s processes of his
reasoning with some one clear and distinct idea before his mind, we might
have expected great things from him; but he has not chosen to do so. It is
with the term _cause_ that he operates, against the ambiguities of which
he has not guarded himself or his reader.

"Having thus explained what I mean by cause," says he, "I assert that
nothing ever comes to pass without a cause." We have seen his reasoning on
this point. He labours through page after page to establish his very
ambiguous proposition, in a sense in which nobody ever denied it; unless
some one has affirmed that a thing may come into being without any ground
or reason of its existence,--may arise out of nothing and help itself into
existence. Having sufficiently established his fundamental proposition in
this sense, he proceeds to show that every effect and volition in
particular, is necessarily connected with its cause. "It must be
remembered," says he, "that it has been already shown, that nothing can
ever come to pass without a cause or a reason;"(116) and he then proceeds
to show, that "the acts of the will must be connected with their cause."
In this part of his argument, he employs his ambiguous proposition in a
different sense from that in which he established it. In the establishment
of it he only insists that there must be some antecedent sufficient to
account for every event; and in the application of it he contends, that
the antecedent or cause must produce the event. These ideas are perfectly
distinct. There could be no act of the mind unless there were a mind to
act, and unless there were a motive in view of which it acts; but it does
not follow that the mind is compelled to act by motive. But let us see how
he comes to this conclusion.

"For an event," says he, "to have a cause and ground of its existence, and
yet not be connected with its cause, is an inconsistency. For if the event
be not connected with its cause, it is not dependent on the cause: _its
existence is, as it were, loose from its influence, and may attend it or
may not_."(117) "Dependence on the influence of a cause is the very notion
of an effect."(118) Again, "to suppose there are some events which have a
cause and ground of their existence, that yet are not necessarily
connected with their cause, is to suppose that they have a cause which is
not their cause. Thus, if the effect be not necessarily connected with the
cause, with its influence and influential cir