onnexion.

"If it appear, therefore, what all mankind have ever allowed,
without any doubt or hesitation, that these two circumstances take
place in the voluntary actions of men, and in the operations of
mind, it must follow that all mankind have ever agreed in the
doctrine of necessity, and that they have hitherto disputed merely
from not understanding each other."--(IV. p. 97.)

But is this constant conjunction observable in human actions? A student
of history could give but one answer to this question:

"Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity,
public spirit: these passions, mixed in various degrees, and
distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the
world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprizes
which have ever been observed among mankind. Would you know the
sentiments, inclinations, and course of life of the Greeks and
Romans? Study well the temper and actions of the French and
English. You cannot be much mistaken in transferring to the former
_most_ of the observations which you have made with regard to the
latter. Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that
history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular.
Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal
principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of
circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from
which we may form our observations, and become acquainted with the
regular springs of human action and behaviour. These records of
wars, intrigues, factions, and revolutions are so many collections
of experiments, by which the politician or moral philosopher fixes
the principles of his science, in the same manner as the physician
or natural philosopher becomes acquainted with the nature of
plants, minerals, and other external objects, by the experiments
which he forms concerning them. Nor are the earth, air, water, and
other elements examined by Aristotle and Hippocrates more like to
those which at present lie under our observation, than the men
described by Polybius and Tacitus are to those who now govern the
world."--(IV. pp. 97-8.)

Hume proceeds to point out that the value set upon experience in the
conduct of affairs, whether of business or of politics, involves the