(1.) The so-called strength of a motive is the degree of probability that the will will act in accordance with or on account of it. "And it is most important to remark that the result is not always, nor in most cases, necessarily as the highest probability. The will may choose for the higher or for the lower. And as the will may choose for a lower rather than a higher probability, so the will may choose on account of what is called antecedently a weaker over a stronger motive. And hereby is once for all established the difference between mechanical force and motive influence—that whereas in the former, by necessity, the greater effect results from the greater force, in the latter the less is possible from the greater, the greater from the less."[542] That result is not as the highest probability Dr. Whedon has shown most conclusively from the doctrine of Contingencies or Probabilities. And on this he grounds his doctrine of contingent motive probability. "This contingent character of motive influence is correspondent with the alternative character of that which is its sole possible object—will. An alternative will and a contingent motive influence are correlatives. They mutually explain and sustain each other. To admit either is to admit both. And so a unipotent will and a necessary motive influence are correlatives. He who is compelled to admit one is compelled to admit the other. It will be a mere controversy about a word to say that an influence which does not produce effect is no influence. That may legitimately be called an influence, it is important to add, which is conceived as possessing an intrinsic probability for result, though the higher probability be a contingency for which there exists power of failure. If so, then the doctrine of contingent motive influence is established, and the doctrine of volitional necessity is at an end. The relation between physical force and effect is necessity. The relation between motive and volition is contingency."[543]
(2.) The so-called strength of a motive is the comparative prevalence which the will assigns to it by its own action. It is impossible to erect any standard by which the intrinsic "strength" of motives can be determined previous to volition. "A cold intellection is not intrinsically commensurable with a deep emotion, nor a sentiment of taste with a feeling of obligation, nor a physical appetite with a sense of honor." Now by what standard can the comparative force of these influences be determined? There is no more commensurability between them than between "the brightness of day and the force of magnetic attractions." Or if we could possibly determine, by some rational à priori method, that a feeling of obligation is intrinsically stronger than a physical appetite, or that the love of life is stronger per se than a sense of duty, we can not affirm that the one or the other shall therefore uniformly and necessarily prevail. These influences derive all their prevalency, and consequently their comparative strength of motive, from the will alone. The will places its interest in the one or the other. It decides the mental position. "It settles the question of preferences between alternatives, dismisses the counter-motive from view, and closes the debate."[544]
The "strength" of a motive, in its relation to the will, can only be known by the test of prevalency. This is unwittingly conceded by the necessitarian. He says "the strongest motive prevails because that is the strongest which the will chooses." This really concedes the position assumed by Dr. Whedon, that "the strength of a motive is the comparative prevalence which the will, in its own action, assigns to it, or the nearness to which the will comes to acting on account of it." Men do not always choose that which is most desirable, nor that which is most eligible, nor that which appears most obligatory. But from whatever motive men may choose to act, however base and unworthy, the necessitarian affirms it was intrinsically the strongest motive because it was chosen; which simply amounts to this—the strongest motive is always chosen because the motive chosen is always the strongest motive.
The attempts of the necessitarian to fix upon some standard by which to estimate the antecedent strength of motives have all signally failed. The most plausible is that of Edwards. He asserts that the volition is always as the greatest apparent good. But by what standard is that good estimated, by which faculty is it recognized and pronounced good? by the reason, the conscience, the judgment, or the appetites? Can that be pronounced good which is chosen in obedience to passion and lust? Does the man who inflicts a premeditated injury upon his neighbor choose the greatest apparent good? Does the murderer believe that in taking away the life of his fellow-man "the volition is as the greatest apparent good?" Certainly not. "Never," says Bushnell, "was there a case of wrong, a sinful choice, in which the agent believed he was choosing for the strongest, weightiest, or most valuable motives." The great mass of sinful men are conscious of choosing sinful indulgence against their "highest good."
(3.) Motives are the conditions, but not the causes of volition. "Of volition the cause, the sole cause, is will. Motives are collateral conditions ... for the volition to be; with which there is adequate power for the volition not to be.... The motive is only the occasion, and all its acts of excitement amount to no more than this, that they stand as probable conditions opening the way toward which the will thereby acquires opportunity to act with full adequate power of not acting."[545] The relation between motive and volition is not a necessary but a contingent relation. The will is the controlling conscious self in the exercise of direct causative power in producing volition.
Some modern writers of the necessitarian school, McCosh for example, admit the existence of "self-activity" in the will. But what can be the meaning of "self-activity" if the will have not the power of either resisting or yielding to motives presented, and in the same unchanged circumstances of choosing a different alternative? To be moved absolutely by motives is not self-movement. A power to move in only one given direction is a mere nature-force; it can not be self-activity. The distinguished writer above named also admits that "causation in the will is entirely different from causation in other actions."[546] If he mean that motives act upon the will in a manner "entirely different" from that by which physical causes secure action or change in the material world, what right has he to call it causation at all? And if he mean that volitional causation is "alternative," and not, like physical causation, "unipotent," then the controversy is at an end.
(4.) We have no such experience of "uniformities of volition" as shall enable us to generalize a universal law of volitional causation. The facts of uniformity which present themselves in the continuous life of some men who were absorbed in one great life-purpose, as also in the conduct of aggregate masses of men, are not denied. We affirm that the correct definition of a free will supposes that it may choose in a generally uniform manner. Much of the uniformity in the life of an individual may be accounted for by corporeal nature—disposition, standard purpose, and habit. "Upon a basis of corporeal, psychological, and mental nature are overlaid a primary stratum of dispositions blending the natural and the volitional, and a secondary formation of generic purposes wholly volitional, and formed by repetition into a tertiary of habits; and thus we have, in his mingled constitution of necessitation and freedom, an agent prepared for daily free responsible action."[547]
Now it may be readily granted that character forms a basis of reliable probability as to how in given circumstances a man will act. We may be able to judge, with some degree of accuracy, how a man will work in his freedom; but we can never calculate with absolute certainty, because we have numberless examples of men acting strangely "out of character," and disappointing our most confident expectations.
"There is often the action, great or small, which reverses the record of a life or a protracted course of action. He who well watches his neighbor, however blind he may be to his own practical self-contradictions, is sure to find, even in the life most uniform in its great outline, plenty of minor inconsistencies. Or as Müller, in his 'Doctrine of Sin,' well says, that both our observation and our subject's temptation may occur just at the moment of one of his great volitional turning-points. From the apostasy of the first angels and the fall of man, through the whole course of human history, we have innumerable instances of revolutionary volitions, not only out of the previous character, but shaping a new character. The one disastrous sin of Moses, the one great complicated crime of David, the apostasy of Solomon, the wisest of men, are all proofs how, not only in contrasted traits, but in revolutionary acts, a man may be
'The wisest, brightest, meanest of mankind.'"[548]