A Review of Edwards's "Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will"

by Henry Philip Tappan

I use powers and instruments whose energy and capacity I have learned by experience, but in whose constitution I have had no hand. They are provided for me, and I merely use them. But God in working by these, works by what his own wisdom and power have created; and therefore a fortiori must every effect produced by these, according to his design, and by his volition as at least the first power of the series, be attributed to him,—be called his doing. He causeth the sun to rise and set. “He causeth the grass to grow for the cattle, and herb for the service of man.” “He watereth the hills from his chambers.” This is not merely poetry. It is truth.

Now the system we are considering goes one step further; it makes human volitions as much the objects of the eternal design, and as really the effects of the divine volition, as the rising of the stars, the flight of the lightning, the tumult of the waters, or the light which spreadeth itself like a garment over creation. Every volition of created mind is God’s act, as really as any effect in nature. We have seen how every volition is connected with its motive; how the motive lies in a pre-constitution; how the series of antecedents and sequents necessarily runs back and connects itself with the infinite wisdom. God’s volition is his own act; the effect immediately produced by that volition is his own deed. Let that effect be the creation of man: the man in all his powers and susceptibilities is God’s work; the objects around him are God’s work; the correlation of the objects with the sensitivity of man is God’s work; the volition which necessarily takes place as the result of this correlation is God’s work. The volition of the man is as strictly attributable to God, as, according to our common apprehensions, the blow which I give with an axe is attributable to me. What is true of the first man, must be equally true of the man removed by a thousand generations, for the intermediary links are all ordained by God under an inevitable necessity. God is really, therefore, the sole doer—the only efficient, the only cause. All beings and things, all motion and all volition, are absolutely resolved into divine volition. God is the author of all beings, things, motions, and volitions, and as much the author of any one of these as of any other, and the author of all in the same way and in the same sense. Set aside self-determining will, and there is no stopping-place between a human volition and the divine volition. The human volition is but the divine, manifested through a lengthened it may be, but a connected and necessary chain of antecedents and sequents. I see no way of escaping from this, as a necessary and legitimate consequence of the necessary determination of will. And what is this consequence but pantheism? God is the universal and all-pervading intelligence—the universal and only power. Every movement of nature is necessary; every movement of mind is necessary; because necessarily caused and determined by the divine volition. There is no life but his, no thought but his, no efficiency but his. He is the soul of the world.

Spinosa never represented himself as an atheist, and according to the following representation appears rather as a pantheist. “He held that God is the cause of all things; but that he acts, not from choice, but from necessity; and, of consequence, that he is the involuntary author of all the good and evil, virtue and vice, which are exhibited in human life.” (Dugald Stewart, vol. 6. p. 276, note.)

Cousin remarks, too, that Spinosa deserves rather the reproach of pantheism than of atheism. His pantheism was fairly deduced from the doctrine of necessary determination, which he advocated.

XVIII. Spinosa, however, is generally considered an atheist. “It will not be disputed,” says Stewart, “by those who comprehend the drift of his reasonings, that in point of practical tendency atheism and Spinosism are one and the same.”

The following is Cousin’s view of his system. It apparently differs from the preceding in some respects, but really tends to the same conclusions.

