If, as I have endeavoured to show, the appetites and passions exert no positive influence in the production of volition, if they do not sustain the relation of cause to the acts of the will; then is the doctrine of the liberty of indifference placed in a clear and strong light having admitted that the sensitive part of our nature always tends to produce volition, and in some cases irresistibly produces it, the advocates of free agency have not been able to maintain the doctrine of a perfect liberty in regard to all human actions. They have been compelled to retire from the broad and open field of the controverted territory, and to take their stand in a dark corner, in order to contend for that perfect liberty, without which there cannot be a perfect and unclouded accountability. Hence, it has been no uncommon thing, even for those who have been the most disposed to sympathize with them, to feel a dissatisfaction in reading what they have written on the subject of a liberty of indifference. This they have placed in a perfect freedom to choose between a few insignificant things, in regard to which we have no feeling; while, in regard to the great objects which relate to our eternal destiny, we have been supposed to enjoy no such freedom.
The true liberty of indifference does not consist, as I have endeavoured to show, in a power to resist the influence of the appetites and passions struggling to produce volition; because there is no such influence in existence. This notion is encumbered with insuperable difficulties; it supposes two powers struggling for the mastery—the desires on the one hand, and the will on the other; and that when the desires are so strong as to prevail, and bear us away in spite of ourselves, we cease to be free agents. It supposes that at no time we have a perfect liberty, unless we are perfectly destitute of feeling; and that at some of the most trying, and critical, and awful moments of our existence, we have no liberty at all; the whole man being passive to the power and dominion of the passions. What a wound is thus given to the cause of free-agency and accountability! What scope is thus allowed for the sophistry of the passions! Every man who can persuade himself that his appetites, his desires, or his passions, have been too strong for him, may blind his mind to a sense of his guilt, and lull his conscience into a fatal repose.
The necessitarian, like a skilful general, is not slow to attack this weak point in the philosophy of free-agency. If our emotions operate to produce volition, says he, then the strongest must prevail; to say otherwise, is to say that it is not the strongest. This is the ground uniformly occupied by President Day. And it is urged by President Edwards, that if a great degree of such influence destroys free agency, as it is supposed to do, then every smaller degree of it must impair free agency; and hence, according to the principles and scheme of its advocates, it cannot be perfect. Is not this inference well drawn? Indeed, it seems to me, that while the notion that our desires possess a real power and efficacy, which are exerted over the will, maintains its hold upon the mind, the great doctrine of liberty can never be seen in the brightness of its full-orbed glory; and that it must, at times, suffer a total eclipse.
The liberty which we really possess, then, does not consist in an indifference of the desires and affections, but in that of the will itself. We are perfectly free, says the libertarian, in regard to all those things about which our feelings are in a state of indifference; such as touching one of two spots, or choosing one of two objects that are perfectly alike. To this the necessitarian replies, what does it signify that a man has a perfect liberty in regard to the choice of “one of two peppercorns?” Are not such things perfectly insignificant, and unworthy “the grave attention of the philosopher,” while treating of the great questions of moral good and evil?
There is some truth in this reply, and some injustice. It truly signifies nothing, that we are at perfect liberty to choose between two pepper-corns, if we are not so to choose between good and evil, life and death. But in making this attack upon the position of his opponent, when viewed as designed to serve the cause of free-agency, the necessitarian overlooks its bearing upon his own scheme. He contends, that the mind cannot act unless it is made to act by some extraneous influence: this is a universal proposition, extending to all our mental acts; and hence, if it can be shown that, in a single instance, the mind can and does put forth a volition, without being made to do so, his doctrine is subverted from its foundations. If this can be shown, by a reference to the case of “two pepper-corns,” it may be made to serve an important purpose in philosophy, how much soever it may be despised by the philosopher.
If we keep the distinction between the will and the sensibility in mind, it will throw much light on what has been written in regard to the subject of indifference. If you offer a guinea and a penny to a man’s choice, asks President Day, which will he choose? Will the one exert as great an influence over him as the other? President Day may assert, if he pleases, that the guinea will exert the greater influence over his feelings; but this does not destroy the equilibrium of the will. The feelings and the will are different. By the one we feel, by the other we act; by the one wesuffer, by the other wedo. Why, then, will the man be certain to choose the guinea, all other things being equal? Not because its influence acts upon the will, either directly or indirectly through the passions, and compels him to choose it, but because he has a purpose to accomplish; and, as a rational being, he sees that the guinea will answer his purpose better than the penny. He is not made to act, therefore, by a blind impulse; he acts freely in the light of reason. The philosophy of the necessitarian overlooks the slight circumstance, that the will of man is not a ball to be set a-going by external impulse; but that man is a rational being, made in the image of his Maker, and can act as a designing cause. Hence, when we affirm that the will of man acts without being made to do so by the action of any thing uponthe will itself, he imagines that we dethrone the Almighty, and “place chance upon the throne of the moral universe.” Day on the Will, p. 195. But I would remind him, once for all, that the act of a free designing cause, no less than that of a necessitated act, proceeding from an efficient cause, (if such a thing can be conceived,) is utterly inconsistent with the idea of accident. Choice in its very nature is opposed to chance.
The doctrine of the indifference of the will has been subjected to another mode of attack. This doctrine implies that we have a power to choose one thing or another; or, as it is sometimes called, a power of choice to the contrary. For, if the will is not controlled by any extraneous influence, it is evident that we may choose a thing, or let it alone—that we may put forth a volition, or refuse to put it forth. This power, which results from the idea of indifference as just explained, is regarded as in the highest degree absurd; and a torrent of impetuous questions is poured forth to sweep it away. “When Satan, as a roaring lion,” asks President Day, “goeth about, seeking whom he may devour, is he equally inclined to promote the salvation of mankind?” &c. &c. &c. Now, I freely admit, that when Satan is inclined to do evil, and is actually doing it, he is not inclined to the contrary. I freely admit that a thing is not different from itself; and the learned author is welcome to all such triumphant positions.
In the same easy way, President Edwards, as he imagines, demolishes the doctrine of indifference. He supposes that, according to this doctrine, the will does not choose when it does choose; and, having supposed this, he proceeds to demolish it, as if he were contending with a thousand adversaries; and yet, I will venture to affirm, that no man in his senses ever maintained such a position. The most contemptible advocate of free-agency that ever lived, has maintained nothing so absurd as that the mind ever chooses without choosing. This is the light in which the doctrine of indifference is frequently represented by Edwards, but it is a gross misrepresentation.
“The question is,” says Edwards, “whether ever the soul of man puts forth an act of will, while it yet remains in a state of liberty, viz: as implying a state of indifference; or whether the soul ever exerts an act of preference, while at the very timethe willis in a perfect equilibrium, not inclining one way more than another,” p. 72. If this be the point in dispute, he may well add, that “the very putting of the question is sufficient to show the absurdity of the affirmative answer;” and he might have added, the utter futility of the negative reply. “How ridiculous,” he continues, “for any body to insist that the soul chooses one thing before another, when, at the very same instant, it is perfectly indifferent with respect to each! This is the same thing as to say, we shall prefer one thing to another, at the very same time that it has no preference. Choice and preference can no more be in a state of indifference than motion can be in a state of rest,” &c. p. 72. And he repeats it over and over again, that this is to put “the soul in a state of choice, and in a state of equilibrium at the same time;” “choosing one way, while it remains in a state of perfect indifference, and has no choice of one way more than the other;” p. 74. “To suppose the will to act at all in a state of indifference, is to assert that the mind chooses without choosing,” p. 64; and so in various other places.
