Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/133

 examin'd. When any natural Object or Event is presented, 'tis impossible for us, by any Sagacity or Penetration, to discover, or even conjecture, without Experience, what Event will result from it, or to carry our Foresight beyond those Objects, which are immediately present to the Memory and Senses. Even after one Instance or Experiment, where we have observ'd a particular Event to follow upon another, we are not entitled to form a general Rule, or foretel what will happen in like Cases; it being justly esteem'd an unpardonable Rashness and Temerity to judge of the whole Course of Nature from one single Experiment, however accurate or certain. But when one particular Species of Events has always, in all Instances, been conjoin'd with another, we make no longer any Scruple to foretell the one upon the Appearance of the other, and to employ that Reasoning, which can alone assure us of any Matter of Fact or Existence. We then call the one Object, Cause; and the other, Effect: We suppose, that there is some Connexion betwixt them; some Power in the one, by which it infallibly produces the other, and operates with the greatest Certainty and strongest Necessity.