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What smallest evidence have we of any connection between the volitions and the other acts? A volition is an operation of the mind, is it not? and body is matter, is it not? And do you pretend to know can you form the smallest approach to a guess how mind is united with body, and how it is possible therefore for the refined spiritual essence to actuate the gross material substance.
And if so, where shall we look for its origin? in that which by nature is endowed with active power, or in that which is purely and altogether passive? We lay it down, then, as an established and fundamental position, that the mind acts or puts forth its volitions without being efficiently caused to do so—without being impelled by its own prior action, or by the prior action of anything else.
Afraid of making admissions to their opponents, we believe that none of them have fully developed the phenomena of human spontaneity. Even Edwards ridicules the idea of the faculty or power of will, or the soul in the use of that power determining its own volitions.
The mind clearly perceives, by due reflection, and at all times sees dimly, at least, that an act or volition is different in its nature from a passive impression or a produced effect; and hence it knows and feels that it is exempt from the power and efficacy of a producing cause in its volitions.
The philosopher, if he be consistent, must apply the same reasoning to the actions and volitions of intelligent agents. The most irregular and unexpected resolutions of men may frequently be accounted for by those who know every particular circumstance of their character and situation. A person of an obliging disposition gives a peevish answer: But he has the toothache, or has not dined.
If foreknowledge is incompatible with the existence of free-will, it is clear that the will of God is not free; since it is on all sides conceded that all his volitions are perfectly foreseen by him.
And this intuitive principle leads us to expect the reign of causation, not only among the thoughts and feelings generally, but among the wishes and volitions of the soul.” Now here is the question, How can the soul be self-active, self-determined, and yet all its thoughts, and feelings, and volitions, have producing causes?
A desire, an emotion, an idea of the higher order of abstraction, even our judgments and volitions, when they have become habitual, are called up by association, according to precisely the same laws as our simple ideas. In the course of these inquiries, it will be natural and necessary to examine how far the production of one state of mind by another is influenced by any assignable state of body.
His faith saves him; because, acting on his conviction, according to the uniform sequence of volitions in every sound mind, he asks the promised aid, and asking receives it. Much of the confusion, in which the subject has been involved, appears to have arisen from metaphysical refinements, by which the various parts of this mental process are separated from each other.
It is still disputed whether our thoughts, emotions, and volitions are generated through the intervention of material mechanism; whether we have organs of thought and of emotion, in the same sense in which we have organs of sensation. Many eminent physiologists hold the affirmative. According to this theory, one state of mind is never really produced by another: all are produced by states of body.
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