we assert we have really such an idea. Finding that it is always ascribed to causes and effects, I turn my eye to two objects supposed to be placed in that relation, and examine them in all the situations of which they are susceptible. I immediately perceive that they are contiguous in time and place, and that the object we call cause precedes the other we call effect. In no one instance can I go any further, nor is it possible for me to discover any third relation between these objects. I therefore enlarge my view to comprehend several instances. Upon further inquiry I find that the repetition is not in every particular the same, but produces a new impression, and by that means the idea, which I at present examine. For, after a frequent repetition, I find that upon the appearance of one of the objects, the mind is determined by custom to consider its usual attendant, and to consider it in a stronger light upon its relation to the first object. It is this impression, then, or determination which affords me the idea of necessity."

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After more discussion of a negative cast, he reaches the following result "The necessary connection between causes and effects is the foundation of our inference from one to the other. The foundation of our inference is the transition arising from the accustomed union. These are therefore the same.

"The idea of necessity arises from some impression. There is no impression conveyed by our senses which can give rise to that idea. It must, therefore, be derived from some internal impression or impression of reflection. There is no internal impression, which has any relation to the present business, but that propensity which custom produces, to pass from an object to its usual attendant. This, therefore, is the essence of necessity. Upon the whole, necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us ever to form the most distant idea of it, considered as a quality of bodies. Either we have no idea of necessity, or necessity is nothing but that determination of the thought to pass from causes to effects, and from effects to causes, according to their experienced union."

He further draws the following conclusions:-1. All causes are of the same kind, and there is no ground for the distinction, sometimes made, between efficient, formal, material, and final causes; for every cause is efficient, or, if it is not, there is no cause at all. 2. There is but one kind of necessity, as there is but one kind of cause; and the distinction between moral and physical necessity has no foundation

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in nature. 3. The necessity of a cause to every beginning of existence is not founded on intuitive or demonstrative evidence. We can never have reason to believe that any object exists, if we cannot form an idea of it.11

11 Book I., Part III., sects. 1-6, et seq. On this subject of Causation, Hume never changed his views, for in his later work, the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, we find the following :-" When it is asked what is the nature of all our reasonings concerning matter of fact, the proper answer seems to be that they are founded on the relation of cause and effect. When again it is asked what is the foundation of all our reasonings and conclusions concerning that relation, it may be replied in one word-Experience. But if we still carry on our sifting humour, and ask what is the foundation of all conclusions from experience, this implies a new question, which may be of more difficult solution and explication. . I shall content myself in this section with an easy task, and shall pretend only to give a negative answer to the question here proposed. I say then that, even after we have experience of the operations of cause and effect, our conclusions from that experience are not founded on reasoning, or any process of the Understanding."-Sect. 4.

He repeats the statement that there is no connecting principle between cause and effect, which we can discover, and argues the point thus :-"These two propositions are far from being the same. I have found that such an object has always been attended with such an effect, and I foresee, that other objects, which are, in appearance, similar, will be attended with similar effects. I shall allow, if you please, that the one proposition may be justly inferred from the other: I know, in fact, that it always is inferred. But if you insist that the inference is made by a chain of reasoning, I desire you to produce that reasoning. The connection between these propositions is not intuitive. There is required a medium, which may enable the mind to draw such an inference, if indeed it be drawn by reasoning and argument. What that medium is, I must confess, passes my comprehension; and it is incumbent on those to produce it, who assert, that it really exists, and is the origin of all our conclusions concerning matter of fact."-Sect. 4.

Again, "it appears, then, that this idea of a necessary connection among events arises from a number of similar instances, which occur, of the constant conjunction of these events; nor can that idea ever be suggested by any one of these instances, surveyed in all possible lights and positions. But there is nothing in a number of instances, different from every single instance, which is supposed to be exactly similar; except only that after a repetition of similar instances, the mind is carried by habit, upon the appearance of one event, to expect its usual attendant, and to believe, that it will exist. This connection, therefore, which we feel in the mind-this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant-is the sentiment or impression, from which we form the idea of power or necessary connection. Nothing further is in the case. Contemplate the subject on all sides; you will never find any other origin of that idea. And what stronger instance can be produced of the surprising ignorance and weakness of the Understanding, than the VOL. IV.

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In the fourth part of the book on the Understanding, Hume discusses Scepticism with regard to reason and the senses, touches briefly on ancient and modern philosophy, and treats at length of the immateriality of the soul and of personal identity. His treatment of the first of these subjects is of little real value, but his discussion on the senses is of more importance; while his handling of the immateriality of the soul and personal identity chiefly consists of a repetition and application of the negative principles, which he had before reached in the earlier parts of the book, and are therefore of less consequence. From the way in which he refers to the views of Spinoza, it is evident that he had never thoroughly studied the works of that great thinker. In the history of thought, indeed, Hume was not strong.

Touching reason, he says :- "When I reflect on the natural fallibility of my judgment, I have less confidence in my opinions than when I only consider the objects concerning which I reason; and when I proceed still further, to turn the scrutiny against every successive estimation I make of my faculties, all the rules of logic require a continual diminution, and at last a total extinction of belief and evidence.

