s, excepting, perhaps, the "moral argument" drawn from the
facts of conscience.

(I.) _The_ AETIOLOGICAL _proof_, or the argument based upon the principle
of causality, which may be presented in the following form:

All genesis or becoming supposes a permanent and uncaused
Being, adequate to the production of all phenomena.

The sensible universe is a perpetual genesis, a succession
of appearances: it is "always becoming, and never really
is."

Therefore, it must have its cause and origin in a permanent
and unoriginated Being, adequate to its production.

The major premise of this syllogism is a fundamental principle of
reason--a self-evident truth, an axiom of common sense, and as such has
been recognized from the very dawn of philosophy. [Greek: Adounaton
ginesthai ti ek medenos prouparxonios]--_Ex nihilo nihil_--_Nothing
which once was not, could ever of itself come into being_. Nothing can
be made or produced without an efficient cause, is the oldest maxim of
philosophy. It is true that this maxim was abusively employed by
Democritus and Epicurus to disprove a Divine creation of any thing out
of nothing, yet the great body of ancient philosophers, as Pythagoras,
Xenophanes, Parmenides, Zeno, Anaxagoras, Empedocles, Plato, and
Aristotle, regarded it as the announcement of an universal conviction,
that nothing can be produced without an efficient cause;--order can not
be generated out of chaos, life out of dead matter, consciousness out of
unconsciousness, reason out of unreason. A first principle of life, of
order, of reason, must have existed anterior to all manifestions of
order, of life, of intelligence, in the visible universe. It was clearly
in this sense that Cicero understood this great maxim of the ancient
philosophers of Greece. With him "_De nihilo nihil fit"_ is equivalent
to "_Nihil sine causa_"--nothing exists without a cause. This is
unquestionably the form in which that fundamental law of thought is
stated by Plato: "Whatever is generated is necessarily generated from a
certain cause, for it is wholly impossible that any thing should be
generated without a cause."[887] And the efficient cause is defined as
"a power whereby that which did not previously exist was afterwards made
to be."[888] It is scarcely needful to remark that Aristotle, the
scholar of Plato, frequently lays it down as a postulate of reason,
"that we admit nothing without a cause."[889] B