to the world. Franklin, however, was not merely a man in whom the
practical intelligence was developed in a very remarkable degree, but
was fortunate in coming upon a crisis admirably suited to his abilities,
and in being generally in harmony with the spirit of his age. He
succeeded, as we know, in snatching lightning from the heavens, and the
sceptre from tyrants; and had his reward in the shape of much
contemporary homage from French philosophers, and lasting renown amongst
his countrymen. Meanwhile, Jonathan Edwards, his senior by three years,
had the fate common to men who are unfitted for the struggles of daily
life, and whose philosophy does not harmonise with the dominant current
of the time. A speculative recluse, with little faculty of literary
expression, and given to utter opinions shocking to the popular mind, he
excited little attention during his lifetime, except amongst the sharers
of his own religious persuasions; and, when noticed after his death, the
praise of his intellectual acuteness has generally been accompanied with
an expression of abhorrence for his supposed moral obtuseness. Mr.
Lecky, for example, whilst speaking of Edwards as 'probably the ablest
defender of Calvinism,' mentions his treatise on Original Sin as 'one of
the most revolting books that have ever proceeded from the pen of man'
('Rationalism,' i. 404). That intense dislike, which is far from
uncommon, for severe reasoning has even made a kind of reproach to
Edwards of what is called his 'inexorable logic.' To condemn a man for
being honestly in the wrong is generally admitted to be unreasonable;
but people are even more unforgiving to the sin of being honestly in the
right. The frankness with which Edwards avowed opinions, not by any
means peculiar to himself, has left a certain stain upon his reputation.
He has also suffered in general repute from a cause which should really
increase our interest in his writings. Metaphysicians, whilst admiring
his acuteness, have been disgusted by his adherence to an outworn
theology; and theologians have cared little for a man who was primarily
a philosophical speculator, and has used his philosophy to bring into
painful relief the most terrible dogmas of the ancient creeds. Edwards,
however, is interesting just because he is a connecting link between two
widely different phases of thought. He connects the expiring Calvinism
of the old Puritan theocracy with what is called the transcendentalism
embodied in the writings of Emerson and other leaders of young America.
He is remarkable, too, as illustrating, at the central point of the
eighteenth century, those speculative tendencies which were most vitally
opposed to the then dominant philosophy of Locke and Hume. And, finally,
there is a still more permanent interest in the man himself, as
exhibiting in high relief the weak and the strong points of the teaching
of which Calvinism represents only one embodiment. His life, in striking
contrast to that of his more celebrated contemporary, ran its course far
away from the main elements of European activity. With the exception of
a brief stay at New York, he lived almost exclusively in the interior of
what was then the thinly-settled colony of Massachusetts.[8] His father
was for nearly sixty years minister of a church in Connecticut, and his
mother's father, the 'celebrated Solomon Stoddard,' for about an equal
time minister of a church at Northampton, Massachusetts. Young Jonathan,
brought up at the feet of these venerable men, after the strictest sect
of the Puritans, was sent to Yale at the age of twelve, took his B.A.
