If, as I have endeavoured to show, the appetites and passions exert no positive influence in the production of volition, if they do not sustain the relation of cause to the acts of the will; then is the doctrine of the liberty of indifference placed in a clear and strong light having admitted that the sensitive part of our nature always tends to produce volition, and in some cases irresistibly produces it, the advocates of free agency have not been able to maintain the doctrine of a perfect liberty in regard to all human actions. They have been compelled to retire from the broad and open field of the controverted territory, and to take their stand in a dark corner, in order to contend for that perfect liberty, without which there cannot be a perfect and unclouded accountability. Hence, it has been no uncommon thing, even for those who have been the most disposed to sympathize with them, to feel a dissatisfaction in reading what they have written on the subject of a liberty of indifference. This they have placed in a perfect freedom to choose between a few insignificant things, in regard to which we have no feeling; while, in regard to the great objects which relate to our eternal destiny, we have been supposed to enjoy no such freedom.
The true liberty of indifference does not consist, as I have endeavoured to show, in a power to resist the influence of the appetites and passions struggling to produce volition; because there is no such influence in existence. This notion is encumbered with insuperable difficulties; it supposes two powers struggling for the mastery—the desires on the one hand, and the will on the other; and that when the desires are so strong as to prevail, and bear us away in spite of ourselves, we cease to be free agents. It supposes that at no time we have a perfect liberty, unless we are perfectly destitute of feeling; and that at some of the most trying, and critical, and awful moments of our existence, we have no liberty at all; the whole man being passive to the power and dominion of the passions. What a wound is thus given to the cause of free-agency and accountability! What scope is thus allowed for the sophistry of the passions! Every man who can persuade himself that his appetites, his desires, or his passions, have been too strong for him, may blind his mind to a sense of his guilt, and lull his conscience into a fatal repose.
The necessitarian, like a skilful general, is not slow to attack this weak point in the philosophy of free-agency. If our emotions operate to produce volition, says he, then the strongest must prevail; to say otherwise, is to say that it is not the strongest. This is the ground uniformly occupied by President Day. And it is urged by President Edwards, that if a great degree of such influence destroys free agency, as it is supposed to do, then every smaller degree of it must impair free agency; and hence, according to the principles and scheme of its advocates, it cannot be perfect. Is not this inference well drawn? Indeed, it seems to me, that while the notion that our desires possess a real power and efficacy, which are exerted over the will, maintains its hold upon the mind, the great doctrine of liberty can never be seen in the brightness of its full-orbed glory; and that it must, at times, suffer a total eclipse.
The liberty which we really possess, then, does not consist in an indifference of the desires and affections, but in that of the will itself. We are perfectly free, says the libertarian, in regard to all those things about which our feelings are in a state of indifference; such as touching one of two spots, or choosing one of two objects that are perfectly alike. To this the necessitarian replies, what does it signify that a man has a perfect liberty in regard to the choice of “one of two peppercorns?” Are not such things perfectly insignificant, and unworthy “the grave attention of the philosopher,” while treating of the great questions of moral good and evil?
There is some truth in this reply, and some injustice. It truly signifies nothing, that we are at perfect liberty to choose between two pepper-corns, if we are not so to choose between good and evil, life and death. But in making this attack upon the position of his opponent, when viewed as designed to serve the cause of free-agency, the necessitarian overlooks its bearing upon his own scheme. He contends, that the mind cannot act unless it is made to act by some extraneous influence: this is a universal proposition, extending to all our mental acts; and hence, if it can be shown that, in a single instance, the mind can and does put forth a volition, without being made to do so, his doctrine is subverted from its foundations. If this can be shown, by a reference to the case of “two pepper-corns,” it may be made to serve an important purpose in philosophy, how much soever it may be despised by the philosopher.
