Note (return) — Chapter VII

1st. The invalidity of "the principle of causality" is asserted by this author. "We allow that the argument which proves that the effects with which we are surrounded have been caused, and thus leads us up through a chain of subordinate causes to one First Cause, has a simplicity, an obviousness, and a force which, when we are previously furnished with the idea of God, makes it, at first sight, difficult to conceive that men, under any degree of cultivation, should be inadequate to it; yet if ever the human mind commenced such an inquiry at all, it is highly probable that it would rest in the notion of an eternal succession of causes and effects, rather than acquire the ideas of creation, in the proper sense, and of a Supreme Creator." 357 "We feel that our reason rests with full satisfaction in the doctrine that all things are created by one eternal and self-existent Being; but the Greek philosophers held that matter was eternally co-existent with God. This was the opinion of Plato, who has been called the Moses of philosophy." 358