Now, if the doctrine of the indifference of the will, as commonly understood, amounts to this, that the will does not choose when it chooses, then Edwards was certainly right in opposing it; but how could he have expected to correct such incorrigible blockheads as the authors of such a doctrine must have been, by the force of logic?
Edwards has not always, though frequently, mis-stated the doctrine of his adversaries. The liberty of indifference, says he, in one place, consists in this, “that the will, in choosing, is subject tono prevailinginfluence,” p. 64. Now this is a fair statement of the doctrine in question. Why did not Edwards, then, combat this idea? Why transform it into the monstrous absurdity, that “the will chooses without choosing,” or exerts an act of choice at the same time that it exerts no act of choice; and then proceed to demolish it? Was it because he did not wish to march up, fairly and squarely, in the face of the enemy, and contend with them in their strongholds and fastnesses? By no means. There never was a more honest reasoner than Edwards. But his psychology is false; and hence, he has not only misrepresented the doctrine of his opponents, but also his own. He confounds the sensitive part of our nature with the will, expressly in his definitions, though he frequently distinguishes them in his arguments. This is the reason why he sometimes asserts, that the choice of the mind is always as the sense of the most agreeable; and, at others, throws this fundamental doctrine into the form, as we have seen in our third section, that the choice of the mind is always as the choice of the mind; and holds that to deny it is a plain contradiction. By reason of the same confusion of things, the doctrine of his opponents, that “the will, in choosing, is subject to no prevailing influence,” seemed to him to mean that the will, in choosing, does not choose. In both cases, he confounds the most agreeable impression upon the sensibility with the choice of the mind; and thus misrepresents both his own doctrine, and that of his opponents, by reducing the one to an insignificant truism, and the other to a glaring absurdity. President Day should have avoided the error of Edwards, in thus misconceiving the doctrine of his opponents; for he expressly distinguishes the sensibility from the will. But there is this difference between Edwards and Day; the first expressly confounds these two parts of our nature, and then proceeds to reason, in many cases, as if they were distinct; while the last most explicitly distinguishes them, and then frequently proceeds to reason as if they were one and the same. It is in this way that he also gravely teaches that the mind chooses when it chooses; and makes his adversaries assert that the mind chooses without choosing, or that the will is inclined without being inclined. Start from whatever point he will, the necessitarian never feels so strong, as when he finds himself securely intrenched in the truism, that a thing is always as itself; there manfully contending against those who assert that a thing is different from itself.
The doctrine of the liberty of indifference, as usually held, is this—that the will is not determined by any prevailing influence. This is not a perfect liberty, it is true, wherever the will is partially influenced by an extraneous cause; but it is not equivalent to the gross absurdity of the position, that the will chooses without choosing. Nor can we possibly reduce it to this form, unless we forget that the authors of it did not confound that which is supposed to exert the influence over the will, with the act of the will itself. They contended for a partial indifference of the will only; and, consequently, they could only contend for a partial, and not a perfect liberty. On the contrary, I think we should contend for a perfect indifference, not in regard to feeling, but in regard to the will. Standing on this high ground, we need not retire from the broad and open field, in order to set up the empire of a perfect liberty in a dark corner, extending to a few insignificant things only: we may establish it over the whole range of human activity, bringing out into a clear and full light, the great fact of man’s perfect accountability, for all hisactions, under all the circumstances of his life.
Thereare no two things in nature which are more perfectly distinct than action and passion; the one necessarily excludes the other. Thus, if an effect is produced in any thing, by the action or influence of something else, then is the thing in which the effect is produced wholly passive in regard to it. The effect itself is called passion or passiveness. It is not an act of that in which it is produced; it is an effect resulting wholly from that which produces it. To say that a thing acts then, is to say that it is not passive; or, in other words, that its act is not produced by the action or influence of any thing else. To suppose that an act is so produced, is to suppose that it is not an act; the object in which it is said to be caused being wholly passive in regard to it.
If this statement be correct, it follows that an act of the mind cannot be a produced effect; that the ideas of action and passion, of cause and effect, are opposite and contrary the one to the other; and hence, it is absurd to assert that the mind may be caused to act, or that a volition can be produced by any thing acting upon the mind. This is a self-evident truth. The younger Edwards calls for proof of it; but the only evidence there is in the case, is that which arises from the nature of the things themselves, as they must appear to every mind which will bestow suitable reflection on the subject. But as he held the affirmative, maintaining that the mind is caused to act, it would have been well for him to have furnished proof himself, before he called for it from the opposite party.
It may be said, that if it were self-evident that the mind cannot be caused to act, it would appear so to all men, and there could be no doubt on the subject; that a truth or proposition cannot be said to be self-evident, unless it carries irresistible conviction to every mind to which it is proposed. But this does not follow. Previous to the time of Galileo, it was universally believed by mankind, that if a body were set in motion, it would run down of itself; though it should meet with no resistance whatever in its progress. But that great philosopher, by reflecting on the nature of matter, very clearly saw, that if a body were put in motion, and met with no resistance, it would continue to move on in a right line forever. As matter is inert, so he saw that it could not put itself in motion; and if put in motion by the action of any thing upon it, he perceived with equal clearness that it could not check itself in its career. He perceived that it is just as impossible for passive, inert matter, to change its state from motion to rest, as it is for it to change its state from rest to motion. Thus, by simply reflecting upon the nature of matter, as that which cannot act, the mind of Galileo recognized it as a self-evident and unquestionable truth, that if a body be put in motion, and there is nothing to impede its career, it will move on in a right line forever. This great law of motion, first recognized by Galileo, and afterwards adopted by all other philosophers, is called the law of inertia; because its truth necessarily results from the fact, that matter is essentially inert, or cannot act.
I am aware it has been contended by Mr. Whewell, in his Bridgewater Treatise, that the law of motion in question is not a necessary or self-evident truth; and the reason he assigns is, that if it were a truth of this nature, it would have been recognized and believed by all men before the time of Galileo. But this reason is not good. For if it did not appear self-evident to those philosophers who lived before Galileo, it was because they did not bestow sufficient reflection upon the subject, and not because it was not a self-evident truth. All men had seen bodies moving only in a resisting medium, amid counteracting influences; and having always seen them run down in such a medium, they very naturally concluded that a body put in motion would run down of itself. Yielding to an illusion of the senses, instead of rising above it by a sustained effort of reason and meditation, they supposed that the motion of a body would spend itself in the course of time, and so come to an end without any cause of its extinction. This is the reason why they did not see, what must have appeared to be a self-evident truth, if they had bestowed sufficient reflection upon the subject, instead of being swayed by an illusion of the senses.
Mr. Whewell admits the law in question to be a truth; he only denies that it is a necessary or self-evident truth. Now, if it be not a necessary truth, I should like to know how he has ascertained it to be a truth at all. Has any man ever seen a body put in motion, and continue to move on in a right line forever? Has any man ever ascertained the truth of this law by observation and experiment? It is evident, that if it be true at all, it must be a necessary truth. Who that is capable of rising above the associations of sense, so as to view things as they are in themselves, can meditate upon this subject, without perceiving that the law ofinertiais a self-evident truth, necessarily arising out of the very nature of matter?