“Instead of accusing Spinosa of atheism, he ought to be reproached for an error in the other direction. Spinosa starts from the perfect and infinite being of Descartes’s system, and easily demonstrates that such a being is alone a being in itself; but that a being, finite, imperfect, and relative, only participates of being, without possessing it, in itself: that a being in itself is one necessarily: that there is but one substance; and that all that remains has only a phenomenal existence: that to call phenomena, finite substances, is affirming and denying, at the same time; whereas, there being, but one substance which possesses being in itself, and the finite being that which participates of existence without possessing it in itself, a substance finite implies two contradictory notions. Thus, in the philosophy of Spinosa, man and nature are pure phenomena; simple attributes of that one and absolute substance, but attributes which are co-eternal with their substance: for as phenomena cannot exist without a subject, the imperfect without the perfect, the finite without the infinite, and man and nature suppose God; so likewise, the substance cannot exist without phenomena, the perfect without the imperfect, the infinite without the finite, and God on his part supposes man and nature. The error of his system lies in the predominance of the relation of phenomenon to being, of attribute to substance, over the relation of effect to cause. When man has been represented, not as a cause, voluntary and free, but as necessary and uncontrollable desire, and as an imperfect and finite thought; God, or the supreme pattern of humanity, can be only a substance, and not a cause—a being, perfect, infinite, necessary—the immutable substance of the universe, and not its producing and creating cause. In Cartesianism, the notion of substance figures more conspicuously than that of cause; and this notion of substance, altogether predominating, constitutes Spinosism.” (Hist. de la Phil tom. 1. p. 466.)

The predominance of the notion of substance and attribute, over that of cause and effect, which Cousin here pronounces the vice of Spinosa’s system, is indeed the vice of every system which contains the dogma of the necessary determination of will. The first consequence is pantheism; the second, atheism. I will endeavour to explain. When self-determination is denied to will, and it is resolved into mere desire, necessitated in all its acts from its pre-constituted correlation with objects, then will really ceases to be a cause. It becomes an instrument of antecedent power, but is no power in itself, creative or productive. The reasoning employed in reference to the human will, applies in all its force to the divine will, as has been already abundantly shown. The divine will therefore ceases to be a cause, and becomes a mere instrument of antecedent power. This antecedent power is the infinite and necessary wisdom; but infinite and necessary wisdom is eternal and unchangeable; what it is now, it always was; what tendencies or energies it has now, it always had; and therefore, whatever volitions it now necessarily produces, it always necessarily produced. If we conceive a volition to have been, in one direction, the immediate and necessary antecedent of creation; and, in another, the immediate and necessary sequent of infinite, and eternal, and necessary wisdom; then this volition must have always existed, and consequently, creation, as the necessary effect of this volition, must have always existed. The eternal and infinite wisdom thus becomes the substance, because this is existence in itself, no antecedent being conceivable; and creation, consisting of man and nature, imperfect and finite, participating only of existence, and not being existence in themselves, are not substances, but phenomena. But what is the relation of the phenomena to the substance? Not that of effect to cause;—this relation slides entirely out of view, the moment will ceases to be a cause. It is the relation simply of phenomena to being, considered as the necessary and inseparable manifestations of being; the relation of attributes to substance, considered as the necessary and inseparable properties of substance. We cannot conceive of substance without attributes or phenomena, nor of attributes or phenomena without substance; they are, therefore, co-eternal in this relation. Who then is God? Substance and its attributes; being and its phenomena. In other words, the universe, as made up of substance and attributes, is God. This is Spinosism; this is pantheism; and it is the first and legitimate consequence of a necessitated will.

The second consequence is atheism. In the denial of will as a cause per se,—in resolving all its volitions into the necessary phenomena of the eternal substance,—we destroy personality: we have nothing remaining but the universe. Now we may call the universe God; but with equal propriety we call God the universe. This destruction of personality,—this merging of God into necessary substance and attributes,—is all that we mean by Atheism. The conception is really the same, whether we name it fate, pantheism, or atheism.

The following remark of Dugald Stewart, shows that he arrived at the same result: “Whatever may have been the doctrines of some of the ancient atheists about man’s free agency, it will not be denied that, in the history of modern philosophy, the schemes of atheism and of necessity have been hitherto always connected together. Not that I would by any means be understood to say, that every necessitarian must ipso facto be an atheist, or even that any presumption is afforded, by a man’s attachment to the former sect, of his having the slightest bias in favour of the latter; but only that every modern atheist I have heard of has been a necessitarian. I cannot help adding, that the most consistent necessitarian who have yet appeared, have been those who followed out their principles till they ended in Spinosism,—a doctrine which differs from atheism more in words than in reality.” (Vol. 6, p. 470.)