a remote experiment, 143; (c) by a short and simple argument than by a long and complicated one, 144 (cf. 185); (d) when we are prejudiced and led into analogical reasoning by general rules, 146 f.; does belief thus 'consist only in a certain vivacity conveyed from an original impression,' or is it something different from that vivacity 145 (cf.§ 7 A, B.); [legitimate belief=vivacity justified by reflection and general ruler, 146 f. (cf. 173)] though general rules give rise to prejudice and false reasoning yet they are their only remedy, for by general rules we distinguish in an antecedent between essential and accidental circumstances: this distinction generally attributed to the judgment and the confusion to the imagination, though both judgment and imagination are the slaves of custom, 149; 'when we find that an effect can be produced without the concurrence of any particular circumstance, we conclude that that circumstance makes not a part of the efficacious cause, however frequently conjoined with it,' 149 (cf. 87, 248).
E. The several degrees of assurance or belief are (a) that of 'knowledge' or 'demonstration' (b) that of memory, (c) that of 'judgment,' derived from the relation of cause and effect, arising from perfectly constant conjunction of two objects and exact resemblance of the present object to one of them, 153; (d) that of probability, in all cases of which there is less vivacity, for whatever reason it may be, and so less assurance, 154 (cf. § 7).
§ 9. [Idea of necessary connexion or Power, 155 f.]
A. The idea of power or efficacy not derived from reason nor any single experience, 156: account given by Locke, 157, Malbranche, 158, the Cartesian, 159, the proper result of whose speculation is that we have no adequate idea of power or efficacy in any object, 160; the idea cannot be derived from any unknown quality of matter, 160; we can have no general idea of power if we have no particular idea of it, 161; so we have no clear idea of power as belonging to any object or being: when we talk of it we only use words without any determinate idea, 162 (cf. 172, 311); we have no idea of any being endowed with power, still less with infinite power, 149; idea of power not copied from feeling of energy in our own mind and so transferred to matter, 632.
B. Only the multiplicity of resembling instances can produce the idea, and even this can only do so indirectly, for the repetition does not discover anything new in the related objects, 163; nor does it produce anything new in them, 164; but it does produce a new impression in the mind which is the 'real model' of the idm of power, viz. 'a determination to pass from an object to its usual attendant,' which is an 'impression of reflection,' 165 (cf. 155, 74, 77).
C. Thus 'necessity is something that exists in the mind, not in
