Page:An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding - Hume (1748).djvu/130

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118
ESSAY VII.

of Experience. But on this we shall have Occasion to touch afterwards[1].

Secondly, I cannot perceive any Force in the Arguments, on which this Theory is founded. We are ignorant, 'tis true, of the Manner, in which Bodies operate on each other: Their Force or Energy is entirely incomprehensible. But are we not equally ignorant of the Manner or Force, by which a Mind, even the supreme Mind, operates either on itself or on Body? Whence, I beseech you, do we acquire any Idea of it? We have no Sentiment or Consciousness of this Power in ourselves: We have no Idea of the supreme Being, but what we learn from Reflection on our own Faculties. Were our Ignorance, therefore, a good Reason for our rejecting any Thing, we should be led into that Principle of refusing all Energy to the supreme Being as much as to the grossest Matter. We surely comprehend as little the Operations of the one as of the other. Is it more difficult to conceive, that Motion may arise from Impulse, than that it may arise from Volition? All we know is our profound Ignorance in both Cases[2].

PART

  1. Essay XII.
  2. I need not examine at length the vis inertiæ, which is so much talk'd of in the new Philosophy, and which is ascrib'd to Matter. We find by Experience, that a Body at Rest or in Mo-