The Power in Causes and Effects is Created by the Mind

This propensity of the mind to imbue its impressions on objects is why we think that necessity and power lies in the objects we consider, and not in our mind that considers them.

It is impossible for us to create the idea of power and necessity, when the mind does not pass from the idea of an object to the idea of its usual attendant.

This is our only reasonable account of necessity.

Many will treat my feelings as extravagant and ridiculous if the contrary notion is so riveted in the mind from the above principles.

Other people would say:

• What? The effectiveness of causes lies in the mind’s determination?
• Causes cannot operate entirely without the mind?
• Causes would stop operating if there were no mind to contemplate them, or no reason concerning them?

Thought depends on causes for its operation, but causes do not depend on thought.

This would reverse the order of nature and make the secondary as the primary.

Every operation has a proportional power.

This power must be placed on the body that it operates.

If we remove the power from one cause, we must ascribe it to another cause.

But it is a gross absurdity to:

• remove power from all causes, and
• bestow it on a being that is related only to the cause or effect by perceiving them.

This is contrary to the most certain principles of human reason.

I reply that the case is the same as a blind man pretending to find many absurdities in:

• red being different from the sound of a trumpet, or
• the light not being the same as solidity.

If we have no idea of a power or effectiveness in any object, or of any real connection between causes and effects, it will be useless to prove that an effectiveness is needed in all operations.

We do not understand our own meaning in talking so.

We ignorantly confound ideas which are distinct from each other.

There are several qualities in material and immaterial objects which we are utterly unacquainted with.

It will be of little consequence to the world if we call these power or effectiveness.

Instead of meaning these unknown qualities, we make the terms of ‘power’ and ’effectiveness’ to signify something which:

• we have a clear idea of, and
• is incompatible with those objects we apply it to.

Obscurity and error then begin to take place.

We are led astray by a false philosophy.

This is what happens when we:

• transfer the mind’s determination to external objects, and
• suppose any real intelligible connection between them.

This connection is a quality which can only belong to the mind that considers them.

The operations of nature are independent of our thought and reasoning.

Accordingly, objects bear the relations of contiguity and succession to each other.

Like objects may be observed in several instances to have like relations.

All this is independent of, and antecedent to the operations of the understanding.

But if we go further and ascribe a power or necessary connection to these objects, we can never observe this in them.

Instead, we get this idea from our own feeling when we think about them.

For example, when any object is presented to us, it immediately conveys a lively idea of that object to the mind which is usually found to attend it.

This determination of the mind forms the necessary connection of these objects.

But when we change the point of view, from the objects to the perceptions:

• the impression is considered as the cause,
• the lively idea is considered as the effect, and
• their necessary connection is that new determination, which we feel to pass from the idea of the one to that of the other.

The uniting principle among our internal perceptions is as unintelligible as the uniting principle among external objects, and is not known to us in any other way than by experience.

The nature and effects of experience have been already explained.

It never gives us any insight into the internal structure or operating principle of objects.

It only accustoms the mind to pass from one to another.