218 HUME x 



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 experienced 

 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 production 

 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 conclusion concerning human ignor- 

 ance 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 motive and 

 the action ; they are thence apt to suppose, that there is a 

 difference between the effects which result from material force, 

 and those which arise from thought and intelligence. But, 

 being once convinced, that we know nothing of causation of any 

 kind, than merely the constant conjunction of objects, and the 

 consequent inference of the mind from one to another, and find- 

 ing that these two circumstances are universally allowed to have 



