s objects. And
as this imperfection is very sensible in every single instance, it still
encreases by experience and observation, when we compare the several
instances we may remember, and form a general rule against the reposing
any assurance in those momentary glimpses of light, which arise in the
imagination from a feigned resemblance and contiguity.

The relation of cause and effect has all the opposite advantages. The
objects it presents are fixt and unalterable. The impressions of the
memory never change in any considerable degree; and each impression
draws along with it a precise idea, which takes its place in the
imagination as something solid and real, certain and invariable. The
thought is always determined to pass from the impression to the idea,
and from that particular impression to that particular idea, without any
choice or hesitation.

But not content with removing this objection, I shall endeavour
to extract from it a proof of the present doctrine. Contiguity and
resemblance have an effect much inferior to causation; but still have
some effect, and augment the conviction of any opinion, and the vivacity
of any conception. If this can be proved in several new instances,
beside what we have already observed, it will be allowed no
inconsiderable argument, that belief is nothing but a lively idea
related to a present impression.

To begin with contiguity; it has been remarked among the Mahometans as
well as Christians, that those pilgrims, who have seen MECCA or the HOLY
LAND, are ever after more faithful and zealous believers, than those
who have not had that advantage. A man, whose memory presents him with a
lively image of the Red-Sea, and the Desert, and Jerusalem, and Galilee,
can never doubt of any miraculous events, which are related either by
Moses or the Evangelists. The lively idea of the places passes by an
easy transition to the facts, which are supposed to have been related to
them by contiguity, and encreases the belief by encreasing the vivacity
of the conception. The remembrance of these fields and rivers has
the same influence on the vulgar as a new argument; and from the same
causes.

We may form a like observation concerning resemblance. We have remarked,
that the conclusion, which we draw from a present object to its absent
cause or effect, is never founded on any qualities, which we observe
in that object, considered in itself, or, in other words, that it is
impossible to determine,