has anything to do with
the production of bodily motion or mental changes. And he points out, as
Descartes and Spinoza had done before him, that when voluntary motion
takes place, that which we will is not the immediate consequence of the
act of volition, but something which is separated from it by a long
chain of causes and effects. If the will is the cause of the movement of
a limb, it can be so only in the sense that the guard who gives the
order to go on, is the cause of the transport of a train from one
station to another.

"We learn from anatomy, that the immediate object of power in
voluntary motion is not the member itself which is moved, but
certain muscles and nerves and animal spirits, and perhaps
something still more minute and unknown, through which the motion
is successively propagated, ere it reach the member itself, whose
motion is the immediate object of volition. Can there be a more
certain proof that the power by which the whole operation is
performed, so far from being directly and fully known by an inward
sentiment or consciousness, is to the last degree mysterious and
unintelligible? Here the mind wills a certain event: Immediately
another event, unknown to ourselves, and totally different from the
one intended, is produced: This event produces another equally
unknown: Till at last, through a long succession, the desired event
is produced."--(IV. p. 78.)

A still stronger argument against ascribing an objective existence to
force or power, on the strength of our supposed direct intuition of
power in voluntary acts, may be urged from the unquestionable fact, that
we do not know, and cannot know, that volition does cause corporeal
motion; while there is a great deal to be said in favour of the view
that it is no cause, but merely a concomitant of that motion. But the
nature of volition will be more fitly considered hereafter.

FOOTNOTE:

[26] Hume, however, expressly includes the "records of our memory" among
his matters of fact.--(IV. p. 33.)

CHAPTER VII.

THE ORDER OF NATURE: MIRACLES.

If our beliefs of expectation are based on our beliefs of memory, and
anticipation is only inverted recollection, it necessarily follows that
every belief of expectation implies the belief that the future will have
a certain resemblance to the past. From the first hour of experience,
onwards, this belief is constantly being verif