220 HUME x 



his guards, as from the operation of the axe 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 exe- 

 cutioner ; the separation of the head and body ; bleeding, 

 convulsive motions, and death. Here is a connected chain 

 of natural causes and voluntary actions ; but the mind 

 feels no difference between them, in passing from one link 

 to another, nor is less certain of the future event, than if it 

 were connected with the objects presented to the memory or 

 senses, by a train of causes cemented together by what we 

 are pleased to call a physical necessity. The same experi- 

 enced union has the same effect on the mind, whether the 

 united objects be motives, volition, and actions; or figure 

 and motion. We may change the names of things, but 

 their nature and their operation on the understanding 

 never change." (IV. pp. 105-6.) 



But, if the necessary connexion of our acts 

 with our ideas has always been acknowledged in 

 practice, why the proclivity of mankind to deny it 

 words? 



" If we examine the operations of body, and the produc- 

 tion of effects from their causes, we shall find that all our 

 faculties can never carry us further in our knowledge of 

 this relation, than barely to observe, that particular objects 

 are constantly conjoined together, and that the mind is 

 carried, by a customary transition, from the appearance of 

 the one to the belief of the other. But though this con- 

 clusion concerning human ignorance be the result of the 

 strictest scrutiny of this subject, men still entertain a 

 strong propensity to believe, that they penetrate further 

 into the province of nature, and perceive something like 

 a necessary connexion between cause and effect. When, 

 again, they turn their reflections towards the operations of 

 their own minds, and feel no such connexion between the 



