of the physical sciences, because these sciences deal only with limited sections of the phenomena of the universe, regarded in those immediate, invariable, unconditional relations to one another, which have been fixed for them, and to which their objects are adapted, by the free First Cause and Governor of all, and which are commonly spoken of as the “laws of nature.” But the hypothesis of a chain of mutually dependent sequences, which is sufficient for the explanation that the sciences of external nature ask for, regarding the particular orders of phenomena which are their objects, implies the absurdity of a chain without a beginning, when brought, as it is before it is capable of yielding the Necessarian inference, to give a conclusive explanation of all the phenomena which may be made the objects of investigation by man. It cannot, therefore, act as an insurmountable bar against the possibility either of an uncreated or a created free-will.
In a word, on the side of liberty, man is lost in the mystery of absolute commencement. On the side of universal necessity, he is lost in the mystery, or rather the contradiction, of infinite dependent succession. And thus it seems a conclusive inference, that this long-debated problem is indeed insoluble by man, or by any other being whose power of thought is limited like his. It is, however, practically solved, as similar problems in regard to other objects of our speculative nature are, in the existence of those feelings, by which we are compelled to assume, as a first principle,
