The same remark, may be made, in relation to the attempts of ingenious men, to define the nature of law in general. If we analyze all those things which have been called laws, we shall find that they have no element or property in common: the only thing they have in common is the name. Hence, when we undertake to define law in general, or to point out the common property by which laws are distinguished from other things, we must necessarily fail. We may frame a definition in words, as others have done; but, however carefully this may be constructed, it can be applied to different kinds of laws, only by giving totally different meanings to the words of which it is composed. Thus, for example, a law is said to be "a rule of conduct," given by a superior to an inferior, and "which the inferior is bound to obey." Now, who does not see, that the words _conduct_ and _obedience_, must have totally distinct meanings, when they are applied to inanimate objects and when they are applied to the actions of moral and accountable beings? And who does not see, that human beings are _bound_ to do their duty, in an entirely different sense, from that in which matter can be said to be under an obligation? The same remark may be extended to all the definitions which have been given of law in general. And whoever understands the philosophy of definitions, will easily perceive that every attempt to draw things, so wholly unlike each other, under one and the same mode of expression, is not really to define, but to hide, the true nature of things under the ambiguities of language. Of this common fault, President Edwards has been guilty. Instead of defining the various senses of the term necessity, and always using it with precision and without confusion; he has undertaken to show wherein those things called necessary really agree in some common property. He looked for a common nature, where there is only a common name. As Aristippas could not conceive, "how beauty could differ from beauty;" so, if we may judge from his argument, it was a great difficulty with him, to conceive how necessity can differ from necessity. Hence, when he proves an action to be necessary in any one of the various senses which are included under his definition of philosophical necessity, he imagines that his work is done; and when his adversary denies that an action is necessary in any one of those senses, he concludes that he denies "all necessity!" In all this, we see the question as plainly as if it had been expressly written down, "how can philosophical necessity differ from philosophical necessity?" To which I would simply reply, that a thing cannot differ from itself, it is true; but the same word may have very different meanings; and that it is "a prejudice which has descended to modern times from the scholastic ages," to suppose that things have a common nature, merely because they have a common name.