lest degree versed in the science of nature, and accustomed to trace his ideas to their origin, or compare and combine them, who would seriously maintain that our ideas of the relation of cause and effect, and of the contiguity and conjunction of objects are the same? The veriest tyro in metaphysicks could detect a fallacy of this kind. The mere contiguity and conjunction of those objects existing in nature, without conceiving of them as possessed of powers and actually exercising those powers, would not afford even a plausible account of those numberless changes and modifications both bodies and minds are perpetually undergoing, and the endless diversity of forms they are successively assuming. If contiguity and constant conjunction form the only bond of connexion between cause and effect, then, there is no one thing in nature which may not be the cause of any other. Heat may be the cause of cold, and cold of heat, health may be the cause of sickness, and sickness of health, rain may be the cause of sunshine, and sunshine of rain, winter of summer, and summer of winter. I open the lids of my eyes during the day and I perceive the objects around me; I unfold the shutters of window and my room is illuminated. Now, in both these cases, the one event immediately succeeds the other, and is constantly conjoined to it. But is the act of opening my eye-lids the cause of my seeing, or the unfolding of the shutters of my window the cause of the illumination of my room? Scarcely any one can be so little skilled in tracing the operations of nature as to be imposed upon by so palpable a sophism. Take the example furnished us by Mr. Hume himself. "We remember to have seen that species of objects which we call flame, and to have felt that species of sensation, which we call heat. We likewise call to mind their constant conjunction in all past instances. Without further ceremony we call the one cause and the other effect." We may leave it to the judgment of any man of sound understanding, however little accustomed to metaphysical spe

culations, to decide whether this be a just interpretation of nature. Besides the contiguity and constant conjunction of heat as a quality in fire and of our sensation, do we not become sensible that there is a force or power in the fire to produce that sensation? We never approach the fire, but our lungs are at the same time, inflated with air and we breathe, the blood is propelled through the arteries and our pulse beats. These acts of breathing through the lungs and the pulsations of the heart are events as constantly conjoined to that of our approaching the fire as our sensation of heat; and yet is the heat in the fire the cause of our breathing or of the pulsations of the heart? In what, then, it may be asked, consists the difference between the relation which our sensation of heat bears to that quality in fire which excites that sensation, and that which the same quality in fire bears to our breathing through the lungs and the pulsations of our arteries? It is evident, that the difference does not consist in the greater or less degrees of contiguity and conjunction of those objects, as they are equally contiguous and conjoined to each other. The matter can be solved only by admitting that in the one case, we are sensible of a power residing in the fire which operates upon our sense and produces its results; in the other case we are sensible of no such power or operation. Instances without number might be adduced, that fall under every person's daily experience, in which objects are found to be contiguous and conjoined to each other, precedent and sequent, without making the smallest approximation towards that union which is denoted by the expressions, cause and effect. In fact, if Mr. Hume's representation of this matter be correct, the pursuits of the philosopher are greatly abridged, and his irksome and laborious exertions in the prosecution of his discoveries utterly superseded. If instead of striving with the ancient Peripateticks to attain to a knowledge of causes, properly so called, or with Newton to arrive at a solution of the phenomena of nature, by referring them to such

causes as are both true and sufficient to explain them; in a word, if instead of exerting himself to the utmost with the soundest and best investigators both of an ancient and modern times, to remove the awful veil from nature, and disclose to the pupils of science her venerable mysteries; his task be limited to tracing the contiguities and conjunctions of objects, their antecedences and sequences, it might, indeed, be rendered more practicable and easy; but at the same time would become in the highest degree frivolous and futile. What could be more easy than to trace a thousand contiguities and conjunctions of objects, what more difficult than by a complete induction, to ascend upon the modern plan of philosophising to efficient causes and general maxims of science? It is worthy of remark, indeed, that there is a summary mode of philosophising, or compendious method of explaining the appearances of nature, prevalent among the vulgar, which is not unlike that recommended by him, whom Dr. Reid and his contemporaries of the same school of mephysicks, so often mention as one of the acutest metaphysicians that ever lived. Minds undisciplined to thinking and inquiry, and untutored in the science of nature, appear to have a natural propensity to regard events which merely precede or succeed each other, in the light of causes and effects; as when an eclipse of the sun or moon is thought, by the vulgar, to occasion the changes that ensue in the state of the atmosphere, or itself to have arisen from the vices of men, the approach of a comet to be the cause of pestilential influNon causa pro causa, is a very ordinary vulgar sophism. Whenever such appearances among the heavenly bodies have been found in conjunction with such changes and influences upon earth, although these phenomena may be casual coincidences, events purely contingent and unconnected with each other in the order of nature, the vulgar imagination immediately assigns to them a real connection, and considers them as bearing towards each other the relation of

