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to which that "elaborate essay" belonged, is quoted in our volume (P. 420). That philosophical necessity formed a part of the Calvinism of Calvin himself we have shown on P. 421. As to the relations of the philosophy to the theology we apprehend we needed no instructions from either Dr. Cunningham or Dr. Smith. Whether Calvinian predestination requires necessity from strongest motive force or not, our work (P. 268-276) furnishes ample proof, as yet unanswered, that it contradicts the freedom of the human will.

3. Dr. Smith (p. 129) criticizes our definition of Will: "The power of the soul by which it is the conscious author of an intentional act." It will forestall most of his criticisms (all, in fact, but a retort of Edwards's logic upon himself) for us to say that it is necessary to a successful definition, not that it should specify all the attributes of the subject defined, but such attributes as will individualize and mark it off from any other actual or conceivable thing. The possibility of any other thing being included under the definition vitiates it; the possibility of there being specific attributes not included in the definition does not. The definition of a straight line as "the shortest distance between two points," omits its very main quality of straightness, and specifies a result of the straightness, namely, its maximum of brevity, as the isolating element. When, therefore, Dr. S. asks whether there is "no unconscious act of the Will;" and whether there are not "immanent preferences," or "permanent states," and "choices ;" and whether the "Will is all act;" he leaves the validity of our definition untouched. Will and Will alone, of all actual or conceivable things, is still "the power of the soul by which it is the conscious author of an intentional act." What other attributes it possesses, of what other predicates it is the true subject, are matters that subsequent analysis must decide; and the development of any number of such, unless contradicting its statement or vitiating its exclusiveness, leaves the definition unharmed.

When Dr. Smith asks, "Is the Will all act?" we reply No, it is no act at all, but only faculty or power for an act. And when Dr. S. seems to imagine that we are caught napping in this omission of something besides act, will he please note that we had just given (P. 15) a previous definition in which was added to the word act the phrase or state of being. Dr. Smith, then, sees that this exclusion of everything additional to act was conscious and purposed. Cannot Dr. S. imagine why? Then we will tell him. The state is but a remoter consequence of the act; the position of mind brought about by it; and so is too remote for inclusion

in the definition. Or if it be an immediate product of Will, then it is properly a continuous or permanent act, or acting, or action; and so is nothing at last but act. When a man sits down, his subsequent sitting posture is either a state or an act. If a state, it is a consequent of the act; if an act, it is a continuous act of sitting. So far as its immediate product therefore is concerned, in Dr. Smith's sense of the words, the Will is all act.

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4. Dr. Smith says that to distinguish volitional from voluntary is "arbitrary" and "to multiply vain distinctions." Now an arbitrary or "vain distinction" is a distinction founded in mere caprice and not in the nature of things. But will Dr. S. deny that the will and the arm that obeys the will are in nature two different things, and their acts two different acts, and that two different acts need to be distinguished by two different terms? The distinction between the volitional and the voluntary is valid unless Dr. S. can show that a mental faculty and a muscle are one and the same thing.

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5. Dr. Smith, as a retort for the difficulties in which his side is graveled in their endeavors to rid themselves of the term necessity, etc., endeavors to be sarcastic on our disuse of the word self-determine; pretending that (contrary to our plain showing, P. 121) the disuse arises from the exposure by Edwards of its illogical character. The "pluripotential cause," he assures us, is nothing but the old self-determining power over again. Now this identity we not only admit but positively affirm. "Pluripotential power," contrary power," are essentially what Samuel Clarke, Whitby, and Fletcher meant by "self-determining power." We fault the term not because it expresses the same thought, but because it expresses it with too little precision. And this power of diverse choice is just the very thing that Edwards professes to demonstrate to be impossible to exist or conceive, as involving the infinite series. So far from obscuring this fact, we wish to emphasize and bring it out into bold prominence. It, then, makes conspicuous the fact, shutting off all contrary pretense, that Edwards proves that the power of otherwise choosing in the given case does not exist; not, that it exists but is never used. That is, he demonstrates the non-existence, not the non-usance of contrary power; he annihilates all mere invariable sequence; he holds no certainty which differs from necessity; no necessity which differs from fatalism. Our disuse of the term self-determination arose (as Dr. S. knows, but ignores that we fully stated) from lexical, not from logical reason. In answering Edwards's logic based upon the term we used the term. We

declined any logical advantage by laying it aside, and faced his sophisms down in the full use of the term itself.

6. Edwards's definition of Necessity is this: "The full and fixed connection between the thing signified by the subject and predicate of a proposition which affirms something to be true." In this definition we said (P. 61) “Edwards does not say what he means." He really means, we said, that the necessity lies in the connection; that it is a necessary connection; not that the connection is necessity itself. And we may here add, by the way, that even if any one should imagine the necessity to be the connective, still the connective is not the connection. Against all this Dr. Smith maintains that Edwards nevertheless "does say just what he means;" namely, that the necessity and the connection are literally identical. The necessity does not "lie in" the connection; but it is the connection.

