stitute an action responsibly "good or evil in a moral sense,” and also "commendable or faulty," Edwards failed correctly to enumerate. The power in the agent in the given case to withhold the responsible volition he omitted to postulate.

In an automatic organism it can make no difference what the substance composing its series or system of parts, whether matter, electricity, or spirit; or whether the connection of its constituent elements or pieces, be a current, or an emotion, or a ligature, or a volition; provided the whole series do but transmit from part to part a fixed force, and a necessary action, landing in a solely possible result.

We are as able to imagine what may with propriety be called a spiritual as a material machine. Of a machine nothing stronger can be said than that the causative action of one part upon the other secures the solely possible result; and that can as truly be said of a mental organism as of a material organism; and as truly said of a resulting volition as of a resulting intellection or of a resulting mechanical material motion. Such a spiritual machine would be made of a conscious center and sensitive parts. Intellect, sensibility, and will would be its constituents; just as weights, wheels, and hands are the constituents of a clock. And just as the gravitative force may pass from weights to wheels, and from wheels to hands, and may bring the hand to a particular figure, so may the motive force pass from intellect to sensibility, and from sensibility to will, and bring the will to a given volition. The determination of the clock pointer may be no more fixed and necessitated than the determination of a volition. The causations may, in both cases, be as inevitable. If they are not equally mechanical, the difference is essentially verbal; consisting in the fact that the word mechanical is normally applied only to material organisms. But all that renders a mere mechanical action of a conscious machine incapable of moral responsibility exists in the case; namely, a necessitation antecedently fixing the given volitional action. Nor is there the slightest validity in the notion of some thinkers who imagine that the very fact of its being a volition, and not some other thing or event, secures its responsibility. Ask them why a volition is responsible, and their only reply is, Because it is a volition. A volition, neces

itatively affixed to the agent, is no more responsible than anyother attribute, event, operation, or fact.

The human constitution is a compound of the spiritual machine and the bodily machine, co-operating in a sort of "preestablished harmony." The action of forces from the external world strikes through the corporeal frame inward to the spiritual organism, reaching its central power of action; and, from that central power, action comes forth through the corporeal frame upon the external world. If this process be simply action and fixed reaction, producing a solely possible result, then the whole process is, so far as responsibility is concerned, as non-ethical as any case of mechanical impulse and recoil.

The impulse of rays from the beautiful fruit strikes the retina of an eye, and the perception of the exact form and force by necessitation automatically rises. The impulse of perception necessitates the strongest desire automatically to arise. The moral emotion being automatically neutralized, the impulse of strongest desire strikes the will, and automatically the volition springs forth, and from the volitional impulse the automatic action. The automatic corporeal action springs no more mechanically from the volition than the automatic volition from the automatic desire, and that from the automatic perception, and that from the ray of light, and that from the fruit. We admire or condemn the excellent or defective automatism; but the mere arbitrary interpolation of an automatic moral emotion in the series calls not for the attribution by us of any moral merit or blame to the organism, or any part of its automatic action or substance.

We thus demonstrate that if the volition be as necessitated as the emotion, the emotion as the perception, the perception as the receptivity of the retina, then the whole automatic chain forms a circle of automatic force as irresponsible as the streak of an electric circle. It is impossible for logic to show or common sense to see any more responsibility or moral merit or demerit in the necessitated volition than in the necessitated emotion, the necessitated perception, or the necessitated receptivity of the retina, or the necessitated visual ray, or the neces sitated fruit.

Nor can the universal common sense of mankind see that volition, and emotion, and perception, and sensorial retina

necessitatively subjected to automatic effect from automatic impulsions, are any more imputable with moral merit or demerit, praise or blame, reward or penalty, than a similar succession of material automatic parts, under exact and necessary physical forces. We can only find non-meritorious excellence. If this be true, then necessitated volition is non-responsible volition; and if none but necessitated volitions universally exist, moral responsibility has no existence in the universe. The "common-sense of mankind" recognizes morality in volition alone, and not in mere perception, because it recognizes in volition alone non-necessitation.

If we consider a Washington* as a living system of mental and bodily parts and forces so balanced; if clear perceptions and sagacious intellect were so proportioned with emotions of honor, patriotism, heroism, and self-sacrifice, as necessitatively to create that train of grand volitions by which he saved his country, then in body, intellect, and will he was a most noble specimen of merely automatic excellence. We should admire him as a most perfect living and acting colossus. We would love him and wish him all happiness, just as we love and wish well to all noble automatism. But he is only fortunate; he is no more meritorious, morally, than Benedict Arnold. His was only a happier fate.

