146 HUME 



VI 



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 physiology. 

 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 im- 

 possible 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 imme- 

 diately 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 unpardonable 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 the one, by 

 which it infallibly produces the other, and operates with the 



