I must now fix my attention, for a few moments, on the most metaphysical part of this work. We can, perhaps, form an idea of a world existing without a beginning, and by the laws of blind necessity, provided that world was immoveable and invariable in all its parts; but how apply the idea of eternity to a continual succession; as such a nature is necessarily composed of a beginning and end, we cannot otherwise define the idea of succession; thus, we are constrained to elevate ourselves to a first Being existing by himself, when we have before our eyes a constant revolution of causes and effects, of destruction and life. It is impossible to have any idea of motion without that of a beginning. The difficulty would not be removed, by saying, that the whole of the universe is immutable, and the parts only subject to change; for a whole of this kind, without any relation whatever, either real or imaginary, a like whole has only an ideal circumscription, which, in fact, is not susceptible of an alteration; but such a circumscription only presents us an assemblage of positive things contained in its circle; and it is not in studying those, nor in examining the different parts of the unknown whole, which we call the universe, that we are allowed to draw consequences, or to form a judgment. Thus, seeing only a succession, we rationally feel the necessity of a first cause. But, some will say, you are entangled in the same difficulty, when you suppose the eternity of a God; for a series of designs in an intelligent being should lead to the idea of a commencement, as well as the successions of the physical world. This proposition, undoubtedly, is not easily cleared up, like all those whose solution appears to be united to the knowledge of infinity. We cannot, however, hinder ourselves from perceiving, that the physical generations lead us, in a manner simple and manifest, to the necessity of a first principle; and we ought to search for this principle out of ourselves, since our nature does not furnish any idea of it; whereas, the successive combinations of the mind may relate to an origin, of which we have not any conception, and which seems united, in some manner, to these same combinations. In fact, we can easily form a distinct idea of a faculty of thought, antecedent to the action of thinking, and which might even be separated by such intervals as the imagination could conceive. It is the same with liberty, that intellectual power of which we have the consciousness, at the same time that it remains absolutely idle.