degree at the age of seventeen, and two years afterwards became a
preacher at New York. Thence he returned to a tutorship at Yale, but in
his twenty-fourth year was ordained as colleague of his grandfather
Stoddard, and spent at Northampton the next twenty-three years of his
life. It may be added that he married early a wife of congenial temper,
and had eleven children.[9] One of his daughters,--it is an odd
combination,--was the mother of Aaron Burr, the duellist who killed
Hamilton, and afterwards became the prototype of all Southern
secessionists. The external facts, however, of Edwards' life are of
little interest, except as indicating the influences to which he was
exposed. Puritanism, though growing faint, was still powerful in New
England; it was bred in his bones, and he was drilled from his earliest
years into its sternest dogmas. Some curious fragments of his early life
and letters indicate the nature of his spiritual development. Whilst
still almost a boy, he writes down solemn resolutions, and practises
himself in severe self-inspection. He resolves 'never to do, be, or
suffer anything in soul or body, more or less, but what tends to the
glory of God;' to 'live with all my might while I do live;' 'never to
speak anything that is ridiculous or matter of laughter on the Lord's
Day' (a resolution which we might think rather superfluous, even though
extended to other days); and, 'frequently to renew the dedication of
myself to God, which was made at my baptism, which I solemnly renewed
when I was received into the communion of the Church, and which I have
solemnly ratified this 12th day of January 1723' (i. 18). He pledges
himself, in short, to a life of strict self-examination and absolute
devotion to what he takes for the will of God. Similar resolutions have
doubtless been made by countless young men, brought up under the same
conditions, and diaries of equal value have been published by the
authors of innumerable saintly biographies. In Edwards' mouth, however,
they really had a meaning, and bore corresponding results. An
interesting paper gives an account of those religious 'experiences' to
which his sect attaches so tremendous an importance. From his childhood,
he tells us, his mind had been full of objections to the doctrine of
God's sovereignty. It appeared to him to be a 'horrible doctrine' that
God should choose whom He would, and reject whom He pleased, 'leaving
them eternally to perish and be tormented eternally in hell.' The whole
history of his intellectual development is involved in the process by
which he became gradually reconciled to this appalling dogma. In the
second year of his collegiate course, we are told, which would be about
the fourteenth of his age, he read Locke's Essay with inexpressible
delight. The first glimpse of metaphysical inquiry, it would seem,
revealed to him the natural bent of his mind, and opened to him the path
of speculation in which he ever afterwards delighted. Locke, though
Edwards always mentions him with deep respect, was indeed a thinker of a
very different school. The disciple owed to his master, not a body of
doctrine, but the impulse to intellectual activity. He succeeded in
working out for himself a satisfactory answer to the problem by which he
had been perplexed. His cavils ceased as his reason strengthened. 'God's
absolute sovereignty and justice' seemed to him to be as clear as
anything he saw with his eyes; 'at least,' he adds, 'it is so at times.'
Nay, he even came to rejoice in the doctrine and regard it as
'infinitely pleasant, bright, and sweet' (i. 33). The Puritan
assumptions were so ingrained in his nature that the agony of mind which
they caused never led him to question their truth, though it animated
him to discover a means of reconciling them to reason; and the
reconciliation is the whole burden of his ablest works. The effect upon
his mind is described in terms which savour of a less stern school of
faith. God's glory was revealed to him throughout the whole creation,
and often threw him into ecstasies of devotion (i. 33). 'God's
excellency, His wisdom, His purity, and love seemed to appear in
everything: in the sun, moon, and stars: in the clouds and blue sky; in
the grass, flowers, and trees; in the water and all nature, which used
greatly to fix my mind. I often used to sit and view the moon for
continuance, and in the day spent much time in viewing the clouds and
sky, to behold the sweet glory of God in these things; in the meantime
singing forth, with a low voice, my contemplations of the Creator and
Redeemer.' Thunder, he adds, had once been terrible to him; 'now scarce
anything in all the works of nature' was so sweet (i. 36). It seemed as
if the 'majestic and awful voice of God's thunder' was in fact the voice
of its Creator. Thunder and lightning, we know, suggested
