It has always been taken for granted that the will is determined. The use of this word clearly implies that the will is acted upon, either by the will itself, or by something else. It has been conceded, on all sides, that it is determined; and the only controversy has been, as to what is the determiner. It is determined by the strongest motive, says one; it is determined by itself, says another; and upon these two positions the combatants have arranged themselves. But behind all this controversy, there is a question which has not been agitated; and that is, whether the will is determined at all? For my part, I am firmly and fully persuaded that it is not, but that it simply determines. It is the "determiner," but not the "determined." It is never the object of its own determination. It acts, but there is no causative act, by which it is made to act. This position, I trust, has been made good in the preceding pages. If we say that the will is determined by itself, this implies that it is determined in the passive voice, at the same time that it determines in the active voice; whereas, in reality, it is simply active, and not passive to the action of any thing, in its determinations. We should not say, then, that the mind is self-determined, but simply that it is self-active. On this ground we may securely rest in our opposition to the scheme of necessity. It can never be shown that it is involved in the absurdity of an endless series of causes; it will remain for the necessitarian alone to extricate himself from that absurdity. That the mind is self-active, I have already shown, by showing that it is absurd to suppose that an act of the mind is produced by the action of any thing upon it. It is right here, then, upon the self-activity of the human mind, that we take our stand, in order to plant the lever which shall heave the scheme of moral necessity from its foundations. It is right here that we find our stronghold; that we erect the bulwark and the fortifications of man's free-agency, against which, as against a wall of adamant, all the shafts of the necessitarian will fall blunted to the earth, or else recoil with destructive force upon himself.