1819.]

Several Writers on Moral Agency.

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country have been accustomed to grammatical phraseology from their infancy.

If the reverend author of this sermon will take the same stand against Hopkinsianism, that he has against Socinianism, and admit none to preach in his place who do not maintain a system of thorough and consistent Calvinism, he may be the honoured instrument of producing a religious revolution in Boston: but we warn him, that a temporizing policy in relation to any system of error will not prosper. So far as we know any thing of Mr. Sabine's views and exertions, we wish him God speed...

ARTICLE IV-Review of Several American Writers on Moral Agency.

THE questions, What constitutes a moral agent? and, What is a moral action? are of immense importance in theology. Could these be settled, it would terminate many disputes about moral agency.

President Edwards, in his " Inquiry into the modern prevailing notions of that freedom of Will, which is supposed to be essential to Moral Agency," &c. Part I. Sec. v. gives us his opinion, in the following words:

"A moral agent is a being that is capable of those actions that have a moral quality, and which can properly be denominated good or evil in a moral sense, virtuous or vicious, commendable or faulty. To moral agency belongs a moral faculty, or sense of moral good or evil, or of such a thing as desert or worthiness, of praise or blame, reward or punishment; and a capacity which an agent has of being influenced in his actions by moral inducements or motives, exhibited to the view of understanding and reason, to engage to a conduct agreeable to the moral faculty. The essential qualities of a moral agent are in God, in the greatest possible perfection; such as understanding, to perceive the difference between moral good and evil; a capacity of discerning that moral worthiness and demerit, by which some things are praiseworthy, others deserving of blame and punishment; and also a capacity of choice, and choice guided by understanding, and a power of acting according to his choice or pleasure, and being capable of doing those things which are in the highest sense praiseworthy."

Man is capable of doing all those things for which he has the requisite faculties and powers. A moral agent, therefore, must have faculties for moral agency. What then are these faculties? First, Conscience, or a moral sense, is one of them; and without this, men would surely be incapable of any sense of obligation to observe any law. Secondly, The faculty of choice, that is, the will, is also requsite; for a being who should not will, choose, resolve, determine, or purpose to act as he does, would not be a voluntary agent. Thirdly, The faculty of conception, or of understanding, is also necessary, that we may discern between moral good and evil; that we may conceive of our duty; and that we may comprehend the law. President Edwards names, fourthly, reason. These are the only faculties which he speaks of, as necessary to constitute a moral agent. His language would imply, the necessity of other faculties, especially that of agency. He states other things besides faculties, nevertheless, which belong to a moral agent; such as power to understand, choose, act, and exercise the conscience. A moral agent, moreover, must be so constituted and governed by the laws of mental operation, that he shall conceive of motives for every act of the will; and that every volition shall be consequent upon, and connected with, the apprehension of some sufficient inducement. So far as this we argue with our great American metaphysician. But he has stated only a part of the faculties and powers, and only one of the laws of volition, which are essential to a moral agent. It is not requisite, that choice should always be guided by understanding; for moral agents sometimes choose, or will, from a dictate of conscience alone, and sometimes from a sensation, a passion, or an affection. It is a law of moral agency, that every act of the will shall be consequent upon some motive; but any thought, any feeling may be that motive. Should any one choose without being able to assign some motive for his choice, he would not act rationally, or as a sane, intelligent being. It enters into the very nature of the human mind, that we should never feel, but in consequence of some thought; that we should never will, but in consequence of some thought or feeling; and that a

great portion of our mental and all of our external moral operations should be consequent upon volition; so that man is a thinking, feeling, voluntary agent.

Some acute writers have objected to President Edward's Enquiry, that it makes motives to be something existing without the mind; and thus represents the human will as being irresistibly governed in its determinations by external objects. Much of his language would admit of such a construction; but an attentive reader will see, that he really accounts a motive to be some operation of the understanding which is the occasion of a volition; and under the term understanding he includes the faculties of Reason, Judgment, and Apprehension or Con. ception. p. 17.*

"By motive," he remarks," I mean the whole of that which moves, excites, or invites the mind to volition, whether that be one thing singly, or many things conjunctly. Many parti cular things may concur and unite their strength to induce the mind; and when it is so, all together are as it were one complex motive. And when I speak of the strongest motive, I have respect to the strength of the whole that operates to induce to a particular act of volition, whether that be the strength of one thing alone, or of many together." p. 7.

