of my question. As an
agent, I am quite satisfied on the point; but as a philosopher, who has
some share of curiosity, I will not say scepticism, I want to learn the
foundation of this inference.

All inferences from experience are effects of custom, not of reasoning.
We have already observed that nature has established connections among
particular ideas, and that no sooner one idea occurs to our thoughts
than it introduces its correlative, and carries our attention towards it
by a gentle and insensible movement. These principles of connection or
association we have reduced to three--namely, _resemblance_,
_contiguity_, and _causation_, which are the only bonds that unite our
thoughts together and beget that regular train of reflection or
discourse which, in a greater or less degree, takes place among mankind.

Now, here arises a question on which the solution of the present
difficulty will depend. Does it happen in all these relations that when
one of the objects is presented to the senses or memory the mind is not
only carried to the conception of the correlative, but reaches a
steadier and stronger conception of it than otherwise it would have been
able to attain? This seems to be the case with that belief which arises
from the relation of cause and effect. And I shall add that it is
conformable to the ordinary wisdom of nature to secure so necessary an
act of the mind by some instinct or mechanical tendency, which may be
infallible in its operations, may discover itself at the first
appearance of life and thought, and may be independent of all the
laboured deductions of the understanding.

_II.--On Miracles_

A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence. In such conclusions
as are founded on an infallible experience he expects the event with the
last degree of assurance, and regards his past experience as a full
_proof_ of the future existence of that event.

In other cases he proceeds with more caution. He weighs the opposite
experiments. He considers which side is supported by the greatest number
of experiments; to that side he inclines with doubt and hesitation, and
when at last he fixes his judgment, the evidence exceeds not what we
properly call _probability_. All probability, then, supposes an
opposition of experiments and observations, where the one side is found
to overbalance the other, and to produce a degree of evidence
proportioned to the superiority.

When the fact attested is such a one a