Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/56

 concerning the last. To what age do children continue necessary agents, and when do they become free? what different experience have they when they are suppos’d to be free agents, from what they had while necessary agents? And what different actions do they do from whence it appears, that they are necessary agents to a certain age, and free agents afterwards?

 II. A second reason to prove man a necessary agent is, because all his actions have a beginning. For whatever has a beginning must have a cause; and every cause is a necessary cause.

If anything can have a beginning which has no cause, then nothing can produce something. And if nothing can produce something, then the world might have had a beginning without a cause: which is not only an absurdity commonly charg’d on Atheists, but is a real absurdity in itself.

Besides, if a cause be not a necessary cause, it is no cause at all. For if causes are not necessary causes; then causes are not suited to, or are indifferent to effects; and the Epicurean System 