 Section 1 of An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org. This reading by Karl Manchester 2007. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. Section 1 of The Different Species of Philosophy 1. Moral philosophy or the science of human nature may be treated after two different manners, each of which has its peculiar merit and may contribute to the entertainment, instruction and reformation of mankind. The one considers man chiefly as born for action and is influenced in his measures by taste and sentiment, pursuing one object and avoiding another according to the value which these objects seem to possess and according to the light in which they present themselves. As virtue of all objects is allowed to be the most valuable, this species of philosophers paint her in the most amiable colours, borrowing all helps from poetry and eloquence and treating their subject in an easy and obvious manner and such as is best fitted to please the imagination and engage the affections. They select the most striking observations and instances from common life place opposite characters in a proper contrast and alluring us into the paths of virtue by the views of glory and happiness, direct our steps in these paths by the soundest precepts and most illustrious examples. They make us feel the difference between vice and virtue. They excite and regulate our sentiments and so they can but bend our hearts to the love of probity and true honour they think that they have fully attained the end of all their labours. 2. The other species of philosophers consider man in the light of a reasonable rather than an active being and endeavor to form his understanding more than cultivate his manners. They regard human nature as a subject of speculation and with a narrow scrutiny and examine it in order to find those principles which regulate our understanding excite our sentiments and make us approve or blame any particular object action or behaviour. They think it a reproach to all literature that philosophy should not yet have fixed beyond controversy the foundation of morals reasoning and criticism and should forever talk of truth and falsehood vice and virtue beauty and deformity without being able to determine the source of these distinctions. While they attempt this arduous task they are deterred by no difficulties but proceeding from particular instances to general principles they still push on their inquiries to principles more general and rest not satisfied till they arrive at those original principles by which in every science all human curiosity must be bounded. Though their speculation seem abstract and even unintelligible to common readers they aim at the approbation of the learned and the wise and think themselves sufficiently compensated for the labour of their whole lives if they can discover some hidden truths which may contribute to the instruction of posterity. 3. It is certain that the easy and obvious philosophy will always with the generality of mankind have the preference above the accurate and abstruse and by many will be recommended not only as more agreeable but more useful than the other. It enters more into common life moulds the heart and affections and by touching those principles which actuate men reforms their conduct and brings them nearer to that model of perfection which it describes. On the contrary the abstruse philosophy being founded on a turn of mind which cannot enter into business and action vanishes when the philosopher leaves the shade and comes into open day. Nor can its principles easily retain any influence over our conduct and behaviour. The feelings of our heart, the agitation of our passions, the vehemence of our affections dissipate all its conclusions and reduce the profound philosopher to a mere plebeian. 4. This also must be confessed that the most durable as well as justice fame has been acquired by the easy philosophy and that abstract reasoners seem hitherto to have enjoyed only a momentary reputation from the caprice or ignorance of their own age but have not been able to support their renown with more equitable posterity. It is easy for a profound philosopher to commit a mistake in his subtle reasonings and one mistake is the necessary parent of another while he pushes on his consequences and is not deterred from embracing any conclusion by its unusual appearance or its contradiction to popular opinion. But a philosopher who purposes only to present the common sense of mankind in more beautiful and more engaging colours, if by accident he falls into error goes no farther but renewing his appeal to common sense and the natural sentiments of the mind returns into the right path and secures himself from any dangerous illusions. The fame of Cicero flourishes at present but that of Aristotle is utterly decayed. La Bruyère passes the seas and still maintains his reputation but the glory of Malabranche is confined to his own nation and to his own age and Addison perhaps will be read with pleasure when Locke shall be entirely forgotten. The mere philosopher is a character which is commonly but little acceptable in the world as being supposed to contribute nothing either to the advantage or pleasure of society while he lives remote from communication with mankind and is wrapped up in principles and notions equally remote from their comprehension. On the other hand, the mere ignorant is still more despised nor is anything deemed a sure sign of an illiberal genius in an age and nation where the sciences flourish than to be entirely destitute of all relish for those noble entertainments. The most perfect character is supposed to lie between those extremes retaining an equalability and taste for books, company and business preserving in conversation that discernment and delicacy which arises from polite letters and in business that probity and accuracy which are the natural result of a just philosophy. In order to diffuse and cultivate so accomplished a character nothing can be more useful than compositions of the easy style and manner which draw not too much from life, require no deep application or retreat to be comprehended and send back the student among mankind full of noble sentiments and wise precepts applicable to every exigence of human life. By means of such compositions virtue becomes amiable, science agreeable, company instructive and retirement entertaining. Man is a reasonable being and as such receives from science his proper food and nourishment. But so narrow are the bounds of human understanding that little satisfaction can be hoped for in this particular either from the extent of security or his acquisitions. Man is a sociable no less than a reasonable being but neither can he always enjoy company agreeable and amusing or preserve the proper relish for them. Man is also an active being and from that disposition as well as from the various necessities of human life must submit to business and occupation. But the mind requires some relaxation and cannot always support its bent to care and industry. It seems then that nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much so as to incapacitate them for other occupations in entertainment. Indulge your passion for science says she but let your science be human and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. A truce thought and profound researches I prohibit and will severely punish by the pensive melancholy which they introduce by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with when communicated. Be a philosopher but amidst all your philosophy be still a man. 5. Were the generality of mankind contented to prefer the easy philosophy to the abstract and profound without throwing any blame or contempt on the latter it might not be improper perhaps to comply with this general opinion and allow every man to enjoy without opposition his own taste and sentiment but as the matter is often carried farther even to the absolute rejecting of all profound reasonings or what is commonly called metaphysics which will now proceed to consider what can reasonably be pleaded in their behalf. We may begin with observing that one considerable advantage which results from the accurate and abstract philosophy is its subservience to the easy and humane which without the former can never attain a sufficient degree of exactness in its sentiments, presets or reasonings. All polite letters are nothing but pictures of human life in various attitudes and situations and inspire us with different sentiments of praise or blame admiration or ridicule according to the qualities of the object which they set before us. An artist must be better qualified to succeed in this undertaking who besides a delicate taste and a quick apprehension possesses an accurate knowledge of the internal fabric the operations of the understanding the workings of the passions and the various species of sentiment which discriminate vice and virtue. How painful so ever this inward search or inquiry may appear it becomes in some measure requisite to those who would describe with success the obvious and outward appearances of life and manners. The anatomist presents to the eye the most hideous and disagreeable objects but his science is useful to the painter in delineating even a Venus or an Helen. While the latter employs all the richest colors of his art and gives his figures the most graceful and engaging airs he must still carry his attention to the inward structure of the human body, the position of the muscles, the fabric of the bones and the use and figure of every part or organ. Accuracy is in every case advantageous to beauty and just reasoning to delicate sentiment. In vain would we exalt the one by depreciating the other. Besides we may observe in every art or profession even those which most concern life or action that a spirit of accuracy however acquired carries all of them nearer their perfection and renders them more subservient to the interests of society. And though a philosopher may live remote from business the genius of philosophy if carefully cultivated by several must gradually diffuse itself throughout the whole society and bestow a similar correctness on every art and calling. The politician will acquire greater foresight and subtlety in the subdividing and balancing of power. The lawyer more method and finer principles in his reasonings and the general more regularity in his discipline and more caution in his plans and operations. The stability of modern governments above the ancient and the accuracy of modern philosophy have improved and probably will still improve by similar gradations. 6. Were there no advantage to be reaped from these studies beyond the gratification of an innocent curiosity yet ought not even this to be despised as being one accession to those few safe and harmless pleasures which are bestowed on human race. The sweetest and most inoffensive path of life leads through the avenues of science and learning and whoever can either remove any obstructions in this way or open up any new prospect ought so far to be esteemed a benefactor to mankind. And though these researches may appear painful and fatiguing it is with some minds as with some bodies which being endowed with vigorous and florid health require severe exercise and reap a pleasure from what to the generality of mankind may seem burdensome and laborious. Obscurity indeed is painful to the mind as well as to the eye but to bring light from obscurity by whatever labour must needs be delightful and rejoicing. But this obscurity in the profound and abstract philosophy is objected to not only as painful and fatiguing but as the inevitable source of uncertainty and error. Here indeed lies the justice and most plausible objection against a considerable part of metaphysics that they are not properly a science but arise either from the fruitless efforts of human vanity which would penetrate into subjects utterly inaccessible to the understanding or from the craft of popular superstitions which being unable to defend themselves on fair ground raise these entangling brambles to cover and protect their weaknesses. Chased from the open country these robbers fly into the forest and lie in wait to break upon every unguarded avenue of the mind and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices. The stoutest antagonist if he remit his watcher moment is oppressed and many through cowardice and folly open the gates to the enemies and willingly receive them with reverence and submission as their legal sovereigns. 7. But is this a sufficient reason why philosophers should desist from such researchers and leave superstition still in possession of her retreat? Is it not proper to draw an opposite conclusion and perceive the necessity of carrying the war into the most secret recesses of the enemy? In vain do we hope that men from frequent disappointment would at last abandon such airy sciences and discover the proper province of human reason. For besides, that many persons find too sensible an interest in perpetually recalling such topics, besides this, I say, the motive of blind despair can never reasonably have place in the sciences since, however unsuccessful former attempts may have proved, there is still room to hope that the industry, good fortune or improved suggestivity of succeeding generations may reach discoveries unknown to former ages. Each adventurous genius will still leap at the arduous prize and find himself stimulated rather than discouraged by the failures of his predecessors while he hopes that the glory of achieving so hard an adventure is reserved for him alone. The only method of freeing learning at once from these obtuse questions is to inquire seriously into the nature of human understanding and show, from an exact analysis of its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for such remote and obtuse subjects. We must submit to this fatigue in order to live at ease ever after, and must cultivate true metaphysics with some care in order to destroy the false and agilirate. Indolence, which to some persons affords a safeguard against this deceitful philosophy is, with others, overbalanced by curiosity, and despair, which at some moments prevails, may give place afterwards to sanguine hopes and expectations. Accurate and just reasoning is the only Catholic remedy fitted for all persons and all dispositions, and is alone able to subvert that obtuse philosophy and metaphysical jargon, which, being mixed up with popular superstition, renders it in a manner unpenetrable to careless reasoners, and gives it the air of science and wisdom. 8. Besides this advantage of rejecting, after deliberate inquiry, the most uncertain and disagreeable part of learning, there are many positive advantages which result from an accurate scrutiny into the powers and faculties of human nature. It is remarkable concerning the operations of the mind that though most intimately present to us, yet whenever they become the object of reflection, they seem involved in obscurity, nor can the eye readily find those lines and boundaries which discriminate and distinguish them. The objects are too fine to remain long in the same aspect or situation and must be apprehended in an instance by a superior penetration derived from nature and improved by habit and reflection. It becomes, therefore, no inconsiderable part of science, barely to know the different operations of the mind to separate them from each other, to class them under their proper heads and to correct all that seeming disorder in which they lie involved when made the object of reflection and inquiry. This talk of ordering and distinguishing, which has no merit when performed with regard to external bodies, the objects of our senses, rises in its value when directed towards the operations of the mind in proportion to the difficulty and labour which we meet with in performing it, and if we can go no farther than this mental geography or delineation of the distinct parts and powers of the mind, it is at least a satisfaction to go so far and the more obvious this science may appear, and it is by no means obvious, the more contemptible still must the ignorance of it be esteemed in all pretenders to learning and philosophy. Nor can there remain any suspicion that this science is uncertain and shimerical, unless we should entertain such a skepticism as is entirely subversive of all speculation and even action. It cannot be doubted that the mind is endowed with several powers and faculties, and these powers are distinct from each other, that what is really distinct to the immediate perception may be distinguished by reflection and consequently that there is a truth and falsehood in all propositions on this subject, and a truth and falsehood which lie not beyond the compass of human understanding. There are many obvious distinctions of this kind, such as those between the will and understanding, the imagination and passions which fall within the comprehension of every human creature, and the finer and more philosophical distinctions are no less real and certain though more difficult to be comprehended. Some instances, especially late ones, of success in these inquiries may give us a just a notion of the certainty and solidity of this branch of learning, and shall we esteem it worthy the labour of a philosopher to give us a true system of the planets and adjust the position and order of those remote bodies, while we effect to overlook those who, with so much success, delineate the parts of the mind in which we are so intimately concerned. 9. But may we not hope that philosophy, if cultivated with care and encouraged by the attention of the public, may carry its researches still farther, and discover, at least in some degree, the secret springs and principles by which the human mind is actuated in its operations. Astronomers had long contented themselves with proving, from the phenomena, the true motions, order and magnitude of the heavenly bodies, till a philosopher at last arose who seems from the happiest reasoning to have also determined the laws and forces by which the revolutions of the planets are governed and directed. The like has been performed with regard to other parts of nature, and there is no reason to despair of equal success in our inquiries concerning the mental powers and economy if prosecuted with equal capacity and caution. It is probable that one operation and principle of the mind depends on another, which again may be resolved into one more general and universal, and how far these researches may possibly be carried it will be difficult for us before or even after a careful trial exactly to determine. This is certain that attempts of this kind are every day made by those who philosophise the most negligently, and nothing can be more requisite than to enter upon the enterprise with thorough care and attention. That if it lie within the compass of human understanding, it may at last be happily achieved, if not, it may however be rejected with some confidence and security. This last conclusion surely is not desirable, nor ought it to be embraced too rashly, for how much must we diminish from the beauty and value of this species of philosophy upon such a supposition. Moralists have hitherto been accustomed when they considered the vast multitude and diversity of those actions that excite our approbation or dislike, to search for some common principle on which this variety of sentiments might depend, and though they have sometimes carried the matter too far by their passion for one general principle, it must however be confessed that they are excusable in expecting to find some general principles into which all devices and virtues were justly to be resolved. The like has been the endeavour of critics, logicians and even politicians, nor have their attempts been wholly unsuccessful, though perhaps longer time, greater accuracy and more ardent application may bring these sciences still nearer their perfection. To throw up at once all pretensions of this kind may justly be deemed more rash, precipitate and dogmatical than even the boldest and most affirmative philosophy that has ever attempted to impose its crude dictates and principles on mankind. What though these reasonings concerning human nature seem abstract and of difficult comprehension, this affords no presumption of their faulthood. On the contrary, it seems impossible that what has hitherto escaped so many wise and profound philosophers can be very obvious and easy. And whatever pains these researches may cost us, we may think ourselves sufficiently rewarded, not only in point of profit, but of pleasure, if, by that means, we can make any addition to our stock of knowledge in subjects of such unspeakable importance. But as after all, the abstractness of these speculations is no recommendation, but rather a disadvantage to them, and as this difficulty may perhaps be surmounted by care and art, and the avoiding of all unnecessary detail, we have in the following inquiry attempted to throw some light upon subjects from which uncertainty has hitherto deterred the wise and obscurity the ignorant. Happy if we can unite the boundaries of the different species of philosophy by reconciling profound inquiry with clearness and truth with novelty. And still more happy if, reasoning in this easy manner, we can undermine the foundations of an obtuse philosophy which seems to have hitherto served only as a shelter to superstition and a cover to absurdity and error. CHAPTER II. OF THE ORIGIN OF IDEAS. Everyone will readily allow that there is a considerable difference between the perceptions of the mind when a man feels the pain of excessive heat or the pleasure of moderate warmth, and when he afterwards recalls to his memory this sensation or anticipates it by his imagination, these faculties may mimic or copy the perceptions of the senses, but they never can entirely reach the force and vivacity of the original sentiment. The utmost we say of them, even when they operate with greatest vigor, is that they represent their object in so lively a manner that we could almost say we feel or see it. But, except the mind be disordered by disease or madness, they never can arrive at such a pitch of vivacity as to render these perceptions altogether undistinguishable. All the colors of poetry, however splendid, can never paint natural objects in such a manner as to make the description be taken for a real landscape. The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation. We may observe a like distinction to run through all the other perceptions of the mind. A man in a fit of anger is actuated in a very different manner from one who only thinks of that emotion. If you tell me that any person is in love, I easily understand your meaning, and form a just conception of his situation, but never can mistake that conception for the real disorders and agitations of the passion. When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly, for the colors which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed. It requires no nice discernment or metaphysical head to mark the distinction between them. Here, therefore, we may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes, or species, which are distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated thoughts, or ideas. The other species want a name in our language, and in most others, I suppose, because it was not requisite for any but philosophical purposes, to rank them under a general term or appellation. Let us, therefore, use a little freedom, and call them impressions. Employing that word, in a sense, somewhat different from the usual. By the term impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements above mentioned. Nothing, at first view, may seem more unbounded than the thought of man, which not only escapes all human power and authority, but is not even restrained within the limits of nature and reality. To form monsters, and join incongruous shapes and appearances, costs the imagination no more trouble than to conceive the most natural and familiar objects. And while the body is confined to one planet, along which it creeps with pain and difficulty, the thought can, in an instant, transport us into the most distant regions of the universe, or even beyond the universe, into the unbounded chaos, where nature is supposed to lie in total confusion. What never was seen, or heard of, may yet be conceived, nor is anything beyond the power of thought, except what implies an absolute contradiction. But though our thought seems to possess this unbounded liberty, we shall find upon a nearer examination, that it is really confined within very narrow limits, and that all this creative power of the mind amounts to no more than the faculty of compounding, transposing, augmenting, or diminishing the materials afforded us by the senses and experience. When we think of a golden mountain, we only join two consistent ideas, gold and mountain, with which we were formerly acquainted. A virtuous horse we can conceive, because, from our own feeling, we can conceive virtue, and this we may unite to the figure and shape of a horse, which is an animal familiar to us. In short, all the materials of thinking are derived either from our outward or inward sentiment. The mixture and composition of these belongs alone to the mind and will. Or, to express myself in philosophical language, all our ideas, or more feeble perceptions, are copies of our impressions, or more lively ones. To prove this, the two following arguments will, I hope, be sufficient. First, when we analyze our thoughts or ideas, however compounded or sublime, we always find that they resolve themselves into such simple ideas as were copied from a precedent feeling or sentiment. Even those ideas which, at first view, seem the most wide of this origin are found upon a nearer scrutiny to be derived from it. The idea of God, as meaning an infinitely intelligent, wise, and good being, arises from reflecting on the operations of our own mind, and augmenting, without limit, those qualities of goodness and wisdom. We may prosecute this inquiry toward length we please, where we shall always find that every idea which we examine is copied from a similar impression. Those who would assert that this position is not universally true, nor without exception, have only one, and that an easy method of refuting it, by producing that idea which, in their opinion, is not derived from this source. It will then be incumbent on us, if we would maintain our doctrine, to produce the impression, or lively perception, which corresponds to it. Secondly, if it happened, from a defect of the organ, that a man is not susceptible of any species of sensation, we always find that he is as little susceptible of the correspondent ideas. A blind man can form no notion of colors, a deaf man of sounds. Restore either of them that sense in which he is deficient. By opening this new inlet for his sensations, you also open an inlet for the ideas, and he finds no difficulty in conceiving these objects. The case is the same, if the object, proper for exciting any sensation, has never been applied to the organ. A laplander, or negro, has no notion of the relish of wine. And though there are few or no instances of a like deficiency in the mind, where a person has never felt or is wholly incapable of a sentiment or passion that belongs to his species, yet we find the same observation to take place in a less degree. A man of mild manners can form no idea of inveterate revenge or cruelty, nor can a selfish heart easily conceive the heights of friendship and generosity. It is readily allowed that other beings may possess many senses of which we can have no conception, because the ideas of them have never been introduced to us, in the only manner by which an idea can have access to the mind, to wit, by the actual feeling and sensation. There is, however, one contradictory phenomenon which may prove that it is not absolutely impossible for ideas to arise independent of their correspondent impressions. I believe it will readily be allowed that the several distinct ideas of color, which enter by the eye, or those of sound, which are conveyed by the ear, are really different from each other, though at the same time resembling. Now, if this be true of different colors, it must be no less so of the different shades of the same color, and each shade produces a distinct idea independent of the rest. For if this should be denied, it is possible, by the continual gradation of shades, to run a color insensibly into what is most remote from it, and if you will not allow any of the means to be different, you cannot without absurdity deny the extremes to be the same. Suppose, therefore, a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly acquainted with colors of all kinds, except one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that color, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest. It is plain that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, and will be sensible that there is a greater distance in that place between the contiguous colors than in any other. Now I ask, whether it be possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses. I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can, and this may serve as a proof that the simple ideas are not always, in every instance, derived from the correspondent impressions, though this instance is so singular that it is scarcely worth our observing, and does not merit that for it alone we should alter our general maxim. Here, therefore, is a proposition which not only seems in itself simple and intelligible, but, if a proper use were made of it, might render every dispute equally intelligible, and banish all that jargon, which has so long taken possession of metaphysical reasonings, and drawn disgrace upon them. All ideas, especially abstract ones, are naturally faint and obscure. The mind has but a slender hold of them, they are apt to be confounded with other resembling ideas, and when we have often employed any term, though without a distinct meaning, we are apt to imagine it as a determinant idea annexed to it. On the contrary, all impressions, that is, all sensations, either outward or inward, are strong and vivid. The limits between them are more exactly determined, nor is it easy to fall into any error or mistake with regard to them. When we entertain, therefore, any suspicion that a philosophical term is employed without any meaning or idea, as is but too frequent, we need but inquire, from what impression is that supposed idea derived? And if it be impossible to assign any, this will serve to confirm our suspicion. By bringing ideas into so clear a light we may reasonably hope to remove all dispute, which may arise, concerning their nature and reality. Footnote 1. It is probable that no more was meant by those who denied innate ideas than that all ideas were copies of our impressions, though it must be confessed that the terms which they employed were not chosen with such caution, nor so exactly defined as to prevent all mistakes about their doctrine. For what is meant by innate? If innate be equivalent to natural, then all the perceptions and ideas of the mind must be allowed to be innate or natural in whatever sense we take the latter word, whether in opposition to what is uncommon, artificial or miraculous. If by innate be meant contemporary to our birth, the dispute seems to be frivolous, nor is it worthwhile to inquire at what time thinking begins, whether before, at, or after our birth. Again, the word idea seems to be commonly taken in a very loose sense, by lock and others, as standing for any of our perceptions, our sensations and passions, as well as thoughts. Now in this sense I should desire to know what can be meant by asserting that self-love or resentment of injuries, or the passion between the sexes, is not innate. But admitting these terms, impressions, and ideas, in the sense above explained, and understanding by innate what is original or copied from no precedent perception, then may we assert that all our impressions are innate, and our ideas not innate. To be ingenuous I must own it to be my opinion that lock was betrayed into this question by the schoolmen, who, making use of undefined terms, draw out their disputes to a tedious length, without ever touching the point in question. A like ambiguity and circumlocution seem to run through that philosopher's reasonings on this, as well as most other subjects. End of footnote. End of chapter two. Section three of an inquiry concerning human understanding. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org. Recorded by Gesino. An inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume. Section three of the Association of Ideas. It is evident that there is a principle of connection between the different thoughts or ideas of the mind, and that in their appearance to the memory or imagination they introduce each other with a certain degree of method and regularity. In our more serious thinking or discourse this is so observable that any particular thought which breaks in upon the regular tract or chain of ideas is immediately remarked and rejected. And even in our wildest and most wandering reveries, nay in our very dreams, we shall find, if we reflect, that the imagination ran not altogether at adventures, but that there was still a connection upheld among the different ideas which succeeded each other. Were the loosest and freest conversation to be transcribed, they would immediately be observed something which connected it in all its transitions. Or, where this is wanting, the person who broke the thread of discourse might still inform you that they had secretly revolved in his mind a succession of thought which had gradually led him from the subject of conversation. Among different languages, even where we cannot suspect the least connection or communication, it is found that the words, expressive of ideas, the most compounded to yet nearly correspond to each other, a certain proof that the simple ideas comprehended in the compound ones were bound together by some universal principle which had an equal influence on all mankind. So it would be too obvious, to escape observation, that different ideas are connected together. I do not find that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate or class all the principles of association. A subject, however, that seems worthy of curiosity. To me, there appear to be only three principles of connection among ideas, namely resemblance, contiguity, in time or place, and cause or effect. That these principles, served connect ideas, will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original. Footnote, resemblance, end of footnote. The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse concerning the others. Footnote, contiguity, end of footnote. And if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it. Footnote, cause and effect, end of footnote. But that this enumeration is complete, and that there are no other principles of association except these may be difficult to prove to the satisfaction of the reader or even to a man's own satisfaction. All we can do in such cases is to run over several instances and examine carefully the principle which binds the different thoughts to each other, never stopping till we render the principle as general as possible. Footnote, for instance contrast or contrariety, is also a connection among ideas, but it may perhaps be considered as a mixture of causation and resemblance. Where two objects are contrary, the one destroys the other, that is, the cause of its annihilation and the idea of the annihilation of an object implies the idea of its former existence. End of footnote. The more instances we examine and the more care we employ, the more assurance shall we acquire that the enumeration which we form from the whole is complete and entire. End of section 3. Read by Gesine in March 2007. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. Section 4, Part 1. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org, this reading by Carmanchester 2007. An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume. Section 4. Skeptical doubts concerning the operations of the understanding. Part 1. 20. All the objects of human reason or inquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds to wit relations of ideas and matters of fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of geometry, algebra and arithmetic, and in short every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain. That the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the square of the two sides is a proposition which expresses a relation between these figures. That 3 times 5 is equal to the half of 30 expresses a relation between these numbers. Propositions of this kind are discoverable by the mere operation of thought without dependence on what is anywhere existence in the universe. Though there were never a circle or triangle in nature, the truths demonstrated by Euclid would forever retain their certainty and evidence. 