 1655:10, emended, my emphasis).

In the passage above and Hobbes’s other official statements about signification,²⁴ names signify conceptions or ideas, not the objects themselves. It follows, on this view, that there is no reason to uphold Bramhall’s requirement that definitions provide the matter and the form, which are features of things themselves.

As for the third point, that a negation cannot constitute a proper definition of something real, Hobbes dismisses it, mockingly:

If the word defined signify an absence or negation, I hope he would not have me define it by a presence or affirmation. Such a word is liberty; for it signifieth freedom from impediments, which is all one with the absence of impediments, as I have defined it. And if this be contrary to all the rules of right reason, that is to say, of logic, that he hath learned, I should advise him to read some other logic than he hath yet read, or consider better those he did read when he was a young man and could less understand them. (EW 5:371–372)

Hobbes here provides no justification for his rejection of Bramhall’s third requirement, but instead recommends Bramhall revisit his understanding of logic. But Hobbes’s view on the relation between definitions, names, and conceptions discussed in §2 illuminates why Hobbes thinks Bramhall’s position is preposterous. Recall that Hobbes holds that definitions take away equivocation by explicating in language the idea of which a name serves as a sign. Hobbes disagrees with Bramhall’s understanding of liberty as “a real faculty or the elective power” (EW 5:368), and in his view, there is no principled reason for why a definition formulated in terms of absences or negations would fail to fix on a determinate idea. Indeed, the definition of ‘motion,’ one of Hobbes’s paradigm examples of a definition in De corpore, involves a privation, a kind of absence: “he that conceives motion aright, cannot but know that motion is the privation of one place, and the acquisition of another” (De corpore 6.6 / EW 1:70).

3.2. Hobbes’s Criteria of a “Right Definition”

Hobbes proposes two criteria for a proper definition at different points in his exchanges with Bramhall. In his response to Bramhall’s characterizations of a proper definition, Hobbes initially suggests that a right definition is that which supplies a clear and constant meaning:

A right definition is that which determineth the signification of the word defined, to the end that in the discourse where it is used, the meaning of it may be constant and without equivocation. This is the measure of a definition, and intelligible to an English reader. (EW 5:370)

This proposal is consistent with his account in De corpore of the properties of a definition, where, as we have seen, he says a definition “takes away equivocation” (De corpore 6.15 / EW 1:84).

In Of Liberty and Necessity, Hobbes had suggested a seemingly distinct criterion of a proper definition: that the proposed definition not imply a contradiction. He critiques the Molinist definition of a free agent on these grounds:²⁵

I hold that ordinary definition of a free agent, namely, that a free agent is that, which when all things are present which are needful to produce the effect, can nevertheless not produce it, implies a contradiction, and is nonsense; being as much as to say, the cause may be sufficient, that is necessary, and yet the effect not follow. (EW 5:385)

Hobbes’s critique here is confusing. He seems to be equating necessary and sufficient conditions, but the Molinist definition is making a claim only about what is necessary.²⁶ Indeed, Bramhall takes offense at Hobbes’s charge: Bramhall says he is only following the scholastic definition, and “doth [Hobbes] think that all these spake nonsense: or had no more judgment than to contradict themselves in a definition? He might much better suspect himself than censure so many” (EW 5:385). Regardless of the soundness of Hobbes’s reasoning, it is clear that Hobbes thinks that the problem with the Molinist definition is that it implies a contradiction.

Hobbes’s views on the relationships between definitions, language, and conceptions discussed in §2 illuminates this criterion of a proper definition. This is a case of the kind of absurdity where a proposed definition, by amounting to a contradiction, must be false and cannot signify any ideas in the mind. Hobbes might have in mind this kind of absurdity when he says in Leviathan:

When men speak such words, as put together, have in them no signification at all; but are fallen upon by some, through misunderstanding of the words they have received, and repeat by rote; by others, from intention to deceive by obscurity. And this is incident to none but those, that converse in questions of matters incomprehensible, as the Schoole-men. (L viii.27 / Hobbes 2012: 122)

The Scholastic writings on free will is one example Hobbes specifically notes of this kind of absurdity, where “their words are without any thing correspondent to them in the mind” (L viii.27 / Hobbes 2012: 122).²⁷

I have shown that while Hobbes rejects two of the scholastic conceptions of definitions that Bramhall puts forward, he accepts one common understanding of proper definitions, the genus-species conception, because it doesn’t differ substantively from his understanding of definitions as resolving names into their most universal parts. But, more fundamentally, Hobbes’s responses to Bramhall and his own positive criteria of a proper definition reveal the underlying significance of his view that the function of proper definitions is to signify clear ideas, as put forward in De corpore and Leviathan.

