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

If we take the words in any sense, yet as they are correlative terms, the maxim that every effect must have a cause is self-evident; and hence, no conclusion can be drawn from it, unless the conclusion intended to be drawn is assumed in the middle term of the syllogism. It either begs the question, or it decides nothing to the purpose. It is true, that every change in nature must have a cause; that is to say, it is in some sense of the word an effect, and consequently must have a corresponding cause; but in what sense does every act of the mind come under the idea and definition of an effect? This is the question. Is it brought to pass by the prior action of motive? Is it necessitated? Upon this precise question, the maxim that every change must have a cause can throw no light; it only seems to refer to this point, by means of the very convenient ambiguity of the terms in which it is expressed. The necessitarian never fails to avail himself of this ambiguity. He seems both to himself and to the spectator to be carrying on a “great demonstration;” and this is one reason, perhaps, why the mind is diverted from the sophistical tricks, the metaphysical jugglery, by which both are deceived. Let us look a little more narrowly at this pretended demonstration.

The maxim in question is applied to volition; every change in nature, even the voluntary acts of the mind, must have a cause. Now according to Edwards’ explanation of the term, this is a proposition which, I will venture to say, no man in his right mind ever ventured to deny. It is true, that President Edwards tells us of those, who “imagine that a volition has no cause, or that it produces itself;” and he has very well compared this to the absurdity of supposing, “that I gave myself my own being, or that I came into being without a cause,” p. 277. But who ever held such a doctrine? Did any man, in his right mind, ever contend that “a volition could produce itself,” can arise out of nothing, and bring itself into existence? If so, they were certainly beyond the reach of logic; they stood in need of the physician. I have never been so unfortunate as to meet with any advocate of free-agency, either in actual life or in history, who supposed that a volition arose out of nothing, without any cause of its existence, or that it produced itself. They have all maintained, with one consent, that the mind is the cause of volition. Is the mind nothing? If a man should say, as so many have said, that the mind produces its own volitions, is that equivalent to saying, that nothing produces it; that it comes “into being accidentally, without any cause of its being?” Such is the broad caricature of their doctrine, which is repeatedly given by President Edwards.

It is freely admitted, and the advocates of free-agency have always admitted, that volition has a cause, as that word is frequently used by Edwards. He tells us, that by cause he sometimes means any antecedent, whether it exerts any positive influence or no. Now, in this sense, it is conceded by the advocates of free-agency, that motive itself is the cause of volition. This is the question: Is motive the efficient, or producing cause of volition? This is the question, I say; but Edwards frequently loses sight of it in a mist of ambiguities; and he lays around him in the dark, with such prodigious strength, that if his adversaries were not altogether imaginary beings, and therefore impassible to his ponderous blows, I have no doubt he would have slain more of them than ever Samson did of the Philistines.

The manner in which the necessitarian speaks of cause in his maxims, and reasonings, and pretended demonstrations, is of very great service to him. It includes, as we are told, every condition or cause of volition; (what a heterogeneous mass!) every thing without which volition could not come to pass. Yea, it is used in this sense, when it is said that motive is the cause of volition. What shall we do, then, with this broad, this most ambiguous proposition? Shall we deny it? If so, then we deny that volition has any cause of its existence, and fall into the great absurdity of supposing “volition to produce itself.” Shall we assent to it, then? If so, we really admit that motive is the efficient cause of volition; and thus, by denying, we are made to reject our own doctrine, while, by affirming, we are made to receive that of our opponents. This way of proposing the doctrine of necessity very strongly reminds one of a certain trick in legislation, by which such things are forced into a bill, that in voting upon it, you must either reject what you most earnestly desire, or else sanction and support what you most earnestly detest. We should, therefore, neither affirm nor deny the whole proposition as it is set forth by the necessitarian; we should touch it with the dissecting knife, and cure it of its manifold infirmities.

