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An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding by David Hume
page 82 of 205 (40%)
ignorant, have always been of the same opinion with regard to this
subject, and that a few intelligible definitions would immediately have
put an end to the whole controversy. I own that this dispute has been so
much canvassed on all hands, and has led philosophers into such a
labyrinth of obscure sophistry, that it is no wonder, if a sensible
reader indulge his ease so far as to turn a deaf ear to the proposal of
such a question, from which he can expect neither instruction or
entertainment. But the state of the argument here proposed may, perhaps,
serve to renew his attention; as it has more novelty, promises at least
some decision of the controversy, and will not much disturb his ease by
any intricate or obscure reasoning.

I hope, therefore, to make it appear that all men have ever agreed in
the doctrine both of necessity and of liberty, according to any
reasonable sense, which can be put on these terms; and that the whole
controversy has hitherto turned merely upon words. We shall begin with
examining the doctrine of necessity.

64. It is universally allowed that matter, in all its operations, is
actuated by a necessary force, and that every natural effect is so
precisely determined by the energy of its cause that no other effect, in
such particular circumstances, could possibly have resulted from it. The
degree and direction of every motion is, by the laws of nature,
prescribed with such exactness that a living creature may as soon arise
from the shock of two bodies as motion in any other degree or direction
than what is actually produced by it. Would we, therefore, form a just
and precise idea of _necessity_, we must consider whence that idea
arises when we apply it to the operation of bodies.

It seems evident that, if all the scenes of nature were continually
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