He attempts an analysis by the logical Understanding, where a synthesis by the Reason is required,--a synthesis which has already been given by our Creator to man as an original idea. It is not necessary to examine some limited thing, or all limited things, and wander around their boundaries to learn that the First Cause is infinite. We need to make no discursus, but only to look the idea of first cause through and through, and thoroughly analyze it, to find all the truth. By such a process we would find all that Mr. Spencer concedes that "we are obliged to suppose," and further, that such a being _must be_ self-existent. And this conviction would be so strong that the mind would rest itself in this decision: "A thousand phantasmagoria of the imagination may be wrong," says the soul, "but this I know must be true, or there is no truth in the Universe." One sentence in the paragraph now under consideration deserves special notice. It is this. "But if we admit that there can be some thing uncaused, there is no reason to assume a cause for anything." This "assumes" the truth of a major premise all _things_ are substantially alike. If the word "thing" is restricted to its exact limits,--objects of sense,--then the sentence pertains wholly to the Sense and Understanding, and is true. But if, as it would seem, the implication is meant that there are no other entities which can be object to the mind except such "things," then it is a clear _petitio principii_. For the very question at issue is, whether, in fact, there is not one entity--"thing"--which so differs in kind from all others, that it is uncaused, _i. e._ self-existent; and whether the admission that that entity is uncaused does not, because of this seen difference, satisfy the mind, and furnish a reasonable ground on which to account for the subordinate causes which we observe by the Sense.