And, indeed, he owns himself that, when he considers that this is our only foundation for any such belief, he is sometimes tempted to doubt whether we do know any fact whatever, except those which we directly observe. He does, therefore, at least suggest the view that every man's knowledge is entirely confined to those facts, which he is directly observing at the moment, or which he has observed in the past, and now remembers. We see, then, that Hume suggests, at least, three entirely different views as to the consequences of his original doctrine. His original doctrine was that, as regards matters of fact beyond the reach of our own actual observation, the knowledge of each of us is strictly limited to those for which we have a basis in our own experience. And his first view as to the consequences of this doctrine was that it does show us to be incapable of knowing a good many religious and philosophical propositions, which many men have claimed that they knew; but that it by no means denies our capacity of knowing the vast majority of facts beyond our own observation, which we all commonly suppose that we know. His second view, on the other hand, is that it cuts off at once all possibility of our knowing the vast majority of these facts; since he implies that we cannot have any basis in experience for asserting any _external_ fact whatever--any fact, that is, except facts relating to our own actual past and future observations. And his third view is more sceptical still, since it suggests that we cannot really know any fact whatever, beyond the reach of our present observation or memory, even where we _have_ a basis in experience for such a fact: it suggests that experience cannot ever let us _know_ that any two things are causally connected, and therefore that it cannot give us _knowledge_ of any fact based on this relation. What are we to think of these three views, and of the original doctrine from which Hume seems to infer them?