"--(I. p. 106.)
Now the "first cause" is assumed to have existed from all eternity, up
to the moment at which the universe came into existence. Hence it cannot
be the sole cause of the universe; in fact, it was no cause at all until
it was "assisted by some other principle"; consequently the so-called
"first cause," so far as it produces the universe, is in reality an
effect of that other principle. Moreover, though, in the person of
Philo, Hume assumes the axiom "that whatever begins to exist must have a
cause," which he denies in the _Treatise_, he must have seen, for a
child may see, that the assumption is of no real service.
Suppose Y to be the imagined first cause and Z to be its effect. Let the
letters of the alphabet, _a_, _b_, _c_, _d_, _e_, _f_, _g_, in their
order, represent successive moments of time, and let _g_ represent the
particular moment at which the effect Z makes its appearance. It follows
that the cause Y could not have existed "in its full perfection" during
the time _a_--_e_, for if it had, then the effect Z would have come into
existence during that time, which, by the hypothesis, it did not do. The
cause Y, therefore, must have come into existence at _f_, and if
"everything that comes into existence has a cause," Y must have had a
cause X operating at _e_; X, a cause W operating at _d_; and, so on, _ad
infinitum_.[31]
If the only demonstrative argument for the existence of a Deity, which
Hume advances, thus, literally, "goes to water" in the solvent of his
philosophy, the reasoning from the evidence of design does not fare much
better.
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