Having completed our analysis, in as far as our present purpose demands, we may proceed to show that the system of necessity is founded on a false psychology,—on a dark confusion of the facts of human nature. It is very remarkable that all the advocates of this system, from Hobbes down to Edwards, will allow the human mind to possess only two faculties, the understanding and the will. The will and the sensibility are expressly identified by them. Locke distinguished between will and desire, between the faculty of willing and the susceptibility to feeling; but Edwards has endeavoured to show that there is no such distinction as that for which Locke contends. We shall not arrest the progress of our remarks in order to point out the manner in which Edwards has deceived himself by an appeal to logic rather than to consciousness, because the threefold distinction for which we contend is now admitted by necessitarians themselves. Indeed, after the clear and beautiful analysis by M. Cousin, they could not well do otherwise than recognise this threefold distinction; but they have done so, we think it will be found, without perceiving all the consequences of such an admission to their system. It is an admission which, in our opinion, will show the scheme of necessity to be insecure in its foundation, and disjointed in all its parts.
With the light of this distinction in our minds, it will be easy to follow and expose the sophistries of the necessitarian. He often declaims against the idea of liberty for which we contend, on the ground that it would be, not a perfection, but a very great imperfection of our nature to possess such a freedom. But in every such instance he confounds the will with one of the passive susceptibilities of the mind. Thus, for example, Collins argues that liberty would be a great imperfection, because “nothing can be more irrational and absurd than to be able to refuse our assent to what is evidently true to us, and to assent to what we see to be false.” Now, all this is true, but it [pg 137] is not to the purpose; for no one contends that the intelligence is free in assenting to, or in dissenting from, the evidence in view of the mind. No rational being, we admit, could desire such a freedom; could desire to be free, for example, from the conviction that two and two make four. M. Lamartine, we are aware, expresses a very lively abhorrence of the mathematics, because they allow not a sufficient freedom of thought—because they exercise so great a despotism over the intellect. But the circumstance which this flowery poet deems an imperfection in the mathematics, every enlightened friend of free-agency will regard as their chief excellency and glory.
The same error is committed by Spinoza: “We can consider the soul under two points of view,” says he, “as thought and as desire.” Here the will is made to disappear, and we behold only the two susceptibilities of the soul, which are stamped with the characteristic of necessity. Where, then, will Spinoza find the freedom of the soul? Certainly not in the will, for this has been blotted out from the map of his psychology. Accordingly he says: “The free will is a chimera of the species, flattered by our pride, and founded upon our ignorance.” He must find the freedom of the soul then, if he find it at all, in one of its passive susceptibilities. This, as we have already seen, is exactly what he does; he says the soul is free in the affirmation that two and two are four! Thus he finds the liberty of the soul, not in the exercises of its will, of its active power, but in the bosom of the intelligence, which is absolutely necessitated in all its determinations.
In this particular, as well as in most others, Spinoza merely reproduces the error of the ancient Stoics. It was a principle with them, says Ritter, “that the will and the desire are one with thought, and may be resolved into it.”[102] Thus, by the ancient Stoics, as well as by Hobbes, and Spinoza, and Collins, and Edwards, the will is merged in one of the passive elements of the mind, and its real characteristic lost sight of. “By the freedom of the soul,” says Ritter, “the Stoics understood simply that assent which it gives to certain ideas.”[103] Thus the ancient Stoics endeavoured to find the freedom of the soul, where Spinoza and so many modern necessitarians have sought to find it, in the passive, necessitated states of the intelligence. This was [pg 138] indeed to impose upon themselves a mere shadow for a substance,—a dream for a reality.
“By whatever name we call the act of the will,” says Edwards, “choosing, refusing, approving, disapproving, liking, disliking, embracing, rejecting, determining, directing, commanding, forbidding, inclining or being averse, being pleased or displeased with—all may be reduced to this of choosing.”[104] Thus, in the vocabulary and according to the psychology of this great author, the phenomena of the sensibility and those of the will are identified, as well as the faculties themselves. Pleasing and willing, liking and acting, are all one with him. His psychology admits of no distinction, for example, between the pleasant impression made by an apple on the sensibility, and the act of the will by which the hand is put forth to take it. “The will and the affections of the soul,” says he, “are not two faculties; the affections are not essentially distinct from the will, nor do they differ from the mere actings of the will and inclination, but only in the liveliness and sensibility of exercise.”[105] And again, “I humbly conceive that the affections of the soul are not properly distinguished from the will, as though there were two faculties.”[106] And still more explicitly, “all acts of the will are truly acts of the affections.”[107] Is it not strange, that one who could exhibit such wonderful discrimination when the exigences of his system demanded the exercise of such a power, should have confounded things so clearly distinct in their natures as an act of the will and an agreeable impression made on the sensibility?
