Most persons will probably be of opinion that a view like this is its own sufficient refutation; that the reasoning which tries to prove that reasoning may be necessarily and essentially self-contradictory is self-condemned. And they will be quite right in their opinion. If for any proposition the proof and counter-proof be equally cogent--if for contradictories there may be perfect demonstrations--it is not God only, but everything, that we shall have to cease to believe in. Such a _reductio ad absurdum_ of a proposition would be also a _reductio ad absurdum_ of the reason itself, leaving no inference, no intuition, no perception, to be rationally trusted. A scepticism more absolute and comprehensive than any human being has dared to advocate, would be the only legitimate result. Our whole nature would have to be regarded as a lie. But we need have no fear of reason thus terminating its existence by committing suicide. If we are disposed to be afraid that the human mind is in danger of so terrible a calamity, an examination of the reasoning by which it has been attempted to show that the idea of an infinite and absolute First Cause involves a variety of contradictions ought speedily to reassure us. Few persons of ordinary reasoning powers, if not committed to a foregone conclusion, will regard as "inexorable logic" the argumentation by which Mr Mansel and Mr Spencer fancy that they show that one and the same Being cannot be a cause, infinite and absolute, or its inferences as those "from which there appears to be no escape." On the contrary, ninety-nine men in a hundred will deem them extremely weak, and possessed of no other plausibility than that which they derive from an inaccurate and ambiguous use of language. There are arguments proving that there is a First Cause, and that the First Cause must be infinite and absolute, in which no fallacy can be detected. But the only arguments which have yet been invented to show that the First Cause cannot without contradiction be thought of as infinite and absolute, are good for little else than to exercise students of logic in the examination of fallacies. The two sets of arguments are by no means of equal worth and weight.