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all men's actions; and that the terms necessary, unavoidable, impossible, &c., are equally applicable to the case of moral and natural necessity." "ON THE CONTRARY, I have largely declared, that the connection between antecedent things and consequent ones, which takes place with regard to the acts of men's wills, which is called moral necessity, is called by the name of necessity IMPROPERLY; and that such a necessity as attends the acts of men's wills, is more properly called CERTAINTY than necessity; it being NO OTHER than the CERTAIN connection between the subject and predicate of the proposition which affirms their existence." "Nothing that I maintain, supposes that men are at all hindered by any fatal necessity, from doing, and even willing, and choosing as they please, with full freedom; yea, with the highest degree of liberty that ever was thought of, or that could possibly enter into the heart of any man to conceive."

This decisive language, with much more of the same tenor, is contained in his letter to a minister of the Church of Scotland, written, as he tells us, to vindicate himself "from the imputation of advancing a scheme of necessity," and published in all the subsequent editions of his Inquiry. Could language furnish a more coinprehensive or more explicit disavowal of the system which the Reviewer has labored so hard to fasten upon him? How far the reasonings he employed were always strictly consistent with this design, Edwards was not the proper judge. This, it is for his readers to determine; and he who determines it successfully, will find occasion for the exercise of his utmost discernment, and will need to be free alike from the partialities of a disciple, and the prejudices of an opponent. The great metaphysician may Occasionally have spoken, as in his definition of liberty, beside the question in controversy; and his reasonings may sometimes have authorised the imputations which Prof. T. has labored to fasten upon his system; and whoever cautiously points out such errors of the Inquiry, will do most useful service to the cause of truth. But the main pillars of that system rest upon a far different and a far stronger foundation; and the work itself, we are persuaded, will stand even the severe ordeal of the Reviewer's searching examination.

PART II. Consequences of Edwards' System.

The second part of the review we do not propose to notice. If the Reviewer is wrong in ascribing to his author the scheme of fatalism, his reduction of that scheme to its consequences, however logically it may be effected, has no relation to the work from which it professes to be drawn, and we are not called upon to question its correctness. Nor are we at all disposed to seek for faults, in a discussion, with which, for the most part, we are highly pleased. Considered simply as an argument against the physical necessity of volitions, it is accurate, and cogent, in a very high degree; and forces upon the advocates of that scheme, consequences, which it will be found alike impossible, to evade, or to justify. Its absolute incompatibility with all our ideas of moral good and evil, merit and demerit, reward and punishment, in short, with all that belongs to responsibility, is pointed out clearly and impressively. Whoever adopts the system here attributed to Edwards, and has not the hardihood to adopt with it, a most appalling series of consequences, will meet in this portion of Professor Tappan's work, an obstacle over which he will find it impossible to carry his views.

PART III. Examination of Edwards' Argument against Self-Determination.

We commence our remarks upon this third part of the review, with some observations upon the Professor's use of the most important terms of the discussion. We find occurring throughout it, passages like the following: "Will is simply cause"-"volition is the effort of that cause which we call will"—"it is a cause per se." These, and similar expressions, occur on almost every page. If words can settle any thing, then, according to Professor Tappan, will is cause. Take now a different class of expressions: "The divine will is infinite power; the created will is finite power" -"the only escape from necessity, is in the conception of a will as above defined, a conscious, self-moving, power"— we regard it as a contingent cause, a power to do or not to do." These passages clearly evince, that Professor Tappan does not distinguish between the two ideas of cause, and

power, in a question which respects only the causation of certain phenomena: with him they are identical. We can scarcely think it necessary to contend, that these ideas, however related, are perfectly distinct from one another; nor can we help esteeming it an unfavorable augury for the results of a discussion, to find the controlling terms of it so indiscriminately applied. And here we are called to notice some indefiniteness in the Reviewer's use of the term will. "Let us conceive," he says, "of the will as simply and purely an activity, or cause; a cause capable of producing changes, and conscious that it is thus capable." We are here required to appropriate to the will, two distinct conceptions; that of a cause, and that of an activity, which is a quality of a cause. Consciousness also is claimed for it; a faculty which belongs indeed, to the mind, but the claim of it for the will seems open to the charge of indistinctness of idea. "It is as conscious" says the Reviewer, "of power not to do, as of power to do; it may be called a power arbitrary and contingent." A power arbitrary and contingent which is conscious of power? Is not here a manifest identification of the conscious mind with the will? the power, of which that consciousness takes cognizance?

