affected by such a discovery. If the mind be not engaged by argument to
make this step, it must be induced by some other principle of equal
weight and authority; and that principle will preserve its influence as
long as human nature remains the same. What that principle is may well
be worth the pains of enquiry.

35. Suppose a person, though endowed with the strongest faculties of
reason and reflection, to be brought on a sudden into this world; he
would, indeed, immediately observe a continual succession of objects,
and one event following another; but he would not be able to discover
anything farther. He would not, at first, by any reasoning, be able to
reach the idea of cause and effect; since the particular powers, by
which all natural operations are performed, never appear to the senses;
nor is it reasonable to conclude, merely because one event, in one
instance, precedes another, that therefore the one is the cause, the
other the effect. Their conjunction may be arbitrary and casual. There
may be no reason to infer the existence of one from the appearance of
the other. And in a word, such a person, without more experience, could
never employ his conjecture or reasoning concerning any matter of fact,
or be assured of anything beyond what was immediately present to his
memory and senses.

Suppose, again, that he has acquired more experience, and has lived so
long in the world as to have observed familiar objects or events to be
constantly conjoined together; what is the consequence of this
experience? He immediately infers the existence of one object from the
appearance of the other. Yet he has not, by all his experience, acquired
any idea or knowledge of the secret power by which the one object
produces the other; nor is it, by any process of reasoning, he is
engaged to draw this inference. But still he finds himself determined to