he man.' "(37)
According to this Calvinistic divine, the will is not determined by the
strongest motive; on the contrary, it is self-active and self-determined.
"Mind is a self-acting substance," says he; "and hence its activity and
independence." In open defiance of all Calvinistic and necessitarian
philosophy, he even adopts the self-determining power of the will. "Nor
have necessitarians," says he, "even of the highest order, been
sufficiently careful to guard the language employed by them. Afraid of
making admissions to their opponents, we believe that none of them have
fully developed the phenomena of human spontaneity. Even Edwards ridicules
the idea of the faculty or power of will, or the soul in the use of that
power determining its own volitions. Now, we hold it to be an
incontrovertible fact, and one of great importance, that the true
determining cause of every given volition is not any mere anterior
incitement, but the very soul itself, by its inherent power of will."(38)
Surely, the author of such a passage cannot be accused of being afraid to
make concessions to his opponents. But this is not all. If possible, he
rises still higher in his views of the lofty, not to say god-like,
independence of the human will. "We rejoice," says he, "to recognise such
a being in man. We trust that we are cherishing no presumptuous feeling,
when we believe him to be free, as his Maker is free. We believe him,
morally speaking, to be as independent of external control as his Creator
must ever be--as that Creator was when, in a past eternity, there was no
external existence to control him."(39)

Yet, strange as it may seem, Mr. M'Cosh trembles at the idea of "removing
the creature from under the control of God;" and hence, he insists as
strenuously as any other necessitarian, that the mind, and all its
volitions, are subjected to the dominion of causes. "We are led by an
intuition of our nature," says he, "to a belief in the invariable
connexion between cause and effect; and we see numerous proofs of this law
of cause and effect reigning in the human mind as it does in the external
world, and reigning in the will as it does in every other department of
the mind."(40) Again: "It is by an intuition of our nature that we believe
this thought or feeling could not have been produced without a cause; and
that this same cause will again and forever produce the same effects. And
this intuitive principle leads us to expect the reign of