The ambiguity of the term cause is, indeed, one of the most powerful weapons, both of attack and defence, in the whole armory of the necessitarian. Do you affirm the mind to be the cause of volition? Then, forthwith, as if the word could have only one meaning, it is alleged, that if the mind is the cause of volition, it can cause it only by a preceding volition; and so on ad infinitum. Hence, your doctrine must needs be absurd; because the word is understood, yea, and will be understood, in its most restrained and narrow sense. But do you deny motive to be the cause of volition? Then, how absurd are you again; you are no longer understood to use the word in the same sense; you now mean, not only that motive is not the producing cause of volition, but that there is absolutely nothing upon which it depends for its existence, and that “it produces itself.” Does Edwards affirm that motive is the cause of volition; that motive causes volition to arise and come forth into existence; that it is not merely “the negative occasion” thereof, but the cause in the most proper sense of the word; that it is “the effectual power which produces volition?” What then? Dare you assert, in the face of such teaching, that motive is not the cause of volition? If so, then you are a most obstinate and perverse caviller; and you are silenced by the information that he sometimes uses the word cause to signify any antecedent, whether it has any positive influence or no. Yea, he gives this information, he declares, to “cut off occasion from any that might seek occasion to cavil and object against his doctrine,” p. 51. These, and many other things of the same kind, are to be found in the writings of Day, and Edwards, and Collins, and Hobbes; and whosoever may be pleased to follow them, through all the doublings and windings of their logic, may do so at his leisure. It is sufficient for my present purpose to remark, that Edwards has included a number of different ideas in his definition of cause; and that he turns from the one to the other of these ideas, just as it suits the exigencies of his argument. It is in this way, as we have seen, that the famous maxim, that every change in nature must have a cause, has been made to serve his purpose.

He did not look at a volition and an effect, so as to mark their differences narrowly, and to proceed in his reasonings according to them; he set out with the great and universal truth, that every change in the universe must have a cause; from which lofty position the differences of things in this nether world were invisible. Having secured this position to his entire satisfaction, being firmly persuaded in his own mind, that “nonentity could not bring forth,” he supposed he had gained a strong foothold; and from thence he proceeded to reason downward to what actually takes place in this lower world!

We are but “the humble servants and interpreters of nature,” and we “can understand her operations only in so far as we have observed them.” The necessitarian takes higher ground than this. He disdains the humble and patient task of observation. He plants his foot upon an eternal and immutable axiom; and, turning away from the study of what is, he magisterially pronounces what must be.

It is easy to see how he constructs his system. Every change in nature must have a cause, says he; this is very true; there is no truth in the world more certain, according to the sense in which he frequently understands it. If he means to assert, that nothing, whether it be an entity, or an attribute, or a mode, can bring itself into existence, no one disputes his doctrine. It is most true, that there can be no choice without a mind that chooses, or an object in view of which it chooses; a mind, an object, and a desire, (if you please,) are the indispensable prerequisites, the invariable antecedents, to volition; but there is an immense chasm between this position and the doctrine, that the mind cannot put forth a volition, unless it is made to do so by the action of something else upon it. This immense chasm, the necessitarian can cross only by stepping over from one branch of his ambiguous proposition to another; he either does this, or he does not reach the point in controversy at all.

SECTION VII.

OF THE APPLICATION OF THE MAXIM THAT EVERY EFFECT MUST HAVE A CAUSE

In the last section I considered the application of the maxim, “that every effect must have a cause,” to the question of necessity. This maxim figures so largely in every scheme of necessity, and it is relied upon with so much confidence, that I shall present some further views respecting its true nature and application. The necessitarian may see the truth of this maxim clearly, but he applies it vaguely.

He is always saying, “that if we give up this great principle of common sense, then there is no reasoning from effect to cause; and we cannot prove the existence of a God.” Now I propose to show that we need not give up “this great principle of common sense;” that we may continue to reason from effect to cause, and so reach the conclusion that there is a God, by one of the most incontrovertible of all our mental processes; and yet we may, with perfect consistency, refuse to apply the maxim in question to human actions or volitions. In other words, that we may freely admit the principle in question, and yet reject the application which the necessitarian is accustomed to make of it.

