I. We are now prepared to appreciate the Necessitarian argument, based upon the assumption, that "the Will always is as the greatest apparent good." This assumption is the great pillar on which that doctrine rests. Yet the whole argument based upon it is a perpetual reasoning in a circle. Ask the Necessitarian to give the grand argument in favor of his doctrine. His answer is, because "the Will _always_ is as the greatest apparent good." Cite now such facts as those stated above in contradiction of his assumption, and his answer is ready. There must be, in all such cases, some perceived or felt ground of preference, or there could be no act of Will in the case. There must have been, for example, some point in space more eligible than any other for the location of the universe, and this must have been the reason why God selected the one he did. Ask him why he makes this declaration? His reply is, because "the Will is always as the greatest apparent good." Thus this assumption becomes premise or conclusion, just as the exigence of the theory based upon it demands. Nothing is so convenient and serviceable as such an assumption, when one has a very difficult and false position to sustain. But who does not see, that it is a most vicious reasoning in a circle? To assume the proposition, "the Will always is as the greatest apparent good," in the first instance, as the basis of a universal theory, and then to assume the truth of that proposition as the basis of the explanation of particular facts, which contradict that theory, what is reasoning in a circle if this is not? No one has a right to assume this proposition as true at all, until he has first shown that it is affirmed by all the phenomena of the Will. On its authority he has no right to explain a solitary phenomenon. To do it is not only to reason in a circle, but to beg the question at issue. MOTIVES CAUSE ACTS OF WILL, IN WHAT SENSE. II. We are also prepared to notice another assumption of President Edwards, which, if admitted in the sense in which he assumes it as true, necessitates the admission of the Necessitarian scheme, to wit: that the determination of the Will is always _caused_ by the Motive present to the mind for putting forth that determination. "It is that motive," he says, "which, as it stands in the view of the mind, is the strongest which determines the Will." Again, "that every act of the Will has some cause, and consequently (by what has been already proved) has a necessary connection with its cause, and so is necessary by a necessity of connection and consequence, is evident by this, that every act of Will, whatsoever, is excited by some motive." "But if every act of the Will is excited by some motive, then that motive is the cause of that act of the Will." "And if volitions are properly the effects of their motives, then they are necessarily connected with their motives."