Does the objector allege, as a palpable absurdity, that there is, after all, nothing to account for the particular determination? I answer that the particular determination is accounted for in the very quality or attribute of the cause. In the case of a physical cause, the particular determination is accounted for in the quality of the cause, which quality is to be necessarily correlated to the object. In the case of will, the particular determination is accounted for in the quality of the cause, which quality is to have the power to make the particular determination without being necessarily correlated to the object. A physical cause is a cause fixed, determined, and necessitated. The will is a cause contingent and free. A physical cause is a cause instrumental of a first cause:--the will is first cause itself. The infinite will is the first cause inhabiting eternity, filling immensity, and unlimited in its energy. The human will is first cause appearing in time, confined to place, and finite in its energy; but it is the same in kind, because made in the likeness of the infinite will; as first cause it is self moved, it makes its _nisus_ of itself, and of itself it forbears to make it; and within the sphere of its activity, and in relation to its objects, it has the power of selecting by a mere arbitrary act, any particular object. It is a cause, all whose acts, as well as any particular act, considered as phenomena demanding a cause, are accounted for in itself alone. This does not make the created will independent of the uncreated. The very fact of its being a created will, settles its dependence. The power which created it, has likewise limited it, and could annihilate it. The power which created it, has ordained and fixed the instrumentalities by which volitions become productive of effects. The man may make the volition or _nisus_, to remove a mountain, but his arm fails to carry out the _nisus_. His volitions are produced freely of himself; they are unrestrained within the capacity of will given him, but he meets on every side those physical causes which are mightier than himself, and which, instrumental of the divine will, make the created will aware of its feebleness and dependence. But although the will is an activity or cause thus contingent, arbitrary, free, and indifferent, it is an activity or cause united with sensitivity and reason; and forming the unity of the soul. Will, reason, and, the sensitivity or the affections, constitute mind, or spirit, or soul. Although the will is arbitrary and contingent, yet it does not follow that it _must_ act without regard to reason or feeling. I have yet to make my appeal to consciousness; I am now only giving a scheme of psychology in order to prove the possibility of a contingent will, that we have nothing else to oppose to an absolute and universal necessity.