[A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume]@TWC D-Link book
A Treatise of Human Nature

PART III
136/176

This therefore is the nature of the judgment and probability.
What principally gives authority to this system is, beside the undoubted arguments, upon which each part is founded, the agreement of these parts, and the necessity of one to explain another.

The belief, which attends our memory, is of the same nature with that, which is derived from our judgments: Nor is there any difference betwixt that judgment, which is derived from a constant and uniform connexion of causes and effects, and that which depends upon an interrupted and uncertain.

It is indeed evident, that in all determinations, where the mind decides from contrary experiments, it is first divided within itself, and has an inclination to either side in proportion to the number of experiments we have seen and remember.

This contest is at last determined to the advantage of that side, where we observe a superior number of these experiments; but still with a diminution of force in the evidence correspondent to the number of the opposite experiments.

Each possibility, of which the probability is composed, operates separately upon the imagination; and it is the larger collection of possibilities, which at last prevails, and that with a force proportionable to its superiority.


<<Back  Index  Next>>

D-Link book Top

TWC mobile books