characteristically different contemplations to Franklin. Edwards'
utterances are as remarkable for their amiability as for their
non-scientific character. We see in him the gentle mystic rather than
the stern divine who consigned helpless infants to eternal torture
without a question of the goodness of their Creator. This vein of
meditation, however, continued to be familiar to him. He spent most of
his time reflecting on Divine things, and often walking in solitary
places and woods to enjoy uninterrupted soliloquies and converse with
God. At New York he often retired to a quiet spot--now, one presumes,
seldom used for such purposes--on the banks of the Hudson river, to
abandon himself to his quiet reveries, or to 'converse on the things of
God' with one Mr. John Smith. To the end of his life he indulged in the
same habit. His custom was to rise at four o'clock in the morning, to
spend thirteen hours daily in his study, and to ride out after dinner to
some lonely grove, where he dismounted and walked by himself, with a
notebook ready at hand for the arrest of stray thoughts. Evidently he
possessed one of those rare temperaments to which the severest
intellectual exercise is a source of the keenest enjoyment; and though
he must often have strayed in to the comparatively dreary labyrinths of
metaphysical puzzles, his speculations had always an immediate reference
to what he calls 'Divine things.' Once, he tells us, as he rode into the
woods, in 1737, and alighted according to custom 'to walk in Divine
contemplation and prayer,' he had so extraordinary a view of the glory
of the Son of God, and His wonderful grace, that he remained for about
an hour 'in a flood of tears and weeping aloud.' This intensity of
spiritual vision was frequently combined with a harrowing sense of his
own corruption. 'My wickedness,' he says, 'as I am in myself has long
appeared to me perfectly ineffable; like an infinite deluge or mountains
over my head.' Often, for many years, he has had in his mind and his
mouth the words 'Infinite upon infinite!' His heart looks to him like
'an abyss infinitely deeper than hell;' and yet, he adds, it seems to
him that 'his conviction of sin is exceedingly small.' Whilst weeping
and crying for his sins, he seemed to know that 'his repentance was
nothing to his sin' (i. 41). Extravagant expressions of this kind are
naturally rather shocking to the outsider; and, to those who are
incapable of sympathising, they may even appear to be indications of
hypocrisy. Nobody was more alive than Edwards himself to the danger of
using such phrases mechanically. When you call yourself the worst of
men, he says, be careful that you do not think highly of yourself just
because you think so meanly. And if you reply, 'No, I have not a high
opinion of my humility; it seems to me I am as proud as the devil;' ask
again, 'whether on this very account that you think yourself as proud as
the devil, you do not think yourself to be very humble' (iv. 282). That
is a characteristic bit of subtilising, and it indicates the danger of
all this excessive introspection. Edwards would not have accepted the
moral that the best plan is to think about yourself as little as
possible; for from his point of view this constant cross-examination of
all your feelings, this dissection of emotion down to its finest and
most intricate convolutions, was of the very essence of religion. No
one, however, can read his account of his own feelings, even when he
runs into the accustomed phraseology, without perceiving the ring of
genuine feeling. He is morbid, it may be, but he is not insincere; and
even his strained hyperboles are scarcely unintelligible when considered
as the expression of the sentiment produced by the effort of a human
being to live constantly in presence of the absolute and the infinite.
The event which most powerfully influenced Edwards' mind during his life
at Northampton was one of those strange spiritual storms which then, as
now, swept periodically across the Churches. Protestants generally call
them revivals; in Catholic countries they impel pilgrims to some
devotional shrine; Edwards and his contemporaries described such a
phenomenon as 'a remarkable outpouring of God's Holy Spirit.' He has
carefully described the symptoms of one such commotion, in which he was
a main agent; and two or three later treatises, discussing some of the
problems suggested by the scenes he witnessed, testify to the
profoundness of the impression upon his mind. In fact, as we shall
presently see, Edwards' whole philosophical system was being put to a
practical test by these events. Was the excitement, as modern observers
would say, due to a mere moral epidemic, or was it actually produced by
the direct interposition in human affairs of the Almighty Ruler?