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Indeed, will, is Professor Tappan's idol. He cannot magnify it too greatly, nor attribute to it too much. On p. 225, he says, "Let the will be taken as the chief characteristic of sonality, or more properly, as the personality itself. By the personality, I mean the me, or myself. The personality, the me, the will, a self-moving cause, directs itself by an act of attention to the reason, and receives the laws of its action. The perception of these laws is attended with the conviction of their rectitude and imperative obligation; at the same time, there is the consciousness of power to obey or to disobey them." The will is here affirmed to be, a thing which exerts acts of consciousness, of attention, of perception, of conviction; there seems indeed, to be no department of the mind's action which is not monopolised by this all engrossing power, or cause, or activity, which we are finally told is the me or myself. Out of all this confusion of cause with power, agent with activity, mind with will, it is proposed to prove that the will may be. a self-determining power. With such advantages, the effort cannot be considered a very difficult one.

It has been by no means uncommon with writers on this sub

ject, to use the word will for the word mind; to speak carelessly of the will producing effects, when they mean that the mind produces them by willing; a negligence which Edwards censures with just severity. To Professor Tappan, however, this censure has no application. It is no negligence to which his use of these terms is to be attributed. He has a system of his own, the tendency of which is, to exalt the will, by confining all mental activity to it, and of course, to depreciate all other faculties of the mind. It is his studious conformity to this system which has produced the peculiarities we have noticed; peculiarities which, in the subsequent volumes of his work, he laboriously seeks to justify.

The Reviewer's examination of Edwards' argument against self-determination, is of course controlled by the signification which in the former part of the review, the term selfdetermination has been made to bear. If our previous remarks on this subject are correct, that signification is unauthorized; of course, in contending against the idea it gives, the Reviewer is not opposing the real doctrine of Edwards. Of the correctness of those remarks, this portion of the work furnishes additional evidence, as we shall now proceed to show. We quote from the Inquiry the following passage as exhibiting the true issue between Edwards, and the advocates of self-determination. He contends that if the will determine itself to any act, it must do so by a previous act. To this it is replied by his opponents that the determining act is not before the act determined, in the order either of nature or of time, nor indeed distinct from it, but that the will determines the act in forming or producing it. Upon this evasion Edwards remarks as follows:

"If any should say that for the soul to exert a particular volition, is for it to cause and determine that volition, I would on this observe that the thing in question seems to be kept out of sight. The very act of volition itself is DOUBTLESS a determination of the mind. But the question is, what influences, directs, or determines the mind or will to come to such a conclusion as it does? Or what is the cause, ground, or reason why it concludes thus, and not otherwise?"

The evasion as Edwards terms it, has for its point, that for the soul to exert a volition, is for it to cause and determine

that volition; to this Edwards fully responds with a “doubtless," admitting the claim in its length and breadth, but contends that it does not touch the point in controversy. We have here, then, the distinct affirmation, that to exert a volition is to cause it-that it is the soul which exerts or causes volition, and that this question of the efficient causation of volition, is not the one in controversy. The controversy respects only the question, why does the soul cause such an act, rather than a different one? The Reviewer affirms, however, that the question respects only the causation of volition, and that Edwards regards motive as the efficient cause. Though Edwards affirms numberless times, that the soul exerts volition, though he here explains, that by exerts he means causes it, our Reviewer steadily maintains his position, that the system of the Inquiry recognises only motive as the producing cause of choice, and that this is the question principally in controversy between Edwards and himself. This representation compels us to believe that the Professor has misconceived the scheme of his author, capitally, essentially, on the grand question of the whole controversy.

Prof. T. makes distinct allusion to a passage precisely similar to the one we have just quoted; and it is somewhat curious to perceive, with what a cool deliberation he forces this system of fatalism upon Edwards, directly over it. He quotes the language of the Inquiry thus-"the question is not so much how a spirit endued with activity comes to act, as why it exerts such an act, and not another; or why IT acts with a particular determination." This does most manifestly assign the soul as the efficient cause, and the motive as only the occasion or reason, the final cause of the soul's action. Yet, explicit as it is, this language is not deemed worthy even of an "explanation." The Reviewer contents himself with a reference to the dubious principles, which he considers himself as having previously established, that volition is identical with the strongest desire, and that this desire is produced of necessity, like any other effect; and concludes that therefore this language does not recognise the distinction which lies so evidently upon its face."The distinction of final and efficient causes does not lie in his system." "It belongs to the opposite system to make this distinction in all its clearness and force."-p. 186. It would be impossible to state this distinction more palpably than Edwards has

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