21. Matters of fact, which are the second objects of human reason, are not ascertained in the same manner, nor is our evidence of their truth, however great, of a like nature with the foregoing. The contrary of every matter of fact is still possible because it can never imply a contradiction and is conceived by the mind with the same facility and distinctness as if ever so comfortable to reality. That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation that it will rise. We should in vain therefore attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false it would imply a contradiction and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind. It may therefore be a subject worthy of curiosity to inquire what is the nature of that evidence which assures us of any real existence and matter of fact beyond the present testimony of our senses or the records of our memory. This part of philosophy, it is observable, has been little cultivated either by the ancients or moderns and therefore our doubts and errors in the prosecution of so important an inquiry may be the more excusable while we march through such difficult paths without any guide or direction. They may even prove useful by exciting curiosity and destroying that implicit faith and security which is the bane of all reasoning and free inquiry. The discovery of defects in the common philosophy if any such there be will not I presume be a discouragement but rather an incitement as is usual to attempt something more full and satisfactory than has yet been proposed to the public. 22. All reasonings concerning matter of fact seem to be founded on the relation of cause and effect. By means of that relation alone we can go beyond the evidence of our memory and senses. If you were to ask a man why he believes any matter of fact which is absent, for instance that his friend is in the country or in France, he would give you a reason and this reason would be some other fact as a letter received from him or the knowledge of his former resolutions and promises. A man finding a watch or any other machine in a desert island would conclude that there had once been men in that island. All our reasonings concerning fact are of the same nature and here it is constantly supposed that there is a connection between the present fact and that which is inferred from it. Whether nothing to bind them together the inference would be entirely precarious, the hearing of an articulate voice and rational discourse in the dark assures us of the presence of some person. Why? Because these are the effects of the human make and fabric and closely connected with it. If we anatomise all the other reasonings of this nature we shall find that they are founded on the relation of cause and effect and that this relation is either near or remote, direct or collateral. Heat and light are collateral effects of fire and the one effect may just be inferred from the other. 23. If we would satisfy ourselves therefore concerning the nature of that evidence which assures us of matters of fact we must inquire how we arrive at the knowledge of cause and effect. I shall venture to affirm as a general proposition which admits of no exception that the knowledge of this relation is not in any instance attained by reasonings a priori but arises entirely from experience when we find that any particular objects are constantly conjoined with each other. Let an object be presented to a man of ever so strong natural reason and abilities. If that object be entirely new to him he will not be able by the most accurate examination of its sensible qualities to discover any of its causes or effects. Adam, though his rational faculties be supposed, at the very first, entirely perfect, could not have inferred from the fluidity and transparency of water that it would suffocate him or from the light and warmth of fire that it would consume him. No object ever discovers by the qualities which appear to the senses either the causes which produced it or the effects which will arise from it nor can our reason unassisted by experience ever draw any inference concerning real existence and matter of fact. 24. The proposition that causes and effects are discoverable not by reason but by experience will readily be admitted with regard to such objects as we remember to have once been altogether unknown to us, since we must be conscious of the utter inability which we then lay under of foretelling what would arise from them. Present two smooth pieces of marble to a man who has no tincture of natural philosophy he will never discover that they will adhere together in such a manner as to require great force to separate them in a direct line when they make so smaller resistance to a lateral pressure. Such events as bear little analogy to the common course of nature are also readily confessed to be known only by experience nor does any man imagine that the explosion of gunpowder or the attraction of a lodestone could ever be discovered by arguments a priori. In like manner when an effect is supposed to depend upon an intricate machinery or secret structure of parts we make no difficulty in attributing all our knowledge of it to experience. Who will assert that he can give the ultimate reason why milk or bread is proper nourishment for a man not for a lion or a tiger but the same truth may not appear at first sight to have the same evidence with regards to events which have become familiar to us from our first appearance in the world which bear a close analogy to the whole course of nature and which are supposed to depend on the simple qualities of objects without any secret structure of parts. We are apt to imagine that we could discover these effects by the mere operation of our reason without experience. We fancy that where we brought on a sudden into this world we could at first have inferred that one billiard ball would communicate motion to another upon impulse and that we needed not to have waited for the event in order to pronounce with certainty concerning it. Such is the influence of custom that where it is strongest it not only covers our natural ignorance but even conceals itself and seems not to take place merely because it is found in the highest degree. 25. But to convince us that all the laws of nature and all the operations of bodies without exception and own only by experience the following reflections may perhaps suffice. Where any object presented to us and where we required to pronounce concerning the effect which will result from it without consulting past observations after what manner I beseech you must the mind proceed in this operation. It must invent or imagine some event which it ascribes to the object as its effect and it is claimed that this invention must be entirely arbitrary. The mind can never possibly find the effect in the supposed cause but by the most accurate scrutiny and examination for the effect is totally different from the cause and consequently can never be discovered in it. Motion in the second billiard ball is a quite distinct event from motion in the first nor is there anything in the one to suggest the smallest hint of the other. A stone or piece of metal raised into the air and left without any support immediately falls but to consider the matter a priori is there anything we discover in this situation which can be get the idea of a downward rather than an upward or any other motion in the stone or metal. And as the first imagination or invention of a particular effect in all natural operations is arbitrary where we consult not experience so must we also esteem the supposed tie or connection between the cause and effect which binds them together and renders it impossible that any other effect could result from the operation of that cause. When I see for instance a billiard ball moving in a straight line towards another even suppose motion in the second ball should by accident be suggested to me as the result of their contact or impulse may I not conceive that a hundred different events might as well follow from that cause. May not both these balls remain at absolute rest may not the first ball return in a straight line or leap off from the second in any line or direction. All these suppositions are consistent and conceivable why then should we give the preference to one which is no more consistent or conceivable than the rest. All our reasonings a priori will never be able to show us any foundation for this preference. In a word then every effect is a distinct event from its cause it could not therefore be discovered in the cause and the first invention or conception of it a priori must be entirely arbitrary and even after it is suggested the conjunction of it with the cause must appear equally arbitrary since there are always many other effects which to reason must seem fully as consistent and natural. In vain therefore should we pretend to determine any single event or infer any cause or effect without the assistance of observation and experience. 26. Hence we may discover the reason why no philosopher who is rational and modest has ever pretended to assign the ultimate cause of any natural operation or to show distinctly the action of that power which produces any single effect in the universe. It is confessed that the utmost effort of human reason is to reduce the principles productive of natural phenomena to a greater simplicity and to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes by means of reasonings from analogy experience and observation. But as to the causes of these general causes we should in vain attempt their discovery nor shall we ever be able to satisfy ourselves by any particular explanation of them. These ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from human curiosity and inquiry. Elasticity, gravity, perhesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse these are probably the ultimate causes and principles which we shall ever discover in nature and we may esteem ourselves sufficiently happy if by accurate inquiry and reasoning we can trace up the particular phenomena to or near to these general principles. The most perfect philosophy of the natural kind only staves off our ignorance a little longer as perhaps the most perfect philosophy of the moral or metaphysical kind serves only to discover larger portions of it. Thus the observation of human blindness and weakness is the result of all philosophy and meets us at every turn in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it. 27. Nor is geometry when taken into the assistance of natural philosophy ever able to remedy this defect or lead us into the knowledge of ultimate causes by all that accuracy of reasoning for which it is so justly celebrated. Every part of mixed mathematics proceeds upon the supposition that certain laws are established by nature in her operations and abstract reasonings are employed either to assist experience in the discovery of these laws or to determine their influence in particular instances where it depends upon any precise degree of distance and quantity. Thus it is a law of motion discovered by experience that the movement or force of anybody in motion is in the compound ratio or proportion of its solid contents and its velocity and consequently that a small force may remove the greatest obstacle or raise the greatest weight by any contrivance or machinery we can increase the velocity of that force so as to make it an overmatch for its antagonist. Geometry assists us in the application of this law by giving us the just dimensions of all the parts and figures which can enter into any species of machine but still the discovery of the law itself is owing merely to experience and all the abstract reasonings in the world could never lead us one step towards the knowledge of it. When we reason a priori and consider merely any object or cause as it appears to the mind independent of all observation it never could suggest to us the notion of any distinct object such as its effect much less shows the inseparable and inviolable connection between them. A man must be very seditious who could discover by reasoning that crystal is the effect of heat and ice of cold without being previously acquainted with the operation of these qualities. End of section 4 part 1 Section 4 part 2 of An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org this reading by Karl Manchester 2007 An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume Section 4 Skeptical Doubts Concerning the Operations of the Understanding Part 2 28 But we have not yet attained any tolerable satisfaction with regard to the question first proposed each solution still gives rise to a new question as difficult as the foregoing and leads us on to further inquiries. When it is asked what is the nature of all our reasonings concerning matter of fact the proper answer seems to be that they are founded on the relation of cause and effect. When again it is asked what is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions concerning that relation it may be replied in one word experience. But if we still carry on our sifting humour and ask what is the foundation of all conclusions from experience this implies a new question which may be of more difficult solution and explication. Philosophers that give themselves heirs of superior wisdom and sufficiency have a hard task when they encounter persons of inquisitive dispositions who push them from every corner to which they retreat and who assure at last to bring them to some dangerous dilemma. The best expedient to prevent this confusion is to be modest in our pretensions and even to discover the difficulty ourselves before it is objected to us. By this means we may make a kind of merit of our very ignorance. I shall content myself in this section with an easy task and shall pretend only to give a negative answer to the question here proposed. I say then that even after we have experience of the operations of cause and effect our conclusions from that experience are not founded on reasoning or any process of the understanding. This answer we must endeavour both to explain and to defend. 29. It must certainly be allowed that nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets and has afforded us only the knowledge of a few superficial qualities of objects while she conceals from us those powers and principles on which the influence of those objects entirely depends. Our senses inform us of the colour, weight and consistency of bread but neither sense nor reason can ever inform us of those qualities which fit it for the nourishment and support of a human body. Sight or feeling conveys an idea of the actual motion of bodies but as to that wonderful force or power which would carry on a moving body forever in a continual change of place and which bodies never lose but by communicating it to others of this we cannot form the most distant conception. But notwithstanding this ignorance of natural powers and principles we always presume when we see like sensible qualities that they have like secret powers and expect that effects similar to those we have experienced will follow from them. Footnote The word power is here used in a loose and popular sense. The more accurate explication of it would give additional evidence to this argument. C section 7 End footnote If a body of light colour and consistency with that bread which we have formally eat can be presented to us we make no scruple of repeating the experiment and foresee with certainty like nourishment and support. Now this is a process of the mind or thought of which I would willingly know the foundation. It is allowed on all hands that there is no known connection between the sensible qualities and the secret powers and consequently that the mind is not led to form such a conclusion concerning their constant and regular conjunction by anything which it knows of their nature. As to past experience it can be allowed to give direct and certain information of those precise objects only and that precise period of time which fell under its cognisance. But why this experience should be extended to future times and to other objects which for all we know may be only in appearance similar this is the main question on which I would insist. The bread which I formally eat nourished me that is a body of such sensible qualities was at that time endued with such secret powers but does it follow that other bread must also nourish me at another time and that like sensible qualities must always be attended with like secret powers. The consequence seems no wise necessary. At least it must be acknowledged that there is here a consequence drawn by the mind that there is a certain step taken a process of thought and an inference which wants to be explained. These two propositions are far from being the same. I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect and I foresee that other objects which are in appearance similar will be attended with similar effects. I shall allow if you please that one proposition may justly be inferred from the other. I know in fact that it always is inferred but if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connection between these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a medium which may enable the mind to draw such an inference if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is I must confess passes my comprehension and it is incumbent on those to produce it who assert that it really exists and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact. 30. This negative argument must certainly in process of time become altogether convincing if many penetrating and able philosophers shall turn their inquiries this way and no one be ever able to discover any connecting proposition or intermediate step which supports the understanding of this conclusion. But as the question is yet new every reader may not trust so far to his own penetration as to conclude because an argument escapes his inquiry that therefore it does not really exist. For this reason it may be requisite to venture upon a more difficult task and enumerating all the branches of human knowledge endeavour to show that none of them can afford such an argument. All reasonings may be divided into two kinds namely demonstrative reasoning or that concerning relations of ideas and moral reasoning or that concerning matter of fact and existence. That there are no demonstrative arguments in the case seems evident since it implies no contradiction that the course of nature may change and that an object seemingly like those which we have experienced may be attended with different or contrary effects. May I not clearly and distinctly conceive that a body falling from the clouds and which in all other respects resemble snow has yet the taste of salt or feeling of fire. Is there any more intelligible proposition than to affirm that all the trees will flourish in December and January and decay in May and June. Now whatever is intelligible and can be distinctly conceived implies no contradiction and can never be proved false by any demonstrative argument or abstract reasoning at priority. If we be therefore engaged by arguments to put trust in past experience and make it the standard of our future judgment these arguments must be probable only or such as regard matter of fact and real existence according to the division above mentioned. But that there is no argument of this kind must appear if our explication of that species of reasoning be admitted as solid and satisfactory. We have said that all arguments concerning existence are founded on the relation of cause and effect that our knowledge of that relation is derived entirely from experience and that all our experimental conclusions proceed upon the supposition that a future will be conformable to the past. To endeavour therefore the proof of this last supposition by probable arguments or arguments regarding existence must be evidently going in a circle and taking that for granted which is the very point in question. 31. In reality all arguments from experience are founded on the similarity which we discover among natural objects and by which we are induced to expect effects similar to those which we have found to follow from such objects. And though none but a fool or madman will ever pretend to dispute the authority of experience or to reject that great guide of human life it may surely be allowed a philosopher to have so much curiosity at least to examine the principle of human nature which gives this mighty authority to experience and makes us draw advantage from that similarity which nature has placed among different objects. From causes which appear similar we expect similar effects. This is the sum of all our experimental conclusions. Now it seems evident that if this conclusion were formed by reason it would be as perfect at first and upon one instance as after ever so long a course of experience but the case is far otherwise. Nothing so like as eggs yet no one on account of this appearing similarity expects the same taste and relish in all of them. It is only after a long course of uniform experiments in any kind that we attain a firm reliance and security with regard to a particular event. Now where is that process of reasoning which from one instance draws a conclusion so different from that which it infers from a hundred instances that are no wise different from that single one? This question I propose as much for the sake of information as with an intention of raising difficulties. I cannot find, I cannot imagine any such reasoning but I keep my mind still open to instruction if anyone will vouch safe to bestow it on me. 32 Should it be said that from a number of uniform experiments we infer a connection between the sensible qualities and the secret powers this I must confess seems the same difficulty couched in different terms. The question still recurs on what process of argument this inference is founded. Where is the medium the interposing ideas which join propositions so very wide of each other? It is confessed that the colour, consistency and other sensible qualities of bread appear not of themselves to have any connection with the secret powers of nourishment and support. For otherwise we could infer these secret powers from the first appearance of those sensible qualities without the aid of experience contrary to the sentiment of all philosophers and contrary to plain matter of fact. Here then is our natural state of ignorance with regard to the powers and influence of all objects. How is this remedied by experience? It only shows us a number of uniform effects resulting from certain objects and teaches us that those particular objects at that particular time were endowed with such powers and forces when a new object endowed with similar sensible qualities is produced we expect similar powers and forces and look for a like effect. From a body of like colour and consistency with bread we expect like nourishment and support but this surely is a step or progress in the mind which wants to be explained. When a man says I have found in all past instances such sensible qualities conjoined with such secret powers and when he says similar sensible qualities will always be conjoined with similar secret powers he is not guilty of a tautology nor are these propositions in any respect the same. You say that one proposition is an inference from another but you must confess that the inference is not intuitive neither is it demonstrative of what nature is it then to say it is experimental is begging the question for all inferences from experience suppose as their foundation that the future will resemble the past and that similar powers will be conjoined with similar sensible qualities. If there be any suspicion that the course of nature may change and that the past may be no rule for the future all experience becomes useless and can give rise to no inference or conclusion it is impossible therefore that any arguments from experience can prove this resemblance of the past to the future since all these arguments are founded on the supposition of that resemblance. Let the course of things be allowed hitherto ever so regular that alone without some new argument or inference proves not that for the future it will continue so in vain do you pretend to have learned the nature of bodies from your past experience their secret nature and consequently all their effects in influence may change without any change in their sensible qualities this happens sometimes and with regard to some objects why may it not happen always and with regard to all objects what logic what process of argument secures you against this supposition my practice you say refutes my doubts but you mistake the purport of my question as an agent I am quite satisfied in the point but as a philosopher who has some share of curiosity I will not say skepticism I want to learn the foundation of this inference no reading no inquiry has yet been able to remove my difficulty or give me satisfaction in a matter of such importance can I do better than propose the difficulty to the public even though perhaps I have small hopes of obtaining a solution we shall at least by this means be sensible of our ignorance if we do not augment our knowledge 33 I must confess that a man is guilty of unpardonable arrogance who concludes because an argument has escaped his own investigation that therefore it does not really exist I must also confess that though all the learned for several ages should have employed themselves in fruitless search upon any subject it may still perhaps be rash to conclude positively that the subject must therefore pass all human comprehension even though we examine all the sources of our knowledge and conclude them unfit for such a subject there may still remain a suspicion that the enumeration is not complete or the examination not accurate but with regard to the present subject there are some considerations which seem to remove all this accusation of arrogance or suspicion of mistake it is certain that the most ignorant and stupid peasants nay infants nay even brute beasts improve by experience and learn the qualities of natural objects by observing the effects which result from them when a child has felt the sensation of pain from touching the flame of a candle he will be careful not to put his hand near any candle but will expect a similar effect from a cause which is similar in its sensible qualities and appearance if you assert therefore that the understanding of the child is led into this conclusion by any process of argument or rash ossination I may justly require you to produce that argument nor have you any pretence to refuse so equitable a demand you cannot say that the argument is abstruse and may possibly escape your inquiry since you confess that it is obvious to the capacity of a mere infant if you hesitate therefore a moment or if after reflection you produce any intricate or profound argument you in a manner give up the question and confess that it is not reasoning which engages us to suppose the past resembling the future and to expect similar effects from causes which are to appearance similar this is the proposition which I intend to enforce in the present section if I be right I pretend not to have made any mighty discovery and if I be wrong I must acknowledge myself to be indeed a very backward scholar since I cannot now discover an argument which it seems was perfectly familiar to me long before I was out of my cradle end of section four section five of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org an inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume section five skeptical solution of these doubts part one the passion for philosophy like that for religion seems liable to this inconvenience that though it aims at the correction of our manners and extirpation of our vices it may only serve by imprudent management to foster a predominant inclination and push the mind with more determined resolution towards that side which already draws too much by the bias and propensity of the natural temper it is certain that while we aspire to the magnanimous firmness of the philosophic sage and endeavour to confine our pleasures altogether within our own minds we may at last render our philosophy like that of Epictetus and other Stoics only a more refined system of selfishness and reason ourselves out of all virtue as well as social enjoyment while we study with attention the vanity of human life and turn all our thoughts towards the empty and transitory nature of riches and honors we are perhaps all the while flattering our natural indolence which hating the bustle of the world and drudgery of business seeks a pretense of reason to give itself a full and uncontrolled indulgence there is however one species of philosophy which seems little liable to this inconvenience and that because it strikes in with no disorderly passion of the human mind nor can mingle itself with any natural affection or propensity and that is the academic or skeptical philosophy the academics always talk of doubt and suspense of judgment of danger and hasty determinations of confining to very narrow bounds the inquiries of the understanding and of renouncing all speculations which lie not within the limits of common life and practice nothing therefore can be more contrary than such a philosophy to the supine indolence of the mind its rash arrogance its lofty pretensions and its superstitious credulity every passion is mortified by it except the love of truth and that passion never is nor can be carried to too high a degree it is surprising therefore that this philosophy which in almost every instance must be harmless and innocent should be the subject of so much groundless reproach and obliquy but perhaps the very circumstance which renders it so innocent is what chiefly exposes it to the public hatred and resentment by flattering no irregular passion it gains few partisans by posing so many vices and follies it raises to itself abundance of enemies who stigmatize it as libertine profane and irreligious nor need we fear that this philosophy while it endeavors to limit our inquiries to common life should ever undermine the reasonings of common life and carry its doubts so far as to destroy all action as well as speculation nature will always maintain her rights and prevail in the end over any abstract reasoning whatsoever though we should conclude for instance as in the foregoing section that in all reasonings from experience there is a step taken by the mind which is not supported by any argument or process of the understanding there is no danger that these reasonings on which almost all knowledge depends will ever be affected by such a discovery if the mind be not engaged by argument to make this step it must be induced by some other principle of equal weight and authority and that principle will preserve its influence as long as human nature remains the same what that principle is may well be worth the pains of inquiry suppose a person though endowed with the strongest faculties of reason and reflection to be brought on a sudden into this world he would indeed immediately observe a continual succession of objects and one event following another but he would not be able to discover anything further he would not at first by any reasoning be able to reach the idea of cause and effect since the particular powers by which all natural operations are performed never appear to the senses nor is it reasonable to conclude merely because one event in one instance precedes another that therefore the one is the cause the other the effect their conjunction may be arbitrary and casual there may be no reason to infer the existence of one from the appearance of the other and in a word such a person without more experience could never employ his conjecture or reasoning concerning any matter of fact or be assured of anything beyond what was immediately present to his memory and senses suppose again that he has acquired more experience and has lived so long in the world as to observe familiar objects or events to be constantly conjoined together what is the consequence of this experience he immediately infers the existence of one object from the appearance of the other yet he has not by all his experience acquired any idea or knowledge of the secret power by which the one object produces the other nor is it by any process of reasoning he is engaged to draw this inference but still he finds himself determined to draw it and though he should be convinced that this understanding has no part in the operation he would nevertheless continue in the same course of thinking there is some other principle which determines him to form such a conclusion this principle is custom or habit for wherever the repetition of any particular act or operation produces a propensity to renew the same act or operation without being impelled by any reasoning or process of the understanding we always say that this propensity is the effect of custom by employing that word we pretend not to have given the ultimate reason of such a propensity we only point out a principle of human nature which is universally acknowledged and which is well known by its effects perhaps we can push our inquiries no farther or pretend to give the cause of this cause but must rest contented with it as the ultimate principle which we can assign of all our conclusions from experience it is sufficient satisfaction that we can go so far without repining at the narrowness of our faculties because they will carry us no farther and it is certain we here advance a very intelligible proposition at least if not a true one when we assert that after the constant conjunction of two objects heat and flame for instance weight and solidity we are determined by custom alone to expect the one from the appearance of the other this hypothesis seems even the only one which explains the difficulty why we draw from a thousand instances an inference which we are not able to draw from one instance that is in no respect different from them reason is incapable of any such variation the conclusions which it draws from considering one circle are the same which it would form upon surveying all the circles in the universe but no man having seen only one body move after being impelled by another could infer that every other body will move after a like impulse all reasonings from experience therefore are effects of custom not of reasoning custom then is the great guide of human life it is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us and makes us expect for the future a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past without the influence of custom we should be entirely ignorant of every matter of fact beyond what is immediately present to the memory and senses we should never know how to adjust means to ends or to employ our natural powers in the production of any effect there would be an end at once of all action as well as of the chief part of speculation but here it may be proper to remark that though our conclusions from experience carry us beyond our memory and senses and assure us of matters of fact which happened in the most distant places and most remote ages yet some fact must always be present to the senses or memory from which we may first proceed in drawing these conclusions a man who should find in a desert country the remains of pompous buildings would conclude that the country had in ancient times been cultivated by civilized inhabitants but did nothing of this nature occur to him he should never form such an inference we learn the effects of former ages from history but then we must peruse the volumes in which this instruction is contained and then carry up our inferences from one testimony to another till we arrive at the eyewitnesses and spectators of these distant events in a word if we proceed not upon some fact present to the memory or senses our reasonings would be merely hypothetical and however the particular links might be connected with each other the whole chain of inferences would have nothing to support it nor could we ever by its means arrive at the knowledge of any real existence if I ask why you believe any particular matter of fact which you relate you must tell me some reason and this reason will be some other fact connected with it but as you cannot proceed after this manner in infinitum you must at last terminate in some fact which is present to your memory or senses or must allow that your belief is entirely without foundation what then is the conclusion of the whole matter a simple one though it must be confessed pretty remote from the common theories of philosophy all belief of matter of fact or real existence is derived merely from some object present to the memory or senses and a customary conjunction between that and some other object or in other words having found in many instances that any two kinds of objects flame and heat snow and cold have always been conjoined together if flame or snow be presented anew to the senses the mind is carried by custom to expect heat or cold and to believe that such a quality does exist and will discover itself upon a nearer approach this belief is the necessary result of placing the mind in such circumstances it is an operation of the soul when we are so situated as unavoidable as to feel the passion of love when we receive benefits or hatred when we meet with injuries all these operations are a species of