The Relation of Cause and Effect

Cause and effect has all the opposite advantages.

• The objects it presents are fixed and unalterable.

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.

I am not content with removing this objection

I shall try to extract from it a proof of the present doctrine.

The effect of contiguity and resemblance are much inferior to causation.

But it still has some effect.

It adds to:

• the conviction of any opinion, and
• the vivacity of any conception.

If this can be proven in several new instances, then it follows that belief is nothing but a lively idea related to a present impression.

According to Muslims and Christians, the pilgrims who have seen Mecca or the Holy Land become more faithful and zealous than those who have never seen them.

A man who sees a lively image of the Red Sea, the Desert, Jerusalem, and Galilee, can never doubt any miraculous events related by Moses or the Evangelists.

We may form a like observation concerning resemblance.

The conclusion we draw from a present object to its absent cause or effect, is never founded on any qualities in that object itself.

In other words, it is impossible to determine what will result from any phenomenon, or what has preceded it, other than by experience.

This does not seem to require any proof.

Yet some philosophers imagined that:

• there is a cause for the communication of motion, and
• a reasonable man might immediately infer the motion of one body from the impulse of another, without having recourse to any past observation.

It easy to prove this opinion as false.

For if such an inference may be drawn merely from the ideas of body, motion, and impulse, it must amount to a demonstration.

It must imply the absolute impossibility of any contrary supposition.

Every effect, then, beside the communication of motion, implies a formal contradiction.

It is impossible not only that it can exist, but also that it can be conceived.

We can satisfy ourselves of the contrary, by forming a clear and consistent idea of:

• one body’s moving on another,
• its rest immediately on the contact, or
• its returning back in the same line in which it came, or
• its annihilation, or
• its circular or elliptical motion.

In short, of an infinite number of other changes, which we may suppose it to undergo.

These suppositions are all consistent and natural.

We imagine the communication of motion to be more consistent and natural than those suppositions and also than any other natural effect because of the relation of resemblance between the cause and effect.

This relation is united to experience.

This relation binds the objects in the closest and most intimate manner to each other, to make us imagine them inseparable.

Resemblance, then, has the same or a parallel influence with experience.

The only immediate effect of experience is to associate our ideas together.

It follows, that all belief arises from the association of ideas, according to my hypothesis.

At all times, the eye sees an equal number of physical points.

A man on the top of a mountain has the same image presented to his senses as when he is in the narrowest room.

It is only by experience that he infers the greatness of the object from some peculiar qualities of the image.

He commonly confounds this inference of the judgment with sensation.

The inference of the judgment is here much more lively than what is usual in our common reasonings.

A man has a more vivid conception of the ocean’s vastness by seeing it from the top of a cliff than merely from hearing the roaring waters.

He feels more pleasure from its magnificence, which is a proof of a more lively idea.

He confounds his judgment with sensation, which is another proof of it.

The inference is equally certain and immediate in both cases.

Thus, our conception’s superior vivacity in one case comes only from the resemblance between the image and the object we infer, when we draw an inference from sight beside the habitual conjunction.

This relation:

• strengthens the relation, and
• conveys the impression’s vivacity to the related idea with an easier and more natural movement.

Credulity is Based on Resemblance

Credulity is the too easy faith in the testimony of others.

This weakness of human nature is most universal and conspicuous.

It is also very naturally accounted for from the influence of resemblance.

When we receive any fact on human testimony, our faith arises from the very same origin as our inferences from causes to effects, and from effects to causes.

Only our experience of the governing principles of human nature can give us any assurance of the veracity of men.

Experience is the true standard of this and other judgments.

But we seldom regulate ourselves entirely by it.

We have a remarkable propensity to believe whatever is reported, even concerning apparitions, enchantments, and prodigies, however contrary to daily experience.

The words or discourses of others are intimately connected with certain ideas in their mind.

These ideas are also connected with the facts or objects they represent.

This latter connection is generally much overrated.

It commands our assent beyond what experience will justify.

This proceeds only from the resemblance between the ideas and the facts.

Other effects only point out their causes in an oblique manner.

But men’s testimony does it directly.

It is considered as an image and as an effect.

No wonder, we are:

• so rash in drawing our inferences from it, and
• less guided by experience in our judgments concerning it, than in those upon any other subject.

Many eminent theologians have reasonably not scrupled to affirm that:

• the vulgar have no formal principles of infidelity,
• but they are really infidels in their hearts, and
• they do not have a belief of the eternal duration of their souls.

Mankind’s negligence on their approaching condition brings:

• wonder to the studious, and
• regret to the pious man.

A remarkable example is the universal carelessness and stupidity of men about the future which they are incredulous about, just as they have blind credulity on other occasions.

When conjoined with causation, resemblance fortifies our reasonings.

The lack of resemblance in any great degree can almost entirely destroy our reasonings.

Let us reflect:

• on the importance of eternity as displayed by the divines, and
• that though matters of rhetoric are exaggerated, its strongest figures are infinitely inferior to the subject.

Let us then view, the prodigious security of men in this.

Do these people really believe:

• what is inculcated on them, and
• what they pretend to affirm?

Their answer is obviously negative.

Belief is an act of the mind arising from custom.

It is not strange the lack of resemblance should:

• overthrow what custom has established, and
• reduce the force of the idea, as much as that latter principle increases it.

A future state is so far removed from our comprehension.

We have so obscure an idea of how we shall exist after we die

All the reasons we can invent can never:

• surmount this difficulty, or
• bestow authority and force on the idea, no matter how:
  • strong in themselves
  • assisted by education.

I rather ascribe this incredulity to our faint idea of our future condition derived from:

• its lack of resemblance to the present, than from
• its remoteness.