3g ULTIMATE RELIGIOUS IDEAS. 



on all skies — or rather, the same difficulties under new as- 

 pects. We find ourselves on the one hand obliged to make 

 certain assumptions; and yet on the other hand we find 

 these assumptions cannot be represented in thought. 



When we inquire what is the meaning of the various 

 effects produced upon our senses — when we ask how there 

 come to be in our consciousness impressions of sounds, of col- 

 ours, of tastes, and of those various attributes which we as- 

 cribe to bodies; we are compelled to regard them as the ef- 

 fects of some cause. We may stop short in the belief 

 that this cause is what we call matter. Or we may 

 conclude, as some do, that matter is only a cer- 

 tain mode of manifestation of spirit; which is there- 

 fore the true cause. Or, regarding matter and spirit 

 as proximate agencies, we may attribute all the changes 

 wrought in our consciousness to immediate divine power. 

 But be the cause we assign what it may, we are obliged to 

 suppose some cause. And we are not only obliged to sup- 

 pose some cause, but also a first cause. The matter, or spirit, 

 or whatever we assume to be the agent producing on us these 

 various impressions, must either be the first cause of them or 

 not. If it is the first cause, the conclusion is reached. If it 

 is not the first cause, then by implication there must be a 

 cause behind it; which thus becomes the real cause of the 

 effect. Manifestly, however complicated the assumptions, 

 the same conclusion must inevitably be reached. We can- 

 not think at all about the impressions which the external 

 world produces on us, without thinking of them as caused; 

 and we cannot carry out an inquiry concerning their causa- 

 tion, without inevitably committing ourselves to the hypo- 

 thesis of a First Cause. 



But now if we go a step further, and ask what is the na- 

 ture of this First Cause, we are driven by an inexorable 

 logic to certain further conclusions. Is the First Cause finite 

 or infinite? If we say finite we involve ourselves in a di- 

 lemma. To think of the First Cause as finite, is to think of 