"Should it here be asked me, whether I sincerely assent to this argument, which I seem to take such pains to inculcate, and whether I be really one of those sceptics who hold that all is uncertain, and that our judgment is not in anything possessed of any measure of truth and falsehood; I should reply, that this question is entirely superfluous, and that neither I, nor any other person was ever

present? For surely, if there be any relation among objects, which it imports us to know perfectly, it is that of cause and effect."-Sect. 7. Hume's doctrine of causation, it will thus be seen, is the same in his latest works as in his earliest. I shall only adduce one other example of its application :

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"We are ignorant, it is true, of the manner in which bodies operate on each other their force or energy is entirely incomprehensible; but are we not equally ignorant of the manner or force by which a Mind, even the Supreme Mind, operates either on itself or on body? Whence, I beseech you, do we acquire any idea of it? We have no sentiment or consciousness of this power in ourselves. We have no idea of the Supreme Being but what we learn from reflection or our own faculties. Were our ignorance, therefore, a good reason for rejecting anything, we should be led into that principle of denying all energy in the Supreme Being as much as the grossest matter. We surely comprehend as little the operations of one as of the other. It is more difficult to conceive, that motion may arise from impulse, than that it may arise from volition? All we know is our profound ignorance in both cases."-Sect. 7.

sincerely or constantly of that opinion. Nature, by an absolute and uncontrollable necessity, has determined us to judge as well as to breathe and feel; nor can we any more forbear viewing certain objects in a stronger and fuller light, upon account of their customary connection with a present impression, than we can hinder ourselves from thinking as long as we are awake, of seeing the surrounding bodies when we turn our eyes towards them in broad sunshine."12

Now, touching the senses from a sceptical standpoint, Hume had already said, "that belief is nothing but a lively idea related to a present impression ;" and, taking it for granted that body exists, he proposes to inquire into the causes which induce us to believe in its existence. He argues at length that by the senses we cannot know anything of continued or distinct existence. He then inquires how we attain the belief in the continued existence of the objects of the senses, and attributes it to the constancy and coherence of our impressions of them. He points out that when the mind starts in a particular train, it has a tendency to continue, even when objects fail it; and through this tendency we transform interrupted existence into continued existence. And, on his own theory of the mind, he accounts for our believing in this imagined continuity.

In the section on personal identity, he denies in the abstract the existence of self, and could find nothing to give us the impression of an unchangeable self. He observes "that the true idea of the human mind is, to consider it as a system of different perceptions or different existences, which are linked together by the relation of cause and effect, and mutually produce, destroy, influence, and modify each other. Our impressions give rise to their correspondent ideas, and these in their turn produce other impressions. One thought chases another and draws after it a third, by which it is expelled in its turn. As memory alone acquaints us with the continuance and extent of this succession of perceptions, it is to be considered, upon that account chiefly, as the source of personal identity. Had we no memory, we should never have any notion of causation, nor consequently of that chain of causes and effects which constitutes our self or person."13

Before passing from Hume's exposition of the Understanding, which is the most important part of his philosophy, let us recapitulate the leading points. It has to be observed that he develops a system of

12 Book I., Part IV., sect. 1.

13 Book I., Part IV., sects. 2, 6.

the human mind. 1. There are impressions, perceptions, and ideas, of which we are conscious; and, although we may imagine that we know external things as objects of perception, still, in reality we know nothing but our own impressions and perceptions. 2. Therefore, we know nothing of an actual external world save as a phenomenon, which may be, for ought we can ever know, a creation of our own minds the world of imagination. 3. Since our notion of Causation is nothing but a generated habit of looking at our impressions, perceptions, and ideas as constantly conjoined in the relations of contiguity and succession- -a mere result which custom has engrafted on human belief-beyond this we can have no idea of any power, force, energy, or necessary connection in causation. 4. Thus, as already indicated, Hume's system of the mind is a form of absolute Idealism; in short, he embraced the idealistic principles of Berkeley, excepting that portion of them relating to a separate soul or spirit, which in the bishop's own system played so important a part. Even granting the truth of Hume's starting-point, and his fundamental principles, still a large part of his treatment of the Understanding may be fairly described as reasoning in a circle; for he proposes to examine, to clear up, and to solve difficulties, but he often returns to his original point of departure without disclosing anything at all, save the inevitable impressions and ideas in the universe of the imagination.

Passing to the Second Book of the Treatise, which is devoted to the treatment of the passions, under this general term he includes impressions of reflection, emotions, desires, and appetites; and divides them into two main classes, the direct and indirect passions, which are all founded on pleasure and pain. He enumerates the direct as desire, aversion, grief, joy, hope, fear, despair, and security, together with the will; the indirect class embraces pride, humility, ambition, vanity, love, hatred, envy, pity, malice, generosity, and others associated with these. He also distinguishes the reflective emotions, as the calm and the violent :-" Of the first kind is the sense of beauty and deformity in action, composition, and external objects. Of the second are the passions of love and hatred, etc. This division is far from exact. The raptures of poetry and music frequently rise to the greatest height; while those other impressions, properly called passions, may decay into so soft an emotion as to become, in a manner, imperceptible." 14 He gives a description and a kind of

14 Book II., Part I., sect. 1.