Mozley: A Treatise on the Augustinian Doctrine of

22 Examination of the CHAP. n.
To take first, then, the maxim that every event must
have a cause. This is a maxim undoubtedly that approves
itself to our understanding.
If we see a body which has
hitherto been at rest, start out of this state of rest and
begin to move, we naturally and necessarily suppose that
there must be some cause or reason of this new mode of ex
istence. And this applies
to moral events or actions as well
as to events physical. Every action which is performed is
undoubtedly a new event in nature, and as such there must
have been some cause to it. produce Moreover, on the same
principle that the action itself must have a cause, that cause
must have another cause, and so on, till we come to some
cause outside of and beyond the agent himself. The
maxim, then, that there must be a cause of every event once
granted, the conclusion of a necessity
in human actions
inevitably follows.
But though the maxim that every event must have a
cause is undoubtedly true, what kind of a truth is it ? Is
it a truth absolute and complete, like a fact of sensation or
reflection ; or is it a truth indistinct, incipient, and in ten
dency only, like one of those ideas which have just been
discussed ? It is a truth of the latter kind, for this simple
truth to it. When we look
reason, that there is a contrary
into our minds, and examine the nature and characteristics
of action, we find that we have a certain natural and irre
sistible impression or sense of our originality as agents.
We feel beforehand that we can do a thing or not as we
please, and when we have taken either course, we feel after
wards that we could have taken the other, and experience
satisfaction or regret, as may be, on that particular account.
That our actions are original in us, is the ground upon
which arise peculiar pleasures and pains of conscience,
which are known and familiar to us. Could we really think
that they were not, we should be without these particular
feelings ; we should not have a certain class of sensations
which we know we have. We have, then, a certain sense
or perception of our
originality as agents, that an action
is
original in us, or has no cause.
This
originality in human actions is, for want of better