ne 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. But though this conclusion concerning human ignorance be the
result of the strictest scrutiny of this subject, men still
entertain a strong propensity to believe, that they penetrate
further into the province of nature, and perceive something like a
necessary connexion between cause and effect. When, again, they
turn their reflections towards the operations of their own minds,
and _feel_ no such connexion between the motive and the action;
they are thence apt to suppose, that there is a difference between
the effects which result from material force, and those which arise
from thought and intelligence. But, being once convinced, that we
know nothing of causation of any kind, than merely the _constant
conjunction_ of objects, and the consequent _inference_ of the mind
from one to another, and finding that these two circumstances are
universally allowed to have place in voluntary actions; we may be
more easily led to own the same necessity common to all
causes."--(IV. pp. 107, 8.)

The last asylum of the hard-pressed advocate of the doctrine of uncaused
volition is usually, that, argue as you like, he has a profound and
ineradicable consciousness of what he calls the freedom of his will. But
Hume follows him even here, though only in a note, as if he thought the
extinction of so transparent a sophism hardly worthy of the dignity of
his text.

"The prevalence of the doctrine of liberty may be accounted for
from another cause, viz. a false sensation, or seeming experience,
which we have, or may have, of liberty or indifference in many of
our actions. The necessity of any action, whether of matter or of
mind, is not, properly speaking, a quality in the agent, but in any
thinking or intelligent being who may consider the action; and it
consists chiefly in the determination of his thoughts to infer the
existence of that action from some preceding objects; as liberty,
when opposed to necessity, is nothing but