Richard Price > Quotes

“The necessity of a cause of whatever events arise is an essential principle, a primary perception of the understanding; nothing being more palpably absurd than the notion of a change which has been derived from nothing, and of which there is no reason to be given; of an existence which has begun, but never was produced; of a body, for instance, that has ceased to move, but has not been stopped; or that has begun to move, without being moved. Nothing can be done to convince a person, who professes to deny this, besides referring him to common sense. If he cannot find there the perception I have mentioned, he is not farther to be argued with, for the subject will not admit of argument; there being nothing clearer than the point itself disputed to be brought to confirm it. And he who will acknowledge that we have such a perception, but will at the same time say that it is to be ascribed to a different power from the understanding, should inform us why the same should not be asserted of all self-evident truths.”
― Richard Price, A Review of the Principal Questions in Morals