BOOK I PART III
and its operations obvious to our conscious-
ness or sensation. By the refusal of this, we
acknowledge, that the idea is impossible and
imaginary, since the principle of innate ideas,
which alone can save us from this dilemma,
has been already refuted, and is now almost
universally rejected in the learned world. Our
present business, then, must be to find some
natural production, where the operation and
efficacy of a cause can be clearly conceived and
comprehended by the mind, without any dan-
ger of obscurity or mistake.
In this research we meet with very little en-
couragement from that prodigious diversity,
which is found in the opinions of those philoso-
phers, who have pretended to explain the se-
cret force and energy of causes. (See Father
Malbranche, Book vi. Part 2, chap. 3. And