natural instincts which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent at this point at this point it would be very allowable for us to stop our philosophical researches in most questions we can never make a single step farther and in all questions we must terminate here at last after our most restless and curious inquiries but still our curiosity will be pardonable perhaps commendable if it carry us on to still farther researches and make us examine more accurately the nature of this belief and of the customary conjunction once it is derived by this means we may meet with some explications and analogies that will give satisfaction at least to such as love the abstract sciences and can be entertained with speculations which however accurate may still retain a degree of doubt and uncertainty as to readers of a different taste the remaining part of this section is not calculated for them and the following inquiries may well be understood though it be neglected and section five this recording is in the public domain section five part two of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org an inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume section five skeptical solution of these doubts part two nothing is more free than the imagination of man and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas furnished by the internal and external senses it has unlimited power of mixing compounding separating and dividing these ideas in all the varieties of fiction and vision it can feign a train of events with all the appearance of reality ascribed to them a particular time and place conceive them as existent and paint them out to itself with every circumstance that belongs to any historical fact which it believes with the greatest certainty wherein therefore consists the difference between such a fiction and belief it lies not merely in any peculiar idea which is annexed to such a conception as commands are assent and which is wanting to every known fiction for as the mind has authority over all its ideas it could voluntarily annex this particular idea to any fiction and consequently be able to believe whatever it pleases contrary to what we find by daily experience we can in our conception join the head of a man to the body of a horse but it is not in our power to believe that such an animal has ever really existed it follows therefore that the difference between fiction and belief lies in some sentiment or feeling which is annexed to the latter not to the former and which depends not on the will nor can be commanded at pleasure it must be excited by nature like all other sentiments and must arise from the particular situation in which the mind is placed at any particular juncture whatever an object is presented to the memory or senses it immediately by the force of custom carries the imagination to conceive that object which is usually conjoined to it and this conception is attended with a feeling or sentiment different from the loose reveries of the fancy in this consists the whole nature of belief for as there is no matter of fact which we believe so firmly that we cannot conceive the contrary there would be no difference between the conception assented to and that which is rejected or it not for some sentiment which distinguishes the one from the other if I see a billiard ball moving towards another on a smooth table I can easily conceive it to stop upon contact this conception implies no contradiction but still it feels very differently from that conception by which I represent to myself the impulse and the communication of motion from one ball to another were we to attempt a definition of this sentiment we should perhaps find it very difficult if not an impossible task in the same manner as if we should endeavor to define the feeling of cold or passion of anger to a creature who never had any experience of these sentiments belief is the true and proper name of this feeling and no one is ever at a loss to know the meaning of that term because every man is every moment conscious of the sentiment represented by it it may not however be improper to attempt a description of this sentiment in hopes we may by that means arrive at some analogies which may afford a more perfect explication of it I say then that belief is nothing but a more vivid lively forcible firm steady conception of an object than what the imagination alone is ever able to attain this variety of terms which may seem so unphilosophical is intended only to express that act of mind which renders realities or what is taken for such more present to us than fictions causes them to weigh more in the thought and gives them a superior influence on the passions and imagination provided we agree about the thing it is needless to dispute about the terms the imagination has the command over all its ideas and can join and mix and vary them in all the ways possible it may conceive fictitious objects with all the circumstances of place and time it may set them in a manner before our eyes in their true colors just as they might have existed but as it is impossible that this faculty of imagination can ever of itself reach belief it is evident that belief consists not in the peculiar nature or order of ideas but in the manner of their conception and their feeling to the mind I confess that it is impossible perfectly to explain this feeling or manner of conception we may make use of words which express something near it but its true and proper name as we observed before is belief which is a term that everyone sufficiently understands in common life and in philosophy we can go no farther than assert that belief is something felt by the mind which distinguishes the ideas of the judgment from the fictions of the imagination it gives them more weight and influence makes them appear of greater importance enforces them in the mind and renders them the governing principle of our actions I hear at present for instance a person's voice with whom I am acquainted and the sound comes as from the next room this impression of my senses immediately conveys my thought to the person together with all the surrounding objects I paint them out to myself as existing at present with the same qualities and relations of which I formerly knew them possessed these ideas take faster hold of my mind than ideas of an enchanted castle they are very different to the feeling and have a much greater influence of every kind either to give pleasure or pain joy or sorrow let us then take in the whole compass of this doctrine and allow that the sentiment of belief is nothing but a conception more intense and steady than what attends the mere fictions of the imagination and that this manner of conception arises from a customary conjunction of the object with something present to the memory or senses I believe that it will not be difficult upon these suppositions to find other operations of the mind analogous to it and to trace up these phenomena to principles still more general we have already observed that nature has established connections among particular ideas and that no sooner one idea occurs to our thoughts than it introduces its correlative and carries our attention towards it by a gentle and insensible movement these principles of connection or association we have reduced to three namely resemblance contiguity and causation which are the only bonds that unite our thoughts together and beget that regular train of reflection or discourse which in a greater or less degree takes place among all mankind now here arises a question on which the solution of the present difficulty will depend does it happen in all these relations that when one of the objects is presented to the senses or memory the mind is not only carried to the conception of the correlative but reaches a steadier and stronger conception of it than what otherwise it would have been able to attain this seems to be the case with that belief which arises from the relation of cause and effect and if the case be the same with the other relations or principles of association this may be established as a general law which takes place in all the operations of the mind we may therefore observe as the first experiment to our present purpose that upon the appearance of the picture of an absent friend our idea of him is evidently enlivened by the resemblance and that every passion which that idea occasions whether of joy or sorrow acquires new force and vigor in producing this effect there concur both a relation and a present impression where the picture bears him no resemblance at least was not intended for him it never so much conveys our thought to him and where it is absent as well as the person though the mind may pass from the thought of the one to that of the other it feels its idea to be rather weakened than enlivened by that transition we take a pleasure in viewing the picture of a friend when it is set before us but when it is removed rather choose to consider him directly than by reflection in an image which is equally distant and obscure the ceremonies of the roman catholic religion may be considered as instances of the same nature the devotees of that superstition usually plead an excuse for the memories with which they are upgraded that they feel the good effect of those external motions and postures and actions in enlivening their devotion and quickening their fervor which otherwise would decay if directed entirely to distant and immaterial objects we shadow out the objects of our faith say they insensible types and images and render them more present to us by the immediate presence of these types than it is possible for us to do merely by an intellectual view and contemplation sensible objects have always a greater influence on the fancy than any other and this influence they readily convey to those ideas to which they are related and which they resemble i shall only infer from these practices and this reasoning that the effect of resemblance in enlivening the ideas is very common and as in every case a resemblance and a present impression must concur we are abundantly supplied with experiments to prove the reality of the foregoing principle we may add force to these experiments by others of a different kind in considering the effects of contiguity as well as of resemblance it is certain that distance diminishes the force of every idea and that upon our approach to any object though it does not discover itself to our senses it operates upon the mind with an influence which imitates an immediate impression the thinking on any object readily transports the mind to what is contiguous but it is only the actual presence of an object that transports it with a superior vivacity when i am a few miles from home whatever relates to me touches me more nearly than when i am 200 leagues distant though even at that distance the reflecting on anything in the neighborhood of my friends or family naturally produces an idea of them but as in this latter case both the objects of the mind are ideas notwithstanding there is an easy transition between them that transition alone is not able to give a superior vivacity to any of the ideas for want of some immediate impression no one can doubt but causation has the same influence as the other two relations of resemblance and contiguity superstitious people are fond of the relics of saints and holy men for the same reason that they seek after types or images in order to enliven their devotion and give them a more intimate and strong conception of those exemplary lives which they desire to imitate now it is evident that one of the best relics which a devotee could procure would be the handy work of a saint and if his clothes and furniture are ever to be considered in this light it is because they were once at his disposal and were moved and affected by him in which respect they are to be considered as imperfect effects and as connected with him by a shorter chain of consequences than any of those by which we learn the reality of his existence suppose that the son of a friend who had been long dead or absent were presented to us it is evident that this object would instantly revive its correlative idea and recall to our thoughts all past intimacies and familiarities in more lively colors than they would otherwise have appeared to us this is another phenomenon which seems to prove the principle above mentioned we may observe that in these phenomena the belief of the correlative object is always presupposed without which the relation could have no effect the influence of the picture supposes that we believe our friend to have once existed contiguity to home can never excite our ideas of home unless we believe that it really exists now i assert that this belief where it reaches beyond the memory or senses is of a similar nature and arises from similar causes with the transition of thought and vivacity of conception here explained when i throw a piece of dry wood into a fire my mind is immediately carried to conceive that it augments not extinguishes the flame this transition of thought from the cause to the effect proceeds not from reason it derives its origin all together from custom and experience and as it first begins from an object present to the senses it renders the idea or conception of flame more strong and lively than any loose floating reverie of the imagination that idea arises immediately the thought moves instantly towards it and conveys to it all that force of conception which is derived from the impression present to the senses when a sword is leveled at my breast does not the idea of wound and pain strike me more strongly than when a glass of wine is presented to me even though by accident this idea should occur after the appearance of the latter object but what is there in this whole matter to cause such a strong conception except only a present object and a customary transition to the idea of another object which we have been accustomed to conjoin with a former this is the whole operation of the mind in all our conclusions concerning matter of fact and existence and it is a satisfaction to find some analogies by which it may be explained the transition from a present object does in all cases give strength and solidity to the related idea here then is a kind of pre-established harmony between the course of nature and the succession of our ideas and though the powers and forces by which the former is governed be wholly unknown to us yet our thoughts and conceptions have still we find gone on in the same train with the other works of nature custom is that principle by which this correspondence has been affected so necessary to the subsistence of our species and the regulation of our conduct in every circumstance and occurrence of human life had not the presence of an object instantly excited the idea of those objects commonly conjoined with it all our knowledge must have been limited to the narrow sphere of our memory and senses and we should never have been able to adjust means to ends or employ our natural powers either to the producing of good or avoiding of evil those who delight in the discovery and contemplation of final causes have here ample subject to employ their wonder and admiration I shall add for a further confirmation of the foregoing theory that as this operation of mind by which we infer like effects from like causes and vice versa is so essential to the subsistence of all human creatures it is not probable that it could be trusted to the fallacious deductions of our reason which is slow in its operations appears not in any degree during the first years of infancy and at best is in every age and period of human life extremely liable to error and mistake it is more conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary an act of the mind by some instinct or mechanical tendency which may be infallible in its operations may discover itself at the first appearance of life and thought and may be independent of all the labored deductions of the understanding as nature has taught us the use of our limbs without giving us the knowledge of the muscles and nerves by which they are actuated so has she implanted in us an instinct which carries forward the thought in a correspondent course to that which she has established among external objects though we are ignorant of those powers and forces on which this regular course and succession of objects totally depends and section five part two this recording is in the public domain chapter six of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a libra vox recording all libra vox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how to volunteer please contact libra vox.org an inquiry concerning human understanding by david hume section six of probability though there be no such thing as chance in the world our ignorance of the real cause of any event has the same influence on the understanding and begets a like species of belief or opinion there is certainly a probability which arises from a superiority of chances on any side and according as this superiority increases and surpasses the opposite chances the probability receives a proportionable increase and begets still a higher degree of belief or ascent to that side in which we discover the superiority if a die were marked with one figure or number of spots on four sides and with another figure or number of spots on the two remaining sides it would be more probable that the former would turn up than the latter though if it had a thousand sides marked in the same manner and only one side different the probability would be much higher and our belief or expectation of the event more steady and secure this process of the thought or reasoning may seem trivial and obvious but those who consider it more narrowly it may perhaps afford matter for curious speculation it seems evident that when the mind looks forward to discover the event which may result from the throw of such a die it considers the turning up of each particular side as a like probable and this is the very nature of chance to render all the particular events comprehended in it entirely equal but finding a great number of sides concur in the one event then in the other the mind is carried more frequently to that event and meets it oftener in revolving the various possibilities or chances on which the ultimate result depends this concurrence of several views in one particular event begets immediately by an inexplicable contrivance of nature the sentiment or belief and gives that event the advantage over its antagonist which is supported by a smaller number of views and recurs less frequently to the mind if we allow that belief is nothing but a firmer and stronger conception of an object than what attends the mere fictions of the imagination this operation may perhaps in some measure be accounted for the concurrence of these several views or glimpses and prints the idea more strongly on the imagination gives it superior force and vigor renders its influence on the passions and affections more sensible and in a word begets that reliance or security which constitutes the nature of belief and opinion the case is the same with the probability of causes as with that of chance there are some causes which are entirely uniform and constant in producing a particular effect and no instance has ever yet been found of any failure or irregularity in their operation fire has always burned and water suffocated every human creature the production of motion by impulse and gravity is a universal law which has hitherto admitted of no exception but there are other causes which have been found more irregular and uncertain nor has rhubarb always proved a purge or opium a soporific to everyone who has taken these medicines it is true when any cause fails of producing its usual effect philosophers ascribe not this to any irregularity in nature but suppose that some secret causes and the particular structure of parts have prevented the operation our reasonings however and conclusions concerning the event are the same as if this principle had no place being determined by custom to transfer the past to the future in all our inferences where the past has been entirely regular in uniform we expect the event with the greatest assurance and leave no room for any contrary supposition but where different effects have been found to follow from causes which are two appearance exactly similar all these various effects must occur to the mind in transferring the past to the future and enter into our consideration when we determine the probability of the event though we give the preference to that which has been found most usual and believe that this effect will exist we must not overlook the other effects but must assign to each of them a particular weight and authority in proportion as we have found it to be more or less frequent it is more probable in almost every country of europe that there will be frost sometime in january then that the weather will continue open throughout the whole month though this probability varies according to the different climates and approaches to a certainty in the more northern kingdoms here then it seems evident that when we transfer the past to the future in order to determine the effect which will result from any cause we transfer all the different events in the same proportion as they have appeared in the past and conceive one to have existed a hundred times for instance another 10 times and another once as a great number of views do here concur in one event they fortify and confirm it to the imagination beget that sentiment which we call belief and give its object the preference above the contrary event which is not supported by an equal number of experiments and recurs not so frequently to the thought in transferring the past to the future let any one try to account for this operation of the mind upon any of the received systems of philosophy and he will be sensible of the difficulty for my part i shall think it's efficient if the present hints excite the curiosity of philosophers and make them sensible how effective all common theories are in treating of such curious and sublime subjects end of section six of probability this recording is in the public domain chapter nine of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a liberbox recording all liberbox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liberbox.org recording by ml co in cleveland ohio july 2007 an inquiry concerning human understanding by david hume chapter nine of the idea of necessary connection part one 48 the great advantage of the mathematical sciences above the moral consists in this that the ideas of the former being sensible are always clear and determinant the smallest distinction between them is immediately perceptible and the same terms are still expressive of the same ideas without ambiguity or variation an oval is never mistaken for a circle nor an hyperbole of foreign ellipses the isosceles and skillenium are distinguished by boundaries more exact than vice and virtue right and wrong if any term be defined in geometry the mind readily of itself substitutes on all occasions the definition for the term defined or even when no definition is employed the object itself may be presented to the senses and by that means be steadily and clearly apprehended but the finer sentiments of the mind the operations of the understanding the various agitation of the passions that really in themselves distinct easily escape us when surveyed by reflection nor is it in our power to recall the original object as often as we have occasion to contemplate it ambiguity by this means is gradually introduced into our reasonings similar objects are readily taken to be the same and the conclusion becomes at last very wide of the premises one may safely however affirm that if we consider these sciences in a proper light their advantages and disadvantages nearly compensate each other and reduce both of them to a state of equality if the mind with greater facility retains the ideas of geometry clear and determinant it must carry on a much longer and much more intricate chain of reasoning and compare ideas much wider of each other in order to reach the abstruser truths of that science and if moral ideas are apt without extreme care to fall into obscurity and confusion the inferences are always much shorter in these disquisitions and the intermediate steps which lead to the conclusion much fewer than in the sciences which treat of quantity and number in reality there are scarcely a proposition in euclid so simple as not to consist of more parts than are to be found in any moral reasoning which runs not into chimera and conceit where we trace the principles of the human mind through a few steps we may be very well satisfied with our progress considering how soon nature throws a bar to all our inquiries concerning causes and reduces us to an acknowledgement of our ignorance the chief obstacle therefore to our improvement in the moral or metaphysical sciences is the obscurity of the ideas and ambiguity of the terms the principal difficulty in the mathematics is the length of inferences and compass of thought requisite to the forming of any conclusion and perhaps our progress in natural philosophy is chiefly retarded by the want of proper experiments and phenomena which are often discovered by chance and cannot always be found when requisite even by the most diligent and prudent inquiry as moral philosophy seems hitherto to have received less improvement than either geometry or physics we may conclude that if there be any difference in this respect among the sciences the difficulties which obstruct the progress of the former require superior care and capacity to be surmounted there are no ideas which occur in metaphysics more obscure and uncertain than those of power force energy or necessary connection of which it is every moment necessary for us to treat all our disquisitions we shall therefore endeavor in this section to fix if possible the precise meaning of these terms and thereby remove some part of that obscurity which is so much complained of in the species of philosophy it seems a proposition which will not admit a much dispute that all our ideas are nothing but copies of our impressions or in other words that it is impossible for us to think of anything which we have not antecedently felt either by our external or internal senses i have endeavored to explain improve this proposition and have expressed my hopes that by a proper application of it men may reach a greater clearness and precision in philosophical reasonings than what they have hitherto been able to attain complex ideas may perhaps be well known by definition which is nothing but an enumeration of those parts of simple ideas that compose them but when we have pushed up definitions to the most simple ideas and find still some ambiguity in obscurity what resource are we then possessed of by what invention can we throw light upon these ideas and render them all together precise and determined to our intellectual view produce the impressions or original sentiments from which the ideas are copied these impressions are all strong and sensible they admit not of ambiguity they are not only placed in a full like themselves but may throw light on their correspondent ideas which lie in obscurity and by this means we may perhaps attain a new microscope or species of optics by which in the moral sciences the most minute and the most simple ideas may be so enlarged as to fall readily under our apprehension and be equally known with the grossest and most sensible ideas that can be the object of our inquiry to be fully acquainted therefore with the idea of power or necessary connection let us examine its impression and in order to find the impression with greater certainty let us search for it and all the sources from which it may possibly be derived when we look about us towards external objects and consider the operation of causes we are never able in a single instance to discover any power or necessary connection any quality which binds the effect to the cause and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other we only find that the one does actually in fact follow the other the impulse of one billiard ball is attended with motion in the second this is the hole that appears to the outward senses the mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this section of objects consequently there is not in any single particular instance of cause and effect anything which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connection from the first appearance of an object we never can conjecture what effect will result from it but where the power or energy of any cause discoverable by the mind we could foresee an effect even without experience and might at first pronounce with certainty concerning it by mere dint of thought and reasoning in reality there is no part of matter that does ever by its sensible qualities discover any power or energy or give us ground to imagine that it could produce anything or be followed by any other object which we could denominate its effect solidity extension motion these qualities are all complete in themselves and never point out any other event which may result from them the scenes of the universe are continually shifting and one object follows another in an uninterrupted session but the power of force which actuates the whole machine is entirely concealed from us and never discovers itself in any of the sensible qualities of body we know that in fact heat is a constant attendant of flame but what is the connection between them we have no room so much as to conjecture or imagine it is impossible therefore that the idea of power can be derived from the contemplation of bodies in single instances of their operation because nobody's ever discover any power which can be the origin of this idea 51 since therefore external objects as they appear to the senses give us no idea of power or necessary connection by their operation particular instances let us see whether this idea be derived from reflection on the operations of our own minds and be copied from any internal impression it may be said that we are every moment conscious of internal power while we feel that by the simple command of our will we can move the organs of our body or direct the faculties of our mind an act of volition produces motion in our limbs or raises a new idea in our imagination this influence of the will we know by consciousness hence we acquire the idea of power energy and are certain that we ourselves and all other intelligent beings are possessed of power this idea then is the idea of reflection since it arrives from reflecting on the operations of our own mind and on the command which is exercised by will both over the organs of the body and the faculties of the soul 52 we shall proceed to examine this pretension and first with regard to the influence of volition over the organs of the body this influence we may observe is a fact which like all other natural events can be known only by experience and can never be foreseen from any apparent energy or power in the cause which connects it with the effect and renders the one and infallible consequence of the other the motion of our body follows upon the command of our will of this we are every moment conscious but the means by which this is affected the energy by which the will performs so extraordinary in operation of this we are so far from being immediately conscious that it must forever escape our most diligent inquiry or first is there any principle in all nature more mysterious than that of the union of soul with body by which a supposed spiritual substance acquires such an influence over a material one that the most refined thought is able to actuate the grossest matter where are we empowered by a secret wish to remove mountains or control the planets in their orbit this extensive authority would not be more extraordinary nor more beyond our comprehension but if by consciousness we perceived any power or energy in the will we must know this power we must know its connection with the effect we must know the secret union of soul and body and the nature of both these substances by which the one is able to operate in so many instances upon the other secondly we are not able to move all the organs of the body with a like authority though we cannot assign any reason besides experience for so remarkable a difference between one and the other why has the will and influence over the tongue and fingers not over the heart or liver this question would never embarrass us where we conscious of a power in the former case not the latter we should then perceive independent of experience why the authority of will over the organs of the body is circumscribed within such particular limits being in that case fully acquainted with the power or force by which it operates we should also know why its influence reaches precisely to such boundaries and no farther a man suddenly struck with a palsy in the leg or arm or has newly lost those members frequently endeavors at first to move them and employ them in their usual offices here he has as much conscious of power to command such limbs as a man in perfect health is conscious of the power to actuate any member which remains in its natural state and condition but consciousness never deceives consequently neither in the one case nor in the other are we ever conscious of any power we learn the influence of our well from experience alone and experience only teaches us how one event constantly follows another without instructing us in the secret connection which binds them together and renders them inseparable thirdly we learn from anatomy that the immediate object of power and voluntary motion is not the member itself which is moved but certain muscles and nerves and animal spirits and perhaps something still more minute and more unknown through which the motion is successively propagated ere it reached the member itself whose motion is the immediate object of volition can there be a more certain proof that the power by which this whole operation is performed so far from being directly and fully known by an inward sentiment or consciousness is to the last degree mysterious and unintelligible here the mind wills a certain event immediately another event unknown to ourselves and totally different from the one intended is produced this event produces another equally unknown till it lasts through a long succession the desired event is produced but if the original power were felt it must be known or it known its effect must also be known since all powers relative to its effect and vice versa if the fact be not known the power cannot be known nor felt how indeed can we be conscious of the power to move our limbs when we have no such power but only then to move certain animal spirits which though they produce it last the motion of our limbs yet operate in such a manner as it's wholly beyond our comprehension we may therefore conclude from the whole I hope without any temerity though with assurance that our idea of power is not copied from any sentiment or consciousness of power within ourselves when we give rise to animal motion or apply our limbs to their proper use in office that their motion follows the command of the will as a matter of common experience like other natural events but the power or energy by which this is affected like that and other natural events is unknown and inconceivable 53 shall we then assert that we are conscious of a power or energy in our own minds when by an actor command of our will we raise up a new idea fix the mind to the contemplation of it turn it on all sides and it lasts dismiss it for some other idea when we think that we have surveyed it with sufficient accuracy I believe the same arguments will prove that even this command of the will gives us no real idea of force or energy first it must be allowed that when we know a power we know that very circumstance in the cause by which it is unable to produce the effect for these are supposed to be synonymous we must therefore know both the cause and effect and the relation between them but do we pretend to be acquainted with the nature of the human soul and the nature of an idea or the aptitude of the one to produce the other this is a real creation a production of something out of nothing which implies a power so great that it may seem at first sight beyond the reach of any being less than infinite at least it must be owned that such a power is not felt nor known nor even conceivable by the mind we only feel the event namely the existence of an idea consequent to a command of the will but the manner in which this operation is performed the power by which it is produced is entirely beyond our comprehension secondly the command of the mind over itself is limited as well as its command over the body and these limits are not known by reason or any acquaintance with the nature of cause and effect but only by experience and observation as in all other natural events and in the operation of external objects our authority over our sentiments and passions is much weaker than that over ideas even the latter authority is circumscribed within very narrow boundaries while anyone