Thomas Hobbes

Of Liberty and Necessity (1654)

Also the sixth Point,—that a man cannot imagine any thing to begin without a Cause,—can no other way be made known, but by trying how he can imagine it; but if he try, he shall find as much reason (if there be no Cause of the thing) to conceive it should begin at one time as another; that is, he hath equal reason to think it should begin at all times; which is impossible: and therefore he must think there was some special Cause why it began then, rather than sooner or later; or else, that it began never, but was Eternal.

From the 1812 edition, edited by Philip Mallet, page 159.

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Hume’s Reconstruction in Treatise 1.3.3

All the points of time and place, say some philosophers [Mr. Hobbes], in which we can suppose any object to begin to exist, are in themselves equal; and unless there be some cause, which is peculiar to one time and to one place, and which by that means determines and fixes the existence, it must remain in eternal suspence; and the object can never begin to be, for want of something to fix its beginning.

Hume’s Criticism in Treatise 1.3.3

But I ask; Is there any more difficulty in supposing the time and place to be fix’d without a cause, than to suppose the existence to be determin’d in that manner? The first question that occurs on the subject is always, whether the object shall exist or not? The next, when and where it shall begin to exist? If the removal of a cause be intuitively absurd in one case, it must also be so in the other: And if that absurdity be not clear without a proof in the one case, it will equally require one in the other. The absurdity, then, of the one supposition can never be a proof of that of the other, since they are both upon the same footing, and must stand or fall by the same reasoning.