188 CLARKE AND SPINOZA. [CHAP. XIII. 



CLARKE'S DEMONSTRATION. 



PROPOSITION I. 

 5. " Something has existed from eternity" 



The proof is as follows : 



" For since something now is, 'tis manifest that something 

 always was. Otherwise the things that now are must have risen 

 out of nothing, absolutely and without cause. Which is a 

 plain contradiction in terms. For to say a thing is produced, 

 and yet that there is no cause at all of that production, is to say 

 that something is effected when it is effected by nothing, that is, 

 at the same time when it is not effected at all. Whatever exists 

 has a cause of its existence, either in the necessity of its own 

 nature, and thus it must have been of itself eternal : or in the 

 will of some other being, and then that other being must, at least 

 in the order of nature and causality, have existed before it." 



Let us now proceed to analyze the above demonstration. Its 

 first sentence is resolvable into the following propositions : 



1st. Something is. 



2nd. If something is, either something always was, or the 

 things that now are must have risen out of nothing. 



The next portion of the demonstration consists of a proof 

 that the second of the above alternatives, viz., " The things that 

 now are have risen out of nothing," is impossible, and it may 

 formally be resolved as follows : 



3rd. If the things that now are have risen out of nothing, 

 something has been effected, and at the same time that some- 

 thing has been effected by nothing. 



4th. If that something has been effected by nothing, it has 

 not been effected at all. 



The second portion of this argument appears to be a mere 

 assumption of the point to be proved, or an attempt to make that 

 point clearer by a different verbal statement. 



The third and last portion of the demonstration contains a dis- 

 tinct proof of the truth of either the original proposition to be 

 proved, viz., " Something always was," or the point proved in 

 the second part of the demonstration, viz., the untenable nature 