pretend to assign the ultimate reason of these boundaries or so why the power is deficient in one case not in another thirdly this self command is very different at different times a man in health possesses more of it than one languishing with sickness we are more master of our thoughts in the morning than in the evening fasting than after a full meal can we give any reason for these variations except experience where then is the power of which we pretend to be conscious is there not here either in a spiritual or material substance or both some secret mechanism or structure of parts upon which the effects depends and which being entirely unknown to us renders the power or energy of the well equally unknown and incomprehensible volition is surely an act of the mind with which we are sufficiently acquainted reflect upon it consider it on all sides do you find anything in it like this creative power by which it raises from nothing a new idea and with a new kind of fiat imitates the omnipotence of its maker if I may be allowed so to speak who called forth into existence all various scenes of nature so far from being conscious of this energy in the will it requires a certain experience is that of which we are possessed to convince us that such extraordinary effects to ever result from a simple act of volition 54 the generality of mankind never finds any difficulty in accounting for the more common and familiar operations of nature such as the descent of heavy bodies the growth of plants the generation of animals or the nourishment of bodies by food but suppose that in all these cases they perceive the very force or energy of the cause by which it is connected with its effect and it's forever infallible in its operation they acquire by long habit such a turn of mind that upon the appearance of the cause they immediately expect with assurance its usual attendant and hardly conceive it possible that any other vent could result from it it is only on the discovery of an extraordinary phenomena such as earthquakes pestilence and prodigies of any kind that they find themselves at a loss to assign a proper cause and to explain the manner in which the effect is produced by it it is usual for men in such difficulties to have recourse to some invisible intelligent principle as the immediate cause of that event which surprises them and which they think cannot be accounted for from the common powers of nature but philosophers who carry their scrutiny a little farther immediately perceive that even in the most familiar events the energy of the cause is as unintelligible as in the most unusual and that we only learn by experience of the frequent conjunction of objects without ever being able to comprehend anything like connection between them 55 here then many philosophers think themselves obliged by reason to have recourse on all occasions to the same principle which the vulgar never appealed to but in cases that appear miraculous and supernatural they acknowledge mind and intelligence to be not only the ultimate and original cause of all things but the immediate and sole cause of every event which appears in nature they pretend that those objects which are commonly denominated causes are in reality nothing but occasions and that a true and direct principle of every effect is not any power or force of nature but a volition of the supreme being who wills that such particular objects should be forever conjoined with each other instead of saying that one billiard ball moves another by a force which it is derived from the author of its nature it is the deity himself they say who by a particular volition moves the second ball being determined to this operation by the impulse of the first ball in consequence of those general laws which he has laid down to himself and the government of the universe but philosophers advancing still in their inquiries discover that as we are totally ignorant of the power on which depends the mutual operation of bodies we are no less ignorant of that power on which depends the operation of mind on body or a body on mind nor are we able either from our senses or consciousness to assign the ultimate principle in one case more than in the other the same ignorance therefore reduces them to the same conclusion they assert that the deity is the immediate cause of the union between soul and body and that they are not the organs of sense which being agitated by external objects produce sensations in the mind but it is a particular volition of our omnipotent maker which excites such a sensation in consequence of such a motion in the organ in like manner it is not any energy in the will that produces local motion in our members it is God himself who is pleased to second our will in itself impotent and to command the motion which we erroneously attribute to our power and efficacy nor do philosophers stop at this conclusion they sometimes extend the same inference to the mind itself in its internal operations our mental vision or conception of ideas is nothing but a revelation made to us by our maker when we voluntarily turn our thoughts to any object and raise up its image in the fancy it is not the will which creates this idea it is the universal creator who discovers it to the mind and reddens it present to us 56 thus according to these philosophers everything is full of God not content with the principle that nothing exists but by his will that nothing possesses any power but by his concession they rob nature and all created beings of every power in order to render their dependence on the deity still more sensible and immediate they consider not that by this theory they diminish instead of magnifying the grandeur of those attributes which they affect so much to celebrate it argues surely more power in the deity to delegate a certain degree of power to inferior creatures than to produce everything by his own immediate volition it argues more wisdom to contrive at first the fabric of the world with such perfect foresight that of itself and by its proper operation it may serve all the purposes of providence then if the creator were obliged every moment to adjust its parts and animate by his breath all the wheels that's depend this machine but if we would have a more philosophical computation of this theory perhaps the two following reflections may suffice 57 first it seems to me that this theory of the universal energy and operation of the supreme being is too bold ever to carry conviction with it to a man sufficiently apprised to the weakness of human reason and the narrow limits to which it is confined in all its operations though the chain of arguments which conduct to it were ever so logical there must arise a strong suspicion if not an absolute assurance that it has carried us quite beyond the reach of our faculties when it leaves the conclusion so extraordinary and so remote for common life and experience we are got into fairyland long ere we have reached the last steps of our theory and there we have no reason to trust our common methods of argument or to think that our usual analogies and probabilities have any authority our line is too short to fathom such immense abysses and however we may flatter ourselves that we are guided in every step which we take by a kind of verisimilitude and experience we may be assured that this fancied experience has no authority when we thus apply it to subjects that lie entirely out of the sphere of experience but on this we shall have occasion to touch afterwards secondly i cannot perceive any force in the arguments on which this theory is founded we are ignorant it is true of the manner in which our bodies operate on each other their force or energy is entirely incomprehensible but are we not equally ignorant of the manner or force by which a mind even the supreme mind operates either on itself or on body when side to seat you do we acquire any idea of it we have no sentiment or consciousness of this power in ourselves we have no idea of the supreme being but what we learn from reflection on our own faculties where our ignorance therefore a good reason for rejecting anything we should be led into that principle of denying all energy in the supreme being as much as in the grossest matter we surely comprehend as little the operations of one as of the other is it more difficult to conceive that motion may arise from the impulse than it may arise from volition all we know is our profound ignorance in both cases end of chapter 9 chapter 10 of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by ML Co in Cleveland Ohio July 2007 an inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume chapter 10 of the idea of necessary connection part two 58 but to hasten to a conclusion of this argument which is already drawn out to two greater lengths we have sought in vain for an idea of power or necessary connection in all the sources from which we could suppose it to be derived it appears that in single instances of the operation of bodies we never can by our utmost scrutiny discover anything but one event following another without being able to comprehend any force or power by which to cause operates or any connection between it and its supposed effect the same difficulty occurs in contemplating the operations of mine on body where we observe the motion of the ladder to follow upon the volition of the former but are not able to observe or conceive the tie which binds together the motion and volition or the energy by which the mind produces this effect the authority of the will over its own faculties and ideas is not a bit more comprehensible so then upon the whole there appears not throughout all nature any one instance of connection which is conceivable by us all events seem entirely loose and separate one event follows another but we can never observe any tie between them they seem conjoined but never connected and as we can have no idea of anything which never appeared to our outward sense or inward sentiment the necessary conclusion seems to be that we have no idea of connection or power at all and that these words are absolutely without any meaning when employed either in philosophical reasoning or common life 59 but there still remains one method of avoiding this conclusion and one source which we have not yet examined when any natural object or event is presented it is impossible for us by any sagacity or penetration to discover or even conjecture without experience what event will result from it or to carry our foresight beyond that object which is immediately present to the memory and senses even after one instance of our experiment where we have observed a particular event to follow upon another we are not entitled to form a general rule or foretell what will happen in light cases it being justly esteemed an unpardonable temerity to judge of the whole course on nature from one single experiment however accurate or certain but when one particular species of event has always in all instances been conjoined with another we make no longer any scruple of foretelling one upon the appearance of the other and of employing that reasoning which can alone assure us as any matter of fact or existence we then call the one object cause the other effect we suppose that there is some connection between them some power in the one by which it infallibly produces the other and operates with the greatest certainty and strongest necessity it appears then that this idea of a necessary connection among events arises from a number of similar instances which occur are the constant conjunction of these events nor can that idea ever been suggested by any one of these instances surveyed in all possible lights and positions but there is nothing in a number of instances different from every single instance which is supposed to be exactly similar except only that after a repetition of similar instances the mind is carried by habit upon the appearance of one event to expect its usual attendant and to believe that it will exist this connection therefore which we feel in the mind this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connection nothing farther is in the case contemplate the subject on all sides you will never find any other origin of that idea this is the sole difference between one instance from which we can never receive the idea of connection and a number of similar instances by which it is suggested the first time a man saw the communication of motion by impulse as by the shock of two billiard balls he could not pronounce that the one event was connected but only that it was conjoined with the other after he has observed several instances of this nature he then pronounces them to be connected what alteration has happened to give rise to this new idea of connection nothing but that he now feels these events to be connected in his imagination and can readily foretell the existence of one from the appearance of the other when we say therefore that one object is connected with another we mean only that they have acquired a connection in our thought and give rise to this inference by which they become proofs of each other's existence a conclusion which is somewhat extraordinary but which seems founded on sufficient evidence nor will its evidence be weakened by any general difference of the understanding or skeptical suspicion concerning every conclusion which is new and extraordinary though conclusions can be more agreeable to skepticism then such as make discoveries concerning the weakness and narrow limits of human reason and capacity 60 and what stronger instance can be produced of the surprising ignorance and weakness of the understanding than the present for surely if there be any relation among objects which it imports to us to know perfectly it is that of cause and effect on this are founded all our reasoning concerning matter of fact or existence by means of it alone we attain any assurance concerning objects which are removed from the present testimony of our memory and sense the only immediately utility of all sciences is to teach us how to control and regulate future events by their causes our thoughts and inquiries are therefore every moment employed about this relation yet so imperfect are the ideas which we form concerning it that it is impossible to give any just definition of cause except what is drawn from something extraneous and foreign to it similar objects are always conjoined with similar of this we have experience suitably to this experience therefore we may define a cause to be an object followed by another and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects similar to the second or in other words where if the first object had not been the second never had existed the appearance of a cause always conveys the mind by customary transition to the idea of the effect of this also we have experience we may therefore suitably to this experience form another definition of cause and call it an object followed by another and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other but though both these definitions be drawn from circumstances far into the cause we cannot remedy this inconvenience or attain any more perfect definition which may point out that circumstance in the cause which gives it a connection with its effect we have no idea of this connection nor even any distinct notion of what it is we desire to know when we enter into the of what it is we desire to know when we endeavor at a conception of it we say for instance that the vibration of this string is the cause of this particular sound but what do we mean by that affirmation we either mean that this vibration is followed by the sound and that all similar vibrations have been followed by similar sounds or that this vibration is followed by this sound and that upon the appearance of one the mind anticipates the senses and forms immediately an idea of the other we may consider the relation of cause and effect in either of these two lights but beyond these we have no idea of it 61 to recapitulate therefore the reasonings of this section every idea is copied from some proceeding impression or sentiment and where we cannot find any impression we may be certain that there is no idea in all single instances of the operation of bodies or minds there is nothing that produces any impression nor consequently can suggest any idea of power or necessary connection but when many uniform instances appear and the same object is always followed by the same event we then begin to entertain the notion of causing connection we then feel a new sentiment or impression to wit a customary connection in the thought or imagination between one object and its usual attendant and this sentiment is the original of that idea which we seek for for as this idea arises from a number of similar instances and not from any single instance it must arise from that circumstance in which the number of instances differ from every individual instance but this customary connection or transition of the imagination is the only circumstance in which they differ in every other particular they are alike the first instance which we saw of motion communicated by the shock of two billiard balls to return to this obvious illustration is exactly similar to any instance that may at present occurred us except only that we could not at first infer one event from the other which we are unable to do at present after so long a course of uniform experience I know not whether the reader will readily apprehend this reasoning I'm afraid that should I multiply words about it or throw it into greater variety of lights it would only become more obscure and intricate in all abstract reasonings there is one point of view which if we can happily hit we shall go farther towards illustrating the subject and by all the eloquence and copious expression in the world this point of view we should endeavor to reach and reserve the flowers of rhetoric for subject which are more adapted to them end of chapter 10 section 8 of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a liverbox recording all liverbox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit liverbox.org reading by Daniel Polanco an inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume section 8 of liberty and necessity part one it might reasonably be expected in questions which have been canvassed and disputed with great eagerness since the first origin of science and philosophy that the meaning of all the terms at least should have been agreed upon among the disputants in our inquiries and the course of 2000 years been able to pass from words to the true and real subject of the controversy for how easy may it seem to give exact definitions of the terms employed and reasoning and make these definitions not the mere sounds of words the object of future scrutiny and examination but if we consider the matter more narrowly we should be apt to draw a quite opposite conclusion from this circumstance alone that a controversy has been long kept on foot and remains still undecided we may presume that there is some ambiguity in the expression and that the disputants affects different ideas to the terms employed in the controversy for as the faculties of the mind are supposed to be naturally like in every individual otherwise nothing could be more fruitless than to reason or dispute together it were impossible if men fix the same ideas to their terms that they could so long form different opinions of the same subject especially when they communicate their views and each party turn themselves on all sides and search of arguments which may give them the victory over their antagonist it is true if men attempt the discussion of questions which lie entirely beyond the reach of human capacity such as those concerning the origin of worlds or the economy of the intellectual system or region of spirits they may long beat the air in the fruitless contest and never arrive at any determinate conclusion but if the question regard any subject of common life and experience nothing one would think could preserve the dispute so long undecided but some ambiguous expressions which keep the antagonist still at a distance and hinder them from grappling with each other this has been the case in the long disputed question concerning liberty and necessity and to so remarkable a degree that if I be not much mistaken we shall find that all mankind both learned and ignorant have always been of the same opinion with regard to the subject and that a few intelligible definitions would immediately have put an end to the whole controversy I own that this dispute has been so much canvassed on all hands and has led philosophers into such a labyrinth of obscure sophistry that it is no wonder if a sensible reader indulges ease so far as to turn a deaf ear to the proposal of such a question from which you can expect neither instruction or entertainment but the state of the argument here proposed may perhaps serve to renew his attention as it has more novelty promises at least some decision of the controversy it will not much to serve his ease by any intricate or obscure reasoning I hope therefore to make it appear that all men have ever agreed in the doctrine both of necessity and of liberty according to any reasonable sense which can be put on these terms and that the whole controversy has hitherto turned merely upon words we shall begin with examining the doctrine of necessity it is universally allowed that matter in all its operations is actuated by a necessary force and that every natural effect is so precisely determined by the energy of its cause that no other effect and such particular circumstances could possibly have resulted from it the degree and direction of every motion is by the laws of nature prescribed to such exactness that a living creature may as soon arise from the shock of two bodies as motion and any other degree or direction than what is actually produced by it would we therefore form a just and precise idea of necessity when you must consider whence that idea arises when we apply it to the operation of bodies it seems evident that if all the scenes of nature were continually shifted in such a manner that no two events for any resemblance to each other but every object was entirely new without any similitude to whatever had been seen before we should never in that case have attained the least idea of necessity or of any connection among these objects we might say upon such a supposition that one object or event has followed another not that one was produced by the other the relation of cause and effect must be utterly unknown to mankind and for instance reasoning concerning the operations of nature would from that moment be at an end and the memory and senses remain the only canals by which the knowledge of any real existence could possibly have access to the mind our idea therefore of necessity and causation arises entirely from the uniformity observable and the operations of nature where similar objects are constantly conjoined together and the mind is determined by custom to infer the one from the appearance of the other these two circumstances from the whole of that necessity which we ascribe to matter beyond the constant conjunction of similar objects and the consequent inference from one to the other we have no notion of any necessity or connection if it appear therefore that all mankind have ever allowed without any doubt or hesitation that these two circumstances take place in the voluntary actions of men and in the operations of mind it must follow that all mankind have ever agreed in the doctrine of necessity and that they have hitherto disputed merely for not understanding each other as to the first circumstance the constant and regular conjunction of similar events we may possibly satisfy ourselves by the following considerations it is universally acknowledged that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men in all nations and ages and that human nature remains still the same and its principles and operations the same motives always produce the same actions the same events follow from the same causes ambition avarice self-love vanity friendship generosity public spirit these passions mixed in various degrees and distributed through society have been from the beginning of the world and still are the source of all the actions and enterprises which have ever been observed among mankind would you know the sentiments inclinations and course of life of the Greeks and Romans study well the temper and actions of the French and English you cannot be much mistaken in transferring to the former most of the observations which you have made with regard to the latter mankind are so much the same and all times and places that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behavior these records of wars intrigues factions and revolutions are so many collections of experiments by which the politician or moral philosopher fixes the principles of the science in the same manner as the physician or natural philosopher becomes acquainted with the nature of plants minerals and other external objects by the experiments which he forms concerning them nor are the earth water and other elements examined by Aristotle and Hippocrates more like to those which at present lie under our observation than the men described by Polybius and Tacitus are to those who now govern the world should a traveler returning from a far country bring us an account of men wholly different from any with whom we were ever acquainted men who were entirely divested of avarice ambition or revenge who knew no pleasure but friendship generosity and public spirit we should immediately from these circumstances detect the falsehood and prove him a liar with the same certainty as if he had stuffed his narration with stories of centaurs and dragons miracles and prodigies and if we would explode any forgery in history we cannot make use of a more convincing argument than to prove that the actions described to any person are directly contrary to the course of nature and that no human motives in such circumstances could ever induce him to such a conduct the veracity of quintus curtius is as much to be suspected when he describes the supernatural courage of alexander by which he was hurried on singly to attack multitudes as when he describes the supernatural force and activity by which he is able to resist them so readily and universally do we acknowledge a uniformity in human motives and actions as well as in the operations of body hence likewise the benefit of that experience acquired by long life and a variety of business and company in order to instruct us in the principles of human nature and regulate our future conduct as well as speculation by means of this guide we mount up to the knowledge of men's inclinations and motives from their actions expressions and even gestures and again descend to the interpretation of their actions from our knowledge of their motives and inclinations the general observations treasured up by a course of experience give us the clue of human nature and teach us to unravel all its intricacies pretax and appearances no longer deceive us public declarations pass for the spacious coloring of a cause and though virtue and honor be allowed their proper weight and authority that perfect disinterestedness so often pretended to is never expected in multitudes and parties seldom in their leaders and scarcely even in individuals of any rank or station but were there no uniformity in human actions and were every experiment which we could form of this kind irregular and anomalous it were impossible to collect any general observations concerning mankind and no experience however accurately digested by reflection would ever serve to any purpose why is the aged husband man more skillful and is calling than the young beginner but because there is a certain uniformity in the operation of the sun rain and earth towards the production of vegetables and experience teaches the old practitioner the rules by which this operation is governed and directed we must not however expect that this uniformity of human actions should be carried to such a length as that all men in the same circumstances will always act precisely in the same manner without making any allowance for the diversity of characters prejudices and opinions such uniformity in every particular is found in no part of nature on the contrary from observing the variety of conduct in different men we are enabled to form a greater variety of maxims which still suppose a degree of uniformity and regularity are the manners of men different and different ages and countries we learn thence the great force of custom and education which mold the human mind from its infancy and form it into a fixed and established character is the behavior and conduct of the one sex very unlike that of the other is it thence we become acquainted with the different characters which nature has oppressed upon the sexes and which she preserves with constancy and regularity are the actions of the same person much diversified in the different periods of his life from infancy to old age this affords room for many general observations concerning the gradual change of our sentiments and inclinations and the different maxims which prevail in the different ages of human creatures even the characters which are peculiar to each individual have a uniformity in their influence otherwise our acquaintance with the persons and our observations of their conduct could never teach us their dispositions or serve to direct our behavior with regard to them i granted is possible to find some actions which seem to have no regular connection with any known motives and our exceptions to all measures of conduct which have ever been established for the government of men but if we would willingly know what judgments should be formed of such a regular and extraordinary actions we may consider the sentiments commonly entertained with regard to those irregular events which appear in the course of nature and the operations of external objects all causes are not conjoined to their usual effect with light uniformity an artificer who handles only dead matter may be disappointed of his aim as well as the politician who directs the conduct of sensible and intelligent agents the vulgar who takes things according to their first appearance attribute the uncertainty of events to such an uncertainty in the causes as makes the latter often fail of their usual influence though they may meet no impediment in their operation but philosophers observing that almost in every part of nature there is contained a vast variety of springs and principles which are hid by reason of their minuteness or remoteness find that it is at least possible the contrariety of events may not proceed from any contingency in their cause but from the secret operation of contrary causes this possibility is converted into certainty by farther observation when they remark that upon an exact scrutiny a contrariety of effects always betrays a contrariety of causes and proceeds from their mutual opposition a peasant can give no better reason for the stopping of any clock or watch than to say that it is not commonly go right but an artist easily perceives that the same force in the spring or pendulum has always the same influence on the wheels but fails of its usual effect perhaps by reason of a grain of dust which puts a stop to the whole movement from the observation of several parallel instances philosophers form your maxim that the connection between all causes and effects is equally necessary and that its seeming uncertainty in some instances proceeds from the secret opposition of contrary causes thus for instance and the human body when the usual symptoms of health or sickness disappoint our expectation when medicines operate not with their wanted powers when irregular events follow from any particular cause the philosopher and physician are not surprised at the matter nor are ever tempted to deny in general the necessity and uniformity of those principles by which the animal economy is conducted they know that a human body is a mighty complicated machine that many secret powers lurk in it which are altogether beyond our comprehension that to us it must often appear very uncertain in its operations and that therefore the irregular events which outwardly discover themselves can be no proof that the laws of nature are not observed with the greatest regularity and its internal operations and government the philosopher if he be consistent must apply the same reasoning to the actions and volitions of intelligent agents the most irregular and unexpected resolutions of men may frequently be accounted for by those who know every particular circumstance of their character and situation a person of an obliging disposition gives a peevish answer but he has the toothache or has not dined a stupid fellow discovers an uncommon alacrity in his carriage but he has met with a sudden peace of good fortune or even when an action as sometimes happens cannot be particularly accounted for either by the person himself or by others we know in general that the characters of men are to a certain degree and constant and irregular this is in a manner the constant character of human nature though it be applicable in a more particular manner to some persons who have no fixed rule for their conduct but proceed in a continued course of caprice and inconstancy the internal principles and motives may operate in a uniform manner not withstanding these seeming regularities and the same manner as the winds rain clouds and other variations of the weather are supposed to be governed by steady principles though not easily discoverable by human sagacity and inquiry thus it appears not only that the conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as that between the cause and effect in any part of nature but also that this regular conjunction has been universally acknowledged among mankind and has never been the subject of dispute either in philosophy or common life now as it is from past experience that we draw all inferences concerning the future and as we conclude that objects will always be conjoined together which we find to have always been conjoined it may seem superfluous to prove that this experience uniformity in human actions is a source once we draw inferences concerning them but in order to throw the argument into a greater variety of lights we shall also insist though briefly on this latter topic the mutual dependence of men is so great in all societies that scarce any human action is entirely complete in itself or is performed without some reference to the actions of others which are requisite to make it answer fully the intention of the agent the poor stratificer who labors alone expects at least the protection of the magistrate to ensure him the enjoyment of the fruits of his labor he also expects that when he carries his goods to market and offers them at a reasonable price he shall find purchasers and shall be able by the money he acquires to engage others to supply him with those commodities which are requisite for his subsistence in proportion as men extend their dealings and render their intercourse with others more complicated they always comprehend in their schemes of life a greater variety of voluntary actions which they expect from the proper motives to cooperate with their own in all these conclusions they take their measures from past experience in the same manner as their reasonings concerning external objects and firmly believe that men as well as all the elements are to continue in their operations the same that they have ever found them a manufacturer reckons upon the labor of his servants for the execution of any work as much as upon the tools which he employs and would be equally surprised where his expectations disappointed in short this experimental inference and reasoning concerning the actions of others enters so much into human life that no man while awake is every moment without employing it have we not reasoned therefore to affirm that all mankind have always agreed in the doctrine of necessity according to the foregoing definition and explication of it nor have philosophers ever entertained a different opinion from the people in this particular for not to mention that almost every action of their life supposes that opinion there are even few of the speculative parts of learning to which it is not essential what would become of history had we not a dependence on the veracity of the historian according to the experience which we have had of mankind how could politics be a science if laws and forms of government had not a uniform influence upon society where it would be the foundation of morals if particular characters had no certain or determinant power to produce particular sentiments and if these sentiments had no constant operation on actions and with what pretense could we employ our criticism upon any poet or polite author if we cannot pronounce the conduct and sentiments of his actors either natural or unnatural to such characters and in such circumstances it seems almost impossible therefore to engage either in science or action of any kind without acknowledging the doctrine of necessity and this inference from