they have moored upon, where some better aliment than keen and subtile logic will be requisite for their subsistence.

Professor Tappan's work consists of three parts or volumes; the first containing his review of Edwards, the second his own system on the will, and the third the application of this doctrine to moral agency and responsibility. In writing on this particular subject of the will, he has the merit of having excogitated, in truth, a psychological system; that being the ground on which he meets Edwards, and professes to have demonstrated the system of liberty in opposition to that of necessity. He is a candid, fearless, manly and pleasing writer, his style being one of simplicity and beauty, his illustrations pertinent and forcible, and his views on some most important metaphysical points, eminently clear and original. This is the case particularly with his treatment of the subject of cause, his development of the nature of cause, of the source of our own idea of causality, and of the nature of the will in us as the only free agency and causality of our being. We doubt if any other metaphysical writer can be found in our language, who has discussed this ofttimes perplexed and difficult subject with such clear and satisfactory results. We wish that those who are inclined to think that no advancement can be made in psychological science in any other direction than that taken by Edwards, would ponder some few of Professor Tappan's chapters.

We think there are four important points in which the argument of Edwards has been shown by Professor Tappan to be deficient, or built on false assumptions. First of all, by consent even of the defenders of Edwards' system, he has confounded the will and the affections. He makes but two faculties of the mind, the understanding and the will; the will and the affections are identified, and this identification is the foundation of his whole argument that the will is always and necessarily as the strongest motive. There is certainly this sophism; that of concluding that as the strongest motive, which precedes the mind's determination; the sophism of passing over the act of power, the act of the will as cause, to the score of the motive. This act

of power, this sanction of the will is needed to make it the strongest motive, and in this sense the assertion that the will is always as the strongest motive, is only that the will is always as the will's determination.

The second point in which the argument of Edwards is arraigned as defective, is its confusion between cause and motive, cause

and occasion. In Professor Tappan's view the will itself is cause; it is the cause of its own volitions. The principle of causality is in the mind, and there and nowhere else is the source of it. We are ourselves cause, and we are ourselves power, and hence alone we derive these ideas. Edwards makes the motive to be cause. The causality of the mind, according to his system, is motive; the strongest motive is the mind's causality. But as, according to his system, the strongest motive is as the affections, and the affections and the will are the same, it comes really to this, even in his scheme, that the will is the mind's causality.

President Day observes on this point, that if external motives are in any proper sense the cause of a man's volitions, they are so in a very different way from that in which the agent himself is the cause of them. But if the motive be the cause, then the agent cannot be. On this subject Dugald Stewart has written with great clearness.

"Although," says he, "we grant this general proposition, that for every action there must be a motive, it certainly does not follow from it that man is a necessary agent. The question is not concerning the influence of motives, but concerning the nature of that influence. The advocates for necessity represent it as the influence of a cause in producing its effect. The advocates for liberty acknowledge that the motive is the occasion of acting, or the reason for acting; but contend that it is so far from being the efficient cause of it, that it supposes the efficiency to exist elsewhere, namely, in the mind of the agent. Between these two opinions there is an essential distinction. The one represents man merely as a passive instrument. According to the other he is really an agent, and the sole author of his own actions. He acts indeed from motives, but he has the power of choice among different ones. When he acts from a particular motive, it is not because this motive is stronger than others, but because he willed to act in this way. Indeed, it may be questioned if the word strength conveys any idea when applied to motive. It is obviously an analogical or metaphorical expression, borrowed from a class of phenomena essentially different.". "Whatever may be the nature of the re

lation between a motive and an action, there is no reason for concluding it to be at all analogous to that between a cause and its effect."

The third point on which the logic of Edwards is set aside by Professor Tappan, is the confusion between necessity and certainty. Hence arises the argument of Edwards that no future. event can be certainly foreknown, whose existence is contingent, and without all necessity. An event of which there is certain foreknowledge is a necessary event. But this does not

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follow; and the sophism can be maintained only by this confounding of the terms and the ideas. An event of which there is certain foreknowledge is a certain event, but that is all we can say. It may be necessary, and it may be contingent, and whether necessary or contingent, it may be foreknown with equal certainty; but certainty does not constitute necessity, though the argument of Edwards proceeds on this assumption.

The fourth point is analogous, the confounding of contingence with chance. Edwards assumes that contingence signifies something which has absolutely no ground or reason with which its existence has any fixed and certain connection. So President Day regards the system of Edwards' opponents as a system of fortuitous volition. But this is not the case. Such volitions are not contended for, but volitions which have their true and proper cause in the will, as the mind's causality. In maintaining contingence or freedom of the will, chance is not contended for, nor the absence of cause, but the absence of necessity. Edwards' argument continually proceeds on the false assumption that there is no medium between necessity and chance, and that the doctrine of self-determination or contingence is chance.

