To mortal thought, dealing with the evidences of the material senses for its witnesses, Causation is a problem needing solution.
Humanly speaking, all that man seems to see are series of "causes" and "effects." But this observation leaves him still in the dark. Thought pushes the question farther. Whence came the First Cause, or Power, and what is its nature? Reason not only assumes that there is a First Cause, but must know its inherent character, its nature, its essence. To know is to see from the beginning, to behold all things in this light of their origin. To know implies not only the recognition that things are, but what they are in cause and effect, and their relations. Can we know the fundamental substance, the Principle of all action and being, the fountain-head, the starting-point, the originating agent or agency—Cause? What is its substance? what its nature?
This problem has in times past resolved itself into a special study called, "Subject of Causation," "Questions, or Theories of Dynamics." In theology it is most frequently named "Ontology," "Ideas, or Conceptions of God."