motive to voluntary actions from characters to conduct and indeed when we consider how aptly natural and moral evidence linked together and form only one chain of argument we shall make no scruple to allow that they are of the same nature and derive from the same principles a prisoner who has neither money nor interest discovers the impossibility of his escape as well when he considers the obscenity of the jailer as the walls and bars with which he is surrounded and in all attempts for his freedom chooses rather to work upon the stone and iron of the one than upon the inflexible nature of the other the same prisoner when conducted to the scaffold foresees his death as certainly from the constancy and fidelity of his guards as from the operation of the ax or wheel his mind runs along a certain train of ideas the refusal of the soldiers to consent to his escape the action of the executioner the separation of the head and body bleeding convulsing motions and death here is a connected chain of natural causes and voluntary actions but the mind feels no difference between them and passing from one link to another nor is less certain of the future event than if it were connected with the objects present to the memory or senses by a train of causes cemented together by what we are pleased to call a physical necessity the same experienced union has the same effect on the mind whether the united objects be motives volition and actions or figure in motion we may change the name of things but their nature and their operation on the understanding never change where a man whom i know to be honest and opulent and with whom i live an intimate friendship to come into my house where i'm surrounded with my servants i rest assured that he is not to stab me before he leaves it in order to rob me of my silver standish and i no more suspect this event than the falling of the house itself which is new and solidly built and founded but he may have been seized with a sudden and unknown frenzy so may a sudden earthquake arise and shake and tumble my house about my ears i shall therefore change the suppositions i shall say that i know with certainty that he is not to put his hand into the fire and hold it there until it be consumed and this event i think i can foretell with the same assurance as that if he throws himself out at the window and meet with no obstruction he will not remain a moment suspended in the air no suspicion of an unknown frenzy can give the least possibility to the former event which is so contrary to all the known principles of human nature a man who at noon leaves his purse full of gold on the pavement at charring cross may as well expect that will fly away like a feather as that he will find it untouched an hour after above one half of human reasonings contain inferences of a similar nature attended with more or less degrees of certainty proportion to our experience of the usual conduct of mankind in such particular situations i have frequently considered what could possibly be the reason why all mankind though they have ever without hesitation acknowledged the doctrine of necessity in their whole practice and reasoning have yet discovered such a reluctance to acknowledge it in words and have ever shown a propensity in all ages to profess the contrary opinion the matter i think may be accounted for after the following manner if we examine the operations of body and the production of effects from their causes we shall find that all our faculties can never carry us farther in our knowledge of this relation than barely to observe that particular objects are constantly could join together and that the mind is carried by a customary transition from the appearance of one to the belief of the other but though this conclusion concerning human ignorance be the result of the strictest scrutiny of the subject men still entertain a strong propensity to believe that they penetrate farther into the power of nature and perceive something like a necessary connection between the cause and effect when again they turn their reflections towards the operations of their own minds and feel no such connection of the motive in the action they are then apt to suppose that there is a difference between the effects which result from material force and those which arise from thought and intelligence being once convinced that we know nothing farther of causation of any kind than merely the constant conjunction of objects and the consequent inference of the mind from one to another and finding that these two circumstances are universally allowed to have a place in voluntary actions we may be more easily led to own the same necessity common to all causes and though this reasoning may contradict the systems of many philosophers and ascribing necessity to the determinations of the will we shall find upon reflection that they dissent from it in words only not in their real sentiments necessity according to the sense in which it is taken here has never yet been rejected nor can ever I think be rejected by any philosopher it may only perhaps be pretended that the mind can perceive in the operations of matter some farther connection between the cause and effect and connection that has not placed in voluntary actions of intelligent beings now whether it be so or not can only appear upon examination and it is incumbent on these philosophers to make good their assertion by defining or describing the necessity and pointing it out to us and the operations of material causes it would seem indeed that men begin at the wrong end of this question concerning liberty and necessity when they enter upon it by examining the faculties of the soul the influence of the understanding and the operations of the will let them first discuss a more simple question namely the operations of body and a brute unintelligent matter and try whether they can there form any idea of causation and necessity except that of a constant conjunction of objects and subsequent inference of the mind from one to another if these circumstances form in reality the whole of that necessity which we conceive in matter and if these circumstances be also universally acknowledged to take place in the operations of the mind the dispute is at an end at least must be owned to be thence forth merely verbal but as long as we will rashly suppose that we have some farther idea of necessity and causation and the operations of external objects at the same time that we can find nothing farther in the voluntary actions of the mind there is no possibility of bringing the question to any determinant issue while we proceed upon so erroneous a supposition the only method of undeceiving us is to mount up higher to examine the narrow extent of science when applied to material causes and to convince ourselves that we all know of them is the constant conjunction and inference above mentioned we may perhaps find that it is with difficulty we are induced to fix such narrow limits to human understanding but we can afterwards find no difficulty when we come to apply this doctrine to the actions of the will for as it is evident that these have a regular conjunction with motives and circumstances and characters and as we always draw inferences from one to the other we must be obliged to acknowledge in words that necessity which we have already avowed in every deliberation of our lives and every step of our conduct and behavior footnote 17 the prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for from another cause namely a false sensation or seeming experience which we have or may have of liberty or indifference and many of our actions the necessity of any action whether of matter or of mind is not properly speaking equality in the agent but in any thinking or intelligent being who may consider the action and it consists chiefly into the determination of his thoughts to infer the existence of that action from some preceding objects as liberty when opposed to necessity is nothing but the want of that determination and a certain looseness or indifference which we feel in passing or not passing from the idea of one object to that of any succeeding one now we may observe that though and reflecting on human actions we seldom feel such a looseness or indifference but are commonly able to infer them with considerable certainty from their motives and from the dispositions of the agent yet it frequently happens that in performing the actions themselves we're sensible of something like it and as all resembling objects are readily taken for each other this has been employed as a demonstrative and even intuitive proof of human liberty we feel that our actions are subject to our will on most occasions and imagine we feel that the will itself is subject to nothing because when by a denial of it we are provoked to try we feel that it moves easily every way and produces an image of itself or as it is called in schools even on that side on which it did not settle this image or faint motion we persuade ourselves could at that time have been completed into the thing itself because should that be denied we find upon a second trial that at present it can we consider not that the fantastical desire of showing liberty is here the motive of our actions and it seems certain that however we may imagine we feel a liberty within ourselves a spectator can commonly infer our actions from our motives and character and even where he cannot he concludes in general that he might where he perfectly acquainted with every circumstance of our situation and temper and the most secret springs of our complexion and disposition now this is the very essence of necessity according to the foregoing doctrine end of footnote 17 but to proceed in this reconciling project with regard to the question of liberty and necessity the most contentious question of metaphysics the most contentious science it will not require many words to prove that all mankind have ever agreed in the doctrine of liberty as well as in that of necessity and that the whole dispute in their suspect also has been hitherto merely verbal for what is meant by liberty when applied to voluntary actions we cannot surely mean that actions have so little connection with motives and inclinations and circumstances that one does not follow with a certain degree of uniformity from the other and that one affords no inference by which we can conclude the existence of the other for these are plain and acknowledged matters of fact by liberty then we can only mean a power of acting or not acting according to the determinations of the will that is if we choose to remain at rest we may if we choose to move we also may now this hypothetical liberty is universally allowed to belong to everyone who is not a prisoner and in chains here then is no subject of dispute whatever definition we may give of liberty we should be careful to observe two requisite circumstances first that it can be consistent with plain matter of fact secondly that it be consistent with itself if we observe these circumstances and render our definition intelligible i am persuaded that all mankind will be found of one opinion with regard to it it is universally allowed that nothing exists without a cause of its existence and that chance when strictly examined is a mere negative word and means not any real power which has anywhere a being in nature but it is pretended that some causes are necessary some not necessary here then is the advantage of definitions let anyone define a cause without comprehending as a part of the definition a necessary connection with its effect and let him show distinctly the origin of the idea expressed by the definition and i shall readily give up the whole controversy but a foregoing explication of the matter be received this must be absolutely impracticable had not objects a regular conjunction with each other we should never have entertained any notion of cause and effect and this regular conjunction produces that inference of the understanding which is the only connection that we can have any comprehension of whoever attempts a definition of cause exclusive of these circumstances will be obliged either to employ unintelligible terms or such as our synonyms to the term which endeavors to define footnote 18 thus if a cause be defined that which produces anything it is easy to observe that producing is synonymous to causing and like manner if a cause be defined that by which anything exist this is liable to the same objection for what is meant by these words by which had it been said that a cause is that after which anything constantly exists we should have understood the terms for this is indeed all we know of the matter and this constancy forms the very essence of necessity nor have we any other idea of it end of footnote 18 and if the definition above mentioned be admitted liberty when opposed to necessity not to constraint is the same thing with chance which is universally allowed to have no existence end of section eight of liberty and necessity part one recording by Daniel Polanco chapter eight part two of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org an inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume chapter eight part two of liberty and necessity there is no method of reasoning more common and yet non more blameable than in philosophical disputes to endeavor the refutation of any hypothesis by a pretense of its dangerous consequences to religion and morality when any opinion leads to absurdities it is certainly false but it is not certain that an opinion is false because it is of dangerous consequence such topics therefore ought entirely to be foreborn as serving nothing to the discovery of truth but only to make the person of an antagonist odious this i observe in general without pretending to draw any advantage from it i frankly submit to an examination of this kind and shall venture to affirm that the doctrines both of necessity and liberty as above explained are not only consistent with morality but are absolutely essential to its support necessity may be defined two ways conformably to the two definitions of cause of which it makes an essential part it consists either in the constant conjunction of like objects or in the inference of the understanding from one object to another now necessity in both these senses which indeed are at bottom the same has universally though tacitly in the schools in the pulpit and in common life been allowed to belong to the will of men and no one has ever pretended to deny that we can draw inferences concerning human actions and that those inferences are founded on the experienced union of like actions with like motives inclinations and circumstances the only particular in which anyone can differ is that either perhaps he will refuse to give the name of necessity to this property of human actions but as long as the meaning is understood i hope the word can do no harm or that he will maintain it possible to discover something farther in the operations of matter but this it must be acknowledged can be of no consequence to morality or religion whatever it may be to natural philosophy or metaphysics we may hear be mistaken in asserting that there is no idea of any other necessity or connection in the actions of body but surely we ascribe nothing to the actions of the mind but what everyone does and must readily allow of we change no circumstance in the received orthodox system with regard to the will but only in that with regard to material objects and causes nothing therefore can be more innocent at least than this doctrine all laws being founded on rewards and punishments it is supposed as a fundamental principle that these motives have a regular and uniform influence on the mind and both produce the good and prevent the evil actions we may give to this influence what name we please but as it is usually conjoined with the action it must be esteemed a cause and be looked upon as an instance of that necessity which we would hear established the only proper object of hatred or vengeance is a person or creature endowed with thought and consciousness and when any criminal or injurious actions excite that passion it is only by their relation to the person or connection with him actions are by their very nature temporary and perishing and where they proceed not from some cause in the character and disposition of the person who performed them they can either redound to his honor if good or infamy if evil the actions themselves may be blameable they may be contrary to all the rules of morality and religion but the person is not answerable for them and as they proceeded from nothing in him that is durable and constant and leave nothing of that nature behind them it is impossible he can upon their account become the object of punishment or vengeance according to the principle therefore which denies necessity and consequently causes a man is as pure and untainted after having committed the most horrid crime as at the first moment of his birth nor is his character any wise concerned in his actions since they are not derived from it and the wickedness of the one can never be used as a proof of the depravity of the other men are not blamed for such actions as they perform ignorantly and casually whatever may be the consequences why but because the principles of these actions are only momentary and terminate in them alone men are less blamed for such actions as they perform hastily and unpremeditatedly than for such as proceed from deliberation for what reason but because a hasty temper though a constant cause or principle in the mind operates only by intervals and in facts not the whole character again repentance wipes off every crime if attended with a reformation of life and manners how is this to be accounted for but by asserting that actions render a person criminal merely as they are proofs of criminal principles in the mind and when by an alteration of these principles they cease to be just proofs they likewise cease to be criminal but except upon the doctrine of necessity they never were just proofs and consequently never were criminal it will be equally easy to prove and from the same arguments that liberty according to that definition above mentioned in which all men agree is also essential to morality and that no human actions where he's wanting are susceptible of any moral qualities or can be the objects either of approbation or dislike for as actions are objects of our moral sentiment so far only as they are indications of the internal character passions and affections it is impossible that they can give rise either to praise or blame where they proceed not from these principles but are derived altogether from external violence I pretend not to have violated or removed all objections to this theory with regard to necessity and liberty I can foresee other objections derived from topics which have not here been treated of it may be said for instance that if voluntary actions be subjected to the same laws of necessity with the operations of matter there is a continued chain of necessary causes preordained and predetermined reaching from the original cause of all to every single volition of every human creature no contingency anywhere in the universe no indifference no liberty while we act we are at the same time acted upon the ultimate author of all our volitions is the creator of the world who first bestowed motion on this immense machine and placed all beings in that particular position whence every subsequent event by an inevitable necessity must result human actions therefore either can have no moral turpitude at all as proceeding from so good a cause or if they have any turpitude they must involve our creator in the same guilt while he is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author for as a man who fired a mine is answerable for all the consequences whether the train he employed be long or short so wherever a continued chain of necessary causes is fixed that being either finite or infinite who produces the first is likewise the author of all the rest and must both bear the blame and acquire the praise which belong to them our clear and unalterable ideas of morality establish this rule upon unquestionable reasons when we examine the consequences of any human action and these reasons must still have greater force when applied to the volitions and intentions of a being infinitely wise and powerful ignorance or impotence may be pleaded for so limited a creature as men but those imperfections have no place in our creator he foresaw he ordained he intended all those actions of men which we so rashly pronounced criminal and we must therefore conclude either that they are not criminal or that the deity not man is accountable for them but as either of these positions is absurd and impious it follows that the doctrine from which they are deduced cannot possibly be true as being liable to all the same objections an absurd consequence if necessary proves original doctrine to be observed in the same manner as criminal actions render criminal the original cause if the connection between them be necessary and evitable this objection consists of two parts which we shall examine separately first that if human actions can be traced up by a necessary chain to the deity they can never be criminal on account of the infinite perfection of that being from whom they are derived and who can intend nothing but what is altogether good and laudable or secondly if they be criminal we must retract the attribute of perfection which we ascribe to the deity and must acknowledge him to be the ultimate author of guilt and moral turpitude in all his creatures the answer to the first objection seems obvious and convincing there are many philosophers who after an exact scrutiny of all the phenomena of nature conclude that the whole considered as one system is in every period of its existence ordered with perfect benevolence and that the utmost possible happiness will in the end result to all created beings without any mixture of positive or absolute ill or misery every physical ill say they makes an essential part of this benevolent system and could not possibly be removed even by the deity himself considered as a wise agent without giving entrance to greater ill or excluding greater good which will result from it from this theory some philosophers and the ancient stoics among the rest derived a topic of consolation under all afflictions while they taught their pupils that those ills under which they labored were in reality goods to the universe and that to an enlarged view which could comprehend the whole system of nature every event became an object of joy and exaltation but though this topic be specious and sublime it was soon found in practice weak and ineffectual you would surely more irritate than appease a man lying under the racking pains of the gout by preaching up to him the restitude of those general laws which produced the malignant humors in his body and led them through the proper canals to the sinos and nerves where they now excite such acute torments these enlarged views may for a moment please the imagination of a speculative man who is placed in ease and security but neither can they dwell with constancy on his mind even though undisturbed by the emotions of pain or passion much less can they maintain their ground when attacked by such powerful antagonists the affections take a narrower and more natural survey of their object and by an economy more suitable to the infirmity of human minds regard alone the beings around us and are actuated by such events as appear good or ill to the private system the case is the same with moral as with physical ill it cannot reasonably be supposed that those remote considerations which are found of so little efficacy with regard to one will have a more powerful influence with regard to the other the mind of men is so formed by nature that upon the appearance of certain characters dispositions and actions it immediately feels a sentiment of a probation or blame nor are there any emotions more essential to its frame and constitution the characters which engage our approbation our chiefly such as contribute to the peace and security of human society as the characters which excite to blame are chiefly such as tend to public detriment and disturbance once it may reasonably be presumed that the moral sentiments arise either immediately or immediately from a reflection of these opposite interests what though philosophical meditations establish a different opinion or conjecture that everything is right with regard to the whole and that the qualities which disturb society are in the main as beneficial and are as suitable to the primary intention of nature as those which more directly promote its happiness and welfare are such remote and uncertain speculations able to counterbalance the sentiments which arise from the natural and immediate view of the objects a man who is robbed of a considerable sum does he find his vexation for the loss anywise diminished by these sublime reflections why then should his moral resentment against the crime be supposed incompatible with them or why should not the acknowledgement of a real distinction between vice and virtue be reconcilable to all speculative systems of philosophy as well as that of a real distinction between personal beauty and deformity both these distinctions are founded in the natural sentiments of the human mind and these sentiments are not to be controlled or altered by any philosophical theory or speculation whatsoever the second objection admits not of so easy and satisfactory an answer nor is it possible to explain distinctly how the deity can be the immediate cause of all the actions of men without being the author of sin and moral turpitude these are mysteries which mere natural and unassisted reason is very unfit to handle and whatever system she embraces she must find herself involved in inextricable difficulties and even contradictions at every step which it takes with regard to such subjects to reconcile the indifference and contingency of human actions with prescience or to defend absolute decrees and yet free the deity from being the author of sin has been found hitherto to exceed all the power of philosophy happy if she be then sensible of her temerity when she prized into these sublime mysteries and leaving a scene so full of obscurities and perplexities returned with suitable modesty to her true and proper province the examination of common life where she will find difficulties enough to employ her inquiries without launching into so boundless an ocean of doubt uncertainty and contradiction end of chapter eight part two of liberty and necessity section nine of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to find out how to volunteer please contact LibriVox.org an inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume section nine of the reason of animals all our reasonings concerning matter of fact are founded on a species of analogy which leads us to expect from any cause the same events which we have observed to result from similar causes where the causes are entirely similar the analogy is perfect and the inference drawn from it is regarded as certain and conclusive nor does any man ever entertain a doubt where he sees a piece of iron that it will have weight and cohesion of parts as in all other instances which have ever fallen under his observation but where the objects have not so exact a similarity the analogy is less perfect and then for instance less conclusive though still it has some force in proportion to the degree of similarity and resemblance the anatomical observances formed upon one animal are by this species of reasoning extended to all animals and it is certain that when the circulation of the blood for instance is clearly proved to have a place in one creature as a frog or fish it forms a strong presumption that the same principle has place in all these analogical observations may be carried farther even to this science of which we are now treating and any theory by which we explain the operations of the understanding or the origin and connection of the passions in man will acquire additional authority if we find that the same theory is requisite to explain the same phenomena in all other animals we shall make trial of this with regard to the hypothesis by which we have in the foregoing discourse endeavored to account for all experimental reasonings and it is hoped that this new point of view will serve to confirm all our former observations first it seems evident that animals as well as men learn many things from experience and infer that the same events will always follow from the same causes by this principle they become acquainted with the more obvious properties of external objects and gradually from their birth treasure up a knowledge of the nature of fire water earth stones heights depths etc and of the effects which result from their operation the ignorance and an experience of the young are here plainly distinguishable from the cunning and sagacity of the old who have learned by long observation to avoid what hurt them and to pursue what gave ease or pleasure a horse that has been accustomed to the field becomes acquainted with the proper height which he can leap and will never attempt what exceeds his force and ability an old greyhound will trust the more fatiguing part of the chase to the younger and will place himself so as to meet the hare in her doubles nor are the conjectures which he forms on this occasion founded in anything but his observation and experience this is still more evident from the effects of discipline and education on animals who by proper application of rewards and punishments may be taught any course of action and most contrary to their natural instincts and propensities is it not experience which renders a dog apprehensive of pain when you medicine or lift up the whip to beat him is it not even experience which makes him answer to his name and infer from such an arbitrary sound that you mean him rather than any of his fellows and intend to call him when you pronounce it in a certain manner and with a certain tone and accent in all these cases we may observe that the animal infers some fact beyond what immediately strikes his senses and that this inference is altogether founded on past experience while the creature expects from the present object the same consequences which it is always found in its observation to result from similar objects secondly it is impossible that this inference of the animal can be founded on any process of argument or reasoning by which he concludes that like events must follow like objects and that the course of nature will always be regular in its operations for if there be in reality any arguments of this nature they surely lie to obtruse for the observation of such imperfect understandings since it may well employ the utmost care and attention of a philosophic genius to discover and observe them animals therefore are not guided in these inferences by reasoning neither are children neither are the generality of mankind in their ordinary actions and conclusions neither are philosophers themselves who in all the active parts of life are in the main the same with the vulgar and are governed by the same maxims nature must have provided some other principle of more ready and more general use in application nor can an operation of such immense consequence in life as that of inferring effects from causes be trusted to the uncertain process of reasoning and argumentation were this doubtful with regard to men it seems to admit of no question with regard to the brute creation and the conclusion being once firmly established in the one we have a strong presumption from all the rules of analogy that it ought to be universally admitted without any exception or reverse it is custom alone which engages animals from every object that strikes their senses to infer its usual attendant and carries their imagination from the appearance of the one to conceive the other in that particular manner which we denominate belief no other explication can be given of this operation in all the higher as well as the lower classes of sensitive beings which fall under our notice and observation footnote since all reasonings concerning facts or causes is derived merely from custom it may be asked how it happens that men so much surpass animals in reasoning and one man so much surpasses another has not the same custom the same influence on all we shall hear endeavor briefly to explain the great difference in human understandings after which the reason of the difference between men and animals will easily be comprehended when we have lived any time and have been accustomed to the uniformity of nature we acquire a general habit by which we always transfer the known to the unknown and conceive the latter to resemble the former by means of this general habitual principle we regard even one experiment as the foundation of reasoning and expect a similar event with some degree of certainty where the experiment has been made accurately and free from all foreign circumstances it is therefore considered as a matter of great importance to observe the consequences of things and as one man may very much surpass another in attention and memory and observation this will make a very great difference in their reasoning where there is a complication of causes to produce any effect one mind may be much larger than another and better able to comprehend the whole system of objects and to infer justly their consequences one man is able to carry on a chain of consequences to a greater length than another few men can think long without running into a confusion of ideas and mistaking one for another and there are various degrees of this infirmity the circumstance on which the effect depends is frequently involved in other circumstances which are foreign and extrinsic the separation of it often requires great attention accuracy and subtlety the forming of general maxims from particular observation is a very nice operation and nothing is more usual from haste or a narrowness of mind which sees not on all sides than to commit mistakes in this particular when we reason from analogies the man who has the greater experience or the greater promptitude of suggesting analogies will be the better reasoner biases from prejudice education passion party etc hang more upon one mind than another after we have acquired a confidence in human testimony books and conversation enlarge much more the sphere of one man's experience and thought than those of another it would be easy to discover many other circumstances that make a difference in the understandings of men and footnote but though many animals learn many parts of their knowledge from observation there are also many parts of it which they derive from the original hand of nature which much exceed the share of capacity they possess on ordinary occasions and in which they improve little or nothing by the longest practice and experience these we denominate instincts and are so apt to admire as something very extraordinary and inexplicable by all the disquisitions of human understanding but our wonder will perhaps cease or diminish when we consider that the experimental reasoning itself which we possess in common with beasts and on which the whole conduct of life depends is nothing but a species of instinct or mechanical power that acts in us unknown to ourselves and in its chief operations is not directed by any such relations or comparisons of ideas as are the proper objects of our intellectual faculties though the instinct be different yet still it is an instinct what teaches a man to avoid fire as much as that which teaches a bird with such exactness the art of incubation and the whole economy in order of its nursery and of section nine of the reasoning of animals this recording is in the public domain chapter 10 part one of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a labor box recording all labor box recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Leon Meyer an inquiry concerning human understanding chapter 10 part one of miracles there is in Dr. Tillitson's writings an argument against the real presence which is as concise and elegant and strong as any argument can possibly be supposed against a doctrine so little worthy of a serious refutation it is acknowledged on all hands says that learned prelate that the authority either of the scripture or of tradition is founded merely in the testimony of the apostles who were eyewitnesses to those miracles of our savior by which he proved his divine mission our evidence then for the truth of the christian religion is less than the evidence for the truth of our senses because even in the first authors of our religion it was no greater and it is evident it must diminish and passing from them to their disciples nor can anyone rest such confidence in their testimony as in the immediate object of his senses but a weaker evidence can never destroy stronger and therefore were the doctrine of the real presence ever so clearly revealed in scripture it were directly contrary to the rules of just reasoning to give our assent to it it contradicts sense though both the scripture and tradition