It does not follow, then, that a truth is not “self-evident”, because it does not appear so to all men; for some may be blinded to the truth by an illusion of the senses. This is the case, with the necessitarian. He has always seen the motion of body produced by the action of something else; and hence, confounding the activity of mind with the motion of body, he concludes that volition is produced by the prior action of something else. All that he needs in order to see the impossibility of such a thing, is severe and sustained meditation. But how can we expect this from him? Is he not a great reasoner, rather than a great thinker? Does he not display his skill in drawing logical conclusions from the illusions of the senses, and assumptions founded thereon; rather than in laying his foundations and his premises aright, in the immutable depths of meditation and consciousness? We may appeal to hisreason, and he will fall toreasoning. We may ask formeditation, and he will give uslogic. Indeed, he wants that severe and scrutinizing observation which pierces through all the illusions and associations of the senses, rising to a contemplation of things as they are in themselves; which is one of the best attributes of the great thinker.
To show that he does this, I shall begin with President Day. No other necessitarian has made so formal and elaborate an attempt to prove, that the mind may be caused to act. He undertakes to answer the objection which has been urged against the scheme of moral necessity, that it confounds action and passion. It is alleged, that a volition cannot be produced or caused by the action or influence of any thing. To this President Day replies, “these are terms of very convenient ambiguity, with which it is easy to construct a plausible but fallacious argument. The word passive is sometimes used to signify that which isinactive. With this meaning, it must, of course, be the opposite of every thing which is active. To say that that which is inthissense passive, is at the same time active, is to assert that that which is active is not active. But this is not the only signification of the term passive in common use. It is very frequently used to express the relation of an effect to its cause,” p. 159.
Now, here is the distinction, but is it not without a difference? If an effect is produced, is it not passive in relation to its cause? This is not denied. Is it active then in relation to any thing? President Day says it is. But is this so? Is not an effect, which is wholly produced in one thing by the action or influence of another, wholly passive? Is not the thing which, according to the supposition, is wholly passive to the influence acting upon it, wholly passive? In other words; is it made to act? Does it not merely suffer? If it is endued with an active nature, and really puts forth an act, is not this act clearly different from the passive impression made upon it?
One would certainly suppose so, but for the logic of the necessitarian. Let us examine this logic. “The term passive,” says President Day, “is sometimes employed to express the relation of an effect to its cause. In this sense, it is so far from being inconsistent with activity, that activity may be the very effect which is produced. A thing may becausedto be active. A cannon shot is said to be passive, with respect to the charge of powder which impels it. But is there no activity given to the ball? Is not the whirlwind active, when it tears up the forest?” &c. &c., p. 160.
Now, all these illustrations are brought to show that the mind may be caused to act;—that it may be passive in relation to the cause of its volition, and active in relation to the effect of its volition. A more striking instance could not be adduced to prove the correctness of the assertion already made, that the necessitarian confounds the motion of body with the action of mind. “A thing may be caused to act,” says President Day. But how does he show this? By showing that a thing may be caused to move! “Is noactivitygiven to the ball? Is not the whirlwindactive, when it tears up the forest?” And so he goes on, leaving the light of reason and of consciousness; now rushing into the darkness of the whirlwind; now riding “on the mountain wave;” and now plunging into the depths of “volcanic lava;”—all the time in quest of light respecting the phenomena of mind! We could have wished him to stop awhile, in the impetuous current of rhetoric, and inform us, whether he really considers, “the motion of a ball” as the same thing with the volition of the mind. If he does, then he may suppose that his illustrations are to the purpose, how great soever may be his mistake; but if he supposes there is a real difference between them, how can he ever pretend to show that mind may be caused to act, by showing that body may be caused to move?
I freely admit, that body may be caused to move. Body is perfectly passive in motion; and hence, its motion may be caused. But the mind is not passive in volition; and hence the difference in the two cases. It is an error, as I have already said, pervading the views of the necessitarian, that he confounds the action of mind with the motion of body. Even Mr. Locke, who, in some places, has recognized the essential difference between them, has frequently confounded them in his reasonings and illustrations. Hence, it becomes necessary to bear this distinction always in mind, in the examination of their writings. It should be rendered perfectly clear to our minds by meditation; and never permitted to grow dim through forgetfulness. This is indispensably necessary to shut out the illusions of the senses, in order that we may have a clear and unclouded view of the phenomena of nature.
Is the motion of body, then, one and the same thing with the action of mind? They are frequently called by the same name. The motion of mind, and the action of body, are very common modes of expression. Body is said to act, when it only moves; and mind is said to move, when it really acts. These metaphors and supposed analogies are intimately and inseparably interwoven into the very frame-work of our language; and hence the necessity of guarding against them in our conceptions. They are almost as subtle as the great adversary of truth; and therefore we should be constantly on the watch, lest we should be deceived or misled by them.
Let us look, then, at these things just as they are in themselves. When a body moves, it simply passes from one place to another; and when the mind acts or chooses, it simply prefers one thing to another. Here, there is no real identity or sameness of nature. The bodysuffersa change; the mind itselfacts. The one is pure passim or passiveness; the other is pure action—the very opposite of passivity. The one is asuffering, and the other is adoing. There are no two things in the whole range of nature, which are more perfectly and essentially distinct; and he who confounds them in his reasonings, as philosophers have so often done, can never arrive at a clear perception of the truth.
President Day, if he intended any thing to the purpose, undertook to show that an act may be produced in mind, in that which is active, by the action or influence of something else; and what has he shown? Why, that body may be caused to move! Let a case be produced in which the mind, the active soul of man, is made to act: let a case be produced in which a volition is caused to exist in the soul of man, by the action or influence of any thing whatever, and it will be something to the purpose: but what does it signify to tell us, that a body, that that which is wholly and essentially passive in its nature, may be made to move, orsuffera change of place? A more palpable sophism was never perpetrated; and that such a mind should have recourse to such an argument, only betrays the miserable weakness, and the forlorn hopelessness, of the cause in which it is enlisted.
Indeed, the learned president seems, after all, to be at least half conscious that the analogies of matter can throw no light on the phenomena of mind; and that what he has so eloquently said, amounts to just nothing at all. For he says, “It may be objected, that these are all examples ofinanimateobjects; and that they have no proper application to mental activity,” p. 161. Yes, truly, this is the very objection which we should urge against all the fine illustrations of President Day; and it is a full and complete answer to them. It is the great principle of the inductive study of mind, that its phenomena can be understood only in so far as we have observed them in the pure light of consciousness, and no farther; they should never be viewed through the darkening and confounding analogies of matter.
