t agreeable impression made on
the sensibility with an act of the will. He does not like to say, that the
act of the will is caused by the most agreeable sensation, because this
seems to make a thing the cause of itself.

In this he does wisely; but having shaped his doctrine to suit himself
more exactly, in what form is it presented to us? Let us look at it in its
new shape, and see what it is. The will is not determined by the greatest
apparent good, because a thing is not determined by itself; but the will
is always as the greatest apparent good! Thus the absurdity of saying a
thing is determined by itself is avoided; but surely, if an appearing most
agreeable to the mind is not distinct from the mind's acting, then to say
that the mind's acting is always as that which appears most agreeable to
it is merely to say, that the mind's acting is always as the mind's
acting! or, in other words, that a thing is always as itself! Thus, his
great fundamental proposition is, in one form, a glaring absurdity; and in
the other, it is an insignificant truism; and there is no escape from this
dilemma except through a return to a better psychology, to a sounder
analysis of the great facts of human nature.

When Edwards once reaches the truism that a thing is always as itself, he
feels perfectly secure, and defies with unbounded confidence the utmost
efforts of his opponents to dislodge him. "As we observed before," says
he, "nothing is more evident than that, when men act voluntarily, and do
what they please, then they do what appears most agreeable to them; and to
say otherwise, would be as much as to affirm, that men do not choose what
appears to suit them best, or what seems most pleasing to them; or that
they do not choose what they prefer--_which brings the matter to a
contradiction_." True; this brings the matter to a contradiction, as he
has repeatedly told us; for choosing, and preferring, or willing, are all
one. But if any one denies that a man does what he pleases when he does
what he pleases; or if he affirms that he pleases without pleasing, or
chooses without choosing, or prefers without preferring, we shall leave
him to the logic of the necessitarian and the physician. We have no idea
that he will ever be able to refute the volumes that have been written to
confound him. President Edwards clearly has the better of him; for he puts
"the soul in a state of choice," and yet affirms that it "has no choice."
He might as w