OF THE DEFINITION OF A FREE AGENT.
HAVING shown, as I trust, that there is no influence whatever operating
upon the mind to produce volition, I am now prepared to declare the true
idea of a free-agent.
A free-agent, then, is one who acts without being caused to act. Here
the question arises, Is such a thing possible? Can any being act,
without being caused to act? The answer to this question, depends upon
the meaning which is attached to the very ambiguous term cause. If it
means an efficient cause, or that which produces a thing by prior action
or influence, it is possible for a spirit to act without being caused to
do so; and, as we have already seen, if there can be no action without
such a cause of its existence, then there must be an infinite series of
actions or causes. But if the question be, Can an act arise and come
into being, without a sufficient "ground and reason" of its existence? I
answer, No. It is very necessary to separate the different questions
included in the general one, Is not a volition caused? or has it not a
cause? and to pass upon them separately.
There is, I admit, a "sufficient ground and reason" for our actions; but
not an _efficient_ cause of them. This is the all-important distinction
which has been overlooked in the present controversy. Edwards frequently
asks, if a volition is without a cause? Now we call for a division of
this question. Has volition an efficient cause? I answer, No. Has it a
"sufficient ground and reason" of its existence? I answer, Yes. No one
ever imagined that there are no indispensable antecedents to choice,
without which it could not take place; but Edwards has framed this
question in such a manner, that we cannot give a categorical answer to
it, without either denying our own doctrine, or else subscribing to his.
Unless there were a mind, there could be no act of the mind; and unless
the mind possessed a power of acting, it could not put forth volitions.
The mind, then, and the power of the mind called will, constitute the
ground of action or volition.
But a power to act, it will be said, is not a sufficient reason to
account for the existence of action. This is true. The _reason_ is to
come. The sufficient reason, however, is not an efficient cause; for
there is some difference between a blind impulse or force, and
rationality. The mind is endowed with various appetites, passions, and
desires,--with noble affections, and, above all, with a feeling of moral
approbation and disapprobation. These are not the "active principles,"
or the "motive powers," as they have been called; they are the ends of
our acting: we simply act in order to gratify them. They exert no
influence over the will, much less is the will controlled by them; and
hence, we are perfectly free, to gratify the one or the other of
them;--to act in obedience to the dictates of conscience, or in order to
gratify the lowest appetites of our nature. We see that certain means
must be used, in order to gratify the passion, desire, affection, or
feeling, which we _intend_ to gratify; and we act accordingly. In all
this, we form our designs or _intentions_ free from all influence
whatever: nothing acts upon the will: we fix upon the end, and we choose
the means to accomplish it. We adapt the means to our end; because there
is a fitness in them to accomplish that end or design; and because, as
rational creatures, we perceive that fitness. Thus, we act according to
reason, but not from the influence of reason. We act with a view to our
desires, but not from the influence of our desires; and our volition is
virtuous or vicious according to the intention with which it is put
forth,--according to the design with which it is directed. Passion is
not "the gale," it is "the card." Reason is not the force, it is the
law. All the power resides in the free, untrammelled will. He who
overlooks this, and blindly seeks for something to "move the mind to
volition," loses sight of the grand and distinctive peculiarity of man's
nature, and brings it down to the dust, subjecting it to the laws of
matter and to bondage.
We do not allow Mr. Hobbes to declare our idea of a free-agent, as "one
that, when all the circumstances necessary to produce action are
present, _can nevertheless not act_;" nor do we accept of the amendment,
of another, "that a free-agent is one who, when all the circumstances
necessary to produce action are present, _can act_." For if all the
circumstances necessary _to produce_ action are present, then they would
produce it; and nothing would be left for the will to do, except to
receive the producing influence. In other words, if volition is produced
by circumstances, then it is a passive impression made upon the will,
and not an act at all.
It is contended by Edwards, that it is just as absurd to say, that a
volition can come into existence without a cause, as it is that a world
should do so. It is true, that a world cannot arise out of nothing, and
come into existence of itself; and this is also equally true of a
volition. But is the mind nothing? Is the will nothing? Is a free,
intelligent, designing cause nothing?
