I May Venture To Affirm The Rest

We Learn The Influence Of Our Will From Experience Alone. And Experience Only Teaches Us, How One Event Constantly Follows Another; Without Instructing Us In The Secret Connexion, Which Binds Them Together, And Renders Them Inseparable.

That The Sun Will Not Rise Tomorrow Is No Less Intelligible A Proposition, And Implies No More Contradiction, Than The Affirmation, That It Will Rise.

Eloquence, When At Its Highest Pitch, Leaves Little Room For Reason Or Reflection; But Addressing Itself Entirely To The Fancy Or The Affections, Captivates The Willing Hearers, And Subdues Their Understanding. Happily, This Pitch It Seldom Attains. But What A Tully Or A Demosthenes Could Scarcely Effect Over A Roman Or Athenian Audience, Every Capuchin, Every Itinerant Or Stationary Teacher Can Perform Over The Generality Of Mankind, And In A Higher Degree, By Touching Such Gross And Vulgar Passions.

The Identity That We Ascribe To Things Is Only A Fictitious One, Established By The Mind, Not A Peculiar Nature Belonging To What We’re Talking About.

I Say Then, That Belief Is Nothing But A More Vivid, Lively, Forcible, Firm, Steady Conception Of An Object, Than What The Imagination Alone Is Ever Able To Attain. This Variety Of Terms, Which May Seem So Unphilosophical, Is Intended Only To Express That Act Of The Mind, Which Renders Realities, Or What Is Taken For Such, More Present To Us Than Fictions, Causes Them To Weigh More In The Thought, And Gives Them A Superior Influence On The Passions And Imagination.