machines,” says Dick. “It is trifling to speak of such a thing,” says the younger Edwards, in relation to the will. “Why, surely, this cannot be what the great President Edwards meant by the freedom of the will,” says Dr. Day. He certainly must have evaded his own idea on that point. Is it not evident, that the house of the necessitarian is divided against itself?
Necessitarians not only refute each other, but in most cases each one contradicts himself. Thus the younger Edwards says, it is absurd to speak of a power to act according to our choice, when the question relates, not to the freedom of the body, but to the freedom of the mind itself. He happens to see the absurdity of this mode of speaking when he finds it in his adversary, Dr. West; and yet it is precisely his own definition of freedom. “But if by liberty,” says he, “be meant a power of willing and choosing, an exemption from co-action and natural necessity, and power, opportunity, and advantage, to execute our own choice; in this sense we hold liberty.”32 Thus he returns to the absurd idea of free-will as consisting in “elbow-room,” which merely allows our choice or volition to pass into effect. Dr. Dick is guilty of the same inconsistency. Though [pg 069] he admits, as we have seen, that this definition of liberty does not get rid of every difficulty, but seems to leave us mere “machines;” yet he has recourse to it, in order to reconcile the Calvinistic view of divine grace with the free-agency of man. “The great objection,” says he, “against the invincibility of divine grace, is, that it is subversive of the liberty of the will.”33 But, he replies, “True liberty consists in doing what we do with knowledge and from choice.”
Yet as if unconscious that their greatest champions were thus routed and overthrown by each other, we see hundreds of minor necessitarians still fighting on with the same weapons, perfectly unmindful of the disorder and confusion which reigns around them in their own ranks. Thus, for example, D'Aubigné says, “It were easy to demonstrate that the doctrine of the reformers did not take away from man the liberty of a moral agent, and reduce him to a passive machine.” Now, how does the historian so easily demonstrate that the doctrine of necessity, as held by the reformers, does not deny the liberty of a moral agent? Why, by simply producing the old effete notion of the liberty of the will, as consisting in freedom from co-action; as if it had never been, and never could be, called in question. “Every action performed without external restraint,” says he, “and in pursuance of the determination of the soul itself, is a free action.”34 This demonstration, it is needless to repeat, would save any scheme of fatalism from reproach, as well as the doctrine of the reformers.
The scheme of the Calvinists is defended in the same manner in Hill's Divinity: “The liberty of a moral agent,” says he, “consists in the power of acting according to his choice; and those actions are free, which are performed without any external compulsion or restraint, in consequence of the determination of his own mind.” “According to the Calvinists,” says Mr. Shaw, in his Exposition of the Confession of Faith, “the liberty of a moral agent consists in the power of acting according to his choice; and those actions are free which are performed without any external compulsion or restraint, in consequence of the determination of his own mind.”35 Such, if we may believe these learned Calvinists, is the idea of the freedom [pg 070] of the will which belongs to their system. If this be so, then it must be conceded that the Calvinistic definition of the freedom of the will is perfectly consistent with the most absolute scheme of fatality which ever entered into the heart of man to conceive.
The views of M'Cosh respecting the freedom of the will, seem, at first sight, widely different from those of other Calvinists and necessitarians. The freedom and independence of the will is certainly pushed as far by him as it is carried by Cousin, Coleridge, Clarke, or any of its advocates in modern times. “True necessitarians,” says he, “should learn in what way to hold and defend their doctrine. Let them disencumber themselves of all that doubtful argument, derived from man being supposed to be swayed by the most powerful motive.”36 Again: “The truth is,” says he, “it is not motive, properly speaking, that determines the working of the will; but it is the will that imparts the strength to the motive. As Coleridge says, ‘It is the man that makes the motive, and not the motive the man.’ ”37 According to this Calvinistic divine, the will is not determined by the strongest motive; on the contrary, it is self-active and self-determined. “Mind is a self-acting substance,” says he; “and hence its activity and independence.” In open defiance of all Calvinistic and necessitarian philosophy, he even adopts the self-determining power of the will. “Nor have necessitarians,” says he, “even of the highest order, been sufficiently careful to guard the language employed by them. Afraid of making admissions to their opponents, we believe that none of them have fully developed the phenomena of human spontaneity. Even Edwards ridicules the idea of the faculty or power of will, or the soul in the use of that power determining its own volitions. Now, we hold it to be an incontrovertible fact, and one of great importance, that the true determining cause of every given volition is not any mere anterior incitement, but the very soul itself, by its inherent power of will.”38 Surely, the author of such a passage cannot be accused of being afraid to make concessions to his opponents. But this is not all. If possible, he rises still higher in his views of the lofty, not to say god-like, independence of the human will. “We rejoice,” [pg 071] says he, “to recognise such a being in man. We trust that we are cherishing no presumptuous feeling, when we believe him to be free, as his Maker is free. We believe him, morally speaking, to be as independent of external control as his Creator must ever be—as that Creator was when, in a past eternity, there was no external existence to control him.”39
Yet, strange as it may seem, Mr. M'Cosh trembles at the idea of “removing the creature from under the control of God;” and hence, he insists as strenuously as any other necessitarian, that the mind, and all its volitions, are subjected to the dominion of causes. “We are led by an intuition of our nature,” says he, “to a belief in the invariable connexion between cause and effect; and we see numerous proofs of this law of cause and effect reigning in the human mind as it does in the external world, and reigning in the will as it does in every other department of the mind.”40 Again: “It is by an intuition of our nature that we believe this thought or feeling could not have been produced without a cause; and that this same cause will again and forever produce the same effects. And this intuitive principle leads us to expect the reign of causation, not only among the thoughts and feelings generally, but among the wishes and volitions of the soul.”41
Now here is the question, How can the soul be self-active, self-determined, and yet all its thoughts, and feelings, and volitions, have producing causes? How can it be free and independent in its acts, and yet under the dominion of efficient causes? How can the law of causation reign in all the states of the mind, as it reigns over all the movements of matter, and yet leave it as free as was the Creator when nothing beside himself existed? In other words, How is such a scheme of necessity to be reconciled with such a scheme of liberty? The author replies, We are not bound to answer such a question42—nor are we. As we understand it, the very idea of liberty, as above set forth by the author, is a direct negative of his doctrine of necessity.
But although he has taken so much pains to dissent from his necessitarian brethren, and to advocate the Arminian notion of free-will, Mr. M'Cosh, nevertheless, falls back upon the old Calvinistic definition of liberty, as consisting in a freedom from [pg 072] external co-action, in order to find a basis for human responsibility. It may seem strange, that after all his labour in laying the foundation, he should not build upon it; but it is strictly true. “If any man asserts,” says he, “that in order to responsibility, the will must be free—that is, free from physical restraint; free to act as he pleases—we at once and heartily agree with him; and we maintain that in this sense the will is free, as free as it is possible for any man to conceive it to be.” And again: “If actions do not proceed from the will, but from something else, from mere physical or external restraint, then the agent is not responsible for them. But if the deeds proceed from the will, then it at once attaches a responsibility to them. Place before the mind a murder committed by a party through pure physical compulsion brought to bear on the arm that inflicts the blow, and the conscience says, here no guilt is attachable. But let the same murder be done with the thorough consent of the will, the conscience stops not to inquire whether this consent has been caused or no.”43 Thus, after all his dissent from Edwards,