The same prisoner, when conducted to the
scaffold, foresees his death as certainly from the constancy and
fidelity of his guards, as from the operation of the axe or wheel.
His mind runs along a certain train of ideas: The refusal of the
soldiers to consent to his escape; the action of the executioner;
the separation of the head and body; bleeding, convulsive motions,
and death. Here is a connected chain of natural causes and
voluntary actions; but the mind feels no difference between them,
in passing from one link to another, nor is less certain of the
future event, than if it were connected with the objects presented
to the memory or senses, by a train of causes cemented together by
what we are pleased to call a _physical_ necessity. The same
experienced union has the same effect on the mind, whether the
united objects be motives, volition, and actions; or figure and
motion. We may change the names of things, but their nature and
their operation on the understanding never change."--(IV. pp.
105-6.)
But, if the necessary connexion of our acts with our ideas has always
been acknowledged in practice, why the proclivity of mankind to deny it
words?
"If we examine the operations of body, and the production of
effects from their causes, we shall find that all our faculties can
never carry us further in our knowledge of this relation, than
barely to observe, that particular objects are _constantly
conjoined_ together, and that the mind is carried, by a _customary
transition_, from the appearance of the one to the belief of the
other.
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