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— 11 —
The Bookseller will not forgive me, if I say nothing of this Second
Edition,
which he has promised, by the correctness of it, shall make amends for
the
many Faults committed in the former. He desires too, that it should be
known, that it has one whole new Chapter concerning Identity,
and many
additions, and amendments in other places. These I must inform my
Reader
are not all new matter, but most of them either farther confirmation of
what
I had said, or Explications to prevent others being mistaken in the sense
of
what was formerly printed, and not any variation in me from it; I must only
except the alterations I have made in Book 2.
Chap. 21.
What I had there
Writ concerning Liberty
and the Will,
I
thought
deserv’d as accurate a review, as I was capable of: Those Subjects
having
in all Ages exercised the learned part of the World, with Questions
and
Difficulties, that have not a little perplex’d Morality and Divinity,
those
parts of Knowledge, that Men are most concern’d to be clear in. Upon
a
closer inspection into the working of Men’s Minds, and a stricter
examina-
tion of those motives and views, they are turn’d by, I have found
reason
somewhat to alter the thoughts I formerly had concerning that, which
gives
the last determination to the Will
in all voluntary
actions. This I cannot
forbear to acknowledge to the World, with as much freedom
and readiness, as
I at first published, what then seem’d to me to be
right, thinking my self more
concern’d to quit and renounce any Opinon of
my own, than oppose that of
another, when Truth appears against it. For
’tis Truth alone I seek, and that
will always be welcome to me, when or
from whencesoever it comes.
But what forwardness soever I have to resign any
Opinion I have, or to
recede from any thing I have Writ, upon the first evidence
of any error in it;
yet this I must own, that I have not had the good luck to
receive any light
from those Exceptions, I have met with in print against any
part of my Book,
nor have, from any thing has been urg’d against it, found
reason to alter my
Sense, in any of the Points have been question’d.
Whether the Subject, I have
in hand, requires often more thought and attention,
than Cursory Readers, at
least such as are prepossessed, are willing to allow?
Or whether any obscurity
in my expressions casts a cloud over it, and these
notions are made difficult to
others apprehension in my way of treating them? So
it is, that my meaning,
I find, is often mistaken, and I have not the good luck
to be every where rightly
understood. There are so many Instances of this, that
I think it Justice to my
Locke Hum EpR, p. 11