4.1. Definitions Are True by Agreement

Hobbes, at times, says that definitions are true in virtue of the agreement of the speakers who use the defined terms. In De corpore, he says, “the truth of the first principles of our ratiocination, namely definitions, is made and constituted by ourselves, whilst we consent and agree about the appellations of things” (De corpore 25.1 / EW 1:388).³¹ In his elaboration of the argument from experience, he says that in cases of “unusual” words, “all that can be done…is to make the definitions of them true by mutual consent in their signification” (EW 5:385).

Though there are thorny issues involved in making sense of these statements in other contexts,³² this account can be quickly dispatched as an explanation for why the definitions of terms involved in debates about liberty need no demonstration. There is no reason to hold that Hobbes takes the terms in the debate about liberty to be “unusual.” Both Bramhall and Hobbes assume that they are using a common set of terms with meanings about which they can argue and disagree. Hobbes at times even refers to the ordinary usage of terms in the dispute, for example, ‘spontaneity,’ which he characterizes as a word “in common use” (EW 5:92).³³ It is improbable that Hobbes would consider words “in common use” to be “unusual.”³⁴

4.2. Generative Definitions

In De corpore, Hobbes gives another explanation of why some definitions need no demonstration. There are certain names, he says, “that signify things as have some conceiveable cause,” things such as “such a body, such and so great motion, so great magnitude, such figure, and whatsoever we can distinguish one body from another by” (De corpore 6.13 / EW 1:81). Definitions of things which we conceive to have some cause need no demonstration because the definitions are “generative.” Generative definitions provide instructions for constructing what the definition is of:

Definitions of things, which may be understood to have some cause, must consist of such names as express the cause or manner of their generation, as when we define a circle to be a figure made by the circumduction of a straight line in a plane, etc. (De corpore 6.13 / EW 1:81–82)

The definition of a circle explains how to construct the figure itself: we take a straight line and rotate it around a fixed point in a plane. It is because we have “maker’s knowledge” of the truth of definitions such as this one that they need no demonstration. For generative definitions, we “make the truth of our definitions by our ability to carry out the operations they require,” as David Gauthier puts it.”³⁵

This explanation of why definitions need no demonstration would not be helpful for terms involved in the dispute between Hobbes and Bramhall. Terms such as ‘liberty,’ ‘spontaneity,’ ‘free agent,’ and so on, differ in at least two significant ways from Hobbes’s examples of names that have generative definitions. First, unlike the names Hobbes gives as examples, they are general and do not specify particular instances, which seems to be one marker of names that have generative definitions as opposed to those that do not (as I will discuss shortly).³⁶ Second, terms involved in the dispute about liberty do not refer to the kinds of things that can be constructed.³⁷

4.3. Definitions as “Explications of Our Simplest Conceptions”

Hobbes mentions a second kind of definition in De corpore, definitions of “things of which we can conceive no cause at all,” for example, “body, or matter, quantity, or extension, motion, and whatsoever is common to all matter” (De corpore 6.13 / EW 1:81). Hobbes explains that names of this sort:

are well enough defined, when, by speech as short as may be, we raise in the mind of the hearer perfect and clear ideas or conceptions [conceptus] of the things named, as when we define motion to be the leaving of one place, and the acquiring of another continually; for though no thing moved, nor any cause of motion be in that definition, yet, at the hearing of that speech, there will come into the mind of the hearer an idea of motion clear enough. (De corpore 6.13 / EW 1:81 / DC 1655:50)

Definitions of this kind, in contrast with the first, are not of particulars (“no thing moved”), and it seems to be on this basis that they are not generative. In contrast with the definition of a circle, for which we must consider rotating a particular straight line to generate a circle, the definition of motion does not require us to consider any particular thing as being in motion.³⁸ The truth of these kinds of definition, therefore, needs another explanation.

