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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
page 42 of 205 (20%)
therefore, are effects of custom, not of reasoning[7].

[7] Nothing is more useful than for writers, even, on _moral_,
_political_, or _physical_ subjects, to distinguish between
_reason_ and _experience_, and to suppose, that these species
of argumentation are entirely different from each other. The
former are taken for the mere result of our intellectual
faculties, which, by considering _a priori_ the nature of
things, and examining the effects, that must follow from their
operation, establish particular principles of science and
philosophy. The latter are supposed to be derived entirely from
sense and observation, by which we learn what has actually
resulted from the operation of particular objects, and are
thence able to infer, what will, for the future, result from
them. Thus, for instance, the limitations and restraints of
civil government, and a legal constitution, may be defended,
either from _reason_, which reflecting on the great frailty and
corruption of human nature, teaches, that no man can safely be
trusted with unlimited authority; or from _experience_ and
history, which inform us of the enormous abuses, that ambition,
in every age and country, has been found to make of so
imprudent a confidence.

The same distinction between reason and experience is
maintained in all our deliberations concerning the conduct of
life; while the experienced statesman, general, physician, or
merchant is trusted and followed; and the unpractised novice,
with whatever natural talents endowed, neglected and despised.
Though it be allowed, that reason may form very plausible
conjectures with regard to the consequences of such a
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