Our decision (for the correctness of which we appeal to the calm and impartial judgment of the reader) is as follows: If the term _cause_ be understood in the first or the second sense above mentioned, there is no disagreement between the contending parties; and if it be understood in the third sense, then both parties are in error. If, in order to account for an act of the mind, we suppose it is caused by an action of motive, we are involved in the absurdity of an infinite series of actions; and on the other hand, if we suppose it is caused by a preceding act of the mind itself, we are forced into the same absurdity. Hence, we conclude, that an act of the mind, or a volition, is not produced by the action of either mind or motive, but takes its rise in the world without any such efficient cause of its existence. Each party has refuted his adversary, and in the enjoyment of his triumph he seems not to have duly reflected on the destruction of his own position. Both are in the right, and both are in the wrong; but, as we shall hereafter see, not equally so. If we adopt the argument of both sides, in so far as it is true, we shall come to the conclusion that action must take its rise somewhere in the universe without being caused by preceding action. And if so, where shall we look for its origin? in that which by nature is endowed with active power, or in that which is purely and altogether passive? We lay it down, then, as an established and fundamental position, that the mind acts or puts forth its volitions without being efficiently caused to do so—without being impelled by its own prior action, or by the prior action of anything else. The conditions or occasions of volition being supplied, the mind itself acts in view thereof, without being subject to the power or action of any cause whatever. All rational beings must, as we have seen, either admit this exemption of the mind in willing from the power and action of any cause, or else lose themselves in the labyrinth of an infinite series of causes. It is this exemption which constitutes the freedom of the human soul. We are now prepared to see, in a clear light, the sophistical nature of the pretended demonstration of the scheme of necessity. “It is impossible to consider occurrences,” says Sir James Mackintosh, otherwise than as bound together in “_the relation of cause and effect_.” Now this relation, if we interpret it according to the nature of things, and not according to the sound of words, is not one, but two.