In order to do this in a perspicuous and satisfactory manner, let us consider the occasion on which we first became acquainted with the truth of the principle, that every effect must have a cause. Let us consider the circumstances under which it is first suggested to the mind. Whence, then, do we derive the ideas of cause and effect, and of the necessary connection between them?

Locke, it is well known, supposed that we might derive the idea of causation by reflecting on the changes which take place in the external world. The fallacy of this supposition has been fully shown by Hume, and Brown, and Consin. In the refutation of Locke’s notion, these celebrated philosophers were undoubtedly right; but the two first were wrong in the conclusion that we have no idea of power at all. Because the ideas of power and causation are not suggested by the changes of the material world, it does not follow that we have no such ideas in reality; that the only notion we have of causation is that of an invariable antecedence.

The only way in which the mind ever comes to be furnished with the ideas of cause and effect at all is this: we are conscious that we will a certain motion in the body, and we discover that the motion follows the volition. It is this act of the mind, this exertion of the will, that gives us the idea of a cause; and the change which it produces in the body, is that from which we derive the idea of an effect. If we had never experienced a volition, we should never have formed the idea of causation. The idea of positive efficiency, or active power, would never have entered into our minds.

The two terms of the sequence, with which we are thus furnished by an actual experience, is an act of the mind, or a volition, on the one hand, which we call an efficient cause; and a modification or change in inert, passive matter, on the other, which we call an effect. It is easy to see how we rise from this single experience to the universal maxim in question. We are so made and constituted, by the Author of our nature, that we cannot help believing in the uniformity of nature’s laws, or sequences. Hence, whenever we see either term of the above sequence, we are necessarily compelled, by a fundamental law of belief, to infer the existence of the other.

This fundamental law of belief, by which we repose the most implicit confidence in the uniformity of nature’s sequences, has been recognized by many distinguished writers in modern times. It is well stated and illustrated by Dr. Chalmers. “The doctrine of innate ideas in the mind,” says he, “is wholly different from the doctrine of innate tendencies in the mind – which tendencies may lie undeveloped till the excitement of some occasion have manifested or brought them forth. In a newly-formed mind, there is no idea of nature, or of a single object in nature; yet, no sooner is an object presented, or is an event observed to happen, than there is elicited the tendency of the mind to presume on the constancy of nature. At least as far back as our observation extends, the law of the mind is in full operation. Let an infant, for the first time in his life, strike on the table with a spoon; and, pleased with the noise, it will repeat that stroke with every appearance of a confident expectation that the noise will be repeated also. It counts on the invariableness wherewith the same consequent will follow the same antecedent. In the language of Dr. Thomas Brown, these two terms make up a sequence, and there seems to exist in the spirit of man not an underived, but an aboriginal faith in the uniformity of nature’s sequences.” – Nat. Theo. p. 121.

Now, the two terms which we find connected in the case before us, is an act of the mind, and a change or modification of the body. The volition is the antecedent, and the motion of body is the consequent. And these two, by virtue of the law of belief above stated, we shall always expect to find conjoined. Wherever we discover a change or modification, for example, in the corporeal system of any other person, similar to that which results from our own volitions, we shall necessarily infer the existence of a prior act by which it was produced.

Hence, when we witness a change in the world of matter, we are authorized to apply the maxim we have derived in the manner above explained. We have really no idea of an efficient cause, except that which we have derived from the phenomena of action. Hence, if we would not suffer ourselves to be imposed upon by words without meaning, when we see any change or effect in the material world, we should conclude that it proceeds from an action of spirit. When we see the same consequent, we should infer the existence of the same antecedent; and not suffer our minds to be confused and misled by the manifold ambiguities of language, as well as by the innumerable illusions of the fancy. Wherever we see a change in matter, we should infer an act by which it is produced; and thus, through all the changes and modifications of the material universe, we shall behold the sublime manifestations of an ever-present and all-pervading agency of spirit.