If we keep the distinction between the will and the sensibility in mind, it will throw much light on what has been written in regard to the subject of indifference. If you offer a guinea and a penny to a man’s choice, asks President Day, which will he choose? Will the one exert as great an influence over him as the other? President Day may assert, if he pleases, that the guinea will exert the greater influence over his feelings; but this does not destroy the equilibrium of the will. The feelings and the will are different. By the one we feel, by the other we act; by the one we suffer, by the other we do. Why, then, will the man be certain to choose the guinea, all other things being equal? Not because its influence acts upon the will, either directly or indirectly through the passions, and compels him to choose it, but because he has a purpose to accomplish; and, as a rational being, he sees that the guinea will answer his purpose better than the penny. He is not made to act, therefore, by a blind impulse; he acts freely in the light of reason. The philosophy of the necessitarian overlooks the slight circumstance, that the will of man is not a ball to be set a-going by external impulse; but that man is a rational being, made in the image of his Maker, and can act as a designing cause. Hence, when we affirm that the will of man acts without being made to do so by the action of any thing upon the will itself, he imagines that we dethrone the Almighty, and “place chance upon the throne of the moral universe.” Day on the Will, p. 195. But I would remind him, once for all, that the act of a free designing cause, no less than that of a necessitated act, proceeding from an efficient cause, (if such a thing can be conceived,) is utterly inconsistent with the idea of accident. Choice in its very nature is opposed to chance.
The doctrine of the indifference of the will has been subjected to another mode of attack. This doctrine implies that we have a power to choose one thing or another; or, as it is sometimes called, a power of choice to the contrary. For, if the will is not controlled by any extraneous influence, it is evident that we may choose a thing, or let it alone—that we may put forth a volition, or refuse to put it forth. This power, which results from the idea of indifference as just explained, is regarded as in the highest degree absurd; and a torrent of impetuous questions is poured forth to sweep it away. “When Satan, as a roaring lion,” asks President Day, “goeth about, seeking whom he may devour, is he equally inclined to promote the salvation of mankind?” &c. &c. &c. Now, I freely admit, that when Satan is inclined to do evil, and is actually doing it, he is not inclined to the contrary. I freely admit that a thing is not different from itself; and the learned author is welcome to all such triumphant positions.
In the same easy way, President Edwards, as he imagines, demolishes the doctrine of indifference. He supposes that, according to this doctrine, the will does not choose when it does choose; and, having supposed this, he proceeds to demolish it, as if he were contending with a thousand adversaries; and yet, I will venture to affirm, that no man in his senses ever maintained such a position. The most contemptible advocate of free-agency that ever lived, has maintained nothing so absurd as that the mind ever chooses without choosing. This is the light in which the doctrine of indifference is frequently represented by Edwards, but it is a gross misrepresentation.
“The question is,” says Edwards, “whether ever the soul of man puts forth an act of will, while it yet remains in a state of liberty, viz: as implying a state of indifference; or whether the soul ever exerts an act of preference, while at the very time the will is in a perfect equilibrium, not inclining one way more than another,” p. 72. If this be the point in dispute, he may well add, that “the very putting of the question is sufficient to show the absurdity of the affirmative answer;” and he might have added, the utter futility of the negative reply. “How ridiculous,” he continues, “for any body to insist that the soul chooses one thing before another, when, at the very same instant, it is perfectly indifferent with respect to each! This is the same thing as to say, we shall prefer one thing to another, at the very same time that it has no preference. Choice and preference can no more be in a state of indifference than motion can be in a state of rest,” &c. p. 72. And he repeats it over and over again, that this is to put “the soul in a state of choice, and in a state of equilibrium at the same time;” “choosing one way, while it remains in a state of perfect indifference, and has no choice of one way more than the other;” p. 74. “To suppose the will to act at all in a state of indifference, is to assert that the mind chooses without choosing,” p. 64; and so in various other places.
Now, if the doctrine of the indifference of the will, as commonly understood, amounts to this, that the will does not choose when it chooses, then Edwards was certainly right in opposing it; but how could he have expected to correct such incorrigible blockheads as the authors of such a doctrine must have been, by the force of logic?