But when we take a review of this act of the mind, and compare it with the more general and authentic operations of the understanding, we find it to be of an irregular nature, and destructive of all the most established principles of reasonings; which is the cause of our rejecting it.

This is a second influence of general rules, and implies the condemnation of the former.
Sometimes the one, sometimes the other prevails, according to the disposition and character of the person.

The vulgar are commonly guided by the first, and wise men by the second.

Mean while the sceptics may here have the pleasure of observing a new and signal contradiction in our reason, and of seeing all philosophy ready to be subverted by a principle of human nature, and again saved by a new direction of the very same principle.

The following of general rules is a very unphilosophical species of probability; and yet it is only by following them that we can correct this, and all other unphilosophical probabilities.
Since we have instances, where general rules operate on the imagination even contrary to the judgment, we need not be surprized to see their effects encrease, when conjoined with that latter faculty, and to observe that they bestow on the ideas they present to us a force superior to what attends any other.