An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will

by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

To save the consistency of the author, will it be said, that “every cause” does not include the efficient cause in his estimation, since in his opinion there is no such cause? If this should be said, it would not be true; for the younger Edwards did, as it is well known, regard the influence of the Divine Being as the efficient cause of volition. He regarded the Deity as the sole fountain of all efficiency in heaven and in earth. Hence, if the definition of President Edwards included “every cause” of volition; it must have included this divine influence, this efficient cause. Indeed, the younger Edwards expressly asserts, that this “divine influence” is included in President Edwards’ “explanation of his idea of motive,” p. 104. He tells us, then, that President Edwards regards motive as merely the occasion of volition; and yet that he considered motive as including the efficient cause of volition! At one time, motive is merely the antecedent, which exerts no influence; at another, it embraces the efficient cause! At one time, the author of the Inquiry “most exactly agrees” with the libertarian in regard to this all-important point; and, at another, he most perfectly disagrees with him! It is to be hoped, that President Edwards is not quite so glaringly inconsistent with himself, on this subject, as he is represented to be by his distinguished son.

Again. President Edwards has written a section to prove, that “volitions are necessarily connected with the influence of motives;” which clearly implies that they are brought to pass by the influence of motives. In this section, he says, “Motives do nothing, as motives or inducements, but by their influence. And so much as is done by their influence is the effect of them. For that is the notion of an effect, something that is brought to pass by the influence of something else.” Here motives are said to be the causes of volitions, and to bring them to pass by their influence. Is this to make motive merely the condition on which the mind acts? Is this to consider it as merely an antecedent to volition, which exerts no influence? On the contrary, does it not strongly remind one of that “restrained sense of the word cause,” in which it signifies, that which “has an influence to produce a thing, or bring it to pass?”

Once more. In relation to the acts of the will, he adopts the following language to show that they are necessarily dependent on the influence of motives: “For an event to have a cause and ground of its existence, and yet not be connected with its cause, is an inconsistency. For if the event be not connected with the cause, it is not dependent on its cause; its existence is as it were loose from its influence; and it may attend it, or it may not; its being a mere contingency, whether it follows or attends the influence of the cause, or not; and that is the same thing as not to be dependent on it. And to say the event is not dependent on its cause, is absurd; it is the same thing as to say, it is not its cause, nor the event the effect of it; for dependence on the influence of a cause is the very notion of an effect. If there be no such relation between one thing and another, consisting in the connexion and dependence of one thing on the influence of another, then it is certain there is no such relation between them as is signified by the relation of cause and effect,” p. 77-8. Now, here we are told, that it is the very notion of an effect, that it owes its existence to the influence of its cause; and that it is absurd to speak of an effect which is loose from the influence of its cause. It is this influence, “which causes volition to arise and come forth into existence.” Any other notion of cause and effect is absurd and unmeaning. And yet, President Edwards informs us, that he sometimes uses the term cause to signify any antecedent, though it may exert no influence; and that he so employs it, in order to prevent cavilling and objecting. Now, what is all this taken together, but to inform us, that he sometimes uses the word in question very absurdly, in order to keep us from finding fault with him? The truth is, that whatever apparent concession President Edwards may have made, he does habitually bring down the term cause to its narrow and restrained sense, to its strict and proper meaning, when he says, that motive is the cause of volition. He loses sight entirely of the idea, that it is only the occasion on which the mind acts.

I might multiply extracts to the same effect almost without end; but it is not necessary. It must be evident to every impartial reader of the Inquiry, that even if the author really meant by the above extracts, that motive is merely the antecedent to volition; this was only a momentary concession made to his opponents, with the vague and ill-defined hope, perhaps, that it would render his system less obnoxious to them. It had no abiding place in his mind. It was no sooner uttered than it was repelled and driven away by the whole tenor of his system. We soon hear him, as if no such thing had ever been dreamed of in his philosophy, asking the question, and that too, in relation to motives, “What can be meant by a cause, but something that is the ground and reason of a thing by its influence, an influence that is prevalent and effectual,” p. 97. Will it be pretended, that this does not come up to his definition of an efficient cause, as that which brings something to pass by “a positive influence?” Such a pretext would amount to nothing; for Edwards has said, that “motives excite volition;” and “to excite, is to be a cause in the most proper sense, not merely a negative occasion, but a ground of existence by positive influence,” p. 96.

An efficient cause is properly defined by the Edwardses themselves. “Does not the man talk absurdly and inconsistently,” says the younger Edwards, “who asserts, that a man is the efficient cause of his own volitions, yet puts forth no exertion in order to cause it? If any other way of efficiently causing an effect, be possible or conceivable, let it be pointed out,” p.49. President Edwards evidently entertained the same idea; for he repeatedly says, that if the mind be the cause of its own volitions, it must cause them by a preceding act of the mind. The objection which he urges against the self-determining power, is founded on this idea of a cause. It is what he means, when he says, that the term cause is “often used in so restrained a sense as to signify only that which has a positive efficiency or influence to produce a thing, or bring it to pass.”