ences.

cause and effect. In fine, the same mode of reasoning pursued by Mr. Hume, when extended to those limits to which it inevitably leads, however reluctant he might have felt to trace it to such consequences, would give the sanction of philosophy to the wildest reveries of folly and imposture, and the most extravagant freaks of ignorance and superstition. When the judicial astrologer pretends to foretell the future fortunes of men from the relative positions of the heavenly bodies at the period of their nativity-when the Roman Soothsayers and Augurs undertook to predict the fate of armies and empires, from the pecking of fowls, the flight of birds and the entrails of victims; when the votary of superstition performed a toilsome journey to the tomb of his tutelary saint, and waited with unwearied patience expecting to be healed of his diseases by the heavenly influence supposed to be shed from his ashes: what did all these dupes of ignorance and credulity, but rest their conclusions, and support their visionary hopes, upon the foundation laid for them by Mr. Hume? Men born at certain conjunctions and oppositions of the heavenly bodies, had been found to be partakers of peculiar fortunes. Certain appearances in the pecking of fowls, the flight of birds, and the entrails of victims, had been succeeded by prosperous or disastrous circumstances to armies and empires; devotion at the tombs of saints had been attended, on some occasions, with the cure of diseases. Hence from the contiguities and conjunctions between these events, their antecedences and sequences, the astrologer, the soothsayer, and the votary of superstition, supposed himself justified in considering them as assuming towards each other the relation of cause and effect. So nearly do the extremes in the principles of scepticism and atheism approach to those of ignorance and superstition! And thus does he, who thought himself one of the ablest and most successful enemies of superstition, unwarily establish maxims that lead to its support and encouragement!

But we have objections of a much more serious nature to bring against the principles of Mr. Hume. They lead by inevitable consequence to the rankest atheism. For, if as he asserts, we have no idea of power or efficiency in causes to produce their effects, there being no previous impression to which that idea can be traced; and if moreover, we have no reason to believe, either from intuition, demonstration or experience, that there is any efficiency in any one thing to produce another; and, still farther, if when any effect is exhibited to us there be no good ground to conclude that there must have been a cause, there being no truth in the maxim, that whatever begins to exist must have a cause; the very foundation of the argument by which the existence of a God is proved is sapped and destroyed. And yet we find the learned and judicious Dr. Reid, in animadverting upon these opinions of Mr. Hume, speaking in the following style. “If, on the other hand, our belief that every thing that begins to exist has a cause, be got only by experience: and if, as Mr. Hume maintains, the only notion of a cause be something prior to the effect, which experience has shewn to be constantly conjoined with such effect, I see not how from these principles it is possible to prove the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe." This must be allowed to be very mild and courteous treatment of a man who had the impudence and the hardihood to broach such abominable doctrines. The Dr, need not have discovered any solicitude to relieve the principles of Mr. Hume from the charge of leading to the exclusion of an intelligent cause of all things, as he seems not to have been liable on that score to any such, compunctions visitings of nature for himself. Not only is it true, that from the principles of Mr. Hume, it is impossible to prove the existence of an intelligent cause of the universe; but it is moreover, perfectly certain, that, advancing upon the ground of such doctrines, we are led at once precipitately and unavoidably into the gulf of atheism. How much so