By a similar process, we are made acquainted with the existence of an intelligent and designing First Cause. We learn the connection between the adaptation of means to an end, and the operations of a designing mind, by reflecting on what passes within ourselves when we plan and execute a work of skill and contrivance. And, as we are so made as to rely with implicit confidence on the uniformity of nature’s sequences; so, without further experience or induction, it is impossible for us to conceive of any contrivance whatever, without conceiving of it as proceeding from the hand of a contriver. Thus, we necessarily rise from the innumerable and wonderful contrivances in nature, to a belief in the existence of an intelligent and designing mind. In like manner may we establish the other attributes of God.

But to return to our maxim. We can only infer, from a change or modification in matter, the existence of an act by which it is produced. The former is the only idea we have of an effect; the latter is the only idea we have of an efficient cause. Hence, in reasoning from effect to cause, we can only reason from a change or modification in matter, or in that what is passive, to the act of some active power. This lays a sufficient foundation on which to rest the proof of the existence of God, as well as the existence of other minds.

But the case is very different when we turn from the contemplation of a passive result to consider an efficient cause– when we turn from the motion of body to consider the activity of mind. In such a case, the consequent ceases to be the same; and hence we have no right to infer that the antecedent is the same. We are conscious of an act; we perceive that it is followed by a change in the outward world; and henceforth, whenever we observe another change in the outward world, we are compelled to ascribe it, also, to a similar cause. This conviction results from the constitution of our minds – from a fundamental law of belief. But when we contemplate, not a change in the outward world, in that which is passive, but an act of the mind itself, the case is entirely different. We have some experience that certain changes in matter are the results of certain acts; and hence, whenever we observe similar phenomena, we are under a necessity of our nature to refer them to similar causes. We merely rely upon our veritable belief in the uniformity of nature’s sequences, without a reliance upon which there can be no such thing as reasoning, when we ascend from the changes in the outward world to a belief in the agency of an efficient Cause. But we have no experience that an act of the mind is produced by a preceding act of the mind, or by the prior action of any thing else. President Edwards himself admits that our experience is silent on this subject. And hence, when we witness an act of the mind, or when we are conscious of a volition, our instinctive belief in the uniformity of nature’s sequences does not require us to believe that it has an efficient cause; or, in other words, that it is produced by the prior action of something else, as the motion of body is produced by a prior act of mind. A change in body necessarily implies the prior action of something else by which it is produced; an act of mind only implies the existence of an agent that is capable of acting. Wherever an act exists, we must believe that there is a soul, or mind, or agent, that is capable of acting. We need not suppose that, like a change in body, it is brought to pass by a prior act. In other words, a change in that which is by nature passive, necessarily implies an act by which it is produced. But an act of the mind itself, which is not passive, does not likewise imply a preceding act by which it is produced. It only implies the existence of an agent that is capable of acting, and the circumstances necessary to action as conditions, not as causes.

Herein, then, lies the error of the necessitarian. He discovers from experience the connection between an act and a corresponding motion; and his instinctive belief in the uniformity of nature’s sequences authorizes him to extend this connection to all sequences where the two terms are the same. That is to say, wherever he discovers a change in body, he is authorized to infer the existence of a prior act by which it was produced. But he does not confine himself to this sequence alone. He does not rest satisfied with the universal principle, that every change in body, or in that which is passive, must proceed from the prior action of something else. He makes a most unwarrantable extension of this principle. He supposes not only that every change in body, but also that every act of mind, must proceed from the prior action of something else. Thus he confounds passion and action. He takes it for granted that a volition is an effect– an effect in such a sense that it cannot proceed from the mind, unless it be produced by the prior act thereof. He asserts that “the mind cannot be the cause of such an effect,” of a volition, “except by the preceding action of the mind.” Thus, in rising from a single experience to a universal maxim, by virtue of our belief in the uniformity of nature’s laws, he does not confine himself to the observed sequences; he does not keep his attention steadily fixed on a change in body as the consequent, and on an act as the invariable antecedent. On the contrary, from the exceedingly abstruse and subtle nature of the subject, as well as from the ambiguity of language, he treats a volition as a consequent, which implies the same kind of antecedent as does a change in body. Thus, by this unwarrantable extension or application of his principle, he confounds the motion of body with the action of spirit; than which there could hardly be a more unphilosophical confusion of ideas.

