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

by Albert Taylor Bledsoe

The ideas of a condition and of a cause, though so different in themselves, are always blended together by necessitarians; and hence the confusion into which they run. Edwards has united them, as we have seen, under the term cause; and then employed this term to signify the one or the other at his pleasure. The word “dependence,” is the favourite of President Day; and he uses it with fully as much vagueness and vacillation of meaning, as Edwards does the term cause. He has undertaken to show us, that the mind may be caused to act; and he has shown us, that a particular class of thoughts cannot come to existence, except upon a particular condition! This is not to reason; but to slip and to slide from one meaning of an ambiguous word to another.

When it is said that the mind cannot be caused to act, President Day must have known in what sense the term cause is used in this proposition. He must have known, that no one meant to assert, that there are no conditions or antecedents, on which the action of the mind depends. There is not an advocate of free-agency in the universe, who will contend, that the mind can choose a thing, unless there is a thing to be chosen; or, to take his own illustration, can read a book, unless there is a book to be read. The question is not, whether there are conditions, without the existence of which the mind cannot act; this no one denies; but whether there is, or can be, a real and efficient cause of the mind’s action. The point in dispute, relates not to mere fact of dependence, but to the nature of that dependence. The question is, can the mind be efficiently caused to act? This being the question, what does it signify to tell us, that it cannot read a book, unless it has a book to read? Or what does it signify to tell us, that a body may be caused to move? These are mere irrelevancies; they fall short of the point in dispute; and they only seem to reach it by means of a very “convenient ambiguity” of words.

But still it may be said, that although a body is passive in motion, it may act upon other bodies, and thereby communicate motion to them. This is the ground taken by President Day. “The very same thing,” says he, “may be both cause and effect. The mountain wave, which is the effect of the wind, may be the cause which buries the ship in the ocean,” p. 160. I am aware, that one body is frequently said to act upon another; but this word action, as President Day has well said, is a term “of very convenient ambiguity, with which it is easy to construct a plausible but fallacious argument,” p. 159. The only cause in every case of motion, is that force, whatever it may be, which acts upon the body moved, and puts it in motion. All the rest is pure passion or passiveness. The motion of the body is not action; it is the most pure passion of which the mind can form a conception. If a body in action is said to act upon another, this is but a metaphor; there is no real action in the case. Indeed, if a body be put in motion, and meets with no resistance, it will move on in a right line forever—and why? just because of its inertia, of its inherent destitution of a power to act. As a mathematician, President Day certainly knew all this; but he seems to have forgotten it all, in his eagerness to support the cause of moral necessity.

He saw that motion is frequently called action; he saw that one body is sometimes said to act upon another; and this was sufficient for his purpose. He did not reflect upon the natures of motion and of volition, as they are in themselves; he views them through the medium of an ambiguous phraseology. Nor did he reflect, that if motion is communicated from one body to another, this is not because one body really acts upon another, but because it is impossible for two bodies to occupy the same place at one and the same time. He did not reflect, that if motion is communicated from one body to another, this does not arise from the activity, but from the impenetrability of matter. In short, he did not reflect, that there is no state or phenomena of matter, whatever may be its name, that at all resembles the state of mind which we call action or volition; or else he would have seen, that all his illustrations drawn from material objects can throw no light on the point in controversy.

We find the same confusion of things in the works of the Edwardses. We do not at all confound action and passion, President Edwards contends, by supposing that acts of the soul are effects, wherein the soul is the object of something acting upon and influencing it, p. 203. And again, “It is no more a contradiction to suppose that action may be the effect of some other cause beside the agent, or being that acts, than to suppose that life may be the effect of some other cause beside the being that lives,” p. 203. The younger Edwards also asserts, that “to say that an agent that is acted upon cannot act, is as groundless, as to say, that a body acted upon cannot move,” p. 131. We might adduce many similar passages; but these are sufficient. What do they prove? If they are any thing to the purpose, they are only so by confounding motion with volition, passion with action.

No one would pretend to deny, that the mind may be, and is, caused to exist, or that the agent may be caused to live. In regard to our being and living we are perfectly passive; and hence we admit that we may be caused to exist and to live. Living and being are not acting. We are not passive in regard to volition; this is an act of the mind itself. The above assertions only overlook the slight circumstance that being and doing are two different things; that motion is not volition, that passion is not action. This strange confusion of things is very common in the writings of the Edwardses, as well as in those of all other necessitarians.

Edwards held volition to be a produced effect. This identifies a passive impression made upon the mind, with an act of the mind itself. In order to escape this difficulty, Edwards was bound to show that action and passion are not opposite in their natures. “Action, when properly set in opposition to passion or passiveness,” says he, “is no real existence; it is not the same with an action, but is a mere relation.” And again, “Action and passion are not two contrary natures;” when placed in opposition they are only contrary relations. The same ground is taken by President Day. “Are not cause and effect,” says he, “opposite in their natures? They are opposite relations, but not always opposite things.” They contend, that an object may be passive in relation to one thing, and active in relation to another; that a volition may be passive in relation to its producing cause, and yet active in relation to its produced effect.

Now, this is not true. An act is opposite in its nature to a passive impression made upon the mind. This every man may clearly see by suitable reflection, if he will not blind himself to the truth, as the necessitarian always does, by false analogies drawn from the world of matter, and the phenomena of motion. We have seen how President Day has attempted to show, that an object may be passive in relation to one thing, and yet active in relation to another; and that in all these attempts he has confounded the motion of body with the action or choice of mind. We have seen that all the illustrations adduced to throw light on this subject are fallacious. Let this subject be studied in the light of consciousness, not through the darkening and confounding medium of false analogies, and we may safely anticipate a verdict in our favour. For who that will closely and steadily reflect upon an action of the mind, does not perceive that it is different, in nature and in kind, from a passive impression made upon the mind from without? I do not say action, which President Edwards seems to think does not signify any thing positive, such as an action, when it is set in opposition to passion; but I say that an action itself is opposite in its nature to passion, to a produced effect.

President Edwards cannot escape the absurdity of his doctrine by alleging, that when action and passion are set in opposition, they do not signify opposite natures, but only opposite relations. For he has confounded an act of the mind with a passive impression made thereon; and these things are opposite in their natures, whether he is pleased to say that action and passion are opposite natures or not.

This position may be easily established. “I humbly conceive,” says he, “that the affections of the soul are not properly distinguished from the will, as though they were two faculties in the soul.” . . . . “The affections are no other than the more vigorous and sensible exercises of the inclination and will of the soul.” These passages are referred to by President Day to prove, that Edwards regarded our “emotions or affections as acts of the will,” p. 39. Having confounded the will and the sensibility, it became exceedingly easy for Edwards to show that a volition may be produced or caused: all that he had to do was to show, that an emotion may be produced, which is the same thing with an act of the will or a volition. It is upon this confusion of things, that his whole system rests; for if the sensibility is different from the will, as most persons, at the present day, will admit it is; then to excite an emotion, or to make a passive impression upon the sensibility, is very different from producing a volition.