entity, we can frame 'clear and distinct ideas of'--a real though not
material existence, surely no man will pretend to say an uncreated
reality called Spirit, is less inexplicable than uncreated Matter. All
could not have been caused or created unless nothing can be a Cause, the
very notion of which involves the grossest of absurdities.

'Whatever is produced,' said Hume, 'without any cause, is produced by
nothing; or, in other words, has nothing for its cause. But nothing
never can be a cause no more than it can be something or equal to two
right angles. By the same intuition that we perceive nothing not to be
equal to two right angles, or not to be something, we perceive that it
can never be a cause and consequently must perceive that every object
has a real cause, of its existence. When we exclude all causes we really
do exclude them, and neither suppose nothing nor the object itself to be
the causes of the existence, and consequently can draw no argument from
the absurdity of these suppositions to prove the absurdity of that
exclusion. If everything must have a cause, it follows that upon the
exclusion of other causes we must accept of the object itself or nothing
as causes. But it is the very point in question whether everything must
have a cause or not, and therefore, according to all just reasoning
ought not to be taken for granted. [40:1]

This reasoning amounts to logical demonstration (if logical
demonstration there can be) of a most essential truth, which in all ages
has been obstinately set at nought by dabblers in the supernatural. It
demonstrates that something never was, never can be caused by nothing,
which can no more be a cause, properly so called, than 'it can be
something, or equal to two right angles;' and therefore that everything
could not have had a cause which the reader has seen is the very point
assumed by Theists--the very point on which as a pivot they so merrily