Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/89

 appear'd in the past. Without the Influence of Custom, we should be entirely ignorant of every Matter of Fact, beyond what is immediately present to the Memory and Senses. We should never know how to adjust Means to Ends, or to employ our natural Powers in the Production of any Effect. There would be an End at once of all Action, as well as of the chief Part of Speculation.

here it may be proper to remark, that tho' our Conclusions from Experience carry us beyond our Memory and Senses, and assure us of Matters of Fact, which happen'd in the most distant Places and most remote Ages; yet some Fact must always be present to the Senses or Memory, from which we may first proceed in drawing these Conclusions. A Man, who should find in a desert Country the Remains of pompous Buildings, would conclude, that the Country had, in antient Times, been cultivated by civiliz'd Inhabitants; but did nothing of this Nature occur to him, he could never be able to form such an Inference. We learn the Events of former Ages from History; but then we must peruse the Volumes, in which this Instruction is contain'd, and thence carry up our Inferences from one Testimony to another, till we arrive at the Eye-witnesses and Spectators of these distant Events. In a word, if we proceed not upon some Fact, present to our Memory or Senses, our Reasonings would be merely hypothetical; and however the