The Inquiry itself furnishes abundant evidence, that I have done its author no injustice. "I have chosen," says he, "rather to express myself thus, _that the will always is as the greatest apparent good, or as what appears most agreeable_, than to say the will is determined by the greatest apparent good, or by what seems most agreeable; because an appearing most agreeable to the mind, and the mind's preferring, seem scarcely distinct. If strict propriety of speech be insisted on, it may more properly be said, that the _voluntary action_, which is the immediate consequence of the mind's choice, is determined by that which appears most agreeable, than the choice itself." After all, then, it seems that choice itself, or volition, is not determined by that which appears the most agreeable; because, in reality, the sense of the most agreeable and volition are one and the same thing. But surely, if we cannot distinguish between choice and the sense of the most agreeable, then to say that the one always is as the other, is only to say that a thing is always as it is. Edwards saw the absurdity of saying that a thing is determined by itself; but he does not seem to have seen how insignificant is the proposition, that a thing is always as it is, and not otherwise; and hence this is the form in which he has chosen to present the great leading idea of his work on the will. And henceforth we are to understand, that the preference of the mind is always as that which appears most agreeable to the mind; or, in other words, that the preference or choice of the mind is always as the choice of the mind. This is not all. President Edwards himself has frequently reduced the fundamental doctrine of the Inquiry to an identical proposition. It is well known, that "to be determined by the strongest motive," "to follow the greatest apparent good," "to do what is most agreeable," or "what pleases most," are all different modes of expression employed by him to set forth the same fundamental doctrine. In speaking of this doctrine, he says: "There is scarcely a plainer and more _universal_ dictate of the sense and experience of mankind, than that, when men act voluntarily, and do what they please, then they do what suits them best, or what is most _agreeable to them_. To say, that they do what _pleases_ them, but yet not what is agreeable to them, is the same thing as to say, they do what they please, but do not act their pleasure; and that is to say, that they do what they please, and yet do not what they please." Most assuredly, if to deny the leading proposition of the Inquiry, is to deny that men do what they please when they do what they please; then to affirm it, is only to advance the insignificant truism, that men do what they please when they do what they please. It seems to me, that after President Edwards had reduced his fundamental proposition to such a truism, he might very well have spared himself the three hundred pages that follow.