Definitions of things of which we conceive no cause like body, motion, and the like are true because they “are nothing but the explication of our simplest conceptions [conceptuum nostrorum simplicissimorum explicationes]” (De corpore 6.6 / DC 1655:44). For Hobbes, a “conception” is not the result of purely intellectual activity.³⁹ Instead, we arrive at conceptions through sense perception. Hobbes often uses ‘conception’ along with ‘imagination,’⁴⁰ ‘phantasm’ (De corpore 2.9 / EW 1:20), and ‘idea,’⁴¹ where all three latter terms are understood as deriving from sense perception.⁴² In a passage at the beginning of Leviathan, Hobbes explicitly connects ‘conception’ with sense perception: “The Originall of [all appearances], is that which we call SENSE; (For there is no conception in a mans mind, which hath not at first, totally, or by parts, been begotten upon the organs of sense)” (L i.2 / Hobbes 2012: 22). And in his earlier Elements of Law, Hobbes says that conceptions are produced by our senses (EW 4:28). Though Hobbes does not detail the mechanism by which we acquire these simplest conceptions, his examples make clear that we acquire them somehow through sense experience of bodies. As we’ve seen, he generally characterizes many of them as “whatsoever is common to all matter,” and it is through our interactions with bodies that we then acquire the simplest conceptions of body, matter, motion, place, and so on.

Hobbes thinks that upon hearing names of this sort, clear ideas straightforwardly arise in the mind of the listener (De corpore 6.13 / EW 1:81–82). Definitions of these kinds of names, as first principles, are in this sense “manifest of themselves” (De corpore 6.5 / EW 1:69) or “known by nature”:

And seeing teaching is nothing but leading the mind of him we teach, to the knowledge of our discoveries [inventorum cognitionem], in that track [vestigia] by which we attained the same with our own mind; therefore, the same method that served for our discovery [fuerat investigandi], will serve also for demonstration to others saving that we omit the first part of method which proceeded from the sense of things to universal principles, which, because they are principles, cannot be demonstrated; and seeing they are known by nature, (as was said above in the 5th article) they need no demonstration, though they need explication. (De corpore 6.12 / EW 1:80–81, modified / DC 1655:49)⁴³

Hobbes says earlier in De corpore that that “the method of teaching” is “of demonstration” (De corpore 6.10 / EW 1:79). So, demonstration consists in leading others down the same mental path (“the track”) that we ourselves took when we learned what the causes of any given effect were, what Hobbes calls “the method of discovery [inveniendi methodo]” (De corpore 6.10 / DC 1655:49). But Hobbes clarifies that the first part of demonstration, the path from sense to definitions, cannot be demonstrated, and indeed needs no demonstration, because definitions are “nothing but the explication of our simplest conceptions” (De corpore 6.6 / DC 1655:44), those basic conceptions we acquire through sense experience.

6.1. How Might Liberty Be One of Hobbes’s Simplest Conceptions?

On this interpretation of the argument from experience, the plausibility of the argument hangs on the plausibility of the view that liberty is one of the simplest conceptions we acquire from sense experience. If, for the sake of argument, we grant Hobbes his own examples of simplest conceptions and his definition of liberty, this view turns out to be less farfetched than it might seem at the start.

Key examples of simplest conceptions in De corpore include body, place, and motion. He says of the latter two:

He who rightly conceives of place [locum…recte concipit], cannot be ignorant of this definition, place is that space which is possessed or filled adequately by some body; and so, he that conceives motion aright, cannot but know that motion is the privation of one place, and the acquisition of another. (De corpore 12.6 / EW 1:70, modified / DC 1655:44)

If simplest conceptions are those that we acquire in virtue of having any sense experience, it makes sense, on Hobbes’s view, that body, place, and motion are paradigm cases. Hobbes holds that the cause of our sense perceptions are external bodies impinging on us, which thereby cause motions in our bodies that appear to us as colors, sounds, odors, and the like (L i.4 / Hobbes 2012: 22–24).⁵² Whenever we have any sense experience whatsoever, what we are sensing, ultimately, are bodies changing places—that is, bodies in motion.

Liberty, then, understood in Hobbes’s sense in his debate with Bramhall, could likewise be a conception we acquire through sense experience. The clearest formulation of the definition of ‘liberty’ that would align with this account is one he provides in Leviathan: “LIBERTY, or FREEDOME, signifieth (properly) the absence of Opposition; (by Opposition, I mean externall Impediments of motion)” (L xxi.1 / Hobbes 2012: 324).⁵³ If we acquire the simplest conceptions of bodies, motion, and place in virtue of having sense experience, though Hobbes does not say this, presumably on the same basis, we could also acquire the conception of liberty. Since the definition of liberty contains within it an explicit reference to motion, it seems plausible that the conception of liberty derives from conceptions of body, motion, and place. Hobbes claims that when liberty is not understood in his sense, people misapply the terms: “when the words Free, and Liberty, are applyed to any thing but Bodies, they are abused; for that which is not subject to Motion, is not subject to Impediment” (L xxi.2 / Hobbes 2012: 324).

