200 HUME. 



sible ; but a love of singularity, an aversion to agree 

 with other men, and particularly with the bulk of the 

 people, prevails very manifestly throughout the work ; 

 and we may recollect that it is the author's earliest pro- 

 duction, the ' Treatise on Human Nature,' which formed 

 the basis of the whole, having been written before 

 his six and twentieth year, at an age when the distinc- 

 tion of differing with the world, the boldness of 

 attacking opinions held sacred by mankind at large, is 

 apt to have most charms for vain and ambitious minds. 

 Accordingly, he finds all wrong in the opinions 

 which men generally entertained, whether upon mo- 

 ral, metaphysical, or theological subjects, and he 

 pushes his theories to an extreme point in almost 

 every instance. Thus, that we only know the con- 

 nexion between events by their succession one to ano- 

 ther in point of time, and that what we term causa- 

 tion, the relation of cause and effect, is really only the 

 constant precedence of one event, act, or thing to 

 another, is now admitted by all reasoners; and we 

 owe to Mr. Hume the discovery, it may be well called, 

 of this important truth. But he will not stop here : 

 he must deny that there can be such a thing as 

 one act, or effect, or event causing another : he must 

 hold that there can be no such thing as causation, no 

 such thing as power ; he must discard from our 

 belief those ideas which all men in all ages have 

 held so distinctly, and so universally, as to have given 

 them names, specific appellations, in all languages. 

 He denies all connexion, all influence, all power, and 

 holds it impossible that any such things should be 

 that any rational meaning should belong to such words. 



