all our knowledge must have been limited to the narrow sphere of our
memory and senses; and we should never have been able to adjust means to
ends, or employ our natural powers, either to the producing of good, or
avoiding of evil. Those, who delight in the discovery and contemplation
of _final causes_, have here ample subject to employ their wonder and
admiration.

45. I shall add, for a further confirmation of the foregoing theory,
that, as this operation of the mind, by which we infer like effects from
like causes, and _vice versa_, is so essential to the subsistence of all
human creatures, it is not probable, that it could be trusted to the
fallacious deductions of our reason, which is slow in its operations;
appears not, in any degree, during the first years of infancy; and at
best is, in every age and period of human life, extremely liable to
error and mistake. It is more conformable to the ordinary wisdom of
nature to secure so necessary an act of the mind, by some instinct or
mechanical tendency, which may be infallible in its operations, may
discover itself at the first appearance of life and thought, and may be
independent of all the laboured deductions of the understanding. As
nature has taught us the use of our limbs, without giving us the
knowledge of the muscles and nerves, by which they are actuated; so has
she implanted in us an instinct, which carries forward the thought in a
correspondent course to that which she has established among external
objects; though we are ignorant of those powers and forces, on which
this regular course and succession of objects totally depends.



SECTION VI.