This understanding of the connection between liberty and other simplest conceptions highlights the connection between Hobbes’s definition of liberty and his broader metaphysics. If, as according to Hobbes’s materialism, all things are bodies in motion, and motion is the ultimate explanans, it makes sense that that liberty too is construed in terms of motion, as the absence of impediments to motion. An implication of Hobbes’s definition is that liberty is something not only rational beings possess, but even “Irrationall, and Inanimate creatures” (L xxi.1 / Hobbes 2012: 324) such as birds and rivers (EW 5:40–41). Bramhall takes this feature to be a problem for Hobbes’s understanding of liberty, calling it “a brutish liberty” (EW 5:40) and “a ridiculous liberty” (EW 5:41). But as an indication of the coherence of Hobbes’s views on liberty with his metaphysics as a whole, it is a virtue of his view.

6.2. How Are the Simplest Conceptions Guaranteed to be Veracious?

I’ve argued that it’s not implausible that by Hobbes’s own lights, liberty is one of the simplest conceptions. On this interpretation, Hobbes has the resources for a response to Bramhall’s objection to the argument from experience. Bramhall’s objection amounts to a metaphysical concern, that “private notions and conceptions which we have in our minds” (EW 5:390) bear no connection to “the true natures of things” (EW 5:391), and it’s because of this lack of connection between our minds and reality that conceptions are not the proper starting point of a demonstration. But if liberty is indeed a Hobbesian “simplest conception,” as I’ve suggested, the conception of liberty is not causally isolated from extra-mental reality. Anyone can, in principle, acquire the simplest conception of liberty simply in virtue of interacting with the bodies that make up all of reality.

A different problem—an epistemic problem—with the argument from experience emerges. Why would the simplest conceptions we gain by sense experience of bodies be guaranteed to be veracious? As I have discussed, in contrast with Bramhall, Hobbes seems to assume that at least in the case of our simplest conceptions, sense experience unproblematically allows us to acquire “perfect and clear ideas or conceptions of the things named” (De corpore 6.13 / EW 1:81). Though the view that we acquire ideas by sense experience is plausible and by no means unique to Hobbes, nowhere does Hobbes explain how those ideas are guaranteed to accurately reflect the nature of reality, which would seem to be a key issue in an argument conceived as a proof of the nature of liberty.⁵⁴

Perhaps this oversight simply highlights Hobbes’s preoccupation with providing causal explanations of sense perception and other mental phenomena compatible with the mechanical philosophy and his materialism.⁵⁵ In De corpore, Hobbes says that sense “in the sentient, can be nothing else but motion in some of the internal parts of the sentient; and the parts so moved are parts of the organs of sense” (De corpore 25.2 / EW 1:390). His discussions of sense perception and other significant aspects of human psychology—imagination, dreams, appetites, and aversions—in Leviathan too focus on mental phenomena not from a first-person perspective, but in terms of motions in the body. If Hobbes’s main objective is to explain how mental experience arises rather than what it is like, and all of mental experience is reduced to matter in motion, then the gap between what is and how things seem to us might easily drop out of the account.⁵⁶

6.3. Why are Hobbes’s Definitions the Proper Definitions?

Even if we grant Hobbes the preceding two points—that liberty is one of the simplest conceptions everyone can acquire through sense experience and that those conceptions are veracious—on what basis can he hold that his own definitions properly explicate them?⁵⁷

As I’ve discussed, Hobbes holds that common usage properly reflects the signification of words that are not “unusual.” Since ‘liberty’ and other terms involved in the debate are not unusual, we should turn to common usage, which, he argues, supports his definitions of the terms. Hobbes highlights common usage explicitly in defense of his definition of ‘spontaneity,’ one of the terms listed in the argument from experience. In the following passage from The Questions Concerning Liberty, Necessity, and Chance, parts of which I quoted earlier, Hobbes argues that common usage of ‘spontaneity’ aligns with his understanding of the term:

