HKB
it is certain that our knowledge of the true sequence of all actual phenomena, as for instance the phenomena of generation, growth, and dissolution, is and ever must be imperfect.
We do not fare much better when we speak of Causes and Effects than when we speak of Nature. For the practical purposes of life we may use the terms cause and effect conveniently, and we may fix a distinct meaning to them, distinct enough at least to prevent all misunderstanding. But the case is different when we speak of causes and effects as of Things. All that we know is phenomena, as the Greeks called them, or appearances which follow one another in a regular order, as we conceive it, so that if some one phenomenon should fail in the series, we conceive that there must either be an interruption of the series, or that something else will appear after the phenomenon which has failed to appear, and will occupy the vacant place; and so the series in its progression may be modified or totally changed. Cause and effect then mean nothing in the sequence of natural phenomena beyond what I have said; and the real cause, or the transcendent cause, as some would call it, of each successive phenomenon is in that which is the cause of all things which are, which have been, and which will be forever. Thus the word Creation may have a real sense if we consider it as the first, if we can conceive a first, in the present order of natural phenomena; but in the vulgar sense a creation of all things at a certain time, followed by a quiescence of the first cause, and an abandonment of all sequences of Phenomena to the laws of Nature, or to the other words that people may use, is absolutely absurd.
Man being conscious that he is a spiritual power or an intellectual power, or that he has such a power, in whatever way he conceives that he has it,—for I wish simply to state a fact,—from this power which he has in himself, he is led, as Antoninus says, to believe that there is a greater power, which, as the old Stoics tell us, pervades the whole universe as the intellect pervades man.