objects it presents are fixt and unalterable. The impressions of the
memory never change in any considerable degree; and each impression draws
along with it a precise idea, which takes its place in the imagination as
something solid and real, certain and invariable. The thought is always
determined to pass from the impression to the idea, and from that
particular impression to that particular idea, without any choice or
hesitation.

But not content with removing this objection, I shall endeavour to
extract from it a proof of the present doctrine. Contiguity and
resemblance have an effect much inferior to causation; but still have
some effect, and augment the conviction of any opinion, and the vivacity
of any conception. If this can be proved in several new instances, beside
what we have already observed, it will be allowed no inconsiderable
argument, that belief is nothing but a lively idea related to a present
impression.

To begin with contiguity; it has been remarked among the Mahometans as
well as Christians, that those pilgrims, who have seen MECCA or the HOLY
LAND, are ever after more faithful and zealous believers, than those who
have not had that advantage. A man, whose memory presents him with a
lively image of the Red-Sea, and the Desert, and Jerusalem, and Galilee,
can never doubt of any miraculous events, which are related either by
Moses or the Evangelists. The lively idea of the places passes by an easy
transition to the facts, which are supposed to have been related to them
by contiguity, and encreases the belief by encreasing the vivacity of the
conception. The remembrance of these fields and rivers has the same
influence on the vulgar as a new argument; and from the same causes.

We may form a like observation concerning resemblance. We have remarked,