of moral evil. So far from
removing the difficulty from their scheme, they have only illustrated its
force by the ineffable weakness of the means and methods which that scheme
has necessitated them to employ for its destruction.

Section III.

The scheme of necessity denies the reality of moral distinctions.

For, if all things in the world, the acts of the will not excepted, be
produced by an extraneous agency, it seems clear that it is absurd to
attach praise or blame to men on account of their volitions. Nothing
appears more self-evident than the position, that whatever is thus
produced in us can neither be our virtue nor our vice. The advocates of
necessity, at least those of them who do not admit the inference in
question, invoke the aid of logic to extinguish the light of the principle
on which it is based. But where have they found, or where can they find, a
principle more clear, more simple, or more unquestionable on which to
ground their arguments? Where, in the whole armory of logic, can be found
a principle more unquestionable than this, that no man can be to praise or
to blame for that which is produced in him, by causes over which he had no
control?

We have examined those arguments in detail, and exhibited the principles
on which they proceed. Those principles, instead of being of such a nature
as to subserve the purposes of valid argument, are either insignificant
truisms which prove nothing, or else they reach the point in dispute only
by means of an ambiguity of words. Of the first description is the
celebrated maxim of Edwards, that _the essence of virtue and vice consists
in their nature, and not in their cause_. By which he means, that no
matter how we come by our virtue and vice, though they be produced in us
according to the scheme of necessity, yet are they our virtue and vice. If
a horse should fall from the moon, it would be a horse: for no matter
where it comes from, _a horse is a horse_; or, more scientifically
expressed, the essence of a horse consists in the nature of a horse, and
not in its origin or cause. All this is very true. But then, we no more
believe that horses fall from the moon, than we do that virtue and vice
are produced according to the scheme of necessity.

Of the last description is that other maxim of Edwards, that men are
adjudged virtuous or vicious on account of actions proceeding from the
will, without considering how they com