From the foregoing remarks, it will be perceived, as I have already said, that the question is not, whether every effect must have a cause. This is conceded. We do not give up “this great principle of common sense.” We insist upon it as firmly as do our adversaries; and hence, we have as strong a foundation whereon to rest our belief in the being of a God. But the question is, whether every cause is an effect? Or, in other words, whether an act of mind can exist without being produced by the prior action of something else; just as the motion of body is produced by the prior action of mind? We say that it can exist without any such producing cause.

If it were otherwise, if every cause were an effect in the sense in which a volition is assumed to be an effect by the necessitarian, what would be the consequence? It is evident, that each and every cause in the universe must itself have a cause – must itself result from the preceding action of something else; and thus we should be involved in the great absurdity of an infinite series of causes, as well as in the iron scheme of an all-pervading necessity. But, happily, there is nothing in our experience, nor in any law of our nature, nor in both together, which requires us to believe that a volition is an effect in any such sense of the word. Call it an effect, if you please; but then it must be conceded that it is not, like the motion of body, such a consequent as necessarily requires the prior action of something else for its production.

Every effect must have a cause, it is true; but it is purely a gratuitous assumption – a mere petitio principii, to take it for granted that a volition is an effect in the sense in which the word should always be understood in this celebrated maxim. This maxim is undoubtedly true, as we have seen, when applied to the changes of that which cannot act: it is in reference to such effects, or consequents, that the conviction of its truth is first suggested; and we cannot doubt of the propriety of its application to all such effects, unless we can doubt of the uniformity of nature’s sequences. But when we go over from the region of inert, passive matter, into that which is full of spiritual vigour and unceasing activity, and apply this maxim here in all its rigour, we do make a most unwarrantable extension of it. We pervert it from its true meaning and import; we identify volition with local motion; we involve ourselves in the greatest of all absurdities, as well as in the most ruinous of all doctrines.

As we have already said, then, we do not give up the great principle of common sense, that every effect must have a cause. We recognize this principle when we reason from effect to cause – when we ascend from the creation up to the Creator. We deny that volition is an effect; and what then? If volition be not an effect, are there no effects in the universe? Are we sunk in utter darkness? Have we no platform left whereon to stand, and to behold the glory of God, our Creator and Preserver? Surely we have. Every change throughout inanimate nature bespeaks the agency of Him, who “sits concealed behind his own creation,” but is everywhere manifested by his omnipresent energy. The human body is an effect, teeming with evidences of the most wonderful skill of its Great Cause and Contriver. The soul itself is an effect, – the soul, with all its complicated and wonder-working powers, is an effect; and clearly proclaims the wisdom, and the goodness, and the holiness of its Maker. The heavens above us, with all its shining hosts and admirable mechanism, proclaims the glory of God; and the whole universe of created intelligences shout for joy, as they respond in their eternal anthems to the “music of the spheres.” And is not this enough? Is the whole psaltery of heaven and earth marred, and all its sweet harmony turned into harsh discord, if we only dare to assert that an act is not an effect? No, no: this too proclaims the glory of God; for, however great may be the mystery, it only shows that the Almighty has called into existence innumerable creatures, bearing the impress of his own glorious image, and that, in consequence thereof, they are capable of acting without being compelled to act.