Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/258

 nions and Sentiments; with many other Topics of that Kind. 'Tis needless to insist farther on this Head. These Objections are but weak. For as in common Life, we reason every Moment concerning Fact and Existence, and cannot possibly subsist, without continually employing this Species of Argument, any popular Objections, deriv'd from thence, must be insufficient to destroy that Evidence. The great Subverter of Pyrrhonism or the excessive Principles of Scepticism, is Action, and Employment, and the Occupations of common Life. They may flourish and triumph in the Schools; where it is, indeed, difficult, if not impossible to refute them. But as soon as they leave the Shade, and by the Presence of the real Objects, which actuate our Passions and Sentiments, are put in Opposition to the more powerful Principles of our Nature, they vanish, like Smoak, and leave the most determin'd Sceptic in the same Condition as other Mortals.

Sceptic, therefore, had better keep in his proper Sphere, and display those philosophical Objections, which arise from more profound Researches. Here he seems to have ample Matter of Triumph; while he justly insists, that all our Evidence for any Matter of Fact, which lies beyond the Testimony of Sense or Memory, is deriv'd entirely from the Relation of Cause and Effect; that we have no other Idea