Note (return) — Chapter XIV

The major premise of this syllogism is a fundamental principle of reason--a self-evident truth, an axiom of common sense, and as such has been recognized from the very dawn of philosophy. Ἀδύνατον γίνεσθαί τι ἐκ µηδενὸς προὔπάρχοντος--Ex nihilo nihil--Nothing which once was not, could ever of itself come into being. Nothing can be made or produced without an efficient cause, is the oldest maxim of philosophy. It is true that this maxim was abusively employed by Democritus and Epicurus to disprove a Divine creation of any thing out of nothing, yet the great body of ancient philosophers, as Pythagoras, Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato, and Aristotle, regarded it as the announcement of an universal conviction, that nothing can be produced without an efficient cause;--order can not be generated out of chaos, life out of dead matter, consciousness out of unconsciousness, reason out of unreason. A first principle of life, of order, of reason, must have existed anterior to all manifestions of order, of life, of intelligence, in the visible universe. It was clearly in this sense that Cicero understood this great maxim of the ancient philosophers of Greece. With him "De nihilo nihil fit" is equivalent to "Nihil sine causa"--nothing exists without a cause. This is unquestionably the form in which that fundamental law of thought is stated by Plato: "Whatever is generated is necessarily generated from a certain cause, for it is wholly impossible that any thing should be generated without a cause." 887 And the efficient cause is defined as "a power whereby that which did not previously exist was afterwards made to be." 888 It is scarcely needful to remark that Aristotle, the scholar of Plato, frequently lays it down as a postulate of reason, "that we admit nothing without a cause." 889 By an irresistible law of thought, "all phenomena present themselves to us as the expression of power, and refer us to a causal ground whence they issue."