An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume (good e books to read TXT) 📖
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human reason and capacity.
60. And what stronger instance can be produced of the surprising
ignorance and weakness of the understanding than the present? For
surely, if there be any relation among objects which it imports to us to
know perfectly, it is that of cause and effect. On this are founded all
our reasonings concerning matter of fact or existence. By means of it
alone we attain any assurance concerning objects which are removed from
the present testimony of our memory and senses. The only immediate
utility of all sciences, is to teach us, how to control and regulate
future events by their causes. Our thoughts and enquiries are,
therefore, every moment, employed about this relation: Yet so imperfect
are the ideas which we form concerning it, that it is impossible to give
any just definition of cause, except what is drawn from something
extraneous and foreign to it. Similar objects are always conjoined with
similar. Of this we have experience. Suitably to this experience,
therefore, we may define a cause to be _an object, followed by another,
and where all the objects similar to the first are followed by objects
similar to the second_. Or in other words _where, if the first object
had not been, the second never had existed_. The appearance of a cause
always conveys the mind, by a customary transition, to the idea of the
effect. Of this also we have experience. We may, therefore, suitably to
this experience, form another definition of cause, and call it, _an
object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the
thought to that other._ But though both these definitions be drawn from
circumstances foreign to the cause, we cannot remedy this inconvenience,
or attain any more perfect definition, which may point out that
circumstance in the cause, which gives it a connexion with its effect.
We have no idea of this connexion, nor even any distinct notion what it
is we desire to know, when we endeavour at a conception of it. We say,
for instance, that the vibration of this string is the cause of this
particular sound. But what do we mean by that affirmation? We either
mean _that this vibration is followed by this sound, and that all
similar vibrations have been followed by similar sounds:_ Or, _that this
vibration is followed by this sound, and that upon the appearance of one
the mind anticipates the senses, and forms immediately an idea of the
other._ We may consider the relation of cause and effect in either of
these two lights; but beyond these, we have no idea of it.[16]
[16] According to these explications and definitions, the idea
of power is relative as much as that of cause; and both
have a reference to an effect, or some other event constantly
conjoined with the former. When we consider the unknown
circumstance of an object, by which the degree or quantity of
its effect is fixed and determined, we call that its power: And
accordingly, it is allowed by all philosophers, that the effect
is the measure of the power. But if they had any idea of power,
as it is in itself, why could not they Measure it in itself?
The dispute whether the force of a body in motion be as its
velocity, or the square of its velocity; this dispute, I say,
need not be decided by comparing its effects in equal or
unequal times; but by a direct mensuration and comparison.
As to the frequent use of the words, Force, Power, Energy, &c.,
which every where occur in common conversation, as well as in
philosophy; that is no proof, that we are acquainted, in any
instance, with the connecting principle between cause and
effect, or can account ultimately for the production of one
thing to another. These words, as commonly used, have very
loose meanings annexed to them; and their ideas are very
uncertain and confused. No animal can put external bodies in
motion without the sentiment of a nisus or endeavour; and
every animal has a sentiment or feeling from the stroke or blow
of an external object, that is in motion. These sensations,
which are merely animal, and from which we can � priori draw
no inference, we are apt to transfer to inanimate objects, and
to suppose, that they have some such feelings, whenever they
transfer or receive motion. With regard to energies, which are
exerted, without our annexing to them any idea of communicated
motion, we consider only the constant experienced conjunction
of the events; and as we feel a customary connexion between
the ideas, we transfer that feeling to the objects; as nothing
is more usual than to apply to external bodies every internal
sensation, which they occasion.
61. To recapitulate, therefore, the reasonings of this section: Every
idea is copied from some preceding impression or sentiment; and where we
cannot find any impression, we may be certain that there is no idea. In
all single instances of the operation of bodies or minds, there is
nothing that produces any impression, nor consequently can suggest any
idea of power or necessary connexion. But when many uniform instances
appear, and the same object is always followed by the same event; we
then begin to entertain the notion of cause and connexion. We then
feel a new sentiment or impression, to wit, a customary connexion in
the thought or imagination between one object and its usual attendant;
and this sentiment is the original of that idea which we seek for. For
as this idea arises from a number of similar instances, and not from any
single instance, it must arise from that circumstance, in which the
number of instances differ from every individual instance. But this
customary connexion or transition of the imagination is the only
circumstance in which they differ. In every other particular they are
alike. The first instance which we saw of motion communicated by the
shock of two billiard balls (to return to this obvious illustration) is
exactly similar to any instance that may, at present, occur to us;
except only, that we could not, at first, infer one event from the
other; which we are enabled to do at present, after so long a course of
uniform experience. I know not whether the reader will readily apprehend
this reasoning. I am afraid that, should I multiply words about it, or
throw it into a greater variety of lights, it would only become more
obscure and intricate. In all abstract reasonings there is one point of
view which, if we can happily hit, we shall go farther towards
illustrating the subject than by all the eloquence and copious
expression in the world. This point of view we should endeavour to
reach, and reserve the flowers of rhetoric for subjects which are more
adapted to them.
