If we mean by the cause of volition, that which wills or exerts the volition, there is no controversy; for in this sense the advocates of necessity admit that the mind is the cause of volition. Thus says Edwards: “The acts of my will are my own; i. e., they are acts of my will.”(122) It is universally conceded that it is the mind which wills, and nothing else in the place of it; and hence, in this sense of the word, there is no question but that the mind is the cause of volition. But the advocates of necessity cannot be understood in this sense; for they deny that the mind is the cause of volition, and insist that it is caused by motive. The term _cause_ is very often used to designate the condition of a thing, or that without which it could not happen or come to pass. Thus we are told by Edwards, that he sometimes uses “the word cause to signify any _antecedent_” of an event, “whether it has any influence or not,” in the production of such event.(123) If this be the meaning, when it is said that motive is the cause of volition, the truth of the proposition is conceded by the advocates of free-agency. In speaking of arguments and motives, Dr. Samuel Clarke says: “Occasions indeed there may be, and are, upon which that substance in man, wherever the self-moving principle resides, freely exerts its active power.”(124) Herein, then, there is a perfect agreement between the contending parties. The fact that the mind requires certain conditions or occasions, on which to exercise its active power, does not at all interfere with its freedom; and hence the advocates of free-agency have readily admitted that motives are the occasional causes of volition. We must look out for some other meaning of the term, then, if we would clearly and distinctly fix our minds on the point in controversy. We say that an antecedent is the cause of its consequent, when the latter is produced by the action of the former. For example, a motion of the body is said to be caused by the mind; because it is produced by an act of the mind. This seems to be what is meant by an “_efficient cause_.” It is, no doubt, the most proper sense of the word; and around this it is that the controversy still rages, and has for centuries raged.