That President Edwards regarded motive as the efficient or producing cause of volition, according to his own notion of it, is clear not only from numerous passages of the Inquiry; it is also wrought into the very substance and structure of his whole argument. It is involved in his very definition of the strongest motive. The strongest motive, says he, is the whole of that which “operates to induce a particular choice.” Now, to say that one thing operates to induce another, or bring it into existence, is, according to the definition of the younger Edwards himself, to say that it is the efficient cause of the thing so produced. If there be any meaning in words, or any truth in the definition of the Edwardses, then to say that one thing operates to produce another, is to say that it is its efficient cause. President Edwards, as we have seen, holds that motive is “the effectual power and efficacy” which produces volition.

Again. Edwards frequently says, that “if this great principle of common sense, that every effect must have a cause, be given up, then there will be no such thing as reasoning from effect to cause. We cannot even prove the existence of Deity. If any thing can begin to be without a cause of its existence, then we cannot know that there is a God.” Now, the sense in which this maxim is here used is perfectly obvious; for nothing can begin to be without an efficient cause, by which it is brought into existence. When we reason from those things which begin to be up to God, we clearly reason from effects to their efficient causes. Hence, when this maxim is applied by Edwards to volitions, he evidently refers to the efficient causes of them. If he does not, his maxim is misapplied; for it is established in one sense, and applied in another. If it proves any thing, it proves that volition must have an efficient cause; and when motive is taken to be that cause, it is taken to be the efficient cause of volition.

This is not all. Edwards undertakes to point out the difference between natural and moral necessity. In the case of moral necessity, says he, “the cause with which the effect is connected is of a particular kind: viz., that which is of a moral nature; either some previous habitual disposition, or some motive presented to the understanding. And the effect is also of a particular kind, being likewise of a moral nature; consisting in some inclination or volition of the soul, or voluntary action.” But the difference, says he, “does not lie so much in the nature of the connection, as in the two terms connected.” Now, let us suppose that any effect, the creation of the world, for example, is produced by the power of God. In this case, the connection between the effect produced, the creation of the world, and the act of the divine omnipotence by which it is created, is certainly the connection between an effect and its efficient cause. The two terms are here connected by a natural necessity. But we are most explicitly informed, that the connection between motives and volitions, differs from this in the nature of the two terms connected, rather than in the nature of the connection. How could language more clearly or precisely convey the meaning of an author? To say that President Edwards does not make motive the efficient cause of volition, is, indeed, not so much to interpret, as it is to new model, his philosophy of the will.

The connection between the strongest motive, he declares, and the corresponding volition, is “absolute,” just as absolute as any connection in the world. If the strongest motive exists, the volition is sure to follow; it necessarily follows; it is absurd to suppose, that it may attend its cause or not. To say that it may follow the influence of its cause, or may not, is to say that it is not dependent on that influence, that it is not the effect of it. In other words, it is to say that a volition is the effect of the strongest motive, and yet that it is not the effect of it; which is a plain contradiction. Such, as we have seen, is the clear and unequivocal teaching of the Inquiry.

In conclusion, if Edwards really held, that motive does not produce volition, but is merely the occasion on which it is put forth, where shall we find his doctrine? Where shall we look for it? We hear him charged with destroying man’s free-agency, by making motive the producing cause of volition; and we see him labouring to repel this charge. Truly, if he held the doctrine ascribed to him, we might have expected to find some allusion to it in his attempts to refute such a charge. If such had been his doctrine, with what ease might he have repelled the charge in question, and shown its utter futility, by simply alleging that, according to his system, motive is the occasion, and not the producing cause, of volition? Instead of the many pages through which he has so laboriously struggled, in order to bring our ideas of free-agency and virtue into harmony with his scheme; with what infinite ease might a single word have brought his scheme into harmony with the common sentiments of mankind in regard to free-agency and virtue! Indeed, if Edwards really believed that motive is merely the condition on which the mind acts, nothing can be more wonderful than his profound silence in regard to it on such an occasion; except the great pains which, on all occasions, he has taken to keep it entirely in the background. If the younger Edwards is not mistaken as to the true import of his father’s doctrine, then, instead of setting it forth in a clear light, so that it may be read of all men, the author of the Inquiry has, indeed, enveloped it in such a flood of darkness, that it is no wonder those who have been so fortunate as to find it out, should be so frequently called upon to complain that his opponents do not understand him. Indeed, if such be the doctrine of the Inquiry, I do not see how any man can possibly understand it, unless he has inherited some peculiar power, unknown to the rest of mankind, by which its occult meaning may be discerned, notwithstanding all the outward appearances by which it is contradicted and obscured.