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Updated: September 25, 2025
Moral necessity is not irresistible, because this implies resistance, and our wills never resist that which makes us willing. It is only invincible; and invincible it is indeed, since with the mighty, sovereign power of the Almighty it controls all the thoughts, and feelings, and volitions of the human mind.
The power of opposing volitions is best exemplified in the story of Mutius Scævola, who is said to have thrust his hand into the fire before Porcenna, and to have suffered it to be consumed for having failed him in his attempt on the life of that general.
Every scientific man who has long observed the life-activity of these single-celled Protista, is positively convinced that they also possess a soul; that this "cell-soul" also consists of a sum of sensations, perceptions, and volitions; the feeling, thinking, and willing of our human soul differ from these only in degree.
Here somewhat only shall be said of its form as regards the states and their changes, whereby perceptions, thoughts, intentions, volitions, and their belongings are manifested; for, as regards these states and changes, the natural mind that is in evils and their falsities is a form and image of hell.
I cannot help thinking that this is a dispute touching the proper use of a word, rather than that any important distinction in kind is marked. Some human volitions stand out very clearly as such. There are free ideas present, there is the tension of desires, there is deliberation, and there is clearly conscious choice, or the final release of tension.
He admits that liberty “is essential to morality.” For “as actions are objects of our moral sentiment so far only as they are indications of the internal character, passions, and affections, it is impossible that they can give rise either to praise or blame, when they proceed, not from these principles, but are derived altogether from external violence.” It is true, as we have seen, that if our external actions, the motions of the body, proceed not from our volitions, but from external violence, we are not responsible for them.
It is not afraid but it shall have abundant occupation in the æons before it, or that its emotions or volitions shall first be exhausted. Its blithe notion of immortality is that it is immortal youth. It has no conception of age, and could not imagine an eternity of accomplished facts. It is, perhaps, for this reason that doubt of immortality never really comes to youth.
No doubt the volitions and consequently the actions of men are the joint results of the external circumstances amid which men are placed, and of their own characters; which again are the results of circumstances, natural and artificial. So much must needs be admitted, and something more besides. Certain causes will infallibly be succeeded by certain effects.
Even now a full half of the philosophical world, including the very same metaphysicians who contend most for the instinctive character of the belief in uniformity, consider one important class of phenomena, volitions, to be an exception to the uniformity, and not governed by a fixed law.
It does not deny the possibility of liberty; for it recognises its actual existence in the Divine Being. “If the divine will,” says Calvin, “has any cause, then there must be something antecedent, on which it depends; which it is impious to suppose.” According to Calvin, it is the uncaused divine will which makes the “necessity of all things.” He frequently sets forth the doctrine, that, from all eternity, God decreed whatever should come to pass, not excepting, but expressly including, the deliberations and “volitions of men,” and by his own power now executes his decree.
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