on which it is supposed to be built carry not such evidence with them as sense when they are considered merely as external evidences and are not brought home to everyone's breast by the immediate operation of the holy spirit nothing is so convenient as a decisive argument of this kind which must at least silence the most arrogant bigotry in superstition and free us from their impertinent solicitations i flatter myself that i have discovered an argument of a like nature which if just will with the wise and learned be an everlasting check to all kinds of superstitious delusion and consequently will be useful as long as the world endures for so long i presume will the accounts of miracles and prodigies be found in all history sacred and profane though experience be our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact it must be acknowledged that this guide is not altogether infallible but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors one who in our climate should expect better weather in any week of june than in one of december would reason justly and conformably to experience but it is certain that he may happen in the event to find himself mistaken however we may observe that in such a case he would have no cause to complain of experience because it commonly informs us beforehand of the uncertainty by that contrariety of events which we may learn from a diligent observation all effects follow not with like certainty from their supposed causes some events are found in all countries in all ages to have been constantly conjoined together others are found to have been more variable and sometimes to disappoint our expectations so that in our reasonings concerning matter of fact there are all imaginable degrees of assurance from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence a wise man therefore proportions his belief to the evidence in such conclusions as are founded on an infallible experience he expects the event with the last degree of assurance and regards his past experience as a full proof of the future existence of that event in other cases he proceeds with more caution he weighs the opposite experiments he considers which side is supported by the greater number of experiments to that side he inclines with doubt and hesitation and when at last he fixes his judgment the evidence exceeds not what we properly call probability all probability then supposes an opposition of experiments and observations where the one side is found to overbalance the other and to produce a degree of evidence proportion to the superiority a hundred instances or experiments on one side and fifty on another afford a doubtful expectation of any event though a hundred uniform experiments with only one that is contradictory reasonably beget a pretty strong degree of assurance in all cases we must balance the opposite experiments where they are opposite and deduct the smaller number from the greater in order to know the exact force of the superior evidence to apply these principles to a particular instance we may observe that there is no species of reasoning more common more useful and even necessary to human life than that which is derived from the testimony of men and the reports of eyewitnesses and spectators this species of reasoning perhaps one may deny to be founded on the relation of cause and effect i shall not dispute about a word it will be sufficient to observe that our assurance in any argument of this kind is derived from no other principle than our observation of the veracity of human testimony and of the usual conformity of facts to the reports of witnesses it being a general maxim that no objects have any discoverable connection together and that all the inferences which we can draw from one to another are founded merely on our experience of their constant and regular conjunction it is evident that we ought not to make an exception to this maxim in favor of human testimony whose connection with any event seems in itself as little necessary as any other we're not the memory tenacious to a certain degree had not been commonly an inclination to truth and a principle of probity were they not sensible to shame when detected in a falsehood we're not these i say discovered by experience to be qualities inherent in human nature we should never oppose the least confidence in human testimony a man delirious or noted for falsehood and villainy as no manner of authority with us and as the evidence derived from witnesses and human testimony is founded on past experience so it varies with the experience and is regarded either as a proof or a probability according as the conjunction between any particular kind of report and any kind of object has been found to be constant or variable there are a number of circumstances to be taken into consideration in all judgments of this kind and the ultimate standard by which we determine all disputes that may arise concerning them is always derived from experience and observation where this experience is not entirely uniform on any side it is attended with an unavoidable contrariety in our judgments and with the same opposition and mutual destruction of argument as in every other kind of evidence we frequently hesitate concerning the reports of others we balance the opposite circumstances which cause any doubt or uncertainty and when we discover a superiority on any side we incline to it but still with a diminution of assurance in proportion to the force of its antagonist this contrariety of evidence in the present case may be derived from several different causes from the opposition of contrary testimony from the character or number of the witnesses from the manner of their delivering their testimony or from the union of all these circumstances we entertain a suspicion concerning any matter of fact when the witnesses contradict each other when they are but few or of a doubtful character when they have an interest in what they affirm when they deliver their testimony with hesitation or on the contrary with two violent separations there are many other particulars of the same kind which may diminish or destroy the force of any argument derived from human testimony suppose for instance that the fact which the testimony endeavors to establish partakes of the extraordinary and the marvelous in that case the evidence resulting from the testimony admits of a diminution greater or less in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual the reason why we place any credit in witnesses and historians is not derived from any connection which we perceive a priori between testimony and reality but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them but when the fact attested is such a one as has seldom fallen under our observation here is a contest of two opposite experiences of which the one destroys the other as far as its force goes and the superior can only operate on the mind by the force which remains the very same principle of experience which gives us a certain degree of assurance in the testimony of witnesses gives us also in this case another degree of assurance against the fact which they endeavor to establish from which contradiction there necessarily arises a counterpoise and mutual destruction of belief and authority I should not believe such a story were told to me by Cato was a proverbial saying in Rome even during the lifetime with that philosophical patriot the incredibility of a fact it was allowed might invalidate so great an authority the indian prince who refused to believe the first relations concerning the effects of frost reasoned justly and it naturally required very strong testimony to engage his assent to facts that arose from a state of nature with which he was unacquainted and which bore so little analogy to those events of which he had had constant and uniform experience though they were not contrary to his experience they were not conformable to it footnote no indian it is evident could have experienced that water did not freeze in cold climates this is placing nature in a situation quite unknown to him and it is impossible for him to tell a priori what will resolve from it it is making a new experiment the consequence of which is always uncertain one may sometimes conjecture from analogy what will follow but still this is but conjecture and it must be confessed that in the present case of freezing the event follows contrary to the rules of analogy and is such as a rational indian would not look for the operations of cold upon water are not gradual according to the degrees of cold but whenever it comes to the freezing point the water passes in a moment from the utmost liquidity to perfect hardness such an event therefore may be denominated extraordinary and requires a pretty strong testimony to render it credible to people in a warm climate but still it is not miraculous nor contrary to uniform experience of the course of nature in cases where all the circumstances are the same the inhabitants of Sumatra have always seen water fluid in their own climate and the freezing of the rivers ought to be deemed a prodigy but they never saw water in muscovy during the winter and therefore they cannot reasonably be positive what would there be the consequence in footnote but in order to increase the probability against the testimony of witnesses let us suppose that the fact which they affirm instead of being only marvelous is really miraculous and suppose also that the testimony considered apart and in itself amounts to an entire proof in that case there is proof against proof of which the strongest must prevail but still with the diminution of its force in proportion to that of its antagonist a miracle is a violation of the laws of nature and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws the proof against a miracle from the very nature of the fact is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined why is it more than probable that all men must die that lead cannot of itself remain suspended in the air that fire consumes wood and is extinguished by water unless it be that these events are found agreeable to the laws of nature and there is required a violation of these laws or in other words a miracle to prevent them nothing is esteemed a miracle if it ever happened in the common course of nature it is no miracle that a man seemingly in good health should die on a sudden because such a kind of death though more unusual than any other has yet been frequently observed to happen but it is a miracle that a dead man should come to life because that has never been observed in any age or country there must therefore be a uniform experience against every miraculous event otherwise the event would not merit that appellation and as a uniform experience amounts to a proof there is here a direct and full proof from the nature of the fact against the existence of any miracle nor can such a proof be destroyed or the miracle rendered credible but by an opposite proof which is superior footnote sometimes an event may not in itself seem to be contrary to the laws of nature and yet if it were real it might by reason of some circumstances be denominated a miracle because in fact it is contrary to these laws thus if a person claiming a divine authority should command a sick person to be well a healthful man to fall down dead the clouds to pour rain the winds to blow in short should order many natural events which immediately follow upon his command these might justly be esteemed to miracles because they are really in this case contrary to the laws of nature for if any suspicion remain that the event and command concurred by accident there is no miracle and no transgression of the laws of nature if the suspicion be removed there is evidently a miracle and a transgression of these laws because nothing can be more contrary to nature than that the voice or command of a man should have such an influence a miracle may be accurately defined a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent a miracle may either be discoverable by men or not this alters not its nature and essence the raising of a house or ship into the air is a visible miracle the raising of a feather when the wind wants ever so little of a force requisite for that purpose is as real a miracle though not so sensible with regard to us end footnote the plain consequence is and it is a general maxim worthy of our attention that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavors to establish and even in that case there was a mutual destruction of arguments and the superior only gives us an assurance suitable to that degree of force which remains after deducting the inferior when anyone tells me that he saw a dead man restored to life I immediately consider with myself whether it be more probable that this person should either deceive or be deceived or that the fact which he relates should really have happened I weigh the one miracle against the other and according to the superiority which I discover I pronounce my decision and always reject the greater miracle if the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates then and not till then can he pretend to command my belief or opinion end of chapter 10 part one chapter 10 part two of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org recording by Leon Meyer an inquiry concerning human understanding by David Hume chapter 10 of miracles part two in the foregoing reasoning we have supposed that the testimony upon which a miracle is founded may possibly amount to an entire proof and that the falsehood of that testimony would be a real prodigy but it is easy to show that we have been a great deal to liberal in our concession and that there never was a miraculous event established on so full an evidence for first there is not to be found in all history any miracle attested by a sufficient number of men of such unquestioned good sense education and learning as to secure us against all delusion in themselves of such undoubted integrity as to place them beyond all suspicion of any design to deceive others of such credit and reputation in the eyes of mankind as to have a great deal to lose in case of they're being detected in any falsehood and at the same time a testing facts performed in such a public manner and in so celebrated a part of the world as to render the detection unavoidable all which circumstances are requisite to give us a full assurance in the testimony of men secondly we may observe in human nature a principle which if strictly examined will be found to diminish extremely the assurance which we might from human testimony have in any kind of prodigy the maximum by which we commonly conduct ourselves in our reasonings is that the objects of which we have no experience resembles those of which we have that what we have found to be most usual is always most probable and that where there is an opposition of arguments we ought to give preference to such as are founded on the greatest number of past observations but though in proceeding by this rule we readily reject any fact which is unusual and incredible in an ordinary degree yet in advancing farther the mind observes not always the same rule but when anything is affirmed utterly absurd and miraculous it rather the more readily admits of such a fact upon account of that very circumstance which ought to destroy all its authority the passion of surprise and wonder arising from miracles being an agreeable emotion gives a sensible tendency towards the belief of those events from which it is derived and this goes so far that even those who cannot enjoy this pleasure immediately nor can believe those miraculous events of which they are informed yet love to partake of the satisfaction at second hand or by rebound and place a pride and delight in exciting the admiration of others with what greediness are the miraculous accounts of travelers received their descriptions of sea and land monsters their relations of wonderful adventures strange men and uncouth manners but if the spirit of religion join itself to the love of wonder there is an end of common sense and human testimony in these circumstances loses all pretensions to authority a religionist may be an enthusiast and imagine he sees what has no reality he may know his narrative to be false and yet persevere in it with the best intentions in the world for the sake of promoting so wholly a cause or even where this delusion has not place vanity excited by so strong a temptation operates on him more powerfully than on the rest of mankind in any other circumstances and self-interest with equal force his auditors may not have and commonly have not sufficient judgment to canvas his evidence what judgment they have they renounced by principle in these sublime and mysterious subjects or if they were ever so willing to employ it passion in a heated imagination disturb the regularity of its operations their credulity increases his impudence and his impudence overpowers their credulity eloquence when at its highest pitch leaves little room for reason or reflection but addressing itself entirely to the fancy or the affections captivates the willing hearers and subdues their understanding happily this pitch it seldom attains but what a tully or dimostinies could scarcely affect over a roman or athenean audience every capuchin every itinerant or stationary teacher can perform over the generality of mankind and in a higher degree by touching such gross and vulgar passions the many instances of forged miracles and prophecies and supernatural events which in all ages have either been detected by contrary evidence or which detect themselves by their absurdity prove sufficiently the strong propensity of mankind to the extraordinary in the marvelous and ought reasonably to beget a suspicion against all relations of this kind this is our natural way of thinking even with regard to the most common and the most credible events for instance there is no kind of report which rises so easily and spread so quickly especially in country places and provincial towns as those concerning marriages in so much that two young persons of equal condition never see each other twice but the whole neighborhood immediately join them together the pleasure of telling a piece of news so interesting of propagating it and of being the first reporters of it spreads the intelligence and this is so well known that no man of sense gives attention to these reports till he find them confirmed by some greater evidence do not the same passions and others still stronger incline the generality of mankind to believe and report with the greatest vehemence and assurance all religious miracles thirdly it forms a strong presumption against all supernatural and miraculous relations that they are observed chiefly to abound among ignorant and barbarous nations or if a civilized people has ever given admission to any of them that people will be found to have received them from ignorant and barbarous ancestors who transmitted them with that inviolable sanction and authority which always attend received opinions when we peruse the first histories of all nations we are apt to imagine ourselves transported into some new world where the whole frame of nature is disjointed in every element performs its operations in a different manner from what it does at present battles revolutions pestilence famine and death are never the effect of those natural causes which we experience prodigies omens oracles judgments quite obscure the few natural events that are intermingled with them but as the former growth in or every page in proportion as we advance near the enlightened ages we soon learn that there was nothing mysterious or supernatural in the case but that all proceeds from the usual propensity of mankind towards the marvelous and that though this inclination may at intervals receive a check from sense and learning it can never be thoroughly extirpated from human nature it is strange a judicious reader is apt to say upon the perusal of those wonderful historians that such prodigious events never happen in our days but it is nothing strange I hope that men should lie in all ages you must surely have seen instances enough of that frailty you have yourself heard many such marvelous relations started which being treated with scorn by all the wise and judicious have at last been abandoned even by the vulgar be assured that those renowned lies which have spread and flourished to such a monstrous height arose from like beginnings but being sown in a more proper soil shot up at last into prodigies almost equal to those which they relate it was a wise policy in that false prophet alexander who though now forgotten was once so famous to lay the first scene of his imposters in pathogonia whereas lucian tells us the people were extremely ignorant and stupid and ready to swallow even the grossest delusion people at a distance who are weak enough to think the matter at all worth inquiry have no opportunity of receiving better information the stories come magnified to them by a hundred circumstances fools are industrious in propagating the imposter while the wise and learned are contented in general to deride its absurdity without informing themselves of the particular facts by which it may be distinctly refuted and thus the imposter above mentioned was unable to proceed from his ignorant pathogonians to the enlisting of votaries even among the grecian philosophers and men at the most imminent rank and distinction in Rome they could engage the attention of that sage emperor Marcus Aurelius so far as to make him trust the success of a military expedition to his delusive prophecies the advantages are so great of starting an imposter among an ignorant people that even though the delusion should be too gross to impose on the generality of them which though seldom is sometimes a case it has a much better chance for succeeding in remote countries than if the first scene had been laid in a city renowned for arts and knowledge the most ignorant and barbarous of these barbarians carry the report abroad none of their countrymen have a large correspondence or sufficient credit and authority to contradict and beat down the delusion men's inclination to the marvelous has full opportunity to display itself and thus the story which is universally exploded in the place where it was first started shall pass for certain at a thousand miles distance but had alexander fixed his residence at Athens the philosophers of that renowned mark of learning would have immediately spread throughout the whole roman empire their sense of the matter which being supported by so great authority and displayed by all the force of reason and eloquence would have entirely opened the eyes of mankind it is true Lucian passing by chance through pathogonia had an opportunity performing this good office but though much to be wished it does not always happen that every alexander meets with a Lucian ready to expose and detect his imposters I may add as a fourth reason which diminishes the authority of prodigies that there is no testimony for any even those which have not been expressly detect that is not opposed by an infinite number of witnesses so that not only the miracle destroys the credit of testimony but the testimony destroys itself to make this the better understood let us consider that in matters of religion whatever is different is contrary and that it is impossible the religions of ancient Rome of turkey of Siam and of China should all of them be established on any solid foundation every miracle therefore pretended to have been wrought in any of these religions and all of them abound in miracles as its direct scope is to establish the particular system to which it is attributed so has it the same force though more indirectly to overthrow every other system in destroying a rival system it likewise destroys the credit of those miracles on which that system was established so that all the prodigies of different religions are to be regarded as contrary facts and the evidences of these prodigies whether weak or strong as opposite to each other according to this method of reasoning when we believe any miracle of Muhammad or his successors we have for our warrant the testimony of a few barbarous Arabians and on the other hand we're to regard the authority of Titus Livius Plutarch Tacitus and in short of all the authors and witnesses Grecian Chinese and Roman Catholic who have related any miracle in their particular religion I say we're to regard their testimony in the same light as if they had mentioned that Muhammad and miracle and had in express terms contradicted it with the same certainty as they have for the miracle they relate this argument may appear over subtle and refined but is not in reality different from the reasoning of a judge who supposes that the credit of two witnesses maintaining a crime against any one is destroyed by the testimony of two others who affirm him to have been 200 leagues distant at the same instant when the crime is said to have been committed one of the best to tested miracles in all profane history is that which Tacitus reports of Espion who cured a blind man in Alexandria by means of a spittle in a lame man by the mere touch of his foot in obedience to a vision of the god Serapis who had enjoined them to have recourse to the emperor for these miraculous cures the story may be seen in that fine historian where every circumstance seems to add weight to the testimony and might be displayed at large with all the force of argument and eloquence if anyone were now concerned to enforce the evidence of that exploded in idolatrous superstition the gravity solidity age and probity of so great an emperor who through the whole course of his life conversed in a familiar manner with his friends and courtiers and never affected those extraordinary heirs of divinity assumed by Alexander and Demetrius the historian a cotemporary writer noted for candor and veracity and with all the greatest most penetrating genius perhaps of all antiquity and so free from any tendency to crudility that he even lies under the contrary imputation of atheism and profaneness the persons from whose authority he related the miracle of established character for judgment and veracity as we may well presume eyewitnesses of the fact and confirming their testimony after the flavian family was dispoiled of the empire and could no longer give any reward as the price of a lie atroom kwa kui interfuera nun kwa kwa memorand post quam nullum mendakio pretium to which if we add the public nature of the facts as related it will appear that no evidence can well be supposed stronger for so gross and so palpable of falsehood there is also a memorable story related by cardinal doratz which may well deserve our consideration when that intriguing politician fled into spain to avoid the persecution of his enemies he passed through saragasa the capital of aragon where he was shown in the cathedral a man who had served seven years as a doorkeeper and was well known to everybody in town that had ever paid his devotions at that church he had been seen for so long a time wanting a leg but recovered that limb by the rubbing of holy oil upon the stump and the cardinal assures us that he saw him with two legs this miracle was vouched by all the cannons of the church and the whole company in town were appealed to for confirmation of the fact whom the cardinal found by their zealous devotion to be thorough believers of the miracle here the relator was also co-temporary to the supposed prodigy of an incredulous and libertine character as well as of great genius the miracle of so singular in nature as could scarcely admit of a counterfeit and the witnesses very numerous and all of them in a manner spectators of the fact to which they gave their testimony and what adds mightily to the force of the evidence and made double our surprise on this occasion is that the cardinal himself who relates the story seems not to give any credit to it and consequently cannot be suspected of any concurrence in the holy fraud he considered justly that it was not requisite in order to reject a factor this nature to be able accurately to disprove the testimony and to trace its falsehood through all the circumstances of navery and credulity which produced it he knew that as this was commonly altogether impossible at any small distance of time and place so was it extremely difficult even where one was immediately present by reason of the bigotry ignorance cunning and roguery of a great part of mankind he therefore concluded like a just reasoner that such an evidence carried falsehood upon the very face of it and that a miracle supported by any human testimony was more properly a subject of derision than of argument there surely never was a greater number of miracles ascribed to one person than those which were lately said to have been wrought in France upon the tomb of Abbe Paris the famous Jansenist with whose sanctity the people were so long deluded the curing of the sick giving hearing to the deaf and sight to the blind were everywhere talked of as the usual effects of that holy sepulcher but what is more extraordinary many of the miracles were immediately proved upon the spot before judges of unquestioned integrity attested by witnesses of credit and distinction in a learned age and on the most eminent theater that is now in the world nor is this all a relation of them was published and dispersed everywhere nor were the Jesuits though a learned body supported by the civil magistrate and determined enemies to those opinions and whose favor the miracles were said to have been wrought ever able distinctly to refute or detect them footnote this book was read by Monsieur Montgeron counselor or judge of the parliament of Paris a man of figure and character who was also a martyr to the cause and is now said to be somewhere in a dungeon on account of his book there is another book in three volumes called Rue Caillie des Mericulis de la Baie Perrie giving an account of many of these miracles and accompanied with preparatory discourses which are very well written there runs however through the whole of these a ridiculous comparison between the miracles of our savior and those of the abeys wherein it is asserted that the evidence for the latter is equal to that for the former as if the testimony of men could ever be put in the balance with that of God himself who conducted the pen of the inspired writers if these writers indeed were to be considered merely as human testimony the French author is very moderate in his comparison since he might with some appearance of reason pretend that the Janseness miracles much surpassed the other in evidence and authority the following circumstances are drawn from authentic papers inserted in the above mentioned book many of the miracles of abeys perrie were proved immediately by witnesses before the officiality or bishops court at Paris under the eye of carnal noia whose character for integrity and capacity was never contested even by its enemies his successor in the archbishopric was an enemy to the Jansenists and for that reason promoted to the sea by the court yet 22 rectors or curé of Paris with infinite earnestness press him to examine those miracles which they assert to be known to the whole world and undisputably certain but he wisely for bore the mullinist party had tried to discredit these miracles in one instance that of mademoiselle affront but besides that their proceedings were in many respects the most irregular in the world particularly inciting only a few of the Jansenist witnesses whom they tampered with besides this I say they soon found themselves overwhelmed by a cloud of new witnesses 120 a number most of them persons of credit and substance in Paris who gave oath for the miracle this was accompanied with the solemn and earnest appeal to the parliament but the parliament were forbidden by authority to meddle in the affair it was at last observed that where men are heated by zeal and enthusiasm there is no degree of human testimony so strong as may not be procured for the greatest absurdity and those who will be so silly as to examine the affair by that medium and seek particular flaws in the testimony are almost sure to be confounded it must be a miserable imposter indeed that does not prevail in that contest all who have been in France about that time have heard of the reputation of Montsour et Roe Lieutenant de police whose vigilance, penetration, activity and extensive intelligence have been much talked of this magistrate who by the nature of his office is almost absolute was vested with full powers on purpose to suppress or discredit these miracles and he frequently seized immediately and examined the witnesses and subjects of them but never could reach anything satisfactory against them in the case of mademoiselle T. Beau he sent the famous de Silva to examine her whose evidence is very curious the physician declares that it was impossible she could have been so ill as was proved by her witnesses because it was impossible she could in so short a time have recovered so perfectly as he found her he reasoned like a man of sense from natural causes but the opposite party told him that the whole was a miracle and that his evidence was the very best proof of it the Mullenists were in a sad dilemma they durst not assert the absolute insufficiency of human evidence to prove a miracle they were obliged to say that these miracles were wrought by witchcraft and the devil but they were told that this was the recourse of the Jews of old no Jansenist was ever embarrassed to account for the cessation of the miracles when the churchyard was shut up by the king's edict it was the touch of the tomb which produced these extraordinary effects and when no one could approach the tomb no effects could be expected God indeed could have thrown down the walls in a moment but he is master of his own graces and works and it belongs not to us to account for them he did not throw down the walls of every city like those of Jericho on the sounding of the ram's horns nor break up the prison of every apostle like that of St. Paul No less a man than the Duke de Châtillon a Duke and peer of France of the highest rank and family gives evidence of a miraculous cure performed upon a servant of his who had lived several years in his house with a visible and palpable infirmity I shall conclude with observing that no clergy are more celebrated for strictness of life and manners than the secular clergy of France particularly the rectors or curays of Paris who bear testimony to these imposters the learning, genius, and probity of the gentleman and the austerity of the nuns of Port Royal have been much celebrated all over Europe yet they all give evidence for a miracle wrought on the niece of the famous Pascal whose sanctity of life as well as extraordinary capacity is well known the famous Racine gives an account to this miracle in his famous history of Port Royal and fortifies with it all the proofs which a multitude of nuns, priests, physicians, and men of the world all of them of undoubted credit could bestow upon it several men of letters particularly the bishop of Tournay thought this miracle so certain as to employ it in the refutation of atheists and freethinkers the Queen Regent of France who was extremely prejudiced against the Port Royal sent her own physician to examine the miracle who returned an absolute convert in short the supernatural cure was so uncontestable that it saved for a time that famous monastery from the ruin with which it was threatened by the Jesuits had it been a cheat it had certainly been detected by such sagacious and powerful antagonists and must have hastened the ruin of the contrivers our divines who can build up a formidable castle from such despicable materials what a prodigious fabric could they have reared from these and many other circumstances which I have not mentioned how often would the great names of Pascal, Racine, Arnaud, Nicole have resounded in our ears but if they be wise they had better adopt the miracle as being more worth a thousand times than all the rest of the collection besides it may serve very much to their purpose for that miracle was really performed by the touch of an authentic Holy Prickle of the Holy Thorn which composed the Holy Crown which etc etc in footnote where shall we find such a number of circumstances agreeing to the corroboration of one fact and what have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events which they relate and this surely in the eyes of all reasonable people will alone be regarded as a sufficient refutation is the consequence just because some human testimony has the utmost force and authority in some cases when it relates to the battle Philippi or Farsalia for instance that therefore all kinds of testimony must in all cases have equal force and authority suppose that the Caesarean and Pompeian factions had each of them claim the victory in these battles and that the historians of each party had uniformly ascribed the advantage to their own side how could mankind at this distance have been able to determine between them the contrariety is equally strong between the miracles related by Herodotus or Plutarch and those delivered by