uld so naturally agree in preferring it.

[Footnote 15. No questions in philosophy are more
difficult, than when a number of causes present themselves
for the same phaenomenon, to determine which is the
principal and predominant. There seldom is any very precise
argument to fix our choice, and men must be contented to be
guided by a kind of taste or fancy, arising from analogy,
and a comparison of familiar instances. Thus, in the present
case, there are, no doubt, motives of public interest for
most of the rules, which determine property; but still I
suspect, that these rules are principally fixed by the
imagination, or the more frivolous properties of our thought
and conception. I shall continue to explain these causes,
leaving it to the reader's choice, whether he will prefer
those derived from publick utility, or those derived from
the imagination. We shall begin with the right of the
present possessor.

It is a quality, which I have already observed in human
nature, that when two objects appear in a close relation to
each other, the mind is apt to ascribe to them any
additional relation, in order to compleat the union; and
this inclination is so strong, as often to make us run into
errors (such as that of the conjunction of thought and
matter) if we find that they can serve to that purpose. Many
of our impressions are incapable of place or local position;
and yet those very impressions we suppose to have a local
conjunction with the impressions of sight and touch, merely
because they are conjoined by causation, and are already
united in the imagination. Since, therefore, we can feign a
new relation, and even an absurd one, in order to compleat
any union, it will easily be imagined, that if there be any
relations, which depend on the mind, it will readily conjoin
them to any preceding relation, and unite, by a new bond,
such objects as have already an union in the fancy. Thus for
instance, we never fail, in our arrangement of bodies, to
place those which are resembling in contiguity to each
other, or at least in correspondent points of view; because
we feel a satisfaction in joining the relation of contiguity
to that of resemblance, or the resemblance of situation to
that of qualities. And this is easily accounted fo