176 HUME vm 



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, &, c, d, e, f, g, in their order, represent successive 

 moments of time, and let g represent the particu- 

 lar 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 /, 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* 



* Kant employs substantially the same argument : 

 " Wiirde das hochste Wesen in dieser Kette der Bedingun- 

 gen stehen, so wurde es selbst ein Glied der Reihe dersel- 

 ben sein, und eben so wie die niederen Glieder, denen es 

 vorgesetzt ist, noch fernere Untersuchungen wegen seines 

 noch hoheren Grundes erfahren." Kritik. Ed. Harten- 

 stein, p. 422. 



