something, we perceive, that it can never be a cause; and consequently
must perceive, that every object has a real cause of its existence.

I believe it will not be necessary to employ many words in shewing the
weakness of this argument, after what I have said of the foregoing. They
are all of them founded on the same fallacy, and are derived from the
same turn of thought. It is sufficient only to observe, that 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 every thing must have a cause, it
follows, that upon the exclusion of other causes we must accept of the
object itself or of nothing as causes. But it is the very point in
question, whether every thing must have a cause or not; and therefore,
according to all just reasoning, it ought never to be taken for granted.

They are still more frivolous, who say, that every effect must have a,
cause, because it is implyed in the very idea of effect. Every effect
necessarily pre-supposes a cause; effect being a relative term, of which
cause is the correlative. But this does not prove, that every being must
be preceded by a cause; no more than it follows, because every husband
must have a wife, that therefore every man must be marryed. The true
state of the question is, whether every object, which begins to exist,
must owe its existence to a cause: and this I assert neither to be
intuitively nor demonstratively certain, and hope to have proved it
sufficiently by the foregoing arguments.

Since it is not from knowledge or any scientific reasoning, that we
derive the opinion of the necessity of a cause to every new production,
that opinion must necessarily arise from observation and experience. The