hough so clearly founded in the
nature of things, is always overlooked by the logic of the necessitarian.
They might well adopt the language of Bacon, that the subtilty of nature
far surpasseth that of our logic.

Hobbes was content to rest on a simple statement of the fact, that nothing
can produce itself; but it is not every logician who is willing to rely on
the inherent strength of such a position. Ask a child, Did you make
yourself? and the child will answer, No. Propound the same question to the
roving savage, or to the man of mere common sense, and he will also
answer, No. Appeal to the universal reason of man, and the same emphatic
No, will come up from its profoundest depths. But your redoubtable
logicians are not satisfied to rely on such testimony alone: they dare not
build on such a foundation unless it be first secured and rendered firm by
the aid of the syllogistic process. I know "I did not make myself," says
Descartes, "for if I had made myself, I should have given myself every
perfection." Now this argument in true syllogistic form stands thus: If I
had made myself, I should have endowed myself with every perfection; I am
not endowed with every perfection; therefore I did not make myself.
Surely, after so clear a process of reasoning, no one can possibly doubt
the proposition that Descartes did not make himself! In the same way we
might prove that he did not make his own logic: for if he had made his
logic, he would have endowed it with every possible perfection; but it is
not endowed with every possible perfection, and therefore he did not make
it.

But President Edwards has excelled Descartes, and every other adept in the
syllogistic art, except Aristotle in his physics, in his ability to render
the light of perfect day clearer by a few masterly strokes of logic. He
has furnished the reason why some persons imagine that volition has no
cause of its existence, or "that it produces itself." Now, by the way,
would it not have been as well if he had first made sure of the fact,
before he undertook to explain it? But to proceed: let us see how he has
proved that volition does not produce itself; that it does not arise out
of nothing and bring itself into existence.

He does this in true logical form, and according to the most approved
methods of demonstration. He first establishes the general position, that
no existence or event whatever can give rise to its own being,(109) and he
then shows that this is