The mind is something; and it is capable of acting in order to fulfil
its own designs, though it be not impelled to act. Is this idea absurd?
Is it self-contradictory? Is it any thing like the assertion, that an
effect has no cause? It is not. It implies no contradiction;--it is a
possible idea. How does it act, then? I do not know. This is a mystery.
Indeed, every ultimate fact in man's nature, and every simple exercise
of his intellectual powers, is a mystery. An exercise of the power of
conception, by which the past is called up, and made to pass in review
before us; an exercise of the imagination, by which the world is made to
teem with wonders of our own creation; and an exercise of the will, by
which we produce changes in, the external world; are all mysteries? Now,
shall we fly from these mysteries? Shall we strive to make the matter
plain, in a single instance, by assigning an efficient cause to an act
of the will? If so, whether we escape the _mystery_ or not, we shall
certainly plunge into _absurdity_. We shall embrace a doctrine, which
denies the nature of action, and which is necessarily involved in the
great absurdity of an infinite series of causes. For my part, I prefer a
simple statement of the fact of volition, with its attendant
circumstances, how much soever of mystery it may seem to leave around
the subject, to any _explanation_ which involves it in absurdity.
The philosophers of all ages have sought for the efficient cause of
volition; but who has found it? Is it in the will? The necessitarian has
shown the absurdities of this hypothesis. Is it in the power of motive?
This hypothesis is fraught with the very same absurdities. Is it in the
uncaused volition of Deity? The younger Edwards could do nothing with
this hypothesis. In truth, the efficient cause of volition is nowhere.
It has never been found, because it does not exist; and it never will be
found, so long as an action of mind continues to be what it is.
This, then, is the true idea of a free-agent: it is one who, in view of
circumstances, both external and internal, can act, without being
efficiently caused to do so. This is the idea of a free-agent which God
has realized by the creation of the soul of man. It may be a mystery;
but it is not a contradiction. It may be a mystery; but then it solves a
thousand difficulties which we have unnecessarily created to ourselves.
It may be a mystery; but then it is the only safe retreat from
self-contradiction, absurdity, and atheism.
It is no reason for disbelieving a thing, that we cannot conceive how it
is. This will be readily admitted; but this principle, like every other,
may be misapplied and abused. If any thing is possible in itself
considered, that is, if it implies no contradiction, we should not
refuse to believe it, because we cannot conceive how it is. When
confined within these limits, the principle or maxim in question is one
of immense importance; and to disregard it betrays one of the greatest
weaknesses to which the human mind is exposed. If we do not adhere to
it, there is no resting-place for us this side of the most unqualified
atheism: we shall be compelled to renounce, not only the stupendous
facts and mysteries of revelation, but also all the great truths of
natural religion. The very being and attributes of God can find no place
in our minds, if we expunge this principle from them; and insist upon
seeing how every thing is, before we consent to receive it as an object
of belief.
We should find no difficulty, therefore, in believing that the mind of
man acts, without being efficiently caused to act. This implies no
contradiction; and hence the creative power of God can produce such a
being--a being that acts freely, without labouring under any necessity,
either natural or moral, in its accountable and moral agency. A being,
the end of whose action is found in the sensibility; the intention, the
design, and the plan of whose action is formed in the intelligence; and
the power by which this intention is executed, and this plan
accomplished, is in the will alone. It is in this triunity of the
sensibility, the intelligence, and the will, that the glory of man's
nature, as a free and accountable being, consists. The relation between
them is most intimate,--is inconceivably intimate; but the relation is
not the same in nature and kind as that which subsists between an effect
and its efficient, or producing cause. The only relation of this kind,
which is to be found in the case, is that which subsists between the
action of the will, or the volition, and the corresponding change which
it produces in the external part of our being. I say, we can very easily
believe all this, as it implies no contradiction; and yet not feel
ourselves bound, by a regard for consistency, to believe that a world
may rise up out of nothing, and come into being of itself, without any
cause of its existence. These things are blended together, in the
philosophy of the necessitarian, by a most convenient use of an
ambiguous phraseology; but they are, indeed, as widely different from
each other as mystery is from absurdity,--as light is from darkness.