Washington was, as we view the matter, meritorious, because, being volitionally able to prefer to betray his country he saved it. He saved it amid temptations appealing to his apparent selfinterest, his love of ease, and his fear of danger. He served his country after the Revolution by rejecting the motives that would lead him to a Napoleonic self-aggrandizement. The very magnanimity of his character consists in his choosing in accordance with right motives, in preference to powerful wrong ones, possible to him and present before him. He could have yielded to the wrong; he chose to act by the right.

With regard to the human will of our Saviour, Edwards strives by many arguments to show that it was automatic and

* "Is Washington entitled to no credit for giving freedom to his country, unless it can be proved that he was equally inclined to betray it?" (Day on the Will, p. 116.) The question is falsely put. We do not hold that it was necessary that he should be equally "inclined to betray it;" but that he should be susceptible to the temptation and possessed of adequate power for the volition to betray it. Otherwise, we praise him for the non-performance of an impossible act.

1

yet meritorious; and so, to demonstrate that necessity of volition is perfectly consistent with responsibility, merit, and demerit. Now we concede that, even in this case, the automatism, if really existent, negatives the merit. We deny therefore the nonfreedom of the human will of the man Jesus. Were his a mere automatic will, he would be a great mechanical figure in the grand panorama of redemption, striking as an automatic adjustment, but destitute of essential moral character. He might still be the sun in a grand orrery-the central spring in the Mechanique Celeste-but he would fail to be the sun of meritorious righteousness. We hold, that from the infinity of all possible human souls Omniscience selected that one which, in the great crisis of the case, it foresaw would stand, though free to fall. Endowed with the perfect nature of the first Adam, unlike the first Adam he stood the test. The first pure Adam, free to stand, did fall; the second pure Adam, free to fall, did stand. The difference was not in the power, but in the result. Omniscience foreknew each; in accordance with its prescience, it did most wisely plan. It knew the mighty danger of both; it knew the safe result of one.

Still more appalling is the degradation of the Divine will to a mechanical automatism. We can infer the Divine will only from the human will. If a good man's goodness through a single hour, if our Saviour's perfect goodness through his whole life, consist in this, that during that time he was free to choose wrong, and yet chose right, surely the goodness of God forever and ever consists in his eternal free volition to do right in preference to all possible wrong. An infinite power infinitely evil (like the evil deity of Manicheanism) is just as conceivable as an infinite power infinitely good. An almighty devil would be one who infinitely and eternally chose the evil. God is good because he eternally wills right, and with infinite intensity holds the best good of the universe in view. A god like the evil omnipotence of Manes, who, from the eternal necessity of his own nature, has no adequate power for the production of a good volition, would be a being horribly evil, but not responsibly evil. He could be no more responsible or morally blamable for the non-production of a volition for which there exists in him no causality, than a globe of granite could be responsible for the non-production of a gigantic vegetation. A god

automatically good, mechanically good, might be held excellent. But he would not be meritoriously excellent. We should praise him for what he could not help, and thank him for what he could not withhold. We should concede to him an infinite strength in only one way. He would be a cramped omnipotence, an almightiness not full orbed but mutilated and incapable-a blasphemous contradiction.

And so the moral merit of all beings, finite or infinite, arises from this, that in their proportion of power, space, and time, they, in the possession of the full and complete volitional power of doing wrong, do persistently and freely that which is right. A finite being does thus finitely, an infinite being infinitely. Even our Lord Jesus Christ, as man, was a being whom God foresaw would, with the full volitional power of doing wrong, persistently do right, and right alone. Nay, God himself, so far as we can understand, is a being infinitely wise and meritoriously good, because from eternity to eternity he has, and does, and will, with the full power of choosing wrong, persist in a ceaseless course of doing what his omniscience sees to be right. In this consists the moral merit of all holy beings.

If God were to create a being of perceptions, emotions, and volitions, all perfectly excellent and well adjusted, yet all necessary and automatic in their action, so that every volition, like the pointers of a perfectly true clock, should point exactly right, such a being would be innocent and lovely; and in that sense of lovely innocence it might be called holy. It could not be punishable. We should æsthetically admire it; we should sympathetically love it; we should wish it happy in a condition accordant to its nature. Yet we should none the less hold it incapable of moral responsibility, moral merit or demerit, moral good or evil desert, moral reward or penalty. Nor could it, even by Omnipotence itself, be invested with a morally meritorious holiness. All its holiness would be simply a lovely and excellent automatic innocence or purity. The sum of all this is, that a necessitated holiness is no meritorious or morally deserving holiness.

Again, should God create an automatic fiend; a being whose perceptions were, indeed, true, but whose emotions were purely and with a perfect intensity, yet automatically, malignant; and whose volitions were, with all their strength, automatically bad;