A Treatise of Human Nature

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BOOK I PART IV


find any such objects, we may certainly con-
clude, from the foregoing principle, that they
are very naturally confounded with identical
ones, and are taken for them in most of our
reasonings. But though this question be very
important, it is not very difficult nor doubtful.
For I immediately reply, that a succession of re-
lated objects places the mind in this disposi-
tion, and is considered with the same smooth
and uninterrupted progress of the imagination,
as attends the view of the same invariable ob-
ject. The very nature and essence of relation is
to connect our ideas with each other, and upon
the appearance of one, to facilitate the transi-
tion to its correlative. The passage betwixt re-
lated ideas is, therefore, so smooth and easy,
that it produces little alteration on the mind,
and seems like the continuation of the same ac-
tion; and as the continuation of the same ac-

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