The admission that _some kind_ of being or substance must have always existed in the universe, is the common property of all the systems of philosophy. Materialist and idealist, theist and atheist, alike admit it, but its admission is _theologically worthless_. 'The notion of a God,' says Sir William Hamilton, in his admirable manner, 'is not contained in the notion of a mere first cause; for, in the admission of a first cause, atheist and theist are as one.' The being that is assumed to exist is, therefore, a mere blank essence, a zero, an 'everything = nothing,' so far as this argument can carry us. Nature remains a fathomless abyss, telling us nothing of its whence and whither. It is still the fountain-head of inscrutable mystery, which overshadows and overmasters us. The _natura naturata_ casts no light on the _natura naturans_. The systole and diastole of the universe goes on; the flux and reflux of its phenomena are endless. That something always was, every one admits. The question between the rival philosophic schools is as to what that something was and is. We may choose to call it 'the first cause,' (an explanation which implies that our notion of endless regression has broken down) and we may say that we have reached the notion of an uncaused cause. But is that a notion at all? Is it intelligible, conceivable? Do we not, in the very assumption, bid farewell to reason, and fall back on some form of faith? Finally, the moment that supposed cause is reached, does not the principle that was supposed to bring us to it break down? And by thus destroying the bridge behind us, the very principle of casuality which was valid in our progress and ascent, valid in the limited area of experience--now emptied of all philosophical meaning when we desert experience and rise to the transcendental--invalidates the whole series of effects which are supposed to have sprung from it? We need not rise above any single event, contingent and finite, to any other event as the proximate cause of it; if, when we have essayed to carry out the regress, we stop short, and, crying εὕρηκα, congratulate ourselves that we have at length reached an uncaused cause.