All this looks like material motives, and the exertion of physical energy upon the will; but the very next paragraph sets the matter right, so far as respects one class of our motives: for he says,

"Whatever is a motive, in this sense, must be something that is extant in the view or apprehension of the understanding or perceiving faculty. Nothing can induce or invite the mind to will or act any thing, any further than it is perceived, or is some way or other in the mind's view; for what is wholly unperceived, and perfectly out of the mind's view, cannot affect the mind at all. It is most evident, that nothing is in the mind, or reaches it, or takes any hold of it, any otherwise than as it is perceived or thought of." p. 8.

Perception" is here used to denote any act of conception, perception properly so called, or consciousness; and the meaning of the writer undoubtedly was, that men cannot will except in consequence of some operation of the un

Enquiry, London Edition, 8vo. 1790.

derstanding, of which they are conscious. We would add, after the word understanding, the clause, or of the faculty of feeling, and then the whole proposition would be the truth on this subject. We feel, and are conscious of feeling; and will, from feeling. The feeling, and not the consciousness of it, is the motive to volition in this case. When any one thought or feeling constitutes the motive to an act of the will, it is called a simple motive; but when two or more mental operations conspire to constitute a sufficient inducement to volition, the will is said to be governed by a complex motive. Let a man, for instance, choose to eat, simply because he feels an agreeable sensation attendant on eating, and his motive for willing to eat is simple: but let him will to eat, because he desires to live, to be useful, and to glorify God, and because he finds an agreeable sensation accompanying the gratification of his appetite, and his motive for willing to eat is complex.

The greater part of the volitions of adults are consequent upon complex motives. The right volitions of pious persons are the result of a sense of duty, the feeling of love for God, and regard to their own and their neighbours' interest. Conscience particularly capacitates us for the sense of duty, and the heart for exercising feelings of love for ourselves and others. Our mental constitution and the laws of God indicate the divine pleasure, that our motives for voluntarily keeping the commandments should be complex. No man ever, yet hated his own flesh, and no man was ever wisely religious, without intelligence and feeling, or without love to himself, his fel low-men, and his God. Indeed, our own personal happiness, and our duty to our Maker, are so intimately connected by the Divine hand, that it is impossible, in obedience to his counsels of wisdom and goodness, to consult one without promoting the other.

President Edwards repeatedly calls the motive, in consequence of which we will in any case, the cause of that act of the will. This use of the word cause has produced much confusion in the minds of many of his readers. The fact is, that no motive is the efficient cause of any act of human volition: but some human soul is the efficient

cause of every act of the will; and indeed of every other mental operation, which can justly be predicated of man. We agree with Mr. Locke, that a cause is a substance exerting its power into act, to make something begin to be. In this strict sense of the word, it is evident, that no one act of the mind, no one motive, that is, thought or feeling, is the cause of another act of the mind, denominated a volition; for the agent himself, the man, is the efficient cause of all his own mental operations. He makes them exist, or begin to be. The word cause, however, is used to denote the reason, and even the occasion of any action and event; and in this sense President Edwards would be understood, when he says that motive is the cause of volition. His words are these:

"I sometimes use the word cause, in this Inquiry, to signify any antecedent, either natural or moral, positive or negative, on which an event, either a thing, or the manner and circumstance of a thing, so depends, that it is the ground and reason, either in whole, or in part, why it is, rather than not; or why it is as it is, rather than otherwise; or, in other words, any antecedent with which a consequent event is so connected, that it truly belongs to the reason why the proposition which affirms that. event is true; whether it has any positive influence or not. And, in agreeableness to this, I sometimes use the word effect for the consequence of another thing, which is perhaps rather an occasion than a cause, most properly speaking." p. 58.

Having thus explained his meaning, he lays down the indisputable axiom, that every effect has some cause; and this law of mental operation, that every act of the will is ex-* cited by a motive. Then he proceeds to show, that

"If the acts of the will are excited by motives, then motives are the causes of their being excited; or, which is the same thing, the cause of their being put forth into act and exercise. And if so, the existence of the acts of the will is properly the effect of their motives.And if volitions are properly the effects of their motives, then they are necessarily connected with their motives. Every effect and event being, as was proved before, necessarily connected with that, which is the proper ground and reason of its existence." p. 118.

The words necessity, and necessarily, are used in the Inquiry in a limited sense, generally, in the same manner No I.

VOE. II.

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