1. Whence the ideas of cause and effect got.
In the notice that our senses take of the constant vicissitude of things,
we cannot but observe that several particular, both qualities and substances, begin to exist; and that they receive
this their existence from the due application and operation of some other being. From this observation we get our
ideas of cause and effect. That which produces any simple or complex idea we denote by the general name, cause,
and that which is produced, effect. Thus, finding that in that substance which we call wax, fluidity, which is a
simple idea that was not in it before, is constantly produced by the application of a certain degree of heat we call
the simple idea of heat, in relation to fluidity in wax, the cause of it, and fluidity the effect. So also, finding that
the substance, wood, which is a certain collection of simple ideas so called, by the application of fire, is turned
into another substance, called ashes; i.e., another complex idea, consisting of a collection of simple ideas, quite
different from that complex idea which we call wood; we consider fire, in relation to ashes, as cause, and the
ashes, as effect. So that whatever is considered by us to conduce or operate to the producing any particular simple
idea, or collection of simple ideas, whether substance or mode, which did not before exist, hath thereby in our
minds the relation of a cause, and so is denominated by us.
