An Examination of President Edwards' Inquiry into the Freedom of the Will. Albert Taylor Bledsoe

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THE INQUIRY INVOLVED IN A VICIOUS CIRCLE.

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      The great doctrine of the Inquiry seems to go round in a vicious circle, to run into an insignificant truism. This is a grave charge, I am aware, and I have ventured to make it only after the most mature reflection: and the justness of it, may be shown by a variety of considerations.

      In the first place, when we ask, “what determines the will?” the author replies, “it is the strongest motive;” and yet, according to his definition, the strongest motive is that which determines the will. Thus, says Edwards, “when I speak of the strongest motive, I have respect to the whole that operates to induce a particular act of volition, whether that be the strength of one thing alone, or of many together.” If we ask, then, what produces any particular act of volition, we are told, it is the strongest motive; and if we inquire what is the strongest motive, we are informed, it is the whole of that which operated to produce that particular act of volition. What is this but to inform us, that an act of volition is produced by that which produces it?

      It is taken for granted by President Edwards, that volition is an effect, and consequently has a cause. The great question, according to his work, is, what is this cause? He says it is the strongest motive; in the definition of which he includes every thing that in any way contributes to the production of volition; in other words, the strongest motive is made to embrace every thing that acts as a cause of volition. This is the way in which he explains himself, as well as the manner in which he is understood by others. Thus, says the younger Edwards, “in his explanation of his idea of motive, he mentions all agreeable objects and views, all reasons and arguments, and all internal biases and tempers, which have a tendency to volition; i.e. every cause or occasion of volition,” p. 104. Every reader of President Edwards must be satisfied that this is a correct account of his definition of motive; and this being the case, the whole amounts to just this proposition, that volition is caused by that which causes it! He admits that it would be hard, if not impossible, to enumerate all those things and circumstances which aid in the production of volition; but still he is quite sure, that the whole of that which operates to produce a volition does actually produce it! Though he may have failed to show wherein consists the strength of motives; yet he contends that the strongest motive, or the cause of volition, is really and unquestionably the cause of volition! Such is the great doctrine of the Inquiry.

      If this is what the Inquiry means to establish, surely it rests upon unassailable ground. Well may President Day assert, that “to say a weaker motive prevails against a stronger one is to say, that that which has the least influence has the greatest influence,” p. 66. Now who would deny this position of the learned president? Who would say, that that which has the greatest influence has not the greatest influence? Surely, this great doctrine is to the full as certain as the newly discovered axiom of professor Villant, that “a thing is equal to itself!”

      President Day, following in the footsteps of Edwards, informs us that the will is determined by the strongest motive; but how shall we know what is the strongest motive? “The strength of a motive,” says he, “is not its prevailing, but the power by which it prevails. Yet we may very properly measure this power by the actual result!” Thus are we gravely informed that the will is determined by that which determines it.

      Again. If we suppose there is a real strength in motives, that they exert a positive influence in the production of volitions, then we concede every thing to President Edwards. For, if motives are so many forces acting upon the will, to say that the strongest will prevail, is simply to say that it is the strongest. But if motives exert no positive influence, then when we say that one is stronger than another, we must be understood to use this expression in a metaphorical sense; we must refer to some property of motives which we figuratively call their strength, and of which we suppose one motive to possess a greater degree than another. If this be so, what is this common property of motives, which we call their strength? If they do not possess a real strength, if they do not exert an efficient influence; but are merely said, metaphorically speaking, to possess such power and to exert such influence; then what becomes of the self-evidence which President Edwards claims for his fundamental proposition motives exert a real force, of course the strongest must prevail; but if they only have something else about them, which we call their strength, it is not self-evident that the motive which possesses this something else in the highest degree must necessarily prevail. Hence, the great doctrine of President Edwards is either a proposition whose truth arises out of the very definition of the terms in which it is expressed, or it is utterly destitute of that axiomatical certainty which he claims for it. In other words, he has settled his great doctrine of the will by the mere force of a definition; or he has left its foundations quite unsettled.

      Motives, as they are called, are different from each other in nature and in kind; and hence, it were absurd to compare them in degree. “The strongest motive,” therefore, is a mode of expression which can have no intelligible meaning, unless it be used with reference to the influence which motives are supposed to exert over the mind. This is the sense in which it clearly seems to be used by Edwards. The distinguishing property of a motive, according to his definition, is nothing in the nature of the motive itself; it consists in its adaptedness “to move or excite the mind to volition;” nor indeed could he find any other way of measuring or determining what he calls the strength of motives, since they are so diverse in their own nature from each other. He could not have given any plausible definition of the strength of motives, if he had looked at them as they are in themselves; and hence, he was under the necessity of defining it, by a reference to the “degree of tendency or advantage they have to move or excite the will.” Thus, according to the Inquiry, the will is determined by the strongest motive; and yet we can form no intelligible idea of what is meant by the strongest motive, unless we conceive it to be that which determines the will. The matter will not be mended, by alleging that the strongest motive is not defined to be that which actually determines the will, but that which has the greatest degree of previous tendency or advantage, to excite or move it; for we cannot know what motive has this greatest degree of previous tendency or advantage, except by observing what motive actually does determine the will.

      This leads us to another view of the same subject. The strength of a motive, as President Edwards properly remarks, depends upon the state of the mind to which it is addressed. Hence, in a great majority of cases, we can know nothing about the relative strength of motives, except from the actual influence which they exert over the mind of the individual upon whom they are brought to bear. This shows that the universal proposition, that the will is always determined by the strongest motive, can be known to be true, only by assuming that the strongest motive is that by which the will is determined.

      The same thing may be made to appear from another point of view. It has been well said by the philosopher of Malmsbury, “that experience concludeth nothing universally.” From experience we can pronounce, only in so far as we have observed, and no farther. But the proposition, that the will is always determined by the strongest motive, is a universal proposition; and hence, if true at all, its truth could not have been learnt from observation and experience. It must depend upon the very definition of the terms in which it is expressed. We cannot say that the will is in all cases determined by the strongest motive, unless we include in the very idea and definition of the strongest motive, that it is such that it determines the will. President Edwards not only does, but he must necessarily, go around in this circle, in order to give any degree of clearness and certainty to his doctrine.

      That President Edwards goes around in this vicious circle, may be shown in another way. “It appears from these things,” says he, “that in some sense, the will always follows the last dictate of the understanding. But then the understanding must be taken in a large sense, as including the СКАЧАТЬ