Mariana, Bede or any monkish historian the wise lend a very academic faith to every report which favors the passion of the reporter whether it magnifies his country his family or himself or in any other way strikes in with his natural inclinations and propensities but what greater temptation than to appear a missionary a prophet an ambassador from heaven who would not encounter many dangers and difficulties in order to attain so sublime a character or if by the help of vanity and heated imagination a man has first made a convert of himself and entered seriously into the delusion whoever scruples to make use of pious fronds in support of so holy and meritorious a cause the smallest spark may hear kindle into the greatest flame because the materials are always prepared for it the evidem genus auricularum the gazing populace received greedily without examination whatever sues superstition and promotes wonder how many stories of this nature have in all ages been detected and exploded in their infancy how many more have been celebrated for a time and have afterwards sunk into neglect and oblivion where such reports therefore fly about the solution of the phenomenon is obvious and we judge in conformity to regular experience and observation when we account for it by the known and natural principles of credulity and delusion and shall we rather than have a recourse to so natural a solution allow of a miraculous violation of the most established laws of nature I need not mention the difficulty of detecting a falsehood in any private or even public history at the place where it is said to happen much more when the scene is removed ever so small a distance even a court of judicature with all the authority accuracy and judgment which they can employ find themselves often at a loss to distinguish between truth and falsehood in the most recent actions but the matter never comes to any issue if trusted to the common method of altercations and debates and flying rumors especially when men's passions have taken part on either side in the infancy of new religions the wise and learned commonly esteem the matter too inconsiderable to deserve their attention or regard and when afterwards they would willingly detect the cheat in order to undeceive the deluded multitude the season is now past and the records and witnesses which might clear up the matter have perished beyond recovery no means of detection remain but those which must be drawn from the very testimony itself of the reporters in these though always sufficient with the judicious and knowing are commonly too fine to fall under the comprehension of the vulgar upon the whole then it appears that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever amounted to a probability much less to a proof and that even supposing it amounted to a proof it would be opposed by another proof derived from the very nature of the fact which it would endeavor to establish it is experience only which gives authority to human testimony and it is the same experience which assures us of the laws of nature when therefore these two kinds of experience are contrary we have nothing to do but subtract the one from the other and embrace an opinion either on one side or the other with that assurance which arises from the remainder but according to the principle here explained this subtraction with regard to all popular religions amounts to an entire annihilation and therefore we may establish it as a maxim that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a miracle and make it a just foundation for any such system of religion I beg the limitations here made may be remarked when I say that a miracle can never be proved so as to be the foundation of a system of religion for I own that otherwise there may possibly be miracles or violations of the usual course of nature of such a kindness to admit of proof from human testimony though perhaps it will be impossible to find such in all the records of history thus suppose all authors in all languages agree that from the first of January 1600 there was a total darkness over the whole earth for eight days suppose that the tradition of this extraordinary event is still strong and lightly among the people that all travelers who return from foreign countries bring us accounts of the same tradition without the least variation or contradiction it is evident that our present philosophers instead of doubting the fact ought to receive it a certain and ought to search for the causes when it might be derived the decay corruption and dissolution of nature is an event rendered probable by so many analogies that any phenomenon which seems to have a tendency towards that catastrophe comes within the reach of human testimony if that testimony be very extensive in uniform but suppose that all the historians who treat of England should agree that on the first of January 1600 Queen Elizabeth died that both before and after her death she was seen by her physicians in the whole court as is usual with persons of her rank that her successor was acknowledged and proclaimed by the parliament and that after being interred a month she again appeared resumed the throne and governed England for three years I must confess that I should be surprised at the concurrence of so many odd circumstances but should not have the least inclination to believe so miraculous an event I should not doubt of her pretended death and of those other public circumstances that followed it I should only assert it to have been pretended and that it neither was nor possibly could be real you would in vain object to me the difficulty and almost impossibility of deceiving the world in an affair of such consequence the wisdom and solid judgment to that renowned queen with little or no advantage which she could reap from so poor an artifice all this might astonish me but I would still reply that the navery and folly of men are such common phenomena then I should rather believe the most extraordinary events to arise from their concurrence then admit of so signal a violation of the laws of nature but should this miracle be ascribed to any new system of religion men in all ages have been so much imposed on by ridiculous stories of that kind that this very circumstance would be a foolproof of a cheat and sufficient with all men of sense not only to make them reject the fact but even rejected without further examination though the being to whom the miracle is ascribed to be in this case almighty it is not upon that account become a bit more probable since it is impossible for us to know the attributes or actions of such a being otherwise then from the experience which we have of his productions in the usual course of nature this still reduces us to past observation and obliges us to compare the instances of the violation of truth in the testimony of men with those of the violation of the laws of nature by miracles in order to judge which of them is most likely improbable as the violations of truth are more common in the testimony concerning religious miracles then in that concerning any other matter of fact this must diminish very much the authority of the former testimony and make us form a general resolution never to lend any attention to it with whatever species pretense that may be covered Lord Bacon seems to have embraced the same principles of reasoning we ought says he quote to make a collection or particular history of all monsters and prodigious birds or productions and in a word of everything new rare and extraordinary in nature but this must be done with the most severe scrutiny lest we depart from truth above all every relation must be considered as suspicious which depends in any degree upon religion as the prodigies of Livy and no less so everything that is to be found in the writers of natural magic or alchemy or such authors who seem all of them to have an unconquerable appetite for falsehood and fable unquote I am the better pleased with the method of reasoning here delivered as I think it may serve to confound those dangerous friends or disguised enemies to the Christian religion who have undertaken to defend it by the principles of human reason our most holy religion is founded on faith not on reason and it is a sure method of exposing it to put it to such a trial as it is by no means fitted to endure to make this more evident let us examine those miracles related in scripture and not to lose ourselves and too wide a field let us confine ourselves to such as we find in the Pentateuch which we shall examine according to the principles of these pretended Christians not as the word or testimony of God himself but as the production of a mere human writer and historian here then we are first to consider a book presented to us by a barbarous and ignorant people written in an age when they were still more barbarous and in all probability long after the facts which it relates corroborated by no concurrent testimony and resembling those fabulous accounts which every nation gives of its origin upon reading this book we find it full of prodigies and miracles it gives an account of a state of the world and of human nature entirely different from the present of our fall from that state of the age of man extended to near a thousand years of the destruction of the world by a deluge of the arbitrary choice of one people as the favorites of heaven and that people the countrymen of the author of their deliverance from bondage by prodigies the most astonishing imaginable I desire anyone to lay his hand upon his heart and after a serious consideration declare whether he thinks that the falsehood of such a book supported by such a testimony would be more extraordinary and miraculous than all the miracles it relates which is however necessary to make it be received according to the measures of probability above established what we have said of miracles may be applied without any variation to prophecies and indeed all prophecies are real miracles and as such only can be admitted as proofs of any revelation if it did not exceed the capacity of human nature to foretell future events it would be absurd to employ any prophecy as an argument for a divine mission or authority from heaven so that upon the whole we may conclude that the Christian religion not only was at first attended with miracles but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity and whoever is moved by faith to ascend to it is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person which subverts all the principles of his understanding and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience End of Chapter 10 Part 2 Chapter 16 of an Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding This is a LibriVox recording All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain For more information or to volunteer visit LibriVox.org An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume Chapter 16 of a Particular Providence and of a Future State I was lately engaged in conversation with a friend who loves skeptical paradoxes where, though he advanced many principles of which I can by no means approve yet as they seem to be curious and to bear some relation to the chain of reasoning carried on throughout this inquiry I shall here copy them from memory as accurately as I can in order to submit them to the judgment of the reader Our conversation began with my admiring the singular good fortune of philosophy which, as it requires, entire liberty above all other privileges and chiefly flourishes from the free opposition of sentiments and argumentation received its first birth in an age and country of freedom and toleration and was never cramped even in its most extravagant principles by any creeds, concessions, or penal statutes for, except the banishment of protagress and the death of Socrates which last event proceeded partly from other motives there are scarcely any instances to be met with in ancient history of this bigoted jealousy with which the present age is so much infested Epicureus lived at Athens to an advanced age in peace and tranquility Epicureans were even admitted to receive the sacerdotal character and to officiate at the altar in the most sacred rites of the established religion and the public encouragement of pensions and salaries was afforded equally by the wisest of all the Roman emperors to the professors of every sect of philosophy How requisite such kind of treatment was to philosophy in her early youth will easily be conceived if we reflect that even at present when she may be supposed to be hardy and robust she bears with much difficulty the inclemency of the seasons and those harsh winds of calamity and persecution which blow upon her You admire, says my friend as the singular good fortune of philosophy what seems to result from the natural course of things and to be unavoidable in every age and nation This pertenacious bigotry of which you complain as so fatal to philosophy is really her offspring who, after lying with superstition separates himself entirely from the interest of his parent and becomes her most inveterate enemy and persecutor Speculative dogmas of religion the present occasions of such furious dispute could not possibly be conceived or admitted in the early ages of the world when mankind, being wholly illiterate formed an idea of religion more suitable to their weak apprehension and composed their sacred tenets of such tales chiefly as were the objects of traditional belief more than of argument or disputation After the first alarm therefore was over which arose from the new paradoxes and principles of the philosophers These teachers seem ever after during the ages of antiquity to have lived in great harmony with the established superstition and have made a fair partition of mankind between them the former claiming all the learned and wise, the latter possessing all the vulgar and illiterate It seems then, say I, that you leave politics entirely out of the question and never suppose that a wise magistrate can be jealous of certain tenets of philosophy such as those of Epicurus which denying a divine existence and consequently a provenance in a future state seem to loosen in a great measure the ties of morality and may be supposed for that reason pernicious to the peace of civil society I know, replied he, that in fact these persecutions never in any age proceeded from calm reason or from experience of the pernicious consequences of philosophy but arose entirely from passion and prejudice But what if I should advance farther and assert that if Epicurus had been accused before the people by any of the sycophants or informers of those days he could easily have defended his cause and proved his principles of philosophy to be as salutary as those of his adversaries who endeavored with such zeal to expose him to the public hatred and jealousy I wish, said I, you would try your eloquence upon so extraordinary a topic and make a speech for Epicurus which might satisfy not the mob of Athens if you allow that ancient and polite city to have contained any mob but the more philosophical part of his audience such as might be supposed capable of comprehending his arguments The matter would not be difficult upon such conditions, replied he and if you please I shall suppose myself Epicurus for a moment and make you stand for the Athenian people and shall deliver you such a harang as will fill all the urn with white beans and leave not a black one to gratify the malice of my adversaries Very well then, pray proceed upon these suppositions I come hither, O ye Athenians, to justify in your assembly what I maintained in my school and I find myself impeached by furious antagonists instead of reasoning with calm and dispassionate inquirers your deliberations which of right should be directed to questions of public good and the interest of the commonwealth are diverted to the dispositions of speculative philosophy and these magnificent but perhaps fruitless inquiries take place of your more familiar but useful occupations But so far as in me lies I will prevent this abuse We shall not hear dispute concerning the origin and government of worlds We shall only inquire how far such questions concern the public interest and if I can persuade you that they are entirely indifferent to the peace of society and security of government I hope that you will presently send us back to our schools there to examine at leisure the question the most sublime but at the same time the most speculative of all philosophy The religious philosopher is not satisfied with the tradition of your forefathers and doctrine of your priests in which I willingly acquiesce indulge a rash curiosity in trying how far they can establish religion upon the principles of reason and they thereby excite instead of satisfying the doubts which naturally arise from a diligent and scrutinous inquiry they paint in the most magnificent colors the order beauty and wise arrangement of the universe and then ask if such a glorious display of intelligence could proceed from the fortuitous concourse of atoms or if chance could produce what the greatest genius can never sufficiently admire I shall not examine the justness of this argument I shall allow it to be as solid as my antagonists and accusers can desire it is sufficient if I can prove from this very reasoning that the question is entirely speculative and that when in my philosophical dispositions I deny a provenance and a future state I undermine not the foundations of society but advance principles which they themselves upon their own topics if they argue consistently must allow to be solid and satisfactory you then who are my accusers have acknowledged that the chief or sole argument for a divine existence which I never questioned is derived from the order of nature where there appear such marks of intelligence and design that you think it extravagant to assign for its cause either chance or the blind and unguided force of matter you allow that this is an argument drawn from effects to causes from the order of the work you infer that there must have been project and forethought in the workmen if you cannot make out this point you allow that your conclusion fails and you pretend not to establish the conclusion in a greater latitude than the phenomena of nature will justify these are your concessions I desire you to mark the consequences when we infer any particular cause from an effect we must proportion the one to the other and can never be allowed to ascribe to the cause any qualities but what are exactly sufficient to produce the effect a body of 10 ounces raised in any scale may serve as a proof that the counterbalancing weight exceeds 10 ounces but can never afford a reason that it exceeds 100 if the cause assigned for any effect be not sufficient to produce it we must either reject that cause or add to it such qualities as will give it a just proportion to the effect but if we ascribe to it farther qualities or affirm it capable of producing other effects we can only indulge the license of conjecture and arbitrarily suppose the existence of qualities and energies without reason or authority the same rule holds whether the cause assigned be brute unconscious matter or a rational intelligent being if the cause be known by the effect we never ought to ascribe to it any qualities beyond what are precisely requisite to produce the effect nor can we by any rules of just reasoning return back from the cause and infer other effects from it beyond those by which alone it is known to us no one merely from the sight of one of Zeuxis's pictures could know that he was also a statuary or architect and was an artist no less skillful in stone and marble than in colors the talents and taste displayed in the particular work before us these we may safely conclude the workmen to be possessed of the cause must be proportioned to the effect and if we exactly and precisely proportion it we shall never find in it any qualities that point farther or afford an inference concerning any other design or performance such qualities must be somewhat beyond what is merely requisite for producing the effect which we examine allowing therefore the gods to be the authors of the existence or order of the universe it follows that they possess that precise degree of power intelligence and benevolence which appears in their workmanship but nothing farther can ever be proved except we call in the assistance of exaggeration and flattery to supply the defects of argument and reasoning so far as the traces of any attributes at present appear so far may we conclude these attributes to exist the supposition of farther attributes is mere hypothesis much more the supposition that in the distant regions of space or periods of time there has been or will be a more magnificent display of these attributes and a scheme of administration more suitable to such imaginary virtues we can never be allowed to mount up from the universe the effect to Jupiter the cause and then descend downwards to infer any new effect from that cause as if the present effects alone were not entirely worthy of the glorious attributes which we ascribe to that deity the knowledge of the cause being derived solely from the effects they must be exactly adjusted to each other and the one can never refer to anything farther or be the foundation of any new inference and conclusion you find certain phenomena in nature you seek a cause or author you imagine that you have found him you afterwards become so enamored of this offspring of your brain that you imagine it impossible but he must produce something greater and more perfect than the present scene of things which is so full of ill and disorder you forget that the superlative intelligence and benevolence are entirely imaginary or at least without any foundation and reason and that you have no ground to ascribe to him any qualities but what you see he has actually exerted and displayed in his productions let your gods therefore philosophers be suited to the present appearance of nature and presume not to alter these appearances by arbitrary suppositions in order to suit them to the attributes which you so fondly ascribe to your deities when priests and poets supported by your authority O Athenians talk of a golden or silver age which preceded the present state of vice and misery I hear them with attention and with reverence but when philosophers who pretend to neglect authority and to cultivate reason hold the same discourse I pay them not I own the same obsequious submission and pious deference I ask who carried them into the celestial regions who admitted them into the councils of the gods who opened to them the book of fate that they thus rashly affirm that their deities have executed or will execute any purpose beyond what has actually appeared if they tell me that they have mounted on the steps or by the gradual ascent of reason and by drawing inferences from effects to causes I still insist that they have aided the ascent of reason by the wings of imagination otherwise they could not thus change their manner of inference and argue from causes to effects presuming that a more perfect production than the present world would be more suitable to such perfect beings as the gods and forgetting that they have no reason to ascribe to these celestial beings any perfection or any attribute but what can be found in the present world hence all the fruitless industry to account for the ill appearances of nature and save the honor of the gods while we must acknowledge the reality of that evil and disorder with which the world so much abounds the obstinate and intractable qualities of matter we are told or the observance of general laws or some such reason is the sole cause which controlled the power and benevolence of Jupiter and obliged him to create mankind and every sensible creature so imperfect and so unhappy these attributes then are it seems beforehand taken for granted in their greatest latitude and upon that supposition I own that such conjecture may perhaps be admitted as plausible solutions of the ill phenomena but still I ask why take these attributes for granted or why ascribe to the cause any qualities but what actually appear in the effect why torture your brain to justify the course of nature upon suppositions which for ought you know may be entirely imaginary and of which there are to be found no traces in the course of nature the religious hypothesis therefore must be considered only as a particular method of accounting for the visible phenomena of the universe but no just reasoner will ever presume to infer from it any single fact and alter or add to the phenomena in any single particular if you think that the appearances of things prove such causes it is allowable for you to draw an inference concerning the existence of these causes in such complicated and sublime subjects every one should be indulged in the liberty of conjecture and argument but here you ought to rest if you come backward and arguing from your inferred causes conclude that any other fact has existed or will exist in the course of nature which may serve as a fuller display of particular attributes I must admonish you that you have departed from the method of reasoning attached to the present subject and have certainly added something to the attributes of the cause beyond what appears in the effect otherwise you could never with tolerable sense or propriety add anything to the effect in order to render it more worthy of the cause where then is the odiousness of that doctrine which I teach in my school or rather which I examine in my gardens or what do you find in this whole question wherein the security of good morals or in the peace and order of society is in the least concerned I deny a provenance you say in supreme governor of the world who guides the course of events and punishes the vicious with infamy and disappointment and rewards the virtuous with honor and success in all their undertakings but surely I deny not the course itself of events which lies open to everyone's inquiry and examination I acknowledge that in the present order of things virtue is attended with more peace of mind than vice and meets with a more favorable reception from the world I am sensible that according to the past experience of mankind friendship is the chief joy of human life and moderation the only source of tranquility and happiness I never balance between the virtuous and the vicious course of life but I'm sensible that to a well-disposed mind every advantage is on the side of the former and what can you say more allowing all your suppositions and reasonings you tell me indeed that this disposition of things proceeds from intelligence and design but whatever it proceeds from the disposition itself on which depends our happiness or misery and consequently our conduct and deportment in life is still the same is it still open for me as well as you to regulate my behavior by my experience of past events and if you affirm that while a divine providence is allowed and a supreme distributive justice in the universe I ought to expect some more particular reward of the good and punishment of the bad beyond the ordinary course of events I here find the same fallacy which I have before and ever to detect you persist in imagining that if we grant that divine existence for which you so earnestly contend you may safely infer consequences from it and add something to the experienced order of nature by arguing from the attributes which you ascribe to your gods you seem to remember that all your reasonings on this subject can only be drawn from effects to causes and that every argument deducted from causes to effects must of necessity be a gross sophism since it is impossible for you to know anything of the cause but what you have antecedently not inferred but discovered to full in the effect but what must a philosopher think of those vain reasoners who instead of regarding the present scene of things as the sole object of their contemplation so far reverse the whole course of nature as to render this life merely a passage to something farther a porch which leads to a greater and vastly different building a prologue which serves only to introduce the peace and give it more grace and propriety whence do you think can such philosophers derive their idea of the gods from their own conceit and imagination surely for if they derived it from the present phenomena it would never point to anything farther but must exactly adjust to them that the divinity may possibly be endowed with attributes which we have never seen exerted may be governed by principles of action which we cannot discover to be satisfied all this will freely be allowed but still this is mere possibility and hypothesis we never can have reason to infer any attributes or any principles of action in him but so far as we know them to have been exerted and satisfied are there any marks of a distributive justice in the world if you answer in the affirmative I conclude that since justice here exerts itself it is satisfied if you reply in the negative I conclude that you have then no reason to ascribe justice in our sense of it to the gods if you hold a medium between affirmation and negation by saying that the justice of the gods at present exerts itself in part but not in its full extent I answer that you have no reason to give it any particular extent but only so far as you see it at present exert itself thus I bring the disputo Athenians to a short issue with my antagonists the course of nature lies open to my contemplation as well as theirs the experienced train of events is the great standard by which we all regulate our conduct nothing else can be appealed to in the field or in the senate nothing else ought ever to be heard of in the school or in the closet in vain would our limited understanding break through those boundaries which are too narrow for our fond imagination while we argue from the course of nature and infer a particular intelligent cause which first bestowed and still preserves order in the universe we embrace a principle which is both uncertain and useless it is uncertain because the subject lies entirely beyond the reach of human experience it is useless because our knowledge of this cause being derived entirely from the course of nature we can never according to the rules of just reasoning return back from the cause with any new inference or making additions to the common and experience course of nature establish any new principles of conduct and behavior I observed said I finding he had finished his harangue that you neglect not the artifice of the demagogues of old and as you were pleased to make me stand for the people you insinuate yourself into my favor by embracing those principles to which you know I have always expressed a particular attachment but allowing you to make experience as indeed I think you ought the only standard of our judgment concerning this and all other questions of fact I doubt not but from the very same experience to which you appeal it may be possible to refute this reasoning which you have put into the mouth of Epicurus if you saw for instance a half finished building surrounded with heaps of brick and stone and mortar and all the instruments of masonry could you not infer from the effect that it was a work of design and contrivance and could you not return again from this inferred cause to infer new additions to the effect and conclude that the building would soon be finished and receive all further improvements which art could bestow upon it if you saw upon the seashore the print of one human foot you would conclude that man had passed that way and that he had also left the traces of the other foot though effaced by the rolling of the sands or inundation of the waters why then do you refuse to admit the same method of reasoning with regard to the order of nature consider the world and the present life only as an imperfect building from which you can infer a superior intelligence and arguing from that superior intelligence which can leave nothing imperfect why may you not infer a more finished scheme or plan which will receive its completion in some distant point of space and time are not these methods of reasoning exactly similar and under what pretense can you embrace the one while you reject the other the infinite difference of the subjects replied he is a sufficient foundation for this difference in my conclusions in works of human art and contrivance it is allowable to advance from the effect to the cause and returning back from the cause to form new inferences concerning the effect and examine the alterations which it has probably undergone or may still undergo but what is the foundation of this method of reasoning plainly this that man is a being whom we know by experience whose motives and designs we are acquainted with and whose projects and inclinations have a certain connection and coherence according to the laws which nature has established for the government of such a creature when therefore we find that any work is preceded from the skill and industry of man as we are otherwise acquainted with the nature of the animal we can draw a hundred inferences concerning what may be expected from him and these inferences will all be founded in experience and observation but did we know man from the single work or production which we examine it were impossible for us to argue in this manner because our knowledge of all the qualities which we ascribe to him being in that case derived from the production it is impossible they could point to anything farther or be the foundation of any new inference the print of a foot in the sand can only prove when considered alone that there was some figure adapted to it by which it was produced but the print of a human foot proves likewise from our other experience that there was probably another foot which also left its impression though a face by time or other accidents here we mount from the effect to the cause and descending again from the cause infer alterations in the effect but this is not a continuation of the same simple chain of reasoning we comprehend in this case a hundred other experiences and observations concerning the usual figure and members of that species of animal without which this method of argument must be considered as fallacious and sophisticated the case is not the same with our reasonings from the works of nature the deity is known to us only by his productions and is a single being in the universe not comprehended under any species or genus from whose experienced attributes or qualities we can by analogy infer any attribute or quality in him as the universe shows wisdom and goodness we infer wisdom and goodness as it shows a particular degree of these perfections we infer a particular degree of them precisely adapted to the effect which we examine but farther attributes or farther degrees of the same attributes we can never be authorized to infer or suppose by any rules of just reasoning now without some such license of supposition it is impossible for us to argue from the cause or infer any alteration in the effect beyond what has immediately fallen under our observation greater good produced by this being must still prove a greater degree of goodness a more impartial distribution of rewards and punishment must proceed from a greater regard to justice and equity every supposed addition to the works of nature makes an addition to the attributes of the author of nature and consequently being entirely unsupported by any reasoner can never be admitted but as mere conjecture and hypothesis footnote 30 in general it may I think be established as a maxim that where any cause is known only by its particular effects it must be impossible to infer any new effects from that cause since the qualities which are requisite to produce these new effects along with the former must either be different or superior or of more extensive operation than those which simply produce the effect once alone the cause is supposed to be known to us we can never therefore have any reason to suppose the existence of these qualities to say that the new effects proceed only from a continuation of the same energy which is already known from the first effects will not remove the difficulty for even granting this to be the case which can seldom be supposed the very continuation and exertion of a like energy for it is impossible it can be absolutely the same I say this exertion of a like energy in a different period of space and time is a very arbitrary supposition and what there cannot possibly be any traces of in the effects from which all our knowledge of the cause is originally derived let the inferred cause be exactly proportioned as it should be to the known effect and it is impossible that it can possess any qualities from which new or different effects can be inferred end of footnote 30 the great source of our mistake in this subject and of the unbounded license of conjecture which we indulge is that we tacitly consider ourselves as in the place of supreme being and conclude that he will on every occasion observe the same conduct which we ourselves in his situation would have embraced as reasonable and eligible but besides that the ordinary course of nature may convince us that almost everything