Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/103

 Those, who delight in the Discovery and Contemplation of final Causes, have here ample Subject to employ their Wonder and Admiration.

add, as a farther Confirmation of the foregoing Theory, that as this Operation of the Mind, by which we infer like Effects from like Causes, and vice versa, is so essential to the Subsistence of all human Creatures, it is not probable it could be trusted to the fallacious Deductions of our Reason, which is slow in its Operations, appears not, in any Degree, during the first Years of Infancy, and at best is, in every Age and Period of human Life, extremely liable to Error and Mistake. 'Tis more like the ordinary Prudence of Nature to secure so necessary an Act of the Mind, by some Instinct or mechanical Tendency, which may be infallible in its Operations, may discover itself at the first Appearance of Life and Thought, and may be independent of all the labour'd Deductions of the Understanding. As Nature has taught us the Use of our Limbs, without giving us the Knowledge of the Muscles and Nerves, by which they are actuated; so has she implanted in us an Instinct, that carries forward the Thought in a correspondent Course to that which she has establish'd among external Objects; tho' we are ignorant of those Powers and Forces, on which this regular Course and Succession of Objects totally depends.