No one, that I know of, has ever denied that a body may be caused to move; the only point on which we desire to be enlightened is, whether the mind may be caused to act. To this point President Day next directly comes. Leaving “inanimate objects,” he says, “take the case of deep and earnest thinking. Is there no activity in this? And is it without a cause? When reading the orations of Demosthenes, or the demonstrations of Newton, are our minds wholly inactive; or if they think intensely, have our thoughts no dependence on the book before us?” p. 161. Truly, there is activity in this, in our “deep and earnest thinking”; but what is the cause of this activity? Does the book before uscauseus to think? This is the point at which the argument of the author is driving, and to which it should come, if it would be to the purpose, and yet he does not seem to like to speak it out right manfully; and hence, instead of saying that the book causes us to think, he chooses to say that our thoughts have adependenceon the book. It is true, that no man can read a book, unless he has it to read; and, consequently, his thoughts in reading the book are absolutely dependent on the possession of it. But still, the possession of a book is thecondition, and not thecause, of his reading it. The cause of a thing, and the indispensableconditionof it, are perfectly distinct from each other; and the argument of Day, in confounding them, has presented us with another sophism.
The ideas of a condition and of a cause, though so different in themselves, are always blended together by necessitarians; and hence the confusion into which they run. Edwards has united them, as we have seen, under the term cause; and then employed this term to signify the one or the other at his pleasure. The word “dependence,” is the favourite of President Day; and he uses it with fully as much vagueness and vacillation of meaning, as Edwards does the term cause. He has undertaken to show us, that the mind may becausedto act; and he has shown us, that a particular class of thoughts cannot come to existence, except upon a particular condition! This is not to reason; but to slip and to slide from one meaning of an ambiguous word to another.
When it is said that the mind cannot be caused to act, President Day must have known in what sense the term cause is used in this proposition. He must have known, that no one meant to assert, that there are noconditionsorantecedents, on which the action of the mind depends. There is not an advocate of free-agency in the universe, who will contend, that the mind can choose a thing, unless there is a thing to be chosen; or, to take his own illustration, can read a book, unless there is a book to be read. The question is not, whether there areconditions, without the existence of which the mind cannot act; this no one denies; but whether there is, or can be, a real and efficient cause of the mind’s action. The point in dispute, relates not to mere fact of dependence, but to thenatureof that dependence. The question is,can the mind be efficiently caused to act?This being the question, what does it signify to tell us, that it cannot read a book, unless it has a book to read? Or what does it signify to tell us, that a body may be caused to move? These are mere irrelevancies; they fall short of the point in dispute; and they only seem to reach it by means of a very “convenient ambiguity” of words.
But still it may be said, that although a body is passive in motion, it may act upon other bodies, and thereby communicate motion to them. This is the ground taken by President Day. “The very same thing,” says he, “may be both cause and effect. The mountain wave, which is the effect of the wind, may be the cause which buries the ship in the ocean,” p. 160. I am aware, that one body is frequently said toactupon another; but this word action, as President Day has well said, is a term “of very convenient ambiguity, with which it is easy to construct a plausible but fallacious argument,” p. 159. The only cause in every case of motion, is thatforce, whatever it may be, which acts upon the body moved, and puts it in motion. All the rest is pure passion or passiveness. The motion of the body is not action; it is the most pure passion of which the mind can form a conception. If a body in action is said to act upon another, this is but a metaphor; there is no real action in the case. Indeed, if a body be put in motion, and meets with no resistance, it will move on in a right line forever—and why? just because of itsinertia, of its inherent destitution of a power to act. As a mathematician, President Day certainly knew all this; but he seems to have forgotten it all, in his eagerness to support the cause of moral necessity.
He saw that motion is frequently called action; he saw that one body is sometimes said to act upon another; and this was sufficient for his purpose. He did not reflect upon the natures of motion and of volition, as they are in themselves; he views them through the medium of an ambiguous phraseology. Nor did he reflect, that if motion is communicated from one body to another, this is not because one body really acts upon another, but because it is impossible for two bodies to occupy the same place at one and the same time. He did not reflect, that if motion is communicated from one body to another, this does not arise from the activity, but from the impenetrability of matter. In short, he did not reflect, that there is no state or phenomena of matter, whatever may be its name, that at all resembles the state of mind which we call action or volition; or else he would have seen, that all his illustrations drawn from material objects can throw no light on the point in controversy.
We find the same confusion of things in the works of the Edwardses. We do not at all confound action and passion, President Edwards contends, by supposing that acts of the soul are effects, wherein the soul is the object of something acting upon and influencing it, p. 203. And again, “It is no more a contradiction to suppose that action may be the effect of some other cause beside the agent, or being that acts, than to suppose that life may be the effect of some other cause beside the being that lives,” p. 203. The younger Edwards also asserts, that “to say that an agent that is acted upon cannot act, is as groundless, as to say, that a body acted upon cannot move,” p. 131. We might adduce many similar passages; but these are sufficient. What do they prove? If they are any thing to the purpose, they are only so by confounding motion with volition, passion with action.
No one would pretend to deny, that the mind may be, and is, caused to exist, or that the agent may be caused to live. In regard to our being and living we are perfectly passive; and hence we admit that we may be caused to exist and to live.Livingandbeingare notacting. We are not passive in regard to volition; this is an act of the mind itself. The above assertions only overlook the slight circumstance thatbeinganddoingare two different things; that motion is not volition, that passion is not action. This strange confusion of things is very common in the writings of the Edwardses, as well as in those of all other necessitarians.
Edwards held volition to be a produced effect. This identifies a passive impression made upon the mind, with an act of the mind itself. In order to escape this difficulty, Edwards was bound to show that action and passion are not opposite in their natures. “Action, when properly set in opposition to passion or passiveness,” says he, “is no real existence; it is not the same withan action, but is a mere relation.” And again, “Action and passion are not two contrary natures;” when placed in opposition they are only contrary relations. The same ground is taken by President Day. “Are not cause and effect,” says he, “opposite in their natures? They are opposite relations, but not always opposite things.” They contend, that an object may be passive in relation to one thing, and active in relation to another; that a volition may be passive in relation to its producing cause, and yet active in relation to its produced effect.
Now, this is not true. An act is opposite in its nature to a passive impression made upon the mind. This every man may clearly see by suitable reflection, if he will not blind himself to the truth, as the necessitarian always does, by false analogies drawn from the world of matter, and the phenomena of motion. We have seen how President Day has attempted to show, that an object may be passive in relation to one thing, and yet active in relation to another; and that in all these attempts he has confounded the motion of body with the action or choice of mind. We have seen that all the illustrations adduced to throw light on this subject are fallacious. Let this subject be studied in the light of consciousness, not through the darkening and confounding medium of false analogies, and we may safely anticipate a verdict in our favour. For who that will closely and steadily reflect uponan actionof the mind, does not perceive that it is different, in nature and in kind, from a passive impression made upon the mind from without? I do not say action, which President Edwards seems to think does not signify any thing positive, such asan action, when it is set in opposition to passion; but I say thatan actionitself is opposite in its nature to passion, to a produced effect.
President Edwards cannot escape the absurdity of his doctrine by alleging, that when action and passion are set in opposition, they do not signify opposite natures, but only opposite relations. For he has confoundedan actof the mind with apassive impressionmade thereon; and these things are opposite in their natures, whether he is pleased to say that action and passion are oppositenaturesor not.
