86 Herhert Spencer's Syiithetic Philosophy. 



Hume, following Berkeley's manner of reasoning, aimed 

 to show that our belief in the " thinking substance " or soul 

 is just as much an illusion as our belief in the extended 

 substance or matter ; and that no sensorial experience can 

 bring us any knowledge of supreme being awakening per- 

 ceptions in us. The sensation philosophy had thus run out 

 in complete nihilism — a godless, soulless, matterless world, 

 consisting of nothing but sensorial elements more or less 

 closely connected by mental links, so as to form a somewhat 

 consistent experience. 



Amid these nihilistic implications of the sensation phi- 

 losophy it remained clear beyond doctrinal cavil that the 

 sensorial particulars leave faint copies behind them in mem- 

 ory; and that these faint copies, called ideas, enter into 

 manifold combinations among themselves, and also with the 

 direct or vivid sensorial feelings. The question concerning 

 the nature of the bond of connection between experiential 

 data became from now on the principal question in philoso- 

 phy. Ilume had rendered it evident that the connection 

 between the direct, vivid, matter-of-fact data is of an essen- 

 tially different kind from that between the faint remem- 

 bered copies of them — different, above all, from mere logical 

 connection. 



In modern philosophy, through the influence of Descartes 

 and Leibnitz, the method of acquiring knowledge was held 

 to be exclusively that of deduction, as taught by formal 

 logic ; the ancient and current method of syllogistic reason- 

 ing from universals to particulars. 



Hume's argumentation left no doubt that direct matter-of- 

 fact knowledge is derived in an opposite manner — namely, 

 by beginning with particular sensorial feelings, whose con- 

 nection is not ascertained by a process of thought, but is 

 entirely given in direct sensorial experience. Not because 

 I originally have the general idea that fire bums do I know 

 that this particular fire will burn when I touch it : but be- 

 cause I have numbers of times experienced tiiat particular 

 fires burn, have I formed the general idea that all fires burn. 

 This means that the logical connection found to exist in 

 the realm of ideas is secondary to the real connection found 

 to exist in tlie realm of sensorial experience. The connec- 

 tion between natural events or matter-of-fact occurrences 

 can be derived solely through sensorial experience, and can 

 not be arrived at by purely logical or mental processes. 

 Causal connection differs tutu generc from logical connection. 



