An Inquiry Respecting the Self-Determining Power of the Will: Or, Contingent Volition

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: SECTION I. POWERS OF THE MIND. Cause and effect?Dependence?Efficacy of a cause?Complex cause?Efficient causes?Physical and Moral causes?-Negative causes?Every change has a cause?Contingence?Dependent contingence?-Absolute contingence?Power?Mental powers? Classification of Mental powers?The will?Volition?Emotions. The point proposed for our examination is the self- determining power of the will. But here we are met, at the threshold, by a very ambiguous term. What is power ? Before we proceed, it will be necessary to stop and inquire what it means. In all the significations of the term, it probably has relation to a cause. The meaning of one of the words is explained, by referring to the other. What, then, is a cause ? A Cause, in the more extended signification of the term, is an Antecedent on which something Depends. An Effect is a Consequent of something upon which it Depends. Between a cause and its effect, there is always the relation of antecedent and consequent. But antecedence is not the only element, in the notion of a cause. There must also be dependence. The darkness of the night precedes the light of the day. But the darkness is not the cause of the light. The one does not depend on the other. Every change in the universe, at any one moment of time, is the immediate antecedent of every change which takes place in the succeedingmoment. But every one of the former changes, is not the cause of every one of the latter. One thing depends on another, when the one exists on account of the other, and when, without the other or something equivalent, it would not exist. This implies, that there is that, in the nature and relations of the antecedent, which secures the existence of the consequent. It is what is called efficacy, in reference to the cause; and d...