THERE IS A FIRST CAUSE. 119 



dour, and the autumn ripen the seeds of young life 

 for the coming year. 



Of all those appearances which, blending together, 

 produce so much beauty, and beauty so constantly 

 varying, and yet so constant in its succession that 

 it flows on in one unbroken stream, and which, as 

 we observe it, receives, in our knowledge of it, an 

 increase every moment, just as a river gains a rill 

 from every dell that it passes, we cannot say that 

 any one is the cause of any other. When we push 

 our observation of them, and our reflection on them, 

 as far as human knowledge can go, we find that they 

 all equally demand causes ; and that nothing but A 

 UNIVERSAL CAUSE could have produced them, or can 

 satisfy our minds when we come to the bourn where 

 observation stops. And whithersoever we direct 

 our contemplation, upwards or downwards, forwards 

 or backwards, in the extension of space, or in the 

 succession of time, we really can find no boundary 

 no greatest, no smallest, no first, no last ; and 

 yet, as appearance follows appearance in time, we 

 find that the whole are in succession, and that 

 nothing that now is could have been, if something 

 had not been before it ; and yet, though any one 

 of those successions of appearances (which we call 

 the laws of nature) can be suspended by the action 

 or resistance of some, almost any of the others, no 

 one of them can be destroyed or changed into 

 another how much soever its effects may be modi- 

 fied, we cannot even imagine that any of them 

 could have been the first cause of any other, or could 

 have existed without something preceding. 



It is much the same with the productions of nature 

 as with the laws ; and it cannot be very different, as 

 the productions are just the results or consequences 

 of the laws. We see that the habits of plants and 

 animals, and the properties of compound matter, 

 can be changed ; and when we once observe how 

 the change takes place, we generally are able, within 