We may name a fifth point, and that is, the petitio principii, involved in Edwards' definition of liberty, namely, power to conduct according to one's choice, without considering how that choice was produced or caused. That choice may have been necessarily connected with something foregoing, that was wholly out of the mind's power; but this makes no difference. This was Hobbes' definition, and that of all the later necessitarians. Now if this be granted, then indeed liberty and necessity are consentaneous. A wicked choice may have been constituted by the necessary correlation of the mind with an antecedent out of its power, but so long as the man is able to act according to that choice, he is free. All before the volition is necessity, but all after it is freedom. According to this, Belsham was perfectly right in asserting blameworthiness to have no place, and remorse to be fallacious. We may be bad, but not blameworthy. A machine for pain and cruelty is a horribly bad machine, but where is the guilt of it? If we are first so constituted, and secondly so placed, that volitions are necessary or impossible,-necessary in reference to a particular object of desire or course of action, from which we are commanded to refrain, or impossible in reference to one which yet we

are commanded to pursue, we may be very bad, and yet not blameworthy. One wheel, as the water races past it, turns a spinning factory, another turns the machinery of a distillery. One mind under the current of motive desolates an empire; another blesses it; they are the same.

Edwards' definition of liberty shuts a man up to necessity, and was intended to do so. And united with his denial of any self-determining power, it excludes blame and praiseworthiness from the universe, and legitimates all the array of consequences drawn up by Professor Tappan in the train of Edwards' argument. If any thing out of the man determines his will, beyond doubt it is not his determination. He is neither to blame for it nor praiseworthy. And if any thing within the man apart from and above his will, and over which his will has no authority, or against which it has no power, determines his will, then he is neither blame nor praiseworthy. The state of his mind is either owing to the determination of his will, or it is not. If it is not, then it is no part of his personal responsibility any more than it is of the responsibility of a whale or an elephant whether to be constructed with tusks or teeth, or without them. If it is, then it is the self-determination of his will, or a determination by something out of his will. If by something out of his will, then this is by consent and co-operation of his will, or it is not. If not, then again it has nothing to do with his personal responsibility, for it is nothing on which he, as a responsible agent, decides. But if by consent of his will, then this consent is that of a power overlooking and superior to the influence out of the will, the lord of circumstances, and not their slave, namely, it is self-consent and self-determination. If not, it is a consent produced by something superior to his will, and over which his will has no power, and therefore again, in regard to which he has no responsibility, and therefore neither is blame nor praiseworthy. This argument we might pursue ad infinitum, with all the power of the "infinite series" of Edwards himself.

The will is always as the strongest motive. Admit this; but still it is the self-determination of the will in view of that motive, or the man has no more responsibility in regard to his own volitions, than in regard to the action of fire when applied to the body; no more than the leaf of a sensitive plant when it shrinks from the touch, or turns towards the light. If there be any determination of the will, which is not, at the same time, self-determination, it destroys accountability and makes man a

machine. If the reason absolutely, invariably, infallibly, necessarily, impels the man, then the responsibility is thrown back on the cause why the reason is so and so, and not otherwise. If the reason has come to its present state by a cause or causes apart from the will, it is not a man's own responsibility. But if by consent, co-operation, or determination of the will, then again, it is self-determination or not. If not, it is something out of the will, and the responsibility is thrown upon that and the cause of it. Or if the affections irresistibly, invariably, infallibly, necessarily, impel the will, the responsibility is thrown over from the will upon the affections, and we must inquire the cause why the affections are so and so, and not otherwise. If the affections have come to their present state without consent, co-operation, or determination of the will, then the man has no responsibility. But if otherwise, then it must have been a self-determination or not. If not, then some other cause above the will must have moved its consent to the state of the affections, and the whole responsibility is thrown over upon that

cause.

Edwards himself sometimes lays down a principle that contains the whole argument of the advocates of freedom. "When a thing is from a man in that sense that it is from his will or choice, he is to blame for it because his will is in it. So far as the will is in it, blame is in it, and no farther." Remain here, and the whole argument is conceded. But then Edwards adds the element of necessity to his definition of liberty; there must be "no consideration of the original of that bad will, because, according to our natural apprehension, blame originally consists in it."-"The state or act of the will may be the virtue of the subject, though it be not from self-determination, but the determination of an intrinsic cause;" (and of course a cause introduced and set agoing apart from the will;) even so as to cause the event to be morally necessary to the subject of it."

The reason which Edwards here gives for "not considering the original of that bad will," is very curious; "because, according to our natural apprehension, blame originally consists in it; that is, our consciousness tells us that we are free agents, and therefore that the origin of evil is in our own will. We are so formed as to believe that we are free agents, and that answers every purpose. We are restricted from going back of that natural belief, because the original of that evil will transcends both our power and consciousness, and would lead to the