Foreknowledge by Joel Hayes - Library of Theology

previous motive to induce the choice of the motive. This previous motive, on the same principle, must be
chosen in the choice of the original motive, and there must therefore be still another previous motive to
induce the choice of it, and so on. "Which brings us directly to a contradiction," for it supposes a motive
preceding the first motive in the whole train.
Dr. Whedon and President Edwards, however, are right in assuming, as a matter of intuitive
perception, that the motive is chosen in the choice of the object. But they might have gone farther; they might
more truly have assumed that the motive is the only real object of choice. Dr. Whedon, for instance, might
have said that, in the strict sense of the term, the rose is not chosen at all, but only the sweetness. For
suppose, after choosing the rose (in the wider sense of the term), I find that it is not sweet as I supposed,
I immediately conclude that I did not want that rose. Now, it is evident that in such a case no change is made
in the real choice as an act of the will, but only in the judgment which was a concomitant of that choice. I now
refuse the rose by the same act of choice by which I chose the sweetness and refused its absence.
Moreover, if, while that choice remains, some other thing is found to possess the sweetness which I
supposed to belong to the rose, that other thing is immediately chosen. The same act of choice results in
the choice of something else.
The sweetness, or the objective motive, then, is the real object of choice in its ultimate sense. But
the sweetness of the rose is simply its capability of gratifying the sense of smell. The same idea may be
expressed otherwise, therefore, by saying that we choose to gratify our sense of smell, or that we choose
our sense of smell as a thing to gratify. In one sense we choose the sweetness of the rose, the objective
motive; in another sense we choose the sense of smell, the subjective motive. The motive, then, in either
of these senses, is the real object of choice, or the thing chosen.
The same result may be reached on the general assumption made by President Edwards. He
supposes that we cannot choose an object without preferring the corresponding motive; that therefore the
choice of the object necessarily results from the choice of the motive. The motive, then, is the real object
of choice. For suppose, after choosing the object to which in our judgment the strongest motive attaches,
our judgment should change, so that in our judgment the strongest motive should attach to the other object;
it would evidently require no new act of choice to prefer that other object. The other object would be
preferred as a different act or state of the judgment, but the pose of the will would remain the same. This
conclusion is based on the fact, intuitively perceived, that an action of will is an entirely different thing from
an act of judgment; that it is not dependent on it, and therefore does not necessarily change with it.
As we are considering free volitions as the only source of holiness or sin in a created being, this
thought will perhaps be placed in clearer light if we turn our attention to actions which are morally good or
bad. Suppose, for instance, that some one has done me an injury. I determine to have revenge, and, in order
to this, decide on a certain course of conduct. Before putting my design into execution, however, I find that
I can better gratify my revenge in another way. That other way is immediately chosen. Now, here there is
evidently no change in my determination--my real act of choice--but only in my judgment as to how I shall
carry that determination into effect. The free act of the will, which consisted in my choice to gratify my
revenge, has undergone no change. I am the same man in moral character that I was before. The choice
to gratify my revenge was the only real act of choice. On that, and on that alone, my moral character
depended. All the collateral circumstances, all the other elements which entered into my conduct, might have
changed, but this choice remaining, my moral character remained the same.
This illustration covers all cases of moral conduct. Whatever I do voluntarily is done to gratify some
desire, appetite, passion, or propensity of the soul--some one of the moral or pathematic sensibilities. Some
emotion, in the widest sense of the term, is always the real object of choice, so that, as long as my choice
to gratify this emotion remains, my moral character (as much of it as is concerned in the line of conduct
prompted by that emotion) does not change. In all these cases, too, both the objective and the subjective
motives are, in different senses, the real objects of choice. I choose, in one sense, the capability of a line
of conduct to gratify an emotion, the objective motive; in another sense, I choose the emotion itself as a thing
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