It is not possible for any mind, no matter how great its powers, to see the nature of things clearly when it comes to the contemplation of them with such a confusion of ideas. Even President Edwards is not exempt from the common lot of humanity. His doctrine is necessarily enveloped in obscurity. We can turn it in no light without being struck with its inconsistencies or its futility. He repeatedly says, the will is always determined by the strongest affection, or appetite, or passion; that is, by the most agreeable state of the sensibility. But if the will and the sensibility are identical, as his language expressly makes them; or if the states of the one are not distinguishable [pg 139] from the states of the other, then to say that the will is always determined by the sensibility, or an act of the will by the strongest affection of the sensibility, is to say that a thing is determined by itself. It is to say, in fact, that the will is always determined by itself; a doctrine against which he uniformly protests. Nay, more, that an act of the will causes itself; a position which he has repeatedly ascribed to his opponents, and held up to the derision of mankind.
It is very remarkable, that Edwards seems to have been conscious, at times, that he laid himself open to the charge of such an absurdity, when he said that the will is determined by the greatest apparent good, or by what seems most agreeable to the mind. For he says, “I have chosen rather to express myself thus, that the will always is as the greatest apparent good, or as what appears most agreeable, than to say the will is determined by the greatest apparent good, or by what seems most agreeable; because an appearing most agreeable to the mind, and the mind's preferring, seem scarcely distinct.” We have taken the liberty to emphasize his words. Now here he tells us that the “mind's preferring,” by which word he has explained himself to mean willing,[108] is scarcely distinct from “an appearing most agreeable to the mind.” Here he returns to his psychology, and identifies the most agreeable impression made on the sensibility with an act of the will. He does not like to say, that the act of the will is caused by the most agreeable sensation, because this seems to make a thing the cause of itself.
In this he does wisely; but having shaped his doctrine to suit himself more exactly, in what form is it presented to us? Let us look at it in its new shape, and see what it is. The will is not determined by the greatest apparent good, because a thing is not determined by itself; but the will is always as the greatest apparent good! Thus the absurdity of saying a thing is determined by itself is avoided; but surely, if an appearing most agreeable to the mind is not distinct from the mind's acting, then to say that the mind's acting is always as that which appears most agreeable to it is merely to say, that the mind's acting is always as the mind's acting! or, in other words, that a thing is always as itself! Thus, his great fundamental proposition [pg 140] is, in one form, a glaring absurdity; and in the other, it is an insignificant truism; and there is no escape from this dilemma except through a return to a better psychology, to a sounder analysis of the great facts of human nature.
When Edwards once reaches the truism that a thing is always as itself, he feels perfectly secure, and defies with unbounded confidence the utmost efforts of his opponents to dislodge him. “As we observed before,” says he, “nothing is more evident than that, when men act voluntarily, and do what they please, then they do what appears most agreeable to them; and to say otherwise, would be as much as to affirm, that men do not choose what appears to suit them best, or what seems most pleasing to them; or that they do not choose what they prefer—which brings the matter to a contradiction.” True; this brings the matter to a contradiction, as he has repeatedly told us; for choosing, and preferring, or willing, are all one. But if any one denies that a man does what he pleases when he does what he pleases; or if he affirms that he pleases without pleasing, or chooses without choosing, or prefers without preferring, we shall leave him to the logic of the necessitarian and the physician. We have no idea that he will ever be able to refute the volumes that have been written to confound him. President Edwards clearly has the better of him; for he puts “the soul in a state of choice,” and yet affirms that it “has no choice.” He might as well say, indeed, that “a body may move while it is in a state of rest,” as to say that “the mind may choose without choosing,” or without having a choice. He is very clearly involved in an absurdity; and if he can read the three hundred pages of the Inquiry, without being convinced of his error, his case must indeed be truly hopeless.