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Click on the phrases to see them in context. The original texts by Immanuel Kant and David Hume are available from the Gutenberg Projet.
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SECT. IV OF THE TRANSFERENCE OF PROPERTY BY CONSENT When any phaenomena are constantly and invariably conjoined together, they acquire such a connexion in the imagination, that it passes from one to the other, without any doubt or hesitation. That we may fully comprehend the extent of this relation, we must consider, that any principal desire may be attended with subordinate ones, which are connected with it, and to which if other desires are parallel, they are by that means related to the principal one. As the hypothesis concerning hope and fear carries its own evidence along with it, we shall be the more concise in our proofs. There remains only to take notice of a pretty remarkable phaenomenon of this passion; which is, that the communicated passion of sympathy sometimes acquires strength from the weakness of its original, and even arises by a transition from affections, which have no existence. Let us, therefore, examine these impressions, considered in themselves; and enquire into their causes, whether placed on the mind or body, without troubling ourselves at present with that merit or blame, which may attend them. Now as we cannot cognize completely a priori the existence of any object of sense, though we can do so comparatively a priori, that is, relatively to some other previously given existence--a cognition, however, which can only be of such an existence as must be contained in the complex of experience, of which the previously given perception is a part--the necessity of existence can never be cognized from conceptions, but always, on the contrary, from its connection with that which is an object of perception. Few governments will bear being examined so rigorously.