Unhesitatingly recognising the hand of the God the very thought of whom
crushed him into self-annihilation, Edwards is unconsciously troubled by
the strange contrast between the effect and the stupendous cause
assigned for it. When the angel of the Lord comes down to trouble the
waters, one would expect rather to see oceans upheaved than a trifling
ripple in an insignificant pond. There is something almost pathetic in
his eagerness to magnify the proportions of the event. He boasts that in
six months 'more than three hundred souls were savingly brought home to
Christ in this town' (iii. 23). The town itself, it may be observed,
though then one of the most populous in the country, was only of
eighty-two years' standing, and reckoned about two hundred families, the
era of Chicagos not having yet dawned upon the world. The conversion,
however, of this village appeared to some 'divines and others' to herald
the approach of the 'conflagration' (iii. 59); and though Edwards
disavows this rash conjecture, he anticipates with some confidence the
approach of the millennium. The 'isles and ships of Tarshish,'
mentioned in Isaiah, are plainly meant for America, which is to be 'the
firstfruits of that glorious day' (iii. 154); and he collects enough
accounts of various revivals of an analogous kind which had taken place
in Salzburg, Holland, and several of the British Colonies, to justify
the anticipation 'that these universal commotions are the forerunners of
something exceeding glorious approaching' (iii. 414). The limited area
of the disturbance perhaps raised less difficulty than the equivocal
nature of many of the manifestations. In Edwards' imagination, Satan was
always on the watch to produce an imitation, and, it would seem, a
curiously accurate imitation, of the Divine impulses. As De Foe says, in
a different sense--
Wherever God erects a house of prayer,
The devil always builds a chapel there.
And some people were unkind enough to trace in the diseases and other
questionable products of the revival a distinct proof of the 'operation
of the evil spirit' (iii. 96). Edwards felt the vital importance of
distinguishing between the two classes of supernatural agency, so
different in their source, and yet so thoroughly similar in their
effects. There is something rather touching, though at times our
sympathy is not quite unequivocal, in the simplicity with which he
traces distinct proofs of the Divine hand in the familiar phenomena of
religious conversions. The stories seem stale and profitless to us which
he accepted with awe-stricken reverence as a demonstrative testimony to
the Divinity of the work. He gives, for example, an anecdote of a young
woman, who, being jealous of another conversion, resolved to bring about
her own by the rather naïf expedient of reading the Bible straight
through. Having begun her task on Monday, the desired effect was
produced on Thursday, and she felt it possible to skip at once to the
New Testament. The crisis ran through its usual course, ending in a
state of rapture, during which she enjoyed for days 'a kind of beatific
vision of God.' The poor girl was very ill, and expressed 'great
longings to die.' When her brother read in Job about worms feeding on
the dead body, she 'appeared with a pleasant smile, and said it was
sweet to her to think of her being in such circumstances' (iii. 69). The
longing was speedily gratified, and she departed, perhaps not to find in
another world that the universe had been laid out precisely in
accordance with the theories of Mr. Jonathan Edwards, but at least
leaving behind her--so we are assured--memories of touching humility and
spirituality. If Abigail Hutchinson strikes us as representing, on the
whole, rather a morbid type of human excellence, what are we to say to
Phebe Bartlet, who had just passed her fourth birthday in April 1735?
(iii. 70). This infant of more than Yankee precocity was converted by
her brother, who had just gone through the same process at the age of
eleven. She took to 'secret prayer,' five or six times a day, and would
never suffer herself to be interrupted. Her experiences are given at
great length, including a refusal to eat plums, 'because it was sin;'
her extreme interest in a thought suggested to her by a text from the
Revelation, about 'supping with God;' and her request to her father to
replace a cow which a poor man had lost. She took great delight in
'private religious meetings,' and was specially edified by the sermons
of Mr. Edwards, for whom she professed, as he records, with perhaps some
pardonable complacency, the warmest affection. The grotesque side of the
story of this detestable infant is, however, blended with something more
shocking. The poor little wretch was tormented by the fear of
hell-fire; and her relations and pastor appear to have done their best
to stimulate this, as well as other religious sentiments. Edwards boasts
at a subsequent period that 'hundreds of little children' had testified
to the glory of God's work (iii. 146). He afterwards remarks
incidentally that many people had considered as 'intolerable' the
conduct of the ministers in 'frightening poor innocent little children
with talk of hell-fire and eternal damnation' (iii. 200). And indeed we
cannot deny that when reading some of the sermons to which poor Phebe
Bartlet must have listened, and remembering the nature of the audience,
the fingers of an unregenerate person clench themselves involuntarily as
grasping an imaginary horsewhip. The answer given by Edwards does not
diminish the impression. Innocent as children may seem to be, he
replies, 'yet if they are out of Christ, they are not so in God's sight,
but are young vipers, and are infinitely more hateful than vipers, and
are in a most miserable condition as well as grown persons; and they are
naturally very senseless and stupid, being _born as the wild ass's
colt_, and need much to awaken them' (iii. 200). Doubtless they got it,
and if we will take Edwards' word for it, the awakening process never
did harm in any one instance. Here we are touching the doctrines which
naturally excite a fierce revolt of the conscience against the most
repulsive of all theological dogmas, though unfortunately a revolt which
is apt to generate an indiscriminating hostility.
