BOOK I PART IV
Bodies often change their position and quali-
ties, and after a little absence or interruption
may become hardly knowable. But here it is
observable, that even in these changes they
preserve a coherence, and have a regular de-
pendence on each other; which is the founda-
tion of a kind of reasoning from causation, and
produces the opinion of their continued exis-
tence. When I return to my chamber after an
hour’s absence, I find not my fire in the same
situation, in which I left it: But then I am ac-
customed in other instances to see a like alter-
ation produced in a like time, whether I am
present or absent, near or remote. This co-
herence, therefore, in their changes is one of
the characteristics of external objects, as well as
their constancy.
Having found that the opinion of the con-