下麵這一句話，沒有什麽專業術語，我雖然翻譯了可是沒有把握，而且斷句和選詞方麵都和原文有很大不同，意譯的成分很大，不知道作者是不是這麽個意思。期待高手指點，最好給出完整的翻譯。
“An infinite succession, therefore, of merely dependent beings, without any original independent cause, is a series of beings that has neither necessity, nor cause, nor any reason or ground at all of its existence, either within itself or from without; that is, it is an express contradiction and impossibility; it is a supposing something to be caused, (because it is granted in every one of its stages of succession, not to be necessarily and of itself;) and yet that, in the whole, it is caused absolutely by nothing; which every man knows is a contradiction to imagine done in time; and, because duration in this case makes no difference, it is equally a contradiction to suppose it done from eternity; and, consequently, there must, on the contrary, of necessity, have existed from eternity some one immutable and independent being.”
全文鏈接在這裏：http://www.ccel.org/ccel/clarke_s/being.iii.iii.html
因此，如果假設沒有任何獨立源頭的非獨立生命體可以無限延續，則該生命體係列的存在就必然沒有必要性、沒有根源、沒有理由、沒有存在的任何根據，無論從其主觀還是客觀角度檢視都是這樣，也就是說該非獨立生命體本身就構成明顯矛盾和不可能，因為隻有認定有源頭它才可能存在（因為在其每一個延續階段它都受命於其他個體，它的生命既不是必要的也不是自己能掌控的），而從總體看，它恰恰沒有源頭；每個人都知道這一命題矛盾，從時間概念上無法實現，而且因為時間長短對於這一命題的成立沒有影響，所以即使假以永恒這一命題同樣是矛盾。因此，相反的命題必然成立，即，永恒以來，有某種恒久不變、獨立的生命體。
