Having settled it to his entire satisfaction, by this and other arguments, that no effect whatever can produce itself, he then proceeds to show that this proposition is true of volitions as well as of all other events or occurrences. “If any should imagine,” says he, “there is something in the sort of event that renders it possible to come into existence without a cause, and should say that the free acts of the will are existences of an _exceeding different nature_ from other things, by reason of which they may come into existence without _previous ground or reason of it_, though other things cannot; if they make this objection in good earnest, it would be an evidence of their strangely forgetting themselves; for it would be giving some account of the existence of a thing, when, at the same time, they would maintain there is no ground of its existence.”(111) True, if any man should suppose that a volition rises up in the world “without any ground or reason of its existence,” and afterward endeavour to assign a ground or reason of it, he would certainly be strangely inconsistent with himself; but we should deem his last position, that there must be a ground or reason of its existence, to be some evidence of _his coming to himself_, rather than of his having forgotten himself. But to proceed with the argument. “Therefore I would observe,” says he, “that the particular nature of existence, be it never so diverse from others, can lay no foundation for that thing coming into existence without a cause; because, to suppose this, would be to suppose the _particular nature_ of existence to be a thing prior to existence, without a cause or reason of existence. But that which in any respect makes way for a thing coming into being, or for any manner or circumstance of its first existence, must be prior to existence. The distinguished nature of the effect, which is something belonging to the effect, cannot have influence backward to act before it is. The peculiar nature of that thing called volition, can do nothing, can have no influence, while it is not. And afterward it is too late for its influence; for then the thing has made sure of its existence already without its help.”(112) After all this reasoning, and more to the same effect, we are perfectly satisfied that volition, no matter what its nature may be, cannot produce itself; and that it must have some ground or reason of its existence, some antecedent without which it could not come into being.