Page:A Philosophical Inquiry Concerning Human Liberty (3rd ed., 1735).djvu/50

selves to attend to them, which yet in concurrence with other causes, as necessarily produce their effect, as the last feather laid on breaks the horse’s back, and as a grain necessarily turns the balance between any weights, tho’ the eye cannot discover which is the greatest weight or bulk by so small a difference. And I add, that as we know without such discovery by the eye, that if one scale rises and the other falls there is a greater weight in one scale than the other, and also know that the least additional weight is sufficient to determine the scales; so likewise we may know that the least circumstance in the extensive chain of causes that precede every effect, is sufficient to produce an effect; and also know, that there must be causes of our choice (tho’ we do not, or cannot discern those causes) by knowing, that every thing that has a beginning must have a cause. By which last principle we are as necessarily led to conceive a cause of action in man, where we see not the particular cause itself; as we are to conceive that a greater weight determines a scale, tho’ our eyes discover no difference between the two weights.

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