Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/70

 our sifting and examining Humour, and ask, What is the Foundation of all our Conclusions from Experience? this produces a new Question, which may be of more difficult Solution and Explication. Philosophers, that give themselves Airs of superior Wisdom and Sufficiency, have a hard Task, when they encounter Persons of inquisitive Dispositions, who push them from every Corner, to which they retreat, and who are sure at last to bring them to some dangerous Dilemma. The best Expedient to prevent this Confusion is to be modest in our Pretensions; and even to discover the Difficulty ourselves before it is objected to us. By this Means, we may make a kind of Merit of our very Ignorance.

content myself, in this Essay, with an easy Task, and shall pretend only to give a negative Answer to the Question here propos'd. 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. This Answer we must endeavour, both to explain, and to defend.

must certainly be allow'd, that Nature has kept us at a great Distance from all her Secrets, and has afforded us only the Knowledge of a few superficial Qualities of Objects, while she conceals from us those