is regulated by principles and maxims very different from ours besides this I say it must evidently appear contrary to all rules of analogy to reason from the intentions and projects of men to those of a being so different and so much superior in human nature there is a certain experienced coherence of designs and inclinations so that when from any fact we have discovered one intention of any man it may often be reasonable from experience to infer another and draw a long chain of conclusions concerning his past or future conduct but this method of reasoning can never have place with regard to a being so remote and incomprehensible who bears much less analogy to any other being in the universe than the sun to a wax and taper and who discovers himself only by some faint traces or outlines beyond which we have no authority to ascribe to him any attribute or perfection what we imagine to be a superior perfection may really be a defect or were it ever so much a perfection the ascribing of it to the supreme being where it appears not to have been really exerted to the full in his works savers more flattery and panigiric than of just reasoning and sound philosophy all the philosophy therefore in the world and all the religion which is nothing but a species of philosophy will never be able to carry us beyond the usual course of experience or give us measures of conduct and behavior different from those which are furnished by reflections on common life no new fact can ever be inferred from the religious hypothesis no event foreseen or foretold no reward or punishment expected or dreaded beyond what is already known by practice and observation so that my apology for epicurus will still appear solid and satisfactory nor have the political interests of society any connection with the philosophical disputes concerning metaphysics and religion there's still one circumstance replied I which you seem to have overlooked though I should allow your premises you conclude that religious doctrines and reasonings can have no influence on life because they ought to have no influence never considering that men reason not in the same manner you do but draw many consequences from the belief of a divine existence and suppose that the deity will inflict punishments on vice and bestow rewards on virtue beyond what appear in the ordinary course of nature whether this reasoning of theirs be just or not is no matter its influence on their life and conduct must still be the same and those who attempt to disabuse them of such prejudices may for ought I know be good reasoners what I cannot allow them to be good citizens and politicians since they free men from one restraint upon their passions and make the infringement of the laws of society in one respect more easy and secure after all I may perhaps agree to your general conclusion in favor of liberty though upon different premises from those on which you endeavor to found it I think that the state ought to tolerate every principle of philosophy nor is there an instance that any government has suffered in its political interests by such indulgence there is no enthusiasm among philosophers their doctrines are not very alluring to the people and no restraint can be put upon their reasonings but what must be of dangerous consequence to the sciences and even to the state by paving the way for persecution and oppression in points where the generality of mankind are more deeply interested in concern but there occurs to me continued I with regard to your main topic a difficulty which I shall just propose to you without insisting on it lest it lead into reasonings of too nice and delicate a nature in a word I much doubt whether it be possible for a cause to be known only by its effect as you have all long supposed or to be of so singular in particular a nature as to have no parallel and no similarity with any other cause or object that has ever fallen under our observation it is only when two species of object are found to be constantly conjoined that we can infer the one from the other and were an effect presented which was entirely singular and could not be comprehended under any known species I do not see that we could form any conjecture or inference at all concerning its cause if experience and observation and analogy be indeed the only guides which we can reasonably follow in inferences of this nature both the effect and the cause must bear a similarity and resemblance to other effects and causes which we know and which we have found in many instances to be conjoined with each other I leave it to your own reflection to pursue the consequences of this principle I shall just observe that as the antagonists of Epicurus always suppose the universe an effect quite singular and unparalleled to be the proof of a deity a cause no less singular and unparalleled your reasoning upon that supposition seem at least to merit our attention there is I own some difficulty how we can ever return from the cause to the effect and reasoning from our ideas of the former infer any alteration on the latter or any addition to it end of chapter 16 section 12 part 1 of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org section 12 of the academical or skeptical philosophy part 1 there is not a greater number of philosophical reasonings displayed upon any subject than those which prove the existence of a deity and refute the fallacies of atheists and yet the most religious philosophers still dispute whether any man can be so blinded as to be a speculative atheist how shall we reconcile these contradictions the knight's errant who wandered about to clear the world of dragons and giants never entertained the least doubt with regard to the existence of these monsters the skeptic is another enemy of religion who naturally provokes the indignation of all divines and graver philosophers though it is certain that no man ever met with any such absurd creature or conversed with a man who had no opinion or principle concerning any subject either of action or speculation this begets a very natural question what is meant by a skeptic and how far is it possible to push these philosophical principles of doubt and uncertainty there is a species of skepticism antecedent to all study and philosophy which is much inculcated by Descartes and others as a sovereign preservative against error and precipitate judgment it recommends a universal doubt not only of all our former opinions and principles but also of our very faculties of whose veracity say they we must assure ourselves by a chain of reasoning deduce from some original principle which cannot possibly be fallacious or deceitful but neither is there any such original principle which has a prerogative above others that are self-evident and convincing or if there were could we advance a step beyond it but by the use of those very faculties of which we are supposed to be already dividend the Cartesian doubt therefore were it ever possible to be attained by any human creature as it plainly is not would be entirely incurable and no reasoning could ever bring us to a state of assurance and conviction upon any subject it must however be confessed that this species of skepticism when more moderate may be understood in a very reasonable sense and is a necessary preparative to the study of philosophy by preserving a proper impartiality in our judgments and weaning our mind from all those prejudices which we may have imbibed from education or rash opinion to begin with clear and self-evident principles to advance by Timoresan sure steps to review frequently our conclusions and examine accurately all their consequences though by these means we shall make both a slow and a short progress in our systems are the only methods by which we can ever hope to reach truth and attain a proper stability and certainty in our determinations there is another species of skepticism consequent to science and inquiry when men are supposed to have discovered either the absolute fallaciousness of their mental faculties or their unfitness to reach any fixed determination in all those curious subjects of speculation about which they are commonly employed even our very senses are brought into dispute by a certain species of philosophers and the maxims of common life are subjected to the same doubt as the most profound principles or conclusions of metaphysics and theology as these paradoxical tenets if they may be called tenets are to be met with in some philosophers and the refutation of them in several they naturally excite acuriosity and make us inquire into the arguments on which they may be founded I need not insist upon the more trite topics employed by the skeptics in all ages against the evidence of sense such as those which are derived from the imperfection and fallaciousness of our organs on numberless occasions the crooked appearance of an ore in water the various aspects of objects according to their different distances the double images which arise from the pressing one eye and with many other appearances of a like nature these skeptical topics indeed are only sufficient to prove that the senses alone are not implicitly to be depended on but that we must correct their evidence by reason and by considerations derived from the nature of the medium the distance of the object and the disposition of the organ in order to render them within their sphere the proper criteria of truth and falsehood there are other more profound arguments against the senses which admit not of so easy a solution it seems evident that men are carried by a natural instinct or prepossession to repose faith in their senses and that without any reasoning or even almost before the use of reason we always suppose an external universe which depends not on our perception but would exist though we and every sensible creature were absent or annihilated even the animal creation are governed by a like opinion and preserve this belief of external objects in all their thoughts designs and actions it also seems evident that when men follow this blind and powerful instinct of nature they always suppose the very images presented by the senses to be the external objects and never entertain any suspicion that the one are nothing but representations of the other this very table which we see white and which we feel hard is believed to exist independent of our perception and to be something external to our mind which perceives it our presence bestows not being on it our absence does not annihilate it it preserves its existence uniform and entire independent of the situation of intelligent beings who perceive or contemplate it but this universal and primary opinion of all men is soon destroyed by the slightest philosophy which teaches us that nothing can ever be present to the mind but an image or perception and that the senses are only the inlets through which these images are conveyed without being able to produce any immediate intercourse between the mind and the object the table which we see seems to diminish as we remove further from it but the real table which exists independent of us suffers no alteration it was therefore nothing but its image which was present to the mind these are the obvious dictates of reason and no man who reflects ever doubted that the existences which we consider when we say this house and that tree are nothing but perceptions in the mind and fleeting copies or representations of other existences which remain uniform and independent so far then are we necessitated by reasoning to contradict or depart from the primary instincts of nature and to embrace a new system with regard to the evidence of our senses but here philosophy finds herself extremely embarrassed when she would justify this new system and obviate the cavils and objections of the skeptics she can no longer plead the infallible and irresistible instinct of nature for that led us to a quite different system which is acknowledged fallible and even erroneous and to justify this pretended philosophical system by a chain of clear and convincing argument or even any appearance of argument exceeds the power of all human capacity by what argument can it be proved that the perceptions of the mind must be caused by external objects entirely different from them they resembling them if that be possible and could not arise either from the energy of the mind itself or from the suggestion of some invisible and unknown spirit or from some other cause still more unknown to us it is acknowledged that in fact many of these perceptions arise not from anything external as in dreams madness and other diseases and nothing can be more inexplicable than the manner in which the body should so operate upon mind as ever to convey an image of itself to a substance supposed of so different and even contrary a nature it is a question of fact whether the perceptions of the senses be produced by external objects resembling them how shall this question be determined by experience surely as all other questions of a like nature but here experience is and must be entirely silent the mind has never anything present to it but the perceptions and cannot possibly reach any experience of their connection with objects the supposition of such connection is therefore without any foundation in reasoning to have recourse to the veracity of the supreme being in order to prove the veracity of our senses is surely making a very unexpected circuit if his veracity were at all concerned in this matter our senses would be entirely infallible because it is not possible that he can ever deceive not to mention that if the external world be once called in question we shall be at a loss to find arguments by which we may prove the existence of that being or any of his attributes this is a topic therefore in which the profounder and more philosophical skeptics will always triumph when they endeavor to introduce a universal doubt into all subjects of human knowledge and inquiry do you follow the instincts and propensities of nature may they say innocent into the veracity of sense but these lead you to believe that the very perception or sensible image is the external object do you disclaim this principle in order to embrace a more rational opinion that the perceptions are only representations of something external you hear depart from your natural propensities and more obvious sentiments and yet are not able to satisfy your reason which can never find any convincing argument from experience to prove that the perceptions are connected with any external objects there is another skeptical topic of a like nature derived from the most profound philosophy which might merit our attention where it requisite to dive so deep in order to discover arguments and reasonings which can so little serve to any serious purpose it is universally allowed by modern inquirers that all the sensible qualities of objects such as hard soft hot cold white black etc are merely secondary and exist not in the objects themselves but our perceptions of the mind without any external archetype or model which they represent if this be allowed with regard to secondary qualities it must also follow with regard to the supposed primary qualities of extension and solidity nor can the latter be any more entitled to that denomination than the former the idea of extension is entirely acquired from the senses of sight and feeling and if all the qualities perceived by the senses be in the mind not in the object the same conclusion must reach the idea of extension which is wholly dependent on the sensible ideas or the ideas of secondary qualities nothing can save us from this conclusion but the asserting that the ideas of those primary qualities are attained by abstraction an opinion which if we examine it accurately we shall find to be unintelligible and even absurd an extension that is neither tangible nor visible cannot possibly be conceived and a tangible or visible extension which is neither hard nor soft black nor white is equally beyond the reach of human conception let any man try to conceive a triangle in general which is neither isosceles nor scalenum nor has any particular length or proportion of sides and he will soon perceive the absurdity of all the scholastic notions with regard to abstraction and general ideas footnote 31 this argument is drawn from Dr. Berkeley and indeed most of the writings of that very ingenious author form the best lessons of skepticism which are to be found either among the ancient or modern philosopher bail not accepted he professes however in his title page and undoubtedly with great truth to have composed his book against the skeptics as well as against the atheists and free thinkers but that all his arguments though otherwise intended are in reality merely skeptical appears from this that they admit of no answer and produce no conviction their only effect is to cause that momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion which is the result of skepticism return to main text thus the first philosophical objection to the evidence of sense or to the opinion of external existence consists in this that such an opinion if rested on natural instinct is contrary to reason and if referred to reason is contrary to natural instinct and at the same time carries no rational evidence with it to convince an impartial inquirer the second objection goes further and represents this opinion as contrary to reason at least if it be a principle of reason that all sensible qualities are in the mind not in the object bereave matter of all its intelligible qualities both primary and secondary you in a manner annihilate it and leave only a certain unknown inexplicable something as the cause of our perceptions a notion so imperfect that no skeptic will think it worthwhile to contend against it end of section 12 part 1 section 12 part 2 of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org section 12 of the academical or skeptical philosophy part 2 it may seem a very extravagant attempt of the skeptics to destroy reason by argument and ratiocination yet is this the grand scope of all their inquiries and disputes they endeavour to find objections both to our abstract reasonings and to those which regard matter of fact and existence the chief objection against all abstract reasonings is derived from the ideas of space and time ideas which in common life and to a careless view are very clear and intelligible but when they pass through the scrutiny of the profound sciences and they are the chief object of these sciences afford principles which seem full of absurdity and contradiction no priestly dogmas invented on purpose to tame and subdue the rebellious reason of mankind ever shocked common sense more than the doctrine of the infinitive divisibility of extension with its consequences as they are pompously displayed by all geometricians and metaphysicians with a kind of triumph and exaltation a real quantity infinitely less than any finite quantity containing quantities infinitely less than itself and so on in infinitum this is an edifice so bold and prodigious that it is too weighty for any pretended demonstration to support because it shocks the clearest and most natural principles of human reason footnote 32 whatever disputes there may be about mathematical points we must allow that there are physical points that is parts of extension which cannot be divided or lessened either by the eye or imagination these images then which are present to the fancy or senses are absolutely indivisible and consequently must be allowed by mathematicians to be infinitely less than any real part of extension and yet nothing appears more certain to reason than that an infinite number of them composes an infinite extension how much more an infinite number of those infinitely small parts of extension which are still supposed infinitely divisible return to main text but what renders the matter more extraordinary is that these seemingly absurd opinions are supported by a chain of reasoning the clearest and most natural nor is it possible for us to allow the premises without admitting the consequences nothing can be more convincing and satisfactory than all the conclusions concerning the properties of circles and triangles and yet when these are once received how can we deny that the angle of contact between a circle and its tangent is infinitely less than any rectilineal angle that as you may increase the diameter of the circle in infinitum this angle of contact becomes still less even in infinitum and that the angle of contact between other curves and their tangents may be infinitely less than those between any circle and its tangent and so on in infinitum the demonstration of these principles seems as unexceptionable as that which proves the three angles of a triangle to be equal to two right ones though the latter opinion be natural and easy than the former big with contradiction and absurdity reason here seems to be thrown into a kind of amazement and suspense which without the suggestions of any skeptic gives her a diffidence of herself and of the ground on which she treads she sees a full light which illuminates certain places but that light borders upon the most profound darkness and between these she is so dazzled and confided that she scarcely can pronounce with certainty and assurance concerning any one object the absurdity of these bold determinations of the abstract sciences seems to become if possible still more palpable with regard to time than extension an infinite number of real parts of time passing in succession and exhausted one after another appears so evident a contradiction that no man one should think whose judgment is not corrupted instead of being improved by the sciences would ever be able to admit of it yet still reason must remain restless and unquiet even with regard to that skepticism to which she is driven by the seeming absurdities and contradictions how any clear distinct idea can contain circumstances contradictory to itself or to any other clear distinct idea is absolutely incomprehensible and is perhaps as absurd as any proposition which can be formed so that nothing can be more skeptical or more full of doubt and hesitation than this skepticism itself which arises from some of the paradoxical conclusions of geometry or the science of quantity footnote 33 it seems to me not impossible to avoid these absurdities and contradictions if it be admitted that there is no such thing as abstract or general ideas properly speaking but that all general ideas are in reality particular ones attached to a general term which recalls upon occasion other particular ones that resemble in certain circumstances the idea present to the mind thus when the term horse is pronounced we immediately figure to ourselves the idea of a black or a white animal of particular size or figure but as that term is also usually applied to animals of other colors figures and sizes these ideas though not actually present to the imagination are easily recalled and our reasoning and conclusion proceed in the same way as if they were actually present if this be admitted as seems reasonable it follows that all the ideas of quantity upon which mathematicians reason are nothing but particular and such as are suggested by the senses and imagination and consequently cannot be infinitely divisible it is sufficient to have dropped this hint at present without prosecuting it any further it certainly concerns all lovers of science not to expose themselves to the ridicule and contempt of the ignorant by their conclusions and this seems the readiest solution of these difficulties return to main text the skeptical objections to moral evidence or to the reasoning's concerning matter of fact are either popular or philosophical the popular objections are derived from the natural weakness of human understanding the contradictory opinions which have been entertained in different ages and nations the variations of our judgment in sickness and health youth and old age prosperity and adversity the perpetual contradiction of each particular man's opinions and sentiments with many other topics of that kind it is needless to insist farther on this head these objections are but weak for as in common life we reason every moment concerning fact and existence and cannot possibly subsist without continually employing this species of argument any popular objections derived from thence must be insufficient to destroy that evidence the great subverter of pyranism or the excessive principles of skepticism is action and employment and the occupations of common life these principles may flourish and triumph in the schools where it is indeed difficult if not impossible to refute them but as soon as they leave the shade and by the presence of the real objects which actuate our passions and sentiments are put in opposition to the more powerful principles of our nature they vanish like smoke and leave the most determined skeptic in the same condition as other mortals the skeptic therefore had better keep within his proper sphere and display these philosophical objections which arise from more profound researches here he seems to have ample matter of triumph while he justly insists that all our evidence for any matter of fact which lies beyond the testimony of sense or memory is derived entirely from the relation of cause and effect that we have no other idea of this relation than that of two objects which have been frequently conjoined together that we have no argument to convince us that objects which have in our experience been frequently conjoined will likewise in other instances be conjoined in the same manner and that nothing leads us to this inference but custom or a certain instinct of our nature which it is indeed difficult to resist but which like other instincts may be fallacious and deceitful while the skeptic insists upon these topics he shows his force or rather indeed his own and our weakness and seems for the time at least to destroy all assurance and conviction these arguments might be displayed at greater length if any durable good or benefit to society could ever be expected to result from them for here is the chief and most confounding objection to excessive skepticism that no durable good can ever result from it while it remains in its full force and vigor we need only ask such a skeptic what his meaning is and what he proposes by all these curious researchers he is immediately at a loss and knows not what to answer a Copernican or Ptolemaic who supports each his different system of astronomy may hope to produce a conviction which will remain constant and durable with his audience a stoic or epicurean displays principles which may not be durable but which have an effect on conduct and behavior but a Peronian cannot expect that his philosophy will have any constant influence on the mind or if it had that its influence would be beneficial to society on the contrary he must acknowledge if he will acknowledge anything that all human life must perish where his principles universally and steadily to prevail all discourse all action would immediately cease and men remain in a total lethargy till the necessities of nature unsatisfied put an end to their miserable existence it is true so fatal an event is very little to be dreaded nature is always too strong for principle and though a Peronian may throw himself or others into a momentary amazement and confusion by his profound reasonings the first and most trivial event in life will put to flight all his doubts and scruples and leave him the same in every point of action and speculation with the philosophers of every other sect or with those who never concerned themselves in any philosophical researches when he awakes from his dream he will be the first to join in the laugh against himself and to confess that all his objections are mere amusement and can have no tendency other than to show the whimsical condition of mankind who must act and reason and believe though they are not able by their most diligent inquiry to satisfy themselves concerning the foundation of these operations or to remove the objections which may be raised against them end of section 12 part 2 section 12 part 3 of an inquiry concerning human understanding this is a LibriVox recording all LibriVox recordings are in the public domain for more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org section 12 of the Academical or Skeptical Philosophy part 3 there is indeed a more mitigated skepticism or academical philosophy which may be both durable and useful and which may in part be the result of this Pyreneism or excessive skepticism when its undistinguished doubts are in some measure corrected by common sense and reflection the greater part of mankind are naturally apt to be affirmative and dogmatical in their opinions and while they see objects only on one side and have no idea of any counterpoising argument they throw themselves precipitately into the principles to which they are inclined nor have they any indulgence for those who entertain opposite sentiments to hesitate or balance perplexes their understanding checks their passion and suspends their action they are therefore impatient till they escape from a state which to them is so uneasy and they think that they could never remove themselves far enough from it by the violence of their affirmations and obstinacy of their belief but could such dogmatical reasoners become sensible of the strange infirmities of human understanding even in its most perfect state and when most accurate and cautious in its determinations such a reflection would naturally inspire them with more modesty and reserve and diminish their fond opinion of themselves and their prejudice against antagonists the illiterate may reflect on the disposition of the learned who amidst all the advantages of study and reflection are commonly still different in their determinations and if any of the learned be inclined from their natural temper to haughtiness and obstinacy a small tincture of peronism might abate their pride by showing them that the few advantages which they may have attained over their fellows are but inconsiderable if compared with the universal perplexity and confusion which is inherent in human nature in general there is a degree of doubt and caution and modesty which in all kinds of scrutiny and decision ought forever to accompany a just reasoner another species of mitigated skepticism which may be of advantage to mankind and which may be the natural result of the peronian darts and scruples is the limitation of our enquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow capacity of human understanding the imagination of man is naturally sublime delighted with whatever is remote and extraordinary and running without control into the most distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects which custom has rendered too familiar to it a correct judgment observes a contrary method and avoiding all distant and high enquiries confines itself to common life and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience leaving the more leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets and orators or to the arts of priests and politicians to bring us to so salutary a determination nothing can be more serviceable than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force of the peronian doubt and of the impossibility that anything but the strong power of natural instinct could free us from it those who have a propensity to philosophy will still continue their researches because they reflect that besides the immediate pleasure attending such an occupation philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of common life methodized and corrected but they will never be tempted to go beyond common life so long as they consider the imperfection of those faculties which they employ their narrow reach and their inaccurate operations while we cannot give a satisfactory reason why we believe after a thousand experiments that a stone will fall or fire burn can we ever satisfy ourselves concerning any determination which we may form with regard to the origin of worlds and the situation of nature from and to eternity this narrow limitation indeed of our enquiries is in every respect so reasonable that it suffices to make the slightest examination into the natural powers of the human mind and to compare them with their objects in order to recommend it to us we shall then find what are the proper subjects of science and inquiry it seems to me that the only objects of the abstract science or of demonstration are quantity and number and that all attempts to extend this more perfect species of knowledge beyond these bounds are mere sophistry and illusion as the component parts of quantity and number are entirely similar their relations become intricate and involved and nothing can be more curious as well as useful than to trace by a variety of mediums their equality or inequality through their different appearances but as all other ideas are clearly distinct and different from each other we can never advance further by our utmost scrutiny than to observe this diversity and by an obvious reflection pronounce one thing not to be another or if there be any difficulty in these decisions it proceeds entirely from the undeterminate meaning of words which is corrected by juster definitions that the square of the hypotenuse is equal to the squares of the other two sides cannot be known at the terms we have so exactly defined without a train of reasoning and inquiry but to convince us of this proposition that where there is no property there can be no injustice it is only necessary to define the terms and explain injustice to be a violation of property this proposition is indeed nothing but a more imperfect definition it is the same case with all those pretended syllogistical reasonings which may be found in every other branch of learning except the sciences quantity and number and these may safely I think be pronounced the only proper objects of knowledge and demonstration all other inquiries of men regard only matter of fact and existence and these are evidently incapable of demonstration whatever is may not be no negation of a fact can involve a contradiction the non-existence of any being without exception is as clear and distinct an idea as its existence the proposition which affirms it not to be however false is no less conceivable and intelligible than that which affirms it to be the case is different with the sciences properly so-called every proposition which is not true is there confused and unintelligible that the cube root of 64 is equal to the half of 10 is a false proposition and can never be distinctly conceived but that Caesar or the angel Gabriel or any being never existed may be a false proposition but is perfectly conceivable and implies no contradiction the existence therefore of any being can only be proved by arguments from its cause or its effect and these arguments are founded entirely on experience if we reason a priori anything may appear able to produce anything the falling of a pebble may for ought we know extinguish the sun or the wish of a man control the planets in their orbits it is only experience which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another footnote 34 that impious maxim of the ancient philosophy ex nihilo nihil fit by which the creation of matter was excluded ceases to be a maxim according to this philosophy not only the will of the supreme being may create matter but for ought we know a priori the will of any other being might create it or any other cause that the most whimsical imagination can assign return to main text such is the foundation of moral reasoning which forms the greater part of human knowledge and is the source of all human action and behavior moral reasonings are either concerning particular or general facts all deliberations in life regard the former as also all dispositions in history chronology geography and astronomy the sciences which treat of general facts are politics natural philosophy physics chemistry etc where the qualities causes and effects of a whole species of objects are inquired into divinity or theology as it proves the existence of deity and the immortality of souls is composed partly of reasonings concerning particular partly concerning general facts it has a foundation in reason so far as it is supported by experience but its best and most solid foundation is faith and divine revelation models and criticism are not so properly objects of the understanding as of taste and sentiment beauty whether moral or natural is felt more properly than perceived or if we reason concerning it and endeavor to fix its standard we regard a new fact to it the general tastes of mankind or some such fact which may be the object of reasoning and inquiry when we run over libraries persuaded of these principles what havoc must we make if we take in our hand any volume of divinity or school metaphysics for instance let us ask does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number no does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence no commit it then to the flames for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion end of an inquiry concerning human understanding by david hum