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

by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

To show that he does this, I shall begin with President Day. No other necessitarian has made so formal and elaborate an attempt to prove, that the mind may be caused to act. He undertakes to answer the objection which has been urged against the scheme of moral necessity, that it confounds action and passion. It is alleged, that a volition cannot be produced or caused by the action or influence of any thing. To this President Day replies, “these are terms of very convenient ambiguity, with which it is easy to construct a plausible but fallacious argument. The word passive is sometimes used to signify that which is inactive. With this meaning, it must, of course, be the opposite of every thing which is active. To say that that which is in this sense passive, is at the same time active, is to assert that that which is active is not active. But this is not the only signification of the term passive in common use. It is very frequently used to express the relation of an effect to its cause,” p. 159.

Now, here is the distinction, but is it not without a difference? If an effect is produced, is it not passive in relation to its cause? This is not denied. Is it active then in relation to any thing? President Day says it is. But is this so? Is not an effect, which is wholly produced in one thing by the action or influence of another, wholly passive? Is not the thing which, according to the supposition, is wholly passive to the influence acting upon it, wholly passive? In other words; is it made to act? Does it not merely suffer? If it is endued with an active nature, and really puts forth an act, is not this act clearly different from the passive impression made upon it?

One would certainly suppose so, but for the logic of the necessitarian. Let us examine this logic. “The term passive,” says President Day, “is sometimes employed to express the relation of an effect to its cause. In this sense, it is so far from being inconsistent with activity, that activity may be the very effect which is produced. A thing may be caused to be active. A cannon shot is said to be passive, with respect to the charge of powder which impels it. But is there no activity given to the ball? Is not the whirlwind active, when it tears up the forest?” &c. &c., p. 160.

Now, all these illustrations are brought to show that the mind may be caused to act;—that it may be passive in relation to the cause of its volition, and active in relation to the effect of its volition. A more striking instance could not be adduced to prove the correctness of the assertion already made, that the necessitarian confounds the motion of body with the action of mind. “A thing may be caused to act,” says President Day. But how does he show this? By showing that a thing may be caused to move! “Is no activity given to the ball? Is not the whirlwind active, when it tears up the forest?” And so he goes on, leaving the light of reason and of consciousness; now rushing into the darkness of the whirlwind; now riding “on the mountain wave;” and now plunging into the depths of “volcanic lava;”—all the time in quest of light respecting the phenomena of mind! We could have wished him to stop awhile, in the impetuous current of rhetoric, and inform us, whether he really considers, “the motion of a ball” as the same thing with the volition of the mind. If he does, then he may suppose that his illustrations are to the purpose, how great soever may be his mistake; but if he supposes there is a real difference between them, how can he ever pretend to show that mind may be caused to act, by showing that body may be caused to move?

I freely admit, that body may be caused to move. Body is perfectly passive in motion; and hence, its motion may be caused. But the mind is not passive in volition; and hence the difference in the two cases. It is an error, as I have already said, pervading the views of the necessitarian, that he confounds the action of mind with the motion of body. Even Mr. Locke, who, in some places, has recognized the essential difference between them, has frequently confounded them in his reasonings and illustrations. Hence, it becomes necessary to bear this distinction always in mind, in the examination of their writings. It should be rendered perfectly clear to our minds by meditation; and never permitted to grow dim through forgetfulness. This is indispensably necessary to shut out the illusions of the senses, in order that we may have a clear and unclouded view of the phenomena of nature.

Is the motion of body, then, one and the same thing with the action of mind? They are frequently called by the same name. The motion of mind, and the action of body, are very common modes of expression. Body is said to act, when it only moves; and mind is said to move, when it really acts. These metaphors and supposed analogies are intimately and inseparably interwoven into the very frame-work of our language; and hence the necessity of guarding against them in our conceptions. They are almost as subtle as the great adversary of truth; and therefore we should be constantly on the watch, lest we should be deceived or misled by them.

Let us look, then, at these things just as they are in themselves. When a body moves, it simply passes from one place to another; and when the mind acts or chooses, it simply prefers one thing to another. Here, there is no real identity or sameness of nature. The body suffers a change; the mind itself acts. The one is pure passim or passiveness; the other is pure action—the very opposite of passivity. The one is a suffering, and the other is a doing. There are no two things in the whole range of nature, which are more perfectly and essentially distinct; and he who confounds them in his reasonings, as philosophers have so often done, can never arrive at a clear perception of the truth.

President Day, if he intended any thing to the purpose, undertook to show that an act may be produced in mind, in that which is active, by the action or influence of something else; and what has he shown? Why, that body may be caused to move! Let a case be produced in which the mind, the active soul of man, is made to act: let a case be produced in which a volition is caused to exist in the soul of man, by the action or influence of any thing whatever, and it will be something to the purpose: but what does it signify to tell us, that a body, that that which is wholly and essentially passive in its nature, may be made to move, or suffer a change of place? A more palpable sophism was never perpetrated; and that such a mind should have recourse to such an argument, only betrays the miserable weakness, and the forlorn hopelessness, of the cause in which it is enlisted.

Indeed, the learned president seems, after all, to be at least half conscious that the analogies of matter can throw no light on the phenomena of mind; and that what he has so eloquently said, amounts to just nothing at all. For he says, “It may be objected, that these are all examples of inanimate objects; and that they have no proper application to mental activity,” p. 161. Yes, truly, this is the very objection which we should urge against all the fine illustrations of President Day; and it is a full and complete answer to them. It is the great principle of the inductive study of mind, that its phenomena can be understood only in so far as we have observed them in the pure light of consciousness, and no farther; they should never be viewed through the darkening and confounding analogies of matter.

No one, that I know of, has ever denied that a body may be caused to move; the only point on which we desire to be enlightened is, whether the mind may be caused to act. To this point President Day next directly comes. Leaving “inanimate objects,” he says, “take the case of deep and earnest thinking. Is there no activity in this? And is it without a cause? When reading the orations of Demosthenes, or the demonstrations of Newton, are our minds wholly inactive; or if they think intensely, have our thoughts no dependence on the book before us?” p. 161. Truly, there is activity in this, in our “deep and earnest thinking”; but what is the cause of this activity? Does the book before us cause us to think? This is the point at which the argument of the author is driving, and to which it should come, if it would be to the purpose, and yet he does not seem to like to speak it out right manfully; and hence, instead of saying that the book causes us to think, he chooses to say that our thoughts have a dependence on the book. It is true, that no man can read a book, unless he has it to read; and, consequently, his thoughts in reading the book are absolutely dependent on the possession of it. But still, the possession of a book is the condition, and not the cause, of his reading it. The cause of a thing, and the indispensable condition of it, are perfectly distinct from each other; and the argument of Day, in confounding them, has presented us with another sophism.