30 Philosophy of the Human Mind. 



from their adoption, will be attended to in a sub- 

 sequent part of this sketch/ 



During the last age, several detached parts of 

 the philosophy of mind have been illustrated in a 

 manner greatly superior to the attempts at expla- 

 nation made in former periods. Perhaps there is 

 no subject to which this remark more forcibly ap- 

 plies than to the great question of Liberty and Ne- 

 cessity, which, through so many successive ages, 

 has served to puzzle the acutest metaphysicians. 

 Never, probably, was any point more largely, ably, 

 and profoundly discussed. The writings of Leib- 

 nitz, Collins, Hume, Hartley, Priestley, and 

 Belsham, on the side of moral necessity; and of 

 Clarke, Butler, Reid, Beattie, De Luc, Gre- 

 gory, and Horsley, in favour of liberty, are well 

 known, and form very important materials in the 

 metaphysical history of the age. But the greatest 

 work which the century produced on this subject, 

 and certainly among the ablest ever written on 

 any department of philosophy, is that by the ce- 

 lebrated American Divine, Mr. Jonathan Ed- 

 wards, for some time President of the College of 

 New-Jersey. This gentleman wrote on the side 

 of moral necessity, or against the self-determining 

 power of the will; and investigated the subject 

 with a degree of originality, acuteness, depth, pre- 

 cision, and force of argument, which the accurate 

 reader cannot contemplate but with astonishment. 

 It will not be said that he has brought to an issue a 

 controversy, which will probably last as long as 

 men exist on earth; but that he has thrown much 

 new light on the subject will be questioned by 

 none ; and that he has approached as near to a de- 



y Some further remarks on this delusive system will also be found under 

 the head of Education, in the present volume. But in the third division of 

 the work, in which it is proposed to take a view of che moral principles and 

 establishments of the eighteenth century, a more particular consideration 

 of it will be attempted. 



