I have said, that we are not conscious that there is no producing cause of volition. No man can be conscious of that which does not exist. Hence, it is highly absurd to require us to furnish the evidence of consciousness that there is no such cause of volition. It cannot testify to any such universal negative; and one might as well require a mathematical demonstration of the point in dispute, as to demand such evidence from us. And yet, President Edwards declares, that by experience he knows nothing like the doctrine, that "any volition arises in his mind contingently;" that is to say, he was not conscious that a volition has _no producing_ cause of its existence. Did he expect that we should prove the non-existence of a thing by the direct evidence of consciousness? All that he could reasonably expect in such a case is, that we should not be conscious of any such influence; and this President Edwards himself admits. He admits, that we do not see the "effectual power of any cause," or feel its influence, operating to produce a volition: he merely infers this from the assumption that volition is a produced effect. He also says, I find "that the acts of my will are my own; i. e. that they are acts of my will--the volitions of my own mind; or, in other words, that what I will, I will; which, I suppose, is the sum of what others experience in this affair." Surely, no one was ever so silly as to deny that what a man wills, he wills; and if this is all that consciousness teaches on the subject, its information can throw no light upon this or upon any other controversy. This proposition, that a man wills what he wills, is independent of all experience and all consciousness. It is an identical proposition, which experience can neither shake nor confirm. We may see, nay, we must see, that each and every thing in the universe is what it is, without any reference to consciousness or experience. Indeed, it is as absurd to appeal to experience or consciousness for the truth of such a universal and self-evident axiom, as it is to appeal to universal and self-evident axioms, to ascertain and determine the _nature_ of our mental phenomena,--of the states and processes of the mind. Edwards has done both: he has deduced the truth of the proposition, that a man wills what he wills, from the evidence of consciousness or experience, as the sum of all its teaching; and he has established the fact, that a volition is produced by the operation of an effectual power, by an appeal to a universal axiom. He has submitted a truism, which declines every test of its truth, to the tribunal of consciousness; and he has determined the nature of a volition, as well as the manner of its production, by the application of a similar truism, which contains no conceivable information respecting the nature of any thing in the universe.