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185 u essay v u Power, Cause and Effect As all things on this globe are in a continual flux, much activity and new productions without end, man would be ill fitted for his station, were he kept in ignorance of the laws that govern animate and inanimate beings. Without some notion of power in himself and in others, he would rival in ignorance the lowest of the brute creation, and be utterly at a loss how to regulate his conduct. But he is not left imperfect with respect to thisbranch of knowledge, more than with respect to others that contribute to his wellbeing . The idea of power is familiar even with children. When they see a play-thing, a never-failing question is, Who made it, or who brought it here? How that idea is acquired, has however puzzled some philosophers, one in particular who shall be introduced by and by. Power is indeed not discernable by any external sense: we cannot see power, nor hear it, nor smell it, nor taste it, nor touch it. Neither can the idea be derived from experience, which, beingbarelyarepetitionof knownfacts,cannotproduce a new object, nor a new idea. It may give information, that certain known objects are always conjoined, such as fire and heat, the sun and light; but such conjunction is far from being the same with the idea of power. Power is a simple idea, and therefore incapable of being defined; but no person can be at a loss about it; for it is suggested to the mind by every external action. A being may be so formed, as to have no consciousness of itself nor of what it does; but every human being is conscious of itself, and of its actions as proceeding from itself. A man cannotthrowastonewithout being conscious that it is he himself who makes the stone move; which imports that he has a power to produce that effect. A child who is learning to walk, reflects very early that it can walk; which in other words is saying, 186 power, cause and effect that it has a power to walk. I can, I am able, I have a power, are terms perfectly synonimous. A young boy tells his mother, that he is going to the garden, to pull a flower, or to eat gooseberries. Does not this importknowledge in the boy that he can go, or that he has a power to go? A resolution imports, in the very nature of it, a power to act. In short, there is not in the whole circle of our ideas one more familiar than that of power. The author of the treatise of human nature has employed a world of reasoning, in searching for the foundation of our idea of power, and of necessary connection. And, after all his anxious researches, he can make no more of it, but, That the idea of necessary connection, alias power or energy, arises from a number of instances, of one thing always following another, which connects them in the imagination; wherebywecanreadilyforeteltheexistence of the one from the appearance of the other. And he pronounces, “That this connection can never be suggested from any one of these instances, surveyed in all possible lights and positions.”* Thus, he places the essence of power or necessary connection upon that propensity which custom produces to pass from an object to the idea of its usual attendant. And from these premises, he draws a conclusion of a very extraordinary nature, and which he himself acknowledges to be not a little paradoxical. His words are: upon the whole, necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in objects; nor is it possible for us even to form the most distant idea of it, considered asaqualityin bodies.Theefficacyorenergyincauses,isneither placed in the causes themselves, nor in the Deity, nor in the concurrence of these two principles; but belongs entirely to the soul, which considers the union of two or more objects in all past instances. It is here that the real power of causes is placed, along with their connection and necessity.† * Philosophical Essays, Essay 7. [David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (first published as Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding in 1748), ed. Tom L. Beauchamp (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999), 7.28, pp. 144–5.] † Treatise of Human Nature, vol. 1. p. 290, 291. [Hume, Treatise, I.4.14.23, p. 112.] [3.19.31.73] Project MUSE (2024-04-24 00:10...

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