cause, Mr. Holyoake ascribes all the phenomena of the universe; or he leaves them utterly unaccounted for, and takes refuge in an eternal series of derived and dependent beings, without attempting to assign any reason for their existence. He undertakes to account for nothing. He leaves the great problem unsolved, and discards it as insoluble. "Mr. Harrison demanded of me, where the first man came from? I said, I did not know; I was not in the secrets of Nature." "I cannot accept, says one, the theory of progressive development, it is so intricate and unsatisfying." "If something must be self-existent and eternal, says another, why may not matter and all its properties be that something?" "The Atheist holds that the universe is an endless series of causes and effects _ad infinitum_, and therefore the idea of a _first_ cause is an absurdity and a contradiction."[289] In short, the eternity of the world is assumed, the origin of new races is left unexplained, and no account whatever is given of the order which everywhere exists in Nature. In the last resort, he takes refuge in the plea of _ignorance_. His only answer is, "I do not know, I am not in the secrets of Nature." But how does his extension of Paley's argument justify the position which he now assumes? Or how can it invalidate the admissions which he had previously made? That extension of the argument, even were it supposed to be legitimate, amounts simply to this, that a designer must be an organized being, and, as such, must have had a cause. But what analogy suggests, or what law of reason requires, an _infinite series_ of such causes? And what is there in this extension of the argument that should exclude the idea of a First Cause? It is thought, indeed, that by connecting intelligence with organization, we may succeed at least in excluding His infinity, His omnipresence, and other attributes which are ascribed to the Most High: but the main stress of the argument rests not on the fact of organization, but on the supposed necessity of _an endless series_ of contrivers to account for the existence of any one intelligent being, whether organized or not is of little moment. Now, this is a mere assumption, an assumption entirely destitute of proof, an assumption which is not necessarily involved even in the proposed extension of the analogy: for all that the analogy, however extended, can possibly require is a cause adequate to the production of designing minds, and that cause may be a self-existent, underived, and eternal Being. Let the analogy be extended ever so far, it must reach a point at which we are compelled, by the fundamental law of _causality_, to rise to a self-existent Being, exempt from all conditions of time, space, and causality. Mr. Holyoake admits the very same truth in regard to Nature which we maintain in regard to God: "I am driven to the conclusion that Nature is eternal, because we are unable to conceive a state of things when nothing was....