avail, or to render us accountable for such consequences. But it should be forever borne in mind, that the question is not whether a fixed connexion obtains between our volitions and their sequents, but whether a necessary connexion exists between our volitions and their antecedents. The question is, not whether the will be a power which is often followed by necessitated effects; but whether there be a power behind the will by which its volitions are necessitated. And this being the question, what does it signify to tell us, that the will is a producing power? We deny that volitions and their antecedents are necessarily connected; and our opponents refute [pg 061] us by showing that volitions and their sequents are thus connected! We deny that A and B are necessarily connected; and this position is overthrown and demolished by showing that B and C are thus connected! Is it not truly wonderful that such men as a Leibnitz, an Edwards, and a Chalmers, should, in their zeal to maintain a favourite dogma, commit so great an oversight, and so grievously deceive themselves?
Section VI.
The attempt of Edwards to establish free and accountable agency on the basis of necessity—The views of the younger Edwards, Day, Chalmers, Dick, D'Aubigne, Hill, Shaw, and M'Cosh, concerning the agreement of liberty and necessity.
The great metaphysician of New-England insists, that his scheme, and his scheme alone, is consistent with the free-agency and accountability of man. But how does he show this? Does he endeavour to shake the stern argument by which all things seem bound together in the relation of cause and effect? Does he even intimate a doubt with respect to the perfect coherency and validity of this argument? Does he once enter a protest against the doctrine of the Stoics, or of the materialistic fatalists, according to which all things in heaven and earth are involved in an “implex series of causes?” He does not. On the contrary, he has stated and enforced the great argument from cause and effect, in the strongest possible terms. He contends that volition is caused, not by the will nor the mind, but by the strongest motive. This is the cause of volition, and it is impossible for the effect to be loose from its cause. It is an inherent contradiction, a glaring absurdity, to say that motive is the cause of volition, and yet admit that volition may, or may not, follow motive. This is to say, indeed, that motive is the cause, and yet that it is not the cause, of volition; which is a contradiction in terms.25 So far from saying anything, then, to extricate the volitions of men from the adamantine circle of necessity, he has exerted his prodigious energies to fasten them therein.
Hence the question arises, Has he left any room for the introduction of that freedom of the mind, which it is the great object of his inquiry to establish upon its true foundations? [pg 062] The liberty for which he contends, is, after all his labours, precisely that advocated by Hobbes and Collins, and no other. It is a freedom from co-action, and not from necessity. But he is entitled to speak for himself, and we shall permit him so to do: “The plain and obvious meaning of the word freedom and liberty,” says he, “in common speech, is the power, opportunity, or advantage, that any one has, to do as he pleases. Or, in other words, his being free from hinderance or impediment in the way of doing or conducting in any respect as he wills. And the contrary to liberty, whatever name we call it by, is a person being hindered, or unable to conduct as he will, or being necessitated to do otherwise.” Here, it will be seen, that liberty, according to this notion of it, has no relation to the manner in which the will arises, or comes into existence; if one's external conduct can only follow his will, he is free.
“There are two things,” says he, “contrary to what is called liberty in common speech. One is constraint, otherwise called force, compulsion, and co-action; which is a person being necessitated to do a thing contrary to his will. The other is restraint; which is, his being hindered, and not having power to do according to his will. But that which has no will cannot be the subject of these things.” This definition, it is plain, presupposes the existence of a volition; and liberty consists in the absence of co-action. It has no relation to the question as to how we come by our volitions, whether they are put forth by the mind itself without being necessitated, or whether they are necessarily produced in us. It leaves this great fundamental question untouched.
On this subject his language is perfectly explicit. There is nothing in Kames, nor Collins, nor Crombie, nor Hobbes, nor any other writer, more perfectly unequivocal. “But one thing more,” says he, “I would observe concerning what is vulgarly called liberty, namely, that power and opportunity for one to do and conduct as he will, or according to his choice, is all that is meant by it, without taking into the meaning of the word anything of the cause of that choice, or at all considering how the person came to have such a volition, or internal habit and bias; whether it was determined by some internal antecedent volition, or whether it happened without a cause; whether it were necessarily connected with something foregoing, [pg 063] or not connected. Let the person come by his choice any how, yet, if he is able, and there is nothing in the way to hinder his pursuing and executing his will, the man is perfectly free according to the primary and common notion of freedom.” Now this is all the definition of liberty with which his “Inquiry” furnishes us; and this, he says, is “sufficient to show what is meant by liberty, according to the common notion of mankind, and in the usual and primary acceptation of the word.”
It is easy to see, that there is no difficulty in reconciling liberty, in such a sense, with the most absolute scheme of necessity or fatalism the world has ever seen. Let a man come by his volition any how; let it be produced in him by the direct and almighty power of God himself; yet, “he is perfectly free,” provided there is no external co-action to prevent his volition from producing its natural effects!
President Day is not pleased with the definition contained in the “Inquiry;” and in this particular we think he has discovered a superior sagacity to Edwards. But his extreme anxiety to save the credit of his author has betrayed him, it seems to us, into an apology which will not bear a close examination. “On the subject of liberty or freedom,” says he, “which occupies a portion of the fifth section of Edwards's first book, he has been less particular than was to be expected, considering that this is the great object of inquiry in his work. His explanation of what he regards as the proper meaning of the term is applicable to the liberty of outward action, to what is called by philosophers external liberty.” “This is very well as far as it goes. But the professed object of his book, according to the title-page, is an inquiry concerning the freedom of the will, not the freedom of the external conduct. We naturally look for his meaning of this internal liberty. What he has said, in this section, respecting freedom of the will, has rather the appearance of evading such a definition of it as might be considered his own.”26 Now, is it possible that President Edwards has instituted an inquiry into the freedom of the will, and written a great book in defence of it, and yet has evaded giving his own definition of it? If so, then he may have demolished the views of others on this subject, but he has certainly not established his own in their stead; and hence, for [pg 064] aught we know, he really did not believe in the freedom of the will at all; and, for all his work shows, there may be no such freedom. For how is it possible for any man to establish his views of the freedom of the will, if he is not at sufficient pains to explain his meaning of the terms, and forbears even to give his own definition of them?
But the truth is, the author of the “Inquiry” has placed it beyond all controversy, that he has been guilty of no such omission or evasion. He has left no room to doubt that the definition of liberty, which he says is in conformity “with the common notion of mankind,” is his own. He always uses this definition when he undertakes to repel objections against his scheme of necessity. “It is evident,” he says, “that such a providential disposing and determining of men's moral actions, though it infers a moral necessity of those actions, yet it does not in the least infringe the real liberty of mankind, the only liberty that common sense teaches to be necessary to moral agency, which, as has been demonstrated, is not inconsistent