But the above maxim, as I have already said, may be grievously
misapplied; and thus the garb of intellectual humility may be thrown
over the greatest absurdities. We may be told, for example, that the
same body may be wholly in one place, and wholly in a far distant place,
at one and the same time; and, if we object to this doctrine, the
murmurings of reason are sought to be silenced, by reminding us, that it
is exceedingly weak and presumptuous for poor blind creatures like
ourselves, to reject a truth because we cannot conceive how it is. In
like manner, we are informed that a volition, or an act of the will, may
be produced in the mind, may be necessitated, by the action of an
extraneous cause; or, if you please, of an intrinsic cause; and if we
ask how this can be, without interfering with our free-agency, it is
frequently replied, that we cannot tell; but that it is exceedingly
absurd and presumptuous to disbelieve a thing because we cannot conceive
how it is. That God operates upon the mind, not to rectify and elevate
its powers, but to produce a volition in it; not to cleanse and purify
the whole stream and current of our natures, but merely to throw up a
bubble upon the surface thereof, for which _effect_ he holds us
accountable: that he does this, we are told, is a great mystery, which
we should not presume to call in question. For my part, I had rather
believe the doctrine of transubstantiation itself, than such a _mystery_
as this.
There is some difference, I have supposed, between disbelieving a thing
because we cannot see how it is, and disbelieving it, because we very
clearly see that it cannot possibly be any how at all. It is upon this
distinction that I stand, when I receive the great mysteries of the
Godhead, and reject the absurdities of transubstantiation. And it is
upon the same ground, that I most freely and fully recognize and embrace
the great mysteries of our being, whilst I reject the absurdities of an
efficiently caused and accountable agency.
Is not this distinction properly applied? If the action or influence of
any thing produces an effect upon the mind, is not that effect merely a
passive impression? Is it not absurd to suppose, that it is a passive
impression, produced by the action of something else, and yet that it is
an action of the mind itself? If so; and so I think it has been made to
appear, then we not only should, but must, reject it. We must reject it,
unless we suffer ourselves to be blinded by false analogies, and verbal
ambiguities.
This is not to deny the divine influence, as has been so often imagined.
The regeneration, the new creation, of the soul, by the power of God, is
no more inconsistent with free and accountable agency, than was the
original creation of it with all its powers; but this cannot be said of
the production of our acts or volitions by a divine influence. Those
must take an exceedingly narrow and superficial view of the great work
of regeneration; who suppose that it is altogether denied, unless we
admit that the Spirit produces our volitions; who suppose that the
divine agency can in no way cleanse and purify our powers, unless it can
superinduce a volition, or an act, upon our depraved natures. How many
persons have laboured in vain, to reconcile the free-agency of man with
the reality of a divine influence; just because they have laboured under
the superficial notion, the grand illusion, that the Spirit of God
cannot act upon the mind at all, unless it acts to produce a volition!
It is no wonder that they have laboured in vain, and abandoned the task
in despair; because what they have taken for a seeming difficulty, is,
when narrowly inspected, seen to be a real absurdity. Lay this aside,
and there will be a mystery in the case, it is true; but there will not
be _even a seeming contradiction_.
But I do not intend to enter upon the subject of theology. This is
entirely beside the purpose of the present work; and if I have touched
upon it for a moment, it was only to show, by a passing glance, how very
easy it were for any one, if he were so disposed, to draw false
conclusions with respect to theology, from the views which have been
advanced in regard to the philosophy of the will. True, philosophy and
religion will always perfectly harmonize; but then he is very apt to be
a poor philosopher, who derives his philosophy from his religion; and he
a miserable theologian, who derives his religion from his philosophy. It
was in that way, that Edwards became a necessitarian; it is in this,
that many a necessitarian has become an infidel or an atheist.