I desire the reader to take notice, that the common people, on whose arbitration dependeth the signification of words in common use, among the Latins and the Greeks did call all actions and motions whereof they did perceive no cause, spontaneous and αυτοματα [automatic]: I say, not those actions which had no causes; for all actions have their causes; but those actions whose causes they did not perceive. So that spontaneous, as a general name, comprehended many actions and motions of inanimate creatures; as the falling of heavy things downwards, which they thought spontaneous, and that if they were not hindered, they would descend of their own accord. (EW 5:92–93)

Hobbes points out that ordinary people use the term ‘spontaneity’ in the same way he does—to refer to actions and motions of which no cause is perceived and therefore applicable not only to animate but also inanimate things. This is important to clarify because if the term were reserved for actions that lack causes, common usage would conflict with his views about necessity and its relation to liberty.

In the earlier Of Liberty and Necessity, Hobbes also invokes common usage in his discussion of his definition of liberty. After presenting his definition (how he “conceive[s] liberty to be rightly defined” (EW 5:367)), Hobbes gives examples to show that common usage—what “is said,” what “men never say,” and what “we say”—supports his definition:

Liberty is the absence of all the impediments to action, that are not contained in the nature, and in the intrinsical quality of the agent. As for example, the water is said to descend freely, or to have liberty to descend by the channel of the river, because there is no impediment that way; but not across, because the banks are impediments. And though water cannot ascend, yet men never say it wants the liberty to ascend, but the faculty or power; because the impediment is in the nature of the water and intrinsical. So also we say, he that is tied wants the liberty to go, because the impediment is not in him, but in his bonds; whereas we say not so of him that is sick or lame, because the impediment is in himself. (EW 5:367–368)

The example of the river shows that ‘liberty’ is ordinarily used just as his definition would suggest: when there is an absence of impediments to action (where ‘action’ is understood generally as ‘motion’) but not when the impediments are intrinsic to what is acting. Hobbes’s second example of the tied-up man highlights the difference in usage when the impediments are external to an agent vs. internal to him: we commonly use ‘liberty’ only when the impediments are not in the nature of the agent.⁵⁸

In Thomas White’s De Mundo Examined (Anti-White, also known as De Motu), written around the same time as his initial exchange with Bramhall, Hobbes also refers to common usage in his explanation of his understanding of liberty.⁵⁹ In a section titled “The true definition of ‘free’,” Hobbes points out how people use the term ‘free’ (liberum):

Among inanimates, that is called [dicitur] free which is in no degree hindered from doing whatever, from its own nature, it can do. Hence a river runs freely that is prevented from flowing neither by its banks nor by any obstacle. Nor are those who speak thus [Neque tamen…qui sic loquuntur] unaware that water runs down by force of its own gravity, i.e. by natural necessity; they acknowledge therefore, that liberty is opposed not to internal necessity but to an external impediment. Likewise also those who allow a man liberty of action are well aware that there are some things that he cannot will (such as those that seem the worst to him) and some that he cannot avoid desiring (such as those things which seem the best that have been done for him); they do not deny, however, that he acts freely and by free-choice [libere et per electionem agere]. But of free-choice, as of everything else, there exists some cause, and this is a necessary one; yet he who necessarily chooses nonetheless chooses because of that fact, unless we also say that a stone, because it falls of necessity, does not fall. (AW 33.2)⁶⁰

This passage mirrors aspects of the discussions of ‘liberty’ and ‘spontaneity’ in Hobbes’s exchanges with Bramhall: Hobbes adduces the example of the river to show that people use ‘free’ (liberum) as the absence of impediments to action, but only when those obstacles are external. The example of the man, in turn, shows that common usage of ‘liberty of action’ (libertas agendi) does not conflict with Hobbes’s view on necessity and its relation to liberty.

The interpretation I have developed, that liberty is one of the simplest conceptions we acquire from sense experience, explains why common usage reflects the proper definition of ‘liberty.’ If everyone, simply by interacting with the bodies that constitute reality, can acquire a perfect and clear conception of liberty, it would follow that the way people use the term would reflect that conception. It’s only when someone, in the grips of tradition or the authority of men, such as “an Aristotle, a Cicero, or a Thomas, or any other Doctor whatsoever” (L iv.13 / Hobbes 2012: 58) or “some puzzled divine or philosopher” (EW 5:397), eschews common usage that the words they repeat are not proper definitions but “words whereby we conceive nothing but the sound, … those we call Absurd, Insignificant, and Non-sense” (L v.5 / Hobbes 2012: 68).