This second condition of moral government—namely, the possession of free alternative power on the part of the subject to comply, or refuse to comply, with the requirements of moral law—is thus established, first, by the direct testimony of consciousness, from which there can be no appeal, and, secondly, by necessary inference from collateral facts of consciousness, which can not be invalidated by counter-proofs.
Unhappily, the restlessness of speculative minds, the necessities of false theories in philosophy, or the unwarrantable assumptions of dogmatic theologians, have led to the disregard of the affirmations of universal consciousness. Men have asked, How can freedom be possible in a dependent creature? How can it be consistent with our belief in the principle of universal causation? How can it be harmonized with the fact that man always acts under the influence of motives? How can it be reconciled with the omnipotence and absolute prescience of God?
We shall now address ourselves to the consideration of the arguments against the doctrine of the freedom of the will which are suggested by these queries.
1. The first is the Metaphysical or Causational Argument. The rational intuition that "every event must have a cause" is a universal and necessary truth. It must therefore be rigorously applied to all mental as well as to all physical phenomena. Every volition must have a cause, and if caused it can not be free. This is the grand argument upon which the necessitarian mainly relies, and it is urged with eloquence and force by Edwards, Chalmers, and McCosh.
Now that "every event must have a cause" is an à priori truth, which is as readily accorded by the freedomist as it is vehemently insisted upon by the necessitarian. No philosophic writers have more ably and clearly enounced this law of causality than the freedomists Reid, Stewart, and Cousin. They rely upon it as one of the main pillars of the Theistic argument. And they apply it, in all its integrity, to mental as well as to physical phenomena. They hesitate not to say that "every volition must have a cause." That cause is the efficient creative power which resides in a free, spiritual personality. And that power is not, like a material or physical cause, shut up to one sole mode of effectuation: it is an alternative power, a pluri-efficient cause. Where, then, is the discrepancy between the universal principle of causality and the doctrine of alternative causation? Is the infinite First Cause confined to one solely possible mode of effectuation? If so, how will you account for the endlessly varied effects which appear in the physical universe? God is the Eternal One; whence the plurality and diversity of his creative acts if He be not an equipotent cause? And yet, of all the events which have transpired in the universe, whether natural or supernatural, we affirm "every event must have had a cause."[530] The endless diversity of effects which originate in the alternative causation of God is in perfect harmony with this universal law of causality.
But on a closer examination it will be found that when the necessitarian attempts to invalidate our consciousness of alternative power by the application of the causational argument he adroitly shifts his ground. He assumes another proposition, which is neither equivalent to the above axiom, nor in itself axiomatic and self-evident, nor justifiably assumed without proof. McCosh says "the doctrine of necessity is founded on the intellectual intuitions of man's mind, which lead us, in mental as in material phenomena, to anticipate the same effects to follow the same causes"[531]—that is, every cause is inalternative or unipotent; one effect, and only one can follow.
Now that a given phenomenon must have a cause is one assertion; that the same cause will again and forever produce the same effect is another. The first is an axiom, the second is an induction. That "every event must have a cause" is a rational intuition. That "like causes will produce always like effects" is a generalization from our limited experience, and on a further analysis will be found to apply only to our cognitions of the material universe. It is grounded simply on what we know empirically of the uniformity of nature. Now we have no à priori intuitive conviction of the uniformity of nature. As the result of maturer thought, McCosh admits this in his work on the "Intuitions of the Mind:" "It is vain to speak of the belief in the uniformity of nature as a self-evident, a necessary, or a universal truth" (page 276). It is perfectly conceivable that the world might have been so constituted that there should have been no regularity in the succession of events. The causes of all the events in nature might have been supernatural, and consisted in the immediate free volitions of the Deity, or subordinate angelic agencies.[532] They might have been all "miraculous," and yet the true law of causality would not have been violated, or in any way invalidated. And so when man, in the exercise of his free alternative power, produces a new succession of events in physical nature, or moves disorder and ἀνομία into the moral sphere, this is no way inconsistent with the axiom that "every event has a cause."
"In our very definition of freedom of will we assume in the volitional sphere the inapplicability of the maxim that 'like causes ever and always produce like effects.' We assume that either one of several effects is legitimate from the same cause. And while we admit that in non-volitional causation the law that 'every event must have a cause' means that every event must have its own peculiar cause, adequate for itself alone, in volitional causation an event may have a cause adequate either for it or for other event; and whichever event exists, the demands of the laws of causation are completely satisfied."[533]
Driven from this boasted stronghold, the necessitarian resorts to his favorite dialectic strategy. He demands the explanation of equipotent causation, how one cause can be adequate to several effects. He asks, What causes the will to put forth one particular volition rather than another?