The revival gradually spent its force; and, as usual, the more
unpleasant symptoms began to assume greater prominence as the more
spiritual impulse decayed. In Edwards' phraseology, 'it began to be very
sensible that the Spirit of God was gradually withdrawing from us, and
after this time Satan seemed to be set more loose, and raged in a
dreadful manner' (iii. 77). From the beginning of the excitement, the
usual physical manifestation, leapings, and roarings and convulsions
(iii. 131, 205), had shown themselves; and Edwards labours to show that
in this case they were genuine marks of a Divine impulse, and not of
mere enthusiasm, as in the externally similar cases of the Quakers, the
French prophets, and others (iii. 109). Now, however, more startling
phenomena presented themselves. Satan persuaded a highly respectable
citizen to cut his throat. Others saw visions, and had fancied
inspirations; whilst from some hints it would seem probable that grosser
outrages on morality resulted from indiscriminate gatherings of frenzied
enthusiasts (iii. 284). Finally, people's minds were diverted by the
approach of his Excellency the Governor to settle an Indian treaty, and
the building of a new meeting-house altered the channel of enthusiasm
(iii. 79). Northampton settled down into its normal tranquillity.
Some years passed, and, as religious zeal cooled, Edwards became
involved in characteristic difficulties. The pastor, it may easily be
supposed, was not popular with the rising generation. He had, as he
confesses with his usual candour, 'a constitution in many respects
peculiarly unhappy, attended with flaccid solids; vapid, sizy, and
scarce fluids; and a low tide of spirits; often occasioning a kind of
childish weakness and contemptibleness of speech, presence and
demeanour; with a disagreeable dulness and stiffness, much unfitting me
for conversation, but more especially for the government of a college,'
which he was requested to undertake (i. 86). He was, says his admiring
biographer, 'thorough in the government of his children,' who
consequently 'reverenced, esteemed, and loved him.' He adopted the
plan, less popular now than then, and even more decayed in America than
in England, of 'thoroughly subduing' his children as soon as they showed
any tendency to self-will. He was a 'great enemy' to all 'vain
amusements;' and even after his children had grown up, he enforced their
abstinence from such 'pernicious practice,' and never allowed them to be
out after nine at night. Any gentleman, we are happy to add, was given
proper opportunities for courting his daughters after consulting their
parents, but on condition of conforming strictly to the family
regulations (i. 52, 53). This Puritan discipline appears to have
succeeded with Edwards' own family; but a gentleman with flaccid solids,
vapid fluids, and a fervent belief in hell-fire is seldom appreciated by
the youth even of a Puritan village.
