To make this matter clear, let us consider what is precisely meant by the term cause when it is thus used? An effect is necessarily connected, not with the _thing_ which is sometimes called its cause, but with the _action_ or _positive influence_ of that thing. Thus, the mind, or the power of the mind, is sometimes said to be the cause of motion in the body; but this is not to speak with philosophical precision. No motion of the body is necessarily connected, either with the mind itself, or with the power of the mind. In other words, if these should lie dormant, or fail to act, they would produce no bodily motion. But let the mind act, or will a particular motion, and the body will necessarily move in consequence of that action. Hence, it is neither with the mind, nor with the power of the mind, that bodily motion, as an effect, is necessarily connected; it is with an act of the mind or volition that this necessary connection subsists. A cause is said to imply its effect: it is not the mind, but an act of the mind, that implies motion in the body. This is evidently the idea of Edwards, when he says, as he frequently does, that an effect is necessarily connected with the _influence_ or _action_ of its cause. The term _cause_ is ambiguous; and when he says, that an effect is necessarily connected with its cause, he should be understood to mean, in accordance with his own doctrine, that the cause referred to _is the influence_ or _action_ by which it is produced, and not the thing which exerts that _influence_ or _action_. Thus, although motives are said to be causes of action, he contends, they can do nothing except by their influence; and so much as results from their influence is the effect of that influence, and is necessarily connected with it. Now, if a volition is an effect, if it has an efficient cause, what is that cause? By the _action_ of what is it produced? It cannot be by the act of the mind, says Edwards, because the mind can produce an _effect_ only by another act. Thus, on the supposition in question, we cannot ascribe a volition to the mind as its cause, without being compelled to admit that it results from a preceding act of the mind. But that preceding act, on the same supposition, will require still another preceding act to account for its production; and so on _ad infinitum_. Such is the absurdity which Edwards delighted to urge against the self-determining power of the mind. It is triumphantly based on the concession that a volition is an effect; that as such the prior _action_ of something else is necessary to account for its existence. And if we suppose, in accordance with the truth, that a volition is merely a state of the mind, which does not sustain the same relation to the mind that an effect does to its efficient cause, this absurdity will vanish. The doctrine of liberty will no longer be encumbered with it.