Philosophical Works, v. 1 (of 4): Including All the Essays, and Exhibiting the More Important Alterations and Corrections in the Successive Editions Published by the Author
David Hume · en
Secondly, 'tis supposed, that though the dye be necessarily determined
to fall, and turn up one of its sides, yet there is nothing to fix the
particular side, but that this is determined entirely by chance. The
very nature and essence of chance is a negation of causes, and the
leaving the mind in a perfect indifference among those events which
are supposed contingent. When, therefore, the thought is determined
by the causes to consider the dye as falling and turning up one of
its sides, the chances present all these sides as equal, and make us
consider every one of them, one after another, as alike probable and
possible. The imagination passes from the cause, viz. the throwing of
the dye, to the effect, viz. the turning up one of the six sides; and
feels a kind of impossibility both of stopping short in the way, and of
forming any other idea. But as all these six sides are incompatible,
and the dye cannot turn up above one at once, this principle directs us
not to consider all of them at once as lying uppermost, which we look
upon as impossible: neither does it direct us with its entire force to
any particular side; for in that case this side would be considered
as certain and inevitable; but it directs us to the whole six sides
after such a manner as to divide its force equally among them. We
conclude in general, that some one of them must result from the throw:
we run all of them over in our minds: the determination of the thought
is common to all; but no more of its force falls to the share of any
one, than what is suitable to its proportion with the rest. 'Tis after
this manner the original impulse, and consequently the vivacity of
thought arising from the causes, is divided and split in pieces by the
intermingled chances.