Accordingly, Edwards got into trouble by endeavouring to force his own
notions of discipline amongst certain young people, belonging to
'considerable families,' who were said to indulge in loose conversation
and equivocal books. They possibly preferred 'Pamela,' which had then
just revealed a new source of amusement to the world, to awakening
sermons; and Edwards' well-meant efforts to suppress the evil set the
town 'in a blaze' (i. 64). A more serious quarrel followed. Edwards
maintained the doctrine, which had been gradually dying out amongst the
descendants of the Puritans, that converted persons alone should be
admitted to the Lord's Supper. The practice had been different at
Northampton; and when Edwards announced his intention of enforcing the
test of professed conversion, a vigorous controversy ensued. The dispute
lasted for some years, with much mutual recrimination. A kind of
ecclesiastical council, formed from the neighbouring churches, decided
by a majority of one that he should be dismissed if his people desired
it; and the people voted for his dismissal by a majority of more than
200 to 20 (i. 69).
Edwards was thus a martyr to his severe sense of discipline. His
admirers have lamented over the sentence by which the ablest of American
thinkers was banished in a kind of disgrace. Impartial readers will be
inclined to suspect that those who suffered under so rigorous a
spiritual ruler had perhaps some reason on their side. However that may
be, and I do not presume to have any opinion upon a question involving
such complex ecclesiastical disputes, the result to literature was
fortunate. In 1751 Edwards was appointed to a mission for Indians,
founded at Stockbridge, in the remotest corner of Massachusetts, where a
few remnants of the aborigines were settled on a township granted by the
colony. There were great hopes, we are told, of the probable influence
of the mission, which were destined to frustration from accidental
causes. The hopes can hardly have rested on the character of the
preacher. It is difficult to imagine a more grotesque relation between a
minister and his congregation than that which must have subsisted
between Edwards and his barbarous flock. He had remarked pathetically in
one of his writings on the very poor prospect open to the Houssatunnuck
Indians, if their salvation depended on the study of the evidences of
Christianity (iv. 245). And if Edwards preached upon the topics of which
his mind was fullest, their case would have been still harder. For it
was in the remote solitudes of this retired corner that he gave himself
up to those abstruse meditations on free-will and original sin which
form the substance of his chief writings. A sermon in the Houssatunnuck
language, if Edwards ever acquired that tongue, upon predestination, the
differences between the Arminian and the Calvinist schemes, Liberty of
Indifference, and other such doctrines, would hardly be an improving
performance. If, however, his labours in this department 'were attended
with no remarkable visible success' (i. 83), he thought deeply and wrote
much. The publication of his treatise on the Freedom of the Will
followed in 1754, and upon the strength of the reputation which it won
for him, he was appointed President of New Jersey College in the end of
1757, only to die of small-pox in the following March. His death cut
short some considerable literary schemes, not, however, of a kind
calculated to add to his reputation. Various remains were published
after his death, and we have ample materials for forming a comprehensive
judgment of his theories. In one shape or another he succeeded in giving
utterance to his theory upon the great problems of life; and there is
little cause for regret that he did not succeed in completing that
'History of the Work of Redemption' which was to have been his _opus
magnum_. He had neither the knowledge nor the faculties for making much
of a Puritan view of universal history, and he has left a sufficient
indication of his general conception of such a book.
