... The first time a
man saw the communication of motion by impulse, as by the shock of
two billiard balls, he could not pronounce that the one event was
_connected_, but only that it was _conjoined_, with the other.
After he has observed several instances of this nature, he then
pronounces them to be _connected_. What alteration has happened to
give rise to this new idea of _connexion_? Nothing but that he now
_feels_ those events to be _connected_ in his imagination, and can
readily foresee the existence of the one from the appearance of the
other. When we say, therefore, that one object is connected with
another we mean only that they have acquired a connexion in our
thought, and give rise to this inference, by which they become
proofs of each other's existence; a conclusion which is somewhat
extraordinary, but which seems founded on sufficient
evidence."--(IV. pp. 87-89.)
In the fifteenth section of the third part of the _Treatise_, under the
head of the _Rules by which to Judge of Causes and Effects_, Hume gives
a sketch of the method of allocating effects to their causes, upon
which, so far as I am aware, no improvement was made down to the time of
the publication of Mill's _Logic_. Of Mill's four methods, that of
_agreement_ is indicated in the following passage:--
" ... where several different objects produce the same effect, it
must be by means of some quality which we discover to be common
amongst them.
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