"We conclude many things impossibilities, which yet are easie feasables. For by an unadvised transiliency, leaping from the effect to its remotest cause, we observe not the connexion through the interposal of more immediate causalities, which yet at last bring the extremes together without a miracle. And hereupon we hastily conclude that impossible which we see not in the proximate capacity of its efficient."—pp. 83-84.
"From this last-noted head ariseth that other of joyning causes with irrelevant effects, which either refer not at all unto them, or in a remoter capacity. Hence the Indian conceived so grossly of the letter that discovered his theft; and that other who thought the watch an animal. From hence grew the impostures of charmes and amulets, and other insignificant ceremonies; which to this day impose upon common belief, as they did of old upon the barbarism of the uncultivate heathen. Thus effects unusual, whose causes run under ground, and are more remote from ordinary discernment, are noted in the book of vulgar opinion with digitus Deî, or Dæmonis; though they owe no other dependence to the first than what is common to the whole syntax of beings, nor yet any more to the second than what is given it by the imagination of those unqualified judges. Thus, every unwonted meteor is portentous; and the appearance of any unobserved star, some divine prognostick. Antiquity thought thunder the immediate voyce of Jupiter, and impleaded them of impiety that referred it to natural causalities. Neither can there happen a storm at this remove from antique ignorance, but the multitude will have the Devil in it."—pp. 84-85.
On the Influence of Education.
"We judge all things by our anticipations; and condemn or applaud them, as they agree or differ from our first receptions. One country laughs at the laws, customs, and opinions of another as absurd and ridiculous; and the other is as charitable to them in its conceit of theirs."—pp. 93-94.
"Thus, like the hermite, we think the sun shines nowhere but in our cell, and all the world to be darkness but ourselves. We judge truth to be circumscribed by the confines of our belief, and the doctrines we were brought up in; and, with as ill manners as those of China, repute all the rest of the world monoculous. So that, what some astrologers say of our fortunes and the passages of our lives, may, by the allowance of a metaphor, be said of our opinions—that they are written in our stars, being to the most as fatal as those involuntary occurrences, and as little in their power as the placits of destiny. We are bound to our country's opinions as to its laws; and an accustomed assent is tantamount to an infallible conclusion. He that offers to dissent shall be an outlaw in reputation; and the fears of guilty Cain shall be fulfilled on him—whoever meets him shall slay him."—pp. 95-96.
"We look with superstitious reverence upon the accounts of preterlapsed ages, and with a supercilious severity on the more deserving products of our own—a vanity which hath possessed all times as well as ours; and the golden age was never present. . . . We reverence gray-headed doctrines, though feeble, decrepit, and within a step of dust: and on this account maintain opinions which have nothing but our charity to uphold them."—p. 102.
[86:1] "Had I done but half as much as he [Hume] in labouring to subvert principles which ought ever to be held sacred, I know not whether the friends of truth would have granted me any indulgence, I am sure they ought not. Let me be treated with the lenity due to a good citizen no longer than I act as becomes one."—Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, &c. p. 20.
On this Priestley says, "Certainly the obvious construction of this passage is, that Mr. Hume ought not to be treated with the indulgence and lenity due to a good citizen, but ought to be punished as a bad one. And what is this but what a Bonner and a Gardiner might have put into the preamble of an order for his execution. . . I for my part am truly pleased with such publications as those of Mr. Hume, and I do not think it requires any great sagacity or strength of mind, to see that such writings must be of great service to religion, natural and revealed. They have actually occasioned the subject to be more thoroughly canvassed, and consequently to be better understood than ever it was before, and thus vice cotis funguntur."[86:A]
[86:A] Examination of Dr. Reid's Inquiry, &c. Dr. Beattie's Essay, &c. and Dr. Oswald's Appeal, &c. 1774, pp. 191-193.
[88:1] Critik der reinen Vernunft, (Methodenlehre,) 7th ed. p. 571.