As experience increases the regularity of the action of the derivative
force is more and more observable, and then arises the notion of a law
or rule regulating the action of every such force. And a perpetually
increasing number of phenomena are brought under this head, and are
shown to be, not the immediate results of self-originating action, but
the more or less remote results of derivative action governed by laws.
And even a large number of those phenomena, which specially belong to
life and living creatures, in whom alone, if anywhere, the
self-originating action is to be found, are observed to be subject to
law and therefore to be the issue not of self-originating but of
derivative action. And this observed regularity it is found possible to
trace much more widely than it is possible to trace any clear evidence
of what we understand by force. And so, at last, we frequently use the
word force as it were by anticipation, not to express the cause of the
phenomena, which indeed we do not yet know, but as a convenient
abbreviation for a large number of facts classed under one head. And
this it is which enables Hume to maintain that we mean no more by a
cause than an event which is invariably followed by another event.
Pages:
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37