Accordingly, we shall find upon examination, that every demonstration, which has been produced for the necessity of a cause, is fallacious and sophistical. All the points of time and place, say some philosophers,[3] in which we can suppose any object to begin to exist, are in themselves equal; and unless there be some cause, which is peculiar to one time and to one place, and which by that means determines and fixes the existence, it must remain in eternal suspense; and the object can never begin to be, for want of something to fix its beginning. But I ask, is there any more difficulty in supposing the time and place to be fixed without a cause, than to suppose the existence to be determined in that manner! The first question that occurs on this subject is always, _whether_ the object shall exist or not: the next, _when_ and _where_ it shall begin to exist. If the removal of a cause be intuitively absurd in the one case, it must be so in the other: and if that absurdity be not clear without a proof in the one case, it will equally require one in the other. The absurdity then of the one supposition can never be a proof of that of the other; since they are both upon the same footing, and must stand or fall by the same reasoning. The second argument,[4] which I find used on this head, labours under an equal difficulty. Every thing, 'tis said, must have a cause; for if any thing wanted a cause, _it_ would produce _itself_, that is, exist before it existed, which is impossible. But this reasoning is plainly unconclusive; because it supposes that, in our denial of a cause, we still grant what we expressly deny, viz. that there must be a cause; which therefore is taken to be the object itself; and _that_, no doubt, is an evident contradiction. But to say that any thing is produced, or, to express myself more properly, comes into existence, without a cause, is not to affirm that 'tis itself its own cause; but, on the contrary, in excluding all external causes, excludes _a fortiori_ the thing itself which is created. An object that exists absolutely without any cause, certainly is not its own cause; and when you assert, that the one follows from the other, you suppose the very point in question, and take it for granted, that 'tis utterly impossible any thing can ever begin to exist without a cause, but that, upon the exclusion of one productive principle, we must still have recourse to another.