The book upon the Freedom of the Will, which is his main title to
philosophical fame, bears marks of the conditions under which it was
composed, and which certainly did not tend to confer upon an abstruse
treatise any additional charm. Edwards' style is heavy and languid; he
seldom indulges in an illustration, and those which he gives are far
from lively; it is only at rare intervals that his logical ingenuity in
stating some intricate argument clothes his thought in language of
corresponding neatness. He has, in fact, the faults natural to an
isolated thinker. He gives his readers credit for being familiar with
the details of the labyrinth in which he had wandered till every
intricacy was plainly mapped out in his own mind, and frequently dwells
at tiresome length upon some refinement which probably never occurred to
anyone but himself. A writer who, like Hume, is at once an acute thinker
and a great literary artist, is content to aim a decisive blow at the
vital points of the theory which he is opposing, and leaves to his
readers the task of following out more remote consequences; Edwards,
after winning the decisive victory, insists upon attacking his adversary
in every position in which he might conceivably endeavour to entrench
himself. It seems to be his aim to answer every objection which could
possibly be suggested, and, of course, he answers many objections which
no one would raise, whilst probably omitting others of which no
forethought could warn him. The book reads like a verbatim report of
those elaborate dialogues which he was in the habit of holding with
himself in his solitary ramblings. There is some truth in Goldsmith's
remark upon the ease of gaining an argumentative victory when you are at
once opponent and respondent. It must be added, however, that any man
who is at all fond of speculation finds in his second self the most
obstinate and perplexing of antagonists. No one else raises such a
variety of empty and vexatious quibbles, and splits hairs with such
surprising versatility. It is true that your double often shows a
certain discretion, and whilst obstinately defending certain untenable
positions contrives to glide over some weak places, which come to light
with provoking unexpectedness when you are encountered by an external
enemy. Edwards, indeed, guards himself with extreme care by an elaborate
system of logical divisions and subdivisions against the possibility of
so unpleasant a surprise; but no man can dispense with the aid of a
living antagonist, free from all suspicion of being a man of straw. The
opponents against whom he labours most strenuously were unfortunately
very feeble creatures for the most part; such as poor Chubb, the Deist,
and the once well-known Dr. Whitby, who had changed sides in more than
one controversy with more credit to his candour than to his force of
mind. Certain difficulties may, therefore, have evaded the logical
network in which he tried to enclose them; but, on the whole, he is
rather over than under anxious to stop every conceivable loophole.
Condensation, with a view to placing the vital points of his doctrine in
more salient relief, would have greatly improved his treatise. But the
fault is natural in a philosophical recluse, more intent upon thorough
investigation than upon lucid exposition.
Without following his intricate reasonings, the main position may be
indicated in a few words. The doctrine, in fact, which Edwards asserted
may be said to be simply that everything has a cause, and that human
volitions are no more an exception to this universal law than any other
class of phenomena. This belief in the universality of causation rests
with him upon a primary intuition (v. 55), and not upon experience; and
his whole argument pursues the metaphysical method instead of appealing,
as a modern school would appeal, to the results of observation. The
Arminian opponent of necessity must, as he argues, either deny this
self-evident principle, or be confined to statements purely irrelevant
to the really important question. The book is occupied in hunting down
all the evasions by which these conclusions may be escaped, and in
showing that the true theory, when rightly understood, is obnoxious to
no objections on the score of morality. The ordinary mode of meeting
the argument is by appealing to consciousness. We know that we are free,
as Dr. Johnson said, and there's an end on't. Edwards argues at great
length, and in many forms, that this summary reply involves a confusion
between the two very different propositions: 'We can do what we will,'
and 'We can will what we will.' Consciousness really testifies that, if
we desire to raise our right hand, our right hand will rise in the
absence of external compulsion. It does not show that the desire itself
may either exist or not exist, independently of any preceding causes
either external or internal. The ordinary definition of free-will
assumes an infinite series of volitions, each determining all that has
gone before; or, to let Edwards speak for himself, and it will be a
sufficient specimen of his style, he says in a passage which sums up the
whole argument, that the assertion of free-will either amounts to the
merely verbal proposition that you have power to will what you have
power to will; 'or the meaning must be that a man has power to will as
he pleases or chooses to will; that is, he has power by one act of
choice to choose another; by an antecedent act of will to choose a
consequent act, and therein to execute his own choice. And if this be
their meaning, it is nothing but shuffling with those they dispute with,
and baffling their own reason. For still the question returns, wherein
lies man's liberty in that antecedent act of will which chose the
consequent act? The answer, according to the same principle, must be,
that his liberty lies also in his willing as he would, or as he chose,
or agreeably to another act of choice preceding that. And so the
question returns _in infinitum_ and again _in infinitum_. In order to
support their opinion there must be no beginning, but free acts of the
will must have been chosen by foregoing acts of will in the soul of
every man without beginning, and so before he had a beginning.'