But again, what light is cast by this ambitious regress on the nature of the fountain-head. How is the being we are supposed to have reached at length, the source of that series of effects which are supposed to have sprung from his creative fiat? If we experienced a difficulty in our regress in connecting the last link of the chain with the _causa causans_, we experience the same or a counter-difficulty in our descent, in connecting the first link of the chain with the creative energy. And how, it may be asked, do we connect that supreme cause with intelligence, or with personality? We have called the assumption of this [Greek: archê] a leap in the dark, and we ask how can we ever escape from the phenomenal series of effects which we perceive in nature, to the noumenal source of which we are in search? By the observation of what is or what has been, we merely ascend backwards in time, through the ever-changing forms of phenomenal energy (our effects being but developed causes, and our causes potential effects), but we never reach a noumenal source. That is reserved for the flight of the speculative reason vainly soaring into the empyrean, beyond the very atmosphere of thought.
The admission that _some kind_ of being or substance must have always existed in the universe, is the common property of all the systems of philosophy. Materialist and idealist, theist and atheist, alike admit it, but its admission is _theologically worthless_. 'The notion of a God,' says Sir William Hamilton, in his admirable manner, 'is not contained in the notion of a mere first cause; for, in the admission of a first cause, atheist and theist are as one.' The being that is assumed to exist is, therefore, a mere blank essence, a zero, an 'everything = nothing,' so far as this argument can carry us. Nature remains a fathomless abyss, telling us nothing of its whence and whither. It is still the fountain-head of inscrutable mystery, which overshadows and overmasters us. The _natura naturata_ casts no light on the _natura naturans_. The systole and diastole of the universe goes on; the flux and reflux of its phenomena are endless. That something always was, every one admits. The question between the rival philosophic schools is as to what that something was and is. We may choose to call it 'the first cause,' (an explanation which implies that our notion of endless regression has broken down) and we may say that we have reached the notion of an uncaused cause. But is that a notion at all? Is it intelligible, conceivable? Do we not, in the very assumption, bid farewell to reason, and fall back on some form of faith?