This position may be easily established. “I humbly conceive,” says he, “that the affections of the soul are not properly distinguished from the will, as though they were two faculties in the soul.” . . . . “The affections are no other than the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.” These passages are referred to by President Day to prove, that Edwards regarded our “emotions or affections as acts of the will,” p. 39. Having confounded the will and the sensibility, it became exceedingly easy for Edwards to show that a volition may be produced or caused: all that he had to do was to show, that an emotion may be produced, which is the same thing with an act of the will or a volition. It is upon this confusion of things, that his whole system rests; for if the sensibility is different from the will, as most persons, at the present day, will admit it is; then to excite an emotion, or to make a passive impression upon the sensibility, is very different from producing a volition.
Edwards has taken great pains with the superstructure of his system, while he has left its foundations without support. He has not shown, nor can any man show, that the sensibility and the will are one and the same faculty of the soul. He assumes that an emotion is an act of the will, and then proceeds to build upon it, and to argue from it, as if it were a clear and unquestionable truth. Thus, he repeatedly says, that whatever pleases us most, or excites the most agreeable sensation, is that which “operates to induce a volition;” and to say otherwise, is to assert that that which pleases us most, does not please us most. Such assertions, (and I have already had occasion to adduce many such,) clearly identify a sense of the most agreeable, or the most pleasing emotion, with an act of the will. His definition, as we have already seen, laid the foundation for this, and his arguments are based upon it. The passive impression, or the sensation produced, is, according to Edwards, a volition! No wonder, then, that he could conceive of an action of the mindas being produced. The wonder is, how he could conceive of itas being an action at all.
Let us suppose, now, that a feeling or an emotion is produced by an object in view of the mind. It will follow, that the mind is passive in feeling, or in experiencing emotion. We are conscious of such feeling or emotion; and hence we infer, that we are susceptible of feeling or emotion. This susceptibility we call the sensibility, the heart, the affections, &c. But there is another phenomenon of our nature, which is perfectly distinct in nature and in kind from an emotion or a feeling. We are conscious of a volition or choice; and hence we infer that we have a power of acting, or putting forth volitions. This power we call the will.
Now, the phenomena exhibited by these two faculties of the soul, the sensibility and the will, are entirely different from each other; and there is not the least shadow of evidence going to show that the faculties themselves are one and the same. On the contrary, we are compelled by a fundamental law of belief, to regard the susceptibility of our nature, by which we feel, as different from that power of the soul, by which we act or put forth volitions. The only reason we have for saying that matter is different from mind, is that its manifestations or phenomena are different; and we have a similar reason for asserting, that the emotive part of our nature, or the sensibility, is distinct from the will. And yet, in the face of all this, President Edwards has expressly denied that there is any difference between these two faculties of the soul. It is in this confusion of things, in this false psychology, that he has laid the foundation of his system.
If President Edwards be right, it is no wonder that the younger Edwards should so often assert, that it is no more absurd to say, that volition may be caused, than it is to say, that feeling or emotion may be caused. For, if the doctrine in question be true, a volition is an emotion or feeling; and to produce the one is to produce the other. How short and easy has the path of the necessitarian been made, by a convenient definition!
If we only bear the distinction between the sensibility and the will in mind, it will be exceedingly easy to see through the cloudy sophistications of the necessitarian. “How does it appear to be afact,” asks President Day, “that the will cannot act when it is acted upon?” I reply that thewillis not acted upon at all; that passive impressions are made upon the sensibility, and not upon the will. This is afactwhich the necessitarian always overlooks.
Again; the same object may be both passive and active; passive with respect to one thing, and active with respect to another. Thus, says President Day, “The axe is passive, with respect to the hand which moves it; but active, with respect to the object which it strikes. The cricket club is passive inreceivingmotion from the hand of the player; it is active incommunicatingmotion to the ball.” The fallacy of all such illustrations, in confounding motion and action, I have already noticed, and I intend to say nothing more in relation to this point. But there is another less palpable fallacy in them.
How are such illustrations intended to be applied to the phenomena of volition? Is it meant, that volition itself is passive in relation to one thing, and active in relation to another? If so, I reply it is absurd to affirm, that volition, or an act, is passive in relation to any thing? Is it meant, that not volition itself, but the will, is passive to that which acts upon it, while it is active in relation to its effect? If so, I contend that the will is not acted upon at all; that the passive impression is made upon the sensibility, and not upon the will. Is it supposed, that it is neither the volition nor the will, which is both active and passive at the same time; but that it is the mind? This may be very true. The mind may be passive, if you please, in relation to that which acts upon its sensibility, while it is active in volition; but how does this prove the doctrine, thatan actmay be produced by something else acting upon the will? How does this show, that action and passion are not confounded, in supposing that an act is caused? The passive impression, the state of the sensibility is produced but this is nota volition. The passive impression exists in the sensibility; the volition exists in the will. The first is a produced effect; the last is an act of the mind. And the only way in which this act of the mind itself has been linked with that which acts upon the mind, as an effect is linked with its cause, has been by confounding thesensibilitywith thewill; and the light of this distinction is no sooner held up, than we see that a very important link is wanting in the chain of the necessitarian’s logic. Let this light be carried around through all the dark corners of his system, and through all its dark labyrinths of words; and many a lurking sophism will be detected and brought out from its unsuspected hiding place.
When it is said, that the same thing may be active and passive, this remark should be understood with reference to the mind itself. The language of the necessitarian, I am aware, sometimes points to the volition itself, and sometimes to the will; but we should always understand him as referring to the mind. He may not have so understood himself; but he must be so understood. For it is not the will that acts; it is the mind. This is conceded by the necessitarian. Hence, when he says, that the same thing may be both active and passive, he must be understood as applying this proposition to the mind itself; and not to the will or to volition. It is the mind that acts; and hence the mind must be also passive; or we cannot say thatthe same thingmay be both active and passive.
The mind then, it may be said, is both active and passive at the same time. But it is passive in regard to its emotions and feelings; and hence, if you please, these may be produced. It is active in regard to its volitions, or rather in its volitions; and hence these cannot be produced by the action of any thing upon the mind. To show that they can, the necessitarian, as we have seen, has confounded a passive impression with an active volition. If these be distinct, as they most clearly are, the necessitarian can make his point good, only by showing that the passive impression made upon the mind, is connected with the volition of the mind, as a producing cause is connected with its effect. But this he has not shown; and hence his whole system rests upon gratuitous and unfounded assumptions. I say his whole system; for if the mind cannot be caused to act, if it is absurd to speak of a produced action, it is not true, that an action or volition does or can result from the necessitating action, or influence of motives.
Theargument from the foreknowledge of God, is one on which the necessitarian relies with great confidence. Nor is this at all surprising; since to so many minds, even among distinguished philosophers, the prescience of Deity and the free-agency of man have appeared to be irreconcilable.
Thus, says Mr. Stewart, “I have mentioned the attempt of Clarke and others to show that no valid argument against the scheme of free-will can be deduced from the prescience of God, even supposingthatto extend to all the actions of voluntary beings. On this point I must decline offering any opinion of my own, because I conceive it as placed far beyond the reach of our faculties.” Dr. Campbell also says, “To reconcile the divine prescience with the freedom, and even contingency, and consequently with the good or ill desert of human actions, is what I have never yet seen achieved by any, and indeed despair of seeing.” And Mr. Locke declares, “I cannot make freedom in man consistent with omnipotence and omniscience in God, though I am as fully persuaded of both as of any truth I most firmly assent to; and therefore I have long since given off the consideration of that subject, resolving all into this short conclusion, that if it is possible for God to make a free-agent, then man is free, though I see not the way of it.”