If Dr. Smith were here, what he is not, correct, if Edwards did really mean that the necessity and the connection were absolutely one and the same thing, it were so much the worse for Edwards; for what we indulgently supposed to be an error in expression then becomes an absurdity in thought. A connection is a co-relation, coherence, inherence, or some kind of junction between two or more things; and whether that junction, etc., be necessary or not, that is, whether the quality of necessity lies in it or not, becomes a further question. So that the junction and its necessity are two things. Thus taking Edwards's and Smith's example, "God is infinite;" we have here the connection of quality, "infinite," with its subject, "God." The connection is simply inherence; for the quality inheres to the subject. Whether this is a necessary "connection," is a matter of further analysis. But the connection and the necessity are two things. If we find the connection absolutely indissoluble, then we call it necessary. That is, it is a "full and fixed" connection because it has necessity in it. The connection is one thing; its necessity is another.

That Edwards simply made a verbal mistake, is clear from the fact that he, in a later paragraph, uses the very language we say he ought to use. Thus speaking of consequential necessity as existing between logical propositions, following consequently upon each other, he says: "This necessity lies in . . . the connection of two or more propositions one with another." That is, the necessity is not the connection itself, but "lies in " the connection of the two necessarily connected propositions. But if the necessity is the connection itself, then the "necessity lies in" the necessity. It is both quality and subject.

7. Dr. Smith shows, what is true, that Edwards framed this definition to secure the chance of playing between necessity and certainty; and he imputes habitual misrepresentation to us for attributing to Edwards the necessity he "repudiates." This imputation is itself a misrepresentation. Over and over we admit, in our work, that Edwards occasionally "repudiates" necessity and professes certainty; and over and over we show the logical untruth of both the repudiation and the profession. First, argument by argument, we show (and Dr. Smith furnishes no answer to the showing) that Edwards's each and every argument demonstrates not certainty but necessity; and we concentrated a summary of these showings upon P. 221 and sequents, with references to our pages upon which the various showings appear. To all this Dr. Smith's only answer is the dogged repetition of the cry of "misrepresentation." In this same logical falsification of his own profession, Dr. Smith is himself inextricably involved. He repudiates the power of different choice as being the old impossible and unthinkable self-determining power. But, surely if a different choice is an impossibility, a self-contradiction, and a causeless effect, then the direct choice is not merely certain but NECESSARY. For that whose opposite or different cannot be must be, and is necessary with an absolute necessity. When Dr. Smith then professes to believe only in the certainty of the direct choice as distinct from necessity, he ought to see that he utters a self-contradicted profession.

8. Our reviewer represents us (p. 139) as maintaining that a given Will in order to being free "must not only have, but exercise the power of contrary choice;" that (p. 141) "it is not and cannot be free unless it sometimes exercises a power to the contrary;" that "it is under the law of natural necessity if it always chooses what on the whole seems most desirable." Now these are not our positions. We have not affirmed that if an agent should, through his whole life, obey the so-called strongest motives, he might not do it freely. We say expressly, upon the very ground of the Will's freedom, (P. 164,) "If the Will can choose either way it can choose in a uniform way," etc. Our firm and broad position (P. 231 and sequent) is this: The absolute law, as founded in the nature of things that ALL WILL, as Will, actual or possible, obeys the so-called strongest motive, merges into necessity. This does not deny that a given Will may for an indefinite length of time obey a particular class of motives; or that one Will, the infinite, (P. 224-316,) may forever freely prefer a given class of motives.

9. To show what a monster our free-will is, Dr. Smith concen

trates all its absurd features into a single paragraph, (p. 141); and on the other hand, to show how his picture is a caricature, and how not a real absurdity exists, we now proceed, sentence by sentence, to give it analysis.

(1.) "It brings forth ALL its acts out of nothing by its own uncaused and motiveless efficiency." On the contrary we say that the Will's acts, normally, are not "motiveless," but conditioned upon motives; and that the motive condition "enables but does not secure result." That we affirm all the Will's actions to be performed by "motiveless efficiency" is, therefore, a palpable inaccuracy. With equal inaccuracy are we charged with holding an "efficiency" that is "uncaused;" for we maintain that all finite efficiency" even of "alternative Will" is derived and caused by a superior Power.*

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(2.) "It can at times act without motive, and even without emotion or feeling." That the Will is without "emotion" we suppose that even the followers of Edwards will grant at the present day. And that the Will can in the proper conditions act without motive we do promptly affirm; and Dr. Smith is welcome to all the advantage he can gain from it.

(3.) "It is able to make, by its bare power, the weaker motive strong and the stronger motive weak." Our position is (P. 129-131) that motives, being properly so called from their relation to Will, are not, antecedently to Will, properly, weak or strong, as motives. So that there is no strong for the Will to make weak, or weak for it to make strong. It is true that we have, in compliance with necessitarian nomenclature, often under protest, called the most probably successful previous motive the strongest motive; but then all the absurdity amounts to this: The Will by its own power often chooses contrary to the greatest apparent previous probability; and Dr. S. is welcome to that much.

(4.) "It is not and cannot be free unless it sometimes exercises We a power to the contrary, without any sufficient inducement.” have about sufficiently refuted this in a former paragraph. But exercising "a power to the contrary without sufficient inducement" is our reviewer's own gratuitous absurdity. If the "power to the contrary" is "exerted" then the "inducement " is sufficient.

(5.) "It is under the law of natural necessity if it always " in quotation

* Dr. Smith again and again uses the term "uncaused cause marks. We wish he had told us exactly whence quoted.

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