r would anyone,
perhaps, be much the worse for acting upon this suspicion, provided
that, in accordance with it, he kept altogether aloof from the studies
which it disparages. His ideas need not be the less clear because he
neither knows nor cares of what they are copies, nor whether they are
copies of anything; nor will the order of their occurrence be at all
affected in consequence of his being similarly careless, whether that
order is or is not governed by a _law_ of association; neither need his
inferences from experience be the less sound in consequence of his never
having enquired how or why they are deduced. But although the most
absolute ignorance and corresponding indifference about these and
kindred topics may not tend in the least to disqualify him for
performance of the whole duty of man, it is not the less important that,
if he do care to know aught about them, his knowledge should be exact,
for there is no knowing beforehand how luxuriantly the minutest germ of
theoretical error may ramify in practice, or into what substantive
quagmire trust in deceitful shadows may lead. These respectable
aphorisms may be beneficially borne in mind during perusal of what is
about to be said.

If the fact were really, as Hume supposed, that we have _no_ reason for
our inferences from experience, and draw them only because either we
have been in the habit of drawing them, or because we are so constituted
as to be unable to help drawing them, the reason of our drawing them
plainly could not be that we perceive any necessary connection between
antecedent and consequent events, or any force or power binding these
together as cause and effect. Accordingly, Hume does not scruple to
affirm that 'we have no idea of connection or power at all, and that
these words are absolutely without meaning when employed either in
philosophical reasoning or in common life.' Every idea, he argues,
referring to a rule which he somewhat hastily supposes himself to have
already proved to be without exception, must needs have been copied from
some preceding sensible impression, but neither from within nor from
without can we have received an impression from which this particular
idea can have been copied. No keenest scrutiny of any portion of matter,
no study of its external configuration or internal structure could,
previously to experience, enable us to conjecture that it could produce
any effect whatever, still less any particular effect: could e