Sentiments like these, which are so often met with in the writings of eminent philosophers, have repeatedly led me to reconsider the conclusion at which I have arrived on this subject; but I have been able to discover no reason why it should be abandoned. Indeed, if authority were a sufficient reason why the great difficulty in question should be regarded as incapable of being solved, I should abandon it in despair, and leave the necessitarian to make the most of his argument; but it has only induced me to proceed with the greater caution; and this, instead of having shaken my convictions, has settled them with the greater firmness and clearness in my mind. Whether I am in the right, or whether I labour under a hallucination, satisfactory only to myself, and perplexing to all others, I must submit to the candid consideration of the reader.
Why should it be thought impossible to reconcile the free-agency of man with the foreknowledge of God? No one pretends that there is any disagreement between the things themselves, as they really exist; if there is any discrepancy in the case, it must exist only between our ideas of foreknowledge and free-agency. Indeed, we cannot think of the things themselves, or compare them, except by means of the ideas we have formed of then; and if our ideas of them are really irreconcilable, it is because they have not been correctly formed, and do not correspond with the things themselves. What shall we do then? Shall we set to work to reform our ideas? Shall we explain away the free-agency of man, or deny the foreknowledge of God? No. We may retain both.
Edwards contends, that volitions are brought to pass by the influence of motives, and that it is impossible in any case, that a volition should depart from the influence of the strongest motive. This is the great doctrine of moral necessity, which it is the object of President Edwards to establish. Now, if his celebrated argument, or “demonstration,” as it is called, proves this point, then it is to be held as true and valid; but if it only proves some other thing which is called by the name of necessity, it is not to the purpose. And if it can be shown, that his argument does not prove any thing at all in relation to the causation of choice, it will appear that it has no relevancy to the point at issue.
The foreknowledge of God, I admit, infers the necessity of all human actions, in one sense of the word; but not thatkindof necessity for which any necessitarian pleads, or against whichanylibertarian is at all concerned to contend. The fallacy of the argument in question is, that it shows all human actions to be necessary in a sense in which it is not opposed to any scheme of liberty whatever, and assumes them to be necessary in another and quite different sense; and thus the great doctrine of freewill, otherwise so clear and unquestionable, is overshadowed and obscured by an imperfect and ambiguous phraseology, rather than by the inherent difficulties of the subject. This is the position which I shall endeavour to establish.
The first argument of President Edwards is as follows. When the existence of a thing is infallibly and indissolubly connected with something else, which has already had existence, then its existence is necessary; but the future volitions of moral agents, are infallibly and indissolubly connected with the foreknowledge of God; and therefore they are necessary, p. 114-15. Now this argument is perfectly sound; the conclusion is really contained in the premise, or definition of necessity, and it is fairly deduced from it. It is as perfect as any syllogism in Euclidbut what does it prove?It proves that all human actions are necessary—but in what sense? Does it prove that they are necessary with amoral necessity?Does it prove that they are brought to pass by the influence of moral causes? No such thing is even pretended: “I allow what Dr. Whitby says to be true,” says Edwards, “that mere foreknowledge does not affect the thing known, tomakeit more certain or future,” p. 122. He admits that foreknowledge exerts “no influence on the thing known to make it necessary.” He does not even pretend that there is anymoral necessityshown to exist by this argument; and hence his conclusion has no connexion with the great doctrine of the Inquiry, or the point in dispute. It aims at the word, but not at the thing. The infallible connexion it shows to exist, is admitted to be entirely different from the infallible connexion between moral causes and volitions; that is to say, it is admitted that it does not prove any thing to the purpose.
But is the indissoluble connexion, or necessity, established by this argument, at all inconsistent with human liberty? If it is not; and if our scheme of liberty is perfectly consistent and reconcilable with it; then it infers nothing, and is nothing, that is opposed to what we hold.
This question admits of an easy solution. The foreknowledge of a future event proves it to be necessary in precisely the same manner that the knowledge of a present event shows it to be necessary. This is conceded by Edwards. “All certain knowledge,” says he, “whether it be foreknowledge, or after knowledge, or concomitant knowledge, proves the thing known now to be necessary, by some means or other;or proves that it is impossible it should now be otherwise than true,” p. 121. And again, “All certain knowledge proves the necessity of the truth known; whether it bebefore, orafter, orat the same time,” p. 124; and so in other places.
In what sense then, let us inquire, does the knowledge of a present event prove it to be necessary? It is necessary, says Edwards, because it is indissolubly connected with the knowledge of it. In other words, it could not possibly be known to exist, unless it did exist; and hence, its existence is said to be indissolubly connected with the knowledge of its existence, or, in other words, it is said to be necessary. This is all true; but is this indissoluble connexion, or necessity, at all inconsistent with the contingency of the event known?This is the question;and let us not lose sight of it in a mist of words. Let it be distinctly borne in mind, and it will be easily settled.
For this purpose, let us suppose, to adopt the language of President Edwards, “that nonentity is about to bring forth;” and that an event comes into being without any cause of its existence. This event then exists; it is seen, and it is known to exist. Now, even on this wild supposition, there is an infallible and indissoluble connexion between the existence of the event and the knowledge of it; and hence it is necessary, in the sense above explained. But what has this necessary connexion to do with the cause of its existence? This indissoluble connexion, this dire necessity, is perfectly consistent, as we have seen, with the supposition that the event had no cause at all of its existence. How can it conflict, then, with any scheme of free-agency that ever was dreamed of by man?
If this argument proves any thing in regard to human actions, it only proves that a volition has an effect, and not that it has a cause. Indeed, it has been said, that the knowledge of an event is the effect of its existence; and the same remark has been extended to the foreknowledge of God with respect to the future volitions of human beings. This position is not denied by Edwards; he considers, in fact, that it strengthens, rather than weakens, his argument. “Because it shows the existence of the event to be so settled and firm, thatit is as if it had already been;inasmuch asin effectit actually exists already;” and much more to the same purpose, p.122-3. “It is as strong arguing,” says he, “from the effect to the cause, as from the cause to the effect.”
This is all true; it is as strong arguing from effect to cause, as it is from cause to effect. But do the arguments prove the same thing? Let us see. I know a thing to exist; and therefore it does exist. This is to reason from effect to cause. The conclusion is inevitable; but what does it prove? Why, it proves that the thing does exist—it proves the bare fact of existence. The indissoluble connexion, or the necessity, in this case, exists between the knowledge and the event known; and it has no relation to the question how the event came to exist. This argument, then, in regard to human volitions, only proves that they are indissolubly connected with their effects, and are necessarily implied by them; just as every cause is implied by its effects: but no libertarian in the world has ever questioned such a position. For all that such an argument proves, all the volitions of moral agents may come into existence, without having the least shadow of reason or ground of their existence. We admit that volitions are efficient causes; and that they have effects, with which they are indissolubly connected. Edwards undertook to show, that volitions are necessary, because they are infallibly and indissolubly connected with their causes; and he has shown that they are necessary, because they are infallibly and indissolubly connected with their effects! This is one branch of his great argument.
