These sensations, which are merely animal, and from which
we can, _a priori_, draw no inference, we are apt to transfer to
inanimate objects, and to suppose that they have some such feelings
whenever they transfer or receive motion."--(IV. p. 91, _note_.)
It is obviously, however, an absurdity not less gross than that of
supposing the sensation of warmth to exist in a fire, to imagine that
the subjective sensation of effort or resistance in ourselves can be
present in external objects, when they stand in the relation of causes
to other objects.
To the argument, that we have a right to suppose the relation of cause
and effect to contain something more than invariable succession,
because, when we ourselves act as causes, or in volition, we are
conscious of exerting power; Hume replies, that we know nothing of the
feeling we call power except as effort or resistance; and that we have
not the slightest means of knowing whether it has anything to do with
the production of bodily motion or mental changes. And he points out, as
Descartes and Spinoza had done before him, that when voluntary motion
takes place, that which we will is not the immediate consequence of the
act of volition, but something which is separated from it by a long
chain of causes and effects. If the will is the cause of the movement of
a limb, it can be so only in the sense that the guard who gives the
order to go on, is the cause of the transport of a train from one
station to another.
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