Admit that volition is an effect, and what can we say? Can we say, that the strongest motive may exist, and yet no volition may follow from it? To this the necessitarian would instantly reply, that it any thing exists, and no volition follows thereupon, it is evidently not the cause of volition, and consequently is not the strongest motive; for this, according to the definition, includes every cause of volition: it is indeed absurd, to suppose that an effect should not proceed from its cause: This is the ground taken both by President Edwards and President Day. It is absurd, says the latter, to suppose that a weaker motive, or any thing else, can prevail over the stronger--and why? Because the strongest motive is that which prevails. "If it be said," he continues, "that _something else_ gives the weaker motive a superiority over the stronger; _then this something else is itself a motive_, and the united influence of the two is greater than that of the third," p. 66. Thus, say what we will, we can never escape this admirable net of words, that the will is determined by that which determines it. I do not intend, then, to engage in the hopeless task, of admitting volition to be an effect, and yet striving to extricate it from "the mechanism of cause and effect." This ground has long since been occupied by much abler persons than myself; and if they have failed of success, falling into innumerable inconsistencies, it is because, on such ground, success is impossible; and that notwithstanding their transcendant abilities, they have been fated to contradict themselves. SECTION IV. VOLITION NOT AN EFFECT. THE argument of the Inquiry, as I have shown, assumes that a volition is an effect in the proper sense of the word; that it is the correlative of an efficient cause. If it were necessary, this point might be established by a great variety of additional considerations; but, I presume that every candid reader of the Inquiry is fully satisfied in relation to it. If we mean by an effect, every thing that comes to pass, of course a volition is an effect; for no one can deny that it comes to pass. Or, if we include in the definition of the term, every thing which has a sufficient reason and ground of its existence, we cannot deny that it embraces the idea of a volition. For, under certain circumstances, the free mind will furnish a sufficient reason and ground of the existence of a volition. All that I deny is, that a volition does proceed from the mind, or from motive, or from anything else, in the same manner that an effect, properly so called, proceeds from its efficient cause.