vi CONCERNING NECESSARY TRUTHS 147 



In fact, the axiom of causation resembles all 

 other beliefs of expectation in being the verbal 

 symbol of a purely automatic act of the mind, 

 which is altogether extra-logical, and would be 

 illogical, if it were not constantly verified by 

 experience. Experience, as we have seen, stores 

 up memories; memories generate expectations or 

 beliefs why* they do so may be explained here- 

 after by proper investigation of cerebral physi- 

 ology. But to seek for the reason of the facts in 

 the verbal symbols by which they are expressed, 

 and to be astonished that it is not to be found 

 there, is surely singular; and what Hume did was 

 to turn attention from the verbal proposition to the 

 psychical fact of which it is the symbol. 



" When any natural object or event is presented, it is 

 impossible for us, by any sagacity or penetration, to dis- 

 cover, 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 or 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 like cases ; it being justly esteemed an unpardon- 

 able temerity to judge of the whole course of nature from 

 one single experiment, however accurate or certain. But 

 when one particular species of events 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 of any matter of fact or existence. We then call 

 the one object Cause, the other Effect. We suppose that 

 there is some connexion between them : some power in 

 153 



