But lest we should be suspected of doing this great metaphysician injustice, we must point out the means by which he has so grossly deceived himself. According to his definition of motive, as the younger Edwards truly says, it includes every cause and condition of volition. If anything is merely a condition, without which a volition could not come to pass, though it exerts no influence, it is called a cause of that volition, and placed in the definition of motive. And if anything exerts a positive influence to produce volition, this is also a cause of it, and is included in the same definition. In short, this definition embraces every conceivable antecedent on which volition in any manner, either in whole or in part, either negatively or positively, depends. Thus the most heterogeneous materials are crowded together under one and the same term,—the most different ideas under one and the same definition. Is it possible to conceive of a better method of obscuring a subject than such a course? When Edwards merely means a condition, why does he not say so? and when he means a producing cause, why does he not use the right word to express his meaning? If he had carried on the various processes of his reasoning with some one clear and distinct idea before his mind, we might have expected great things from him; but he has not chosen to do so. It is with the term _cause_ that he operates, against the ambiguities of which he has not guarded himself or his reader. “Having thus explained what I mean by cause,” says he, “I assert that nothing ever comes to pass without a cause.” We have seen his reasoning on this point. He labours through page after page to establish his very ambiguous proposition, in a sense in which nobody ever denied it; unless some one has affirmed that a thing may come into being without any ground or reason of its existence,—may arise out of nothing and help itself into existence. Having sufficiently established his fundamental proposition in this sense, he proceeds to show that every effect and volition in particular, is necessarily connected with its cause. “It must be remembered,” says he, “that it has been already shown, that nothing can ever come to pass without a cause or a reason;”(116) and he then proceeds to show, that “the acts of the will must be connected with their cause.” In this part of his argument, he employs his ambiguous proposition in a different sense from that in which he established it. In the establishment of it he only insists that there must be some antecedent sufficient to account for every event; and in the application of it he contends, that the antecedent or cause must produce the event. These ideas are perfectly distinct. There could be no act of the mind unless there were a mind to act, and unless there were a motive in view of which it acts; but it does not follow that the mind is compelled to act by motive. But let us see how he comes to this conclusion.