Edwards says, "I find myself possessed of my volitions." He was conscious of his own acts. This is a sufficient foundation for the doctrine of liberty; for such a consciousness is utterly irreconcilable with the supposition that those acts are produced by the operation of efficient causes. To say that they are "my acts," and yet to say that they are produced by the action of something else, is, as we have repeatedly seen, to say that they are my acts, and at the same time to say that they are not my _acts_, but _effects_ produced upon my mind. This very admission, therefore, lays the foundation of the doctrine of liberty. And hence, it has been supposed that Edwards himself was an advocate of this doctrine; because he has spoken of the soul as exerting its own volitions. From such an admission, it has been concluded by some of his admirers, that he really regarded the mind as the "efficient cause of its own acts," and "motives as merely the occasions on which it acts." But such an admission only proves, that his consciousness cannot be reconciled with his theory. His consciousness lays the foundation of liberty; but he does not build thereon. On the contrary, he lays the foundation of his system in universal abstractions, and not in observed facts; and hence, as it is not derived from an observation of nature, so it can never be brought into harmony with the dictates and operations of nature. It is altogether a thing of definitions and words; and as such it must pass away, when men shall cease to construct for themselves, and come forward as "the humble servants and interpreters of nature," to study the world of mind upon the true principles of the inductive method.