Now let us suppose that, in order to escape these difficulties, an advocate of the self-determining power should deny that there is any causative act of volition; but that volition is itself an act uncaused by any preceding act. According to this view, what does the self-determining power amount to? It amounts to just this, that the will itself acts,--a position which is as freely recognized by Edwards as it could possibly be by the warmest advocate of the self-determining power. If this be all that is meant by self-determination, why not state the simple fact that the will itself acts, in plain English, instead of going about to envelope it in a mist of words? If this be all that is meant, why not state the thing so that it may be acquiesced in by the necessitarian, instead of keeping up such a war of words? Indeed, it appears plain to me, that the assertion that the will is determined by itself, is either false doctrine, or else the language in which it is couched is not a clear and distinct expression of its own meaning. On either supposition, this mode of expression should be abandoned. I have long been impressed with the conviction, that the self-determining power, as it is generally understood, is full of inconsistencies. While we hold this doctrine, we cannot with a good grace contend that the motive-determining power is involved in the absurdity of an infinite series of causes; for we ourselves are involved in it. Nor can we very well maintain that "a necessary agent is no agent at all;" for the necessitarian will reply, as he always does, that according to our own scheme, our actions are caused; and hence, if it be absurd to speak of a caused action, this is equally true, whether the cause be intrinsic or extrinsic. Moreover, if we should complain that, according to the necessitarian, the phenomena of the will are involved in the "mechanism of cause and effect," he will be sure to reply, that the same thing is true according to our own scheme, inasmuch as we admit volition to be an effect, and place it under the dominion of an internal cause. These difficulties, as well as some others, have always encumbered the cause of free and accountable agency; just because it has been supposed to consist in the self-determining power of the will. We should, therefore, abandon this doctrine. If Clarke, and Price, and Reid, and West, have not been able to maintain it without running into such inconsistencies, it is high time it should be laid aside forever.