There is another sense, in which the knowledge of an event, whether it before, orafter, orconcomitant, knowledge, proves it to be necessary. This sense is not clearly distinguished from the former by Edwards. He recognizes them both, however, although he blends them together, and frequently turns from the one to the other in the course of his argument. It is highly important, and affords no little satisfaction, to keep them clearly distinct in our minds.
A thing is said to be necessary, as we have seen, because it is connected with the knowledge of it; and, if a thing does exist, or is certainly and infallibly known to exist, it may be said to be necessary, on the principle that it is impossible it should exist and not exist at one and the same time. These two things are evidently different; and, for the sake of distinctness in our language, as well as in our thoughts, I shall call the first alogical, and the last anaxiomaticalnecessity. A thing, then, which does exist, is said to be necessary with anaxiomaticalnecessity; because it is impossible for it not to exist while it does exist: and it is said to be necessary, with alogicalnecessity, because it is indissolubly connected with the knowledge of it. The former kind of necessity is frequently presented in this form of expression, that if a thing does exist, it is impossible it should be otherwise than true that it does exist. In this form of expression, it is frequently resorted to by Edwards.
Thus, says he, “I observed before, in explaining the nature of necessity, that in things which are past, their past existence is nownecessary;having already made sure of existence,it is now impossible that it should be otherwise than true, that the thing has existed,” p. 114-15. Just so we may say in relation to things which now exist; for, having already made sure of existence, it is impossible it should be otherwise than true, that they do now exist; or, in other words, it is impossible they should not exist while they do exist. In like manner, if the future existence of any thing is foreknown, “it is impossible it should be otherwise than true,” that it should exist, or come to pass: that is to say, if it will exist, it will be impossible for it not to exist at the time of its existence.
Foreknowledge, I admit, infers this kind of necessity; but is this any thing to the purpose? The conclusion is the same, whether it be deduced from foreknowledge, or concomitant knowledge. Let us suppose, then, for the sake of clearness and convenience, that a thing is now known to exist. It follows from hence, by alogicalnecessity, that it does exist; for it could not possibly be known to exist, unless it did exist. And, as it does exist, “it is impossible that it should be otherwise than true that it does exist;” or, in other words, it is impossible for it not to exist now, while it does exist. This is all there is in this part of the argument.
And what does it amount to? It is a simple declaration of what no body ever denied—that if a thing exists, or is to exist, or has existed, it is impossible to conceive of it as not existing at the time of its existence. All this is perfectly true, without the least reference to the question, how it came to exist, or how it will come to exist? It is wholly irrelevant to the point at issue. It controverts no position, held by any sane man that now lives, or that ever has lived.
In other words, if a thing is known to exist, certainly and infallibly, then it does exist; and if it does exist, then “it is impossible it should be otherwise than true” that it does exist; and hence its existence is said to be necessary with anaxiomaticalnecessity. But this does not prove that it isnecessarily produced. For, supposing it to exist, its existence would be necessary in the above sense, even if it had no cause of its existence. The necessity here referred to, is a necessityin the order of our ideas, and notin the course of events. It arises from the impossibility of a thing’s not existing at the time it does exist; and it has no reference whatever to the causation of any thing: it is a fundamental law of belief, and not acausalnecessity. These three things, anaxiomatical, alogical, and acausalnecessity, are most strangely confounded in the argument of President Edwards.
Will it be said, that in this argument, it was not the object of Edwards, to prove that there is a moral necessity in regard to our volitions; but only that they are “not without all necessity?” Suppose this to be the case, with whom has he any controversy, or to what purpose has he argued? No one has ever held that human volitions are “without all necessity,” according to Edwards’ use of that term; and no one can hold it. No one can deny, that there is an indissoluble connexion between the existence of a thing, and the certain and infallible knowledge of its existence; or between the effect of a thing and the thing itself; or that it is impossible for a thing not to exist while it does exist. In these senses of the word, all rational creatures are bound to acknowledge that human volitions are necessary. The most strenuous advocate of free-agency has not one word to say against them; and such being the meaning of Edwards, we must all heartily concur with him, when he says, “that there is no geometrical theorem or proposition whatever more capable ofstrict demonstration, than that God’s certain prescience of the volition of moral agents is inconsistent with such a contingency of these events,as is without all necessity,” p. 125-6.
If it can be truly said, that a thing is foreknown, it follows that it will come to pass, or the proposition which affirms the future existence of it, is necessarily true. In other words, it is self-contradictory and absurd, to assert that a thing is foreknown, and yet that it may not come to pass; just as it is to assert that a thing is known to exist and yet at the same time does not exist. Hence, it is frequently alleged by Edwards, that to deny his conclusions, drawn from foreknowledge, is self-contradictory and absurd; unless we deny foreknowledge itself. To admit this, says he, and yet contend that the thing foreknown may possibly not be, is to fall into a plain contradiction, and “to suppose God’s foreknowledge to be inconsistent with itself,” p. 117. Is it not strange, that it did not occur to Edwards, that if to deny his position is to deny that God foreknows what he foreknows; then to affirm it, is only to affirm that he foreknows what he foreknows? Indeed, all those reasonings in which he represents the denial of his position as self-contradictory and absurd, should have convinced him that he could prove nothing to the purpose, by arguing from the foreknowledge of God, or else he must assume the very thing in dispute, by taking it for granted that it is future; or, which is the same thing in effect, that it is foreknown. For in admitting any premise, we admit, no more than is contained in it; and if we only deny what is not contained in our admission, we are not involved in a self-contradiction, or absurdity. In alleging that we have done this, therefore, in the present case;—in alleging that we contradict ourselves by admitting the foreknowledge of God, and in denying necessity, he takes it for granted that the very thing in dispute is included in that foreknowledge. In other words, if Edwards does not mean to say, that the point in dispute is included in the foreknowledge of God; then he cannot say, that we contradict ourselves by admitting that divine prescience; and if he does mean to say, that the thing which we deny is included in the foreknowledge of God, then he begs the question.
It is freely conceded, that whatever God foreknows will most certainly and infallibly come to pass. He foresees all human volitions; and, therefore, they will most certainly and infallibly come to pass, in some manner or other: the bare fact of their future existence is clearly established by God’s foreknowledge of them. And if all human volitions will be brought to pass, by the operation of moral causes; then this manner of their existence is foreknown to God, and will all come to pass in this way; but to take this for granted, is to beg the question. We have just as much right to suppose, that God foreknows that the volitions of moral agents are not necessitated, as the necessitarian has to suppose that He foreknows the contrary; and then it would follow that our volitions are necessarily free, or without any producing causes. If God foreknows that our actions will come to pass in the way we call freely, (and we have as much right to this supposition as our opponents have to the contrary,) then, as foreknowledge infers necessity, our actions are necessarily free. And surely, if the necessity which is inferred from foreknowledge, is predicable of freedom itself, it cannot be inconsistent with it.
In other words, if the necessity of human volitions, according to the scheme of Edwards, be a fact, then it was foreknown to God that such is the fact; and, if we please, we may infer the fact from his foreknowledge, after having inferred his foreknowledge from the fact. On the other hand, if the scheme of necessity be a mere hypothesis, having no corresponding reality in the universe; then God never foreknew that it is according to such scheme that all human actions are brought to pass; unless he foreknew things to be necessitated which in reality are not necessitated. Hence, we can prove nothing by reasoning from the foreknowledge of God; except what we first assume to be true, and consequently foreknown to Him; and, if we choose to resort to this pitiful way of begging the question, we may prove our hypothesis just as well as any other.