SECTION VIII.
OF LIBERTY AND NECESSITY.
PART I.
62. It might reasonably be expected in questions which have been
canvassed and disputed with great eagerness, since the first origin of
science and philosophy, that the meaning of all the terms, at least,
should have been agreed upon among the disputants; and our enquiries, in
the course of two thousand years, been able to pass from words to the
true and real subject of the controversy. For how easy may it seem to
give exact definitions of the terms employed in reasoning, and make
these definitions, not the mere sound of words, the object of future
scrutiny and examination? But if we consider the matter more narrowly,
we shall be apt to draw a quite opposite conclusion. From this
circumstance alone, that a controversy has been long kept on foot, and
remains still undecided, we may presume that there is some ambiguity in
the expression, and that the disputants affix different ideas to the
terms employed in the controversy. For as the faculties of the mind are
supposed to be naturally alike in every individual; otherwise nothing
could be more fruitless than to reason or dispute together; it were
impossible, if men affix the same ideas to their terms, that they could
so long form different opinions of the same subject; especially when
they communicate their views, and each party turn themselves on all
sides, in search of arguments which may give them the victory over their
antagonists. It is true, if men attempt the discussion of questions
which lie entirely beyond the reach of human capacity, such as those
concerning the origin of worlds, or the economy of the intellectual
system or region of spirits, they may long beat the air in their
fruitless contests, and never arrive at any determinate conclusion. But
if the question regard any subject of common life and experience,
nothing, one would think, could preserve the dispute so long undecided
but some ambiguous expressions, which keep the antagonists still at a
distance, and hinder them from grappling with each other.
63. This has been the case in the long disputed question concerning
liberty and necessity; and to so remarkable a degree that, if I be not
much mistaken, we shall find, that all mankind, both learned and
ignorant, have always been of the same opinion with regard to this
subject, and that a few intelligible definitions would immediately have
put an end to the whole controversy. I own that this dispute has been so
much canvassed on all hands, and has led philosophers into such a
labyrinth of obscure sophistry, that it is no wonder, if a sensible
reader indulge his ease so far as to turn a deaf ear to the proposal of
such a question, from which he can expect neither instruction or
entertainment. But the state of the argument here proposed may, perhaps,
serve to renew his attention; as it has more novelty, promises at least
some decision of the controversy, and will not much disturb his ease by
any intricate or obscure reasoning.
I hope, therefore, to make it appear that all men have ever agreed in
the doctrine both of necessity and of liberty, according to any
reasonable sense, which can be put on these terms; and that the whole
controversy has hitherto turned merely upon words. We shall begin with
examining the doctrine of necessity.
64. It is universally allowed that matter, in all its operations, is
actuated by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so
precisely determined by the energy of its cause that no other effect, in
such particular circumstances, could possibly have resulted from it. The
degree and direction of every motion is, by the laws of nature,
prescribed with such exactness that a living creature may as soon arise
from the shock of two bodies as motion in any other degree or direction
than what is actually produced by it. Would we, therefore, form a just
and precise idea of necessity, we must consider whence that idea
arises when we apply it to the operation of bodies.
It seems evident that, if all the scenes of nature were continually
shifted in such a manner that no two events bore any resemblance to each
other, but every object was entirely new, without any similitude to
whatever had been seen before, we should never, in that case, have
attained the least idea of necessity, or of a connexion among these
objects. We might say, upon such a supposition, that one object or event
has followed another; not that one was produced by the other. The
relation of cause and effect must be utterly unknown to mankind.
Inference and reasoning concerning the operations of nature would, from
that moment, be at an end; and the memory and senses remain the only
canals, by which the knowledge of any real existence could possibly have
access to the mind. Our idea, therefore, of
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