modification of existence, without shewing at the same time the
impossibility there is, that any thing can ever begin to exist without
some productive principle; and where the latter proposition cannot be
proved, we must despair of ever being able to prove the former. Now that
the latter proposition is utterly incapable of a demonstrative proof, we
may satisfy ourselves by considering that as all distinct ideas are
separable from each other, and as the ideas of cause and effect are
evidently distinct, it will be easy for us to conceive any object to be
non-existent this moment, and existent the next, without conjoining to it
the distinct idea of a cause or productive principle. The separation,
therefore, of the idea of a cause from that of a beginning of existence,
is plainly possible for the imagination; and consequently the actual
separation of these objects is so far possible, that it implies no
contradiction nor absurdity; and is therefore incapable of being refuted
by any reasoning from mere ideas; without which it is impossible to
demonstrate the necessity of a cause.

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
[Mr. Hobbes.], in which we can suppose any object to be-in 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 suspence; 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