The foreknowledge of an event, as I have already said, proves nothing more nor less thanthe bare certaintyof its future existence; it decides nothing asto the mannerof its coming into existence. The necessitarian may ring the changes upon this subject as long as he pleases, and all he can possibly make out of it is, that if God foreknows a thing, it will certainly be, and to suppose otherwise, is a contradiction. Thus, says Edwards, “To suppose the future volitions of moral agents not to be necessary events; or, which is the same thing, events which it is not possible but that they may come to pass; and yet to suppose that God certainly foreknows them, and knows all things, is to suppose God’s knowledge to be inconsistent with itself. For to say that God certainly, and without all conjecture, knows that a thing will infallibly be, which at the same time he knows to be socontingentthat it may possibly not be, is to suppose his knowledge inconsistent with itself; or that one thing he knows is utterly inconsistent with another thing he knows. It is the same as to say, he now knows a proposition to be of certain infallible truth, which he knows to be of contingent uncertain truth. If a future volition is so without all necessity, that nothing hinders but it may not be, then the proposition which asserts its future existence is so uncertain, that nothing hinders but that the truth of it may entirely fail. And if God knows all things, he knows this proposition to be thus uncertain; and that is inconsistent with his knowing it to be infallibly true; and so inconsistent with his knowing that it is true.” p. 117. Now all this going around and around amounts to just this, that if God certainly and infallibly foreknows a thing, he certainly and infallibly foreknows it, or that if it will certainly come to pass, it will certainly come to pass.
We admit that the certainty of all future events is implied in God’s foreknowledge of them. Does the argument in question prove any more than the bare fact of the certainty of the events foreknown? The argument, so far as we have yet followed it, clearly does not. It merely proves the bare fact of the certainty of existence. Indeed, Edwards himself says, that “metaphysical or philosophical necessity,” (and this is the necessity for which he here contends,) “is nothing different from their certainty.” p. 23. And the younger Edwards frequently says, “If a proposition asserting some future event, be a real and absolute truth, there is an absolute certainty of the event;such absolute certainty is all that is implied in the divine foreknowledge; and all the moral necessity for which we plead.” p. 160. Now, if these writers merely mean that a thing is certain, when they say it is necessary, it is to be regretted that they did not use the right word. It would have saved their works from no little confusion.
But the truth is, that the moral necessity for which they contend consists sometimes in the certainty of an event, and sometimes inthe groundof that certainty. Volitions are said to be morally necessitory in their definition, and in their system, because they aremade certain by the influence of moral causes. But in their arguments, and the defence of their system,the bare absolute certainty, without any reference to the ground of it, is frequently all that is meant by moral necessity. Thus, they build upon one idea of necessity, while they attack and defend themselves upon another idea thereof.
This is our present starting point then, agreed upon by all sides, that the foreknowledge of God infers the certainty of all future realities. Now, how can we conclude from hence, that the volitions of moral agents are, not only certain, but rendered certain by the influence of moral causes? It may be said, that it is sufficient that the foreknowledge of God proves that human volitions will certainly come to pass in some way or other; for if they will certainly come to pass in any way, we know that they must have some cause of their existence; and it is just as absurd to suppose that a volition can come into being without any cause of its existence, as it is to suppose that a world can come into being of itself. If this ground should be taken, (and it certainly will be,) the reply is obvious. It would show that the divine prescience can only prove the certainty of future events while it is left to the old maxim, that every effect must have a cause, in order to make out the doctrine of moral necessity, or the point in dispute! It would show, that after all the parade made with the divine prescience, it leaves the whole argument to rest upon ground which has already been occupied by one side, and fully considered by the other! It would only show, that a great pretence of demonstration had been made from the foreknowledge of God; whereas, in fact, it proves nothing to the purpose, unless “its most impotent and lame conclusion” be helped out by something else!
Another attempt is made to link the conclusion drawn from the foreknowledge of God, with the point to be established by the necessitarian. It is said, that God could not foreknow all future events, unless he views them as connected with known causes. This ground is taken by many eminent necessitarians. Thus, says Dr. John Dick, “Future events cannot be foreseen, unless they are certain; they cannot be certain, unless God have determined to bring them to pass.”
The same position is assumed by President Edwards, “There must be a certainty in things themselves,” says he, “before they are certainly foreknown.” . . . “There must be a certainty in things to be a ground of certainty of knowledge, and render things capable of being known to be certain.” p. 122. Now, what is this certainty in things themselves, or in human volitions, without which they are incapable of being foreknown? The answer is obvious; for Edwards every where contends, that unless volitions are brought to pass by theinfluenceof moral causes—that unless they are necessarily produced by an “effectual power and efficacy”—they are altogether uncertain and contingent, and connected with nothing that can render them certain. Hence, he clearly maintains, that unless human volitions are necessarily brought to pass by the influence of motives, they are not certain in themselves, and hence are incapable of being foreknown. And besides, he has a laboured argument to prove, that God could not foreknow the future volitions of moral agents, unless he views them as “necessarily connected with something else that is evident.” pp. 115-117. This something else is not foreknowledge itself; for it is the ground of foreknowledge, it is the necessary influence of motives, or moral causes. But we need not dwell upon this point, as this is so evidently his meaning; and if it is not, then it is nothing to the purpose.
If Edwards means that a thing cannot be foreknown unless it has a sufficient ground and reason for its existence, and does not of itself come forth out of nothing, we are not at all concerned to deny his position. Every advocate of free-agency contends, that volition proceeds from the mind, acting in view of motives; and therefore is not destitute of a sufficient ground and reason of its existence. He denies that volition is necessarily brought to pass by the operation of motives. Hence, if Edwards merely means that God could not foreknow a human volition, unless he foreknew all the circumstances in view of the mind when it is to act, as well as the nature and all the circumstances of the mind from which the act is to proceed; no advocate of free-agency is at all concerned to deny his position. It may be true, or it may be false; but it establishes nothing which may not be consistently admitted by the advocates of free-agency. If he means any thing to the purpose, he must mean, that God could not foresee human volitions, unless they are necessarily connected with causes, according to his scheme of moral necessity; that is, unless they are necessarily produced by “the action or influence” of motives, or moral causes. If this is his meaning, then indeed it is something to the purpose; but what unbounded presumption is it, on the part of a poor blind worm of the dust, thus to set bounds and limits to the modes of knowledge possesssd by an infinite, all-knowing God! It is true, that “no understanding, created or uncreated, can see evidence where there is none”; but what kind of evidence that is, by which all things are rendered perfectly clear to the eye of Omniscience, it is surely not for us to determine. That all things are known to God, is freely admitted; but that they can be known, only by reason of their resulting from the necessitating influence of known causes, which are themselves necessitated, is more than any finite mind should presume to affirm. It were, indeed, to make our shallow, limited, and feeble intellects, the measure of all possible modes of knowledge. It were to make God like one of ourselves. Yet this position the necessitarian has been compelled to assume. After all his pretended demonstrations from the foreknowledge of God, his argument can reach the point in dispute, only by means of this tremendous flight of presumption.