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Short Essay Topic 2.) Explain the following quote from Hume: “When I see, for instance, a Billiard-ball moving in a straight line towards another; even suppose motion….” When one holds a rock in the air and releases it from the hand, from our past experiences, history has told us that gravity will bring the rock hurdling back to the ground. This example goes along with this quote from Hume. “We are apt to imagine that we could discover these effects by the mere operation of our reason, without experience (p. 695).” This quote explains that we can only assume that the rock will fall because our general reasoning has led up to the high probability of it falling down, rather than experiencing first that the rock will fall. According to Hume, this way of looking at possibility is false. Hume believes that the possibilities of effect are almost infinite until you have fact or until a specific task is performed. “Every effect is a distinct event from its cause, it could not, therefore, be discovered in the cause, and the first invention or conception about it, a priori, must be entirely arbitrary (p. 696).” Between one experiences to another, there is a possibility of one thing being slightly different that could alter the effect of any cause. It is only natural for one to bring a conception into its simplest form before the task is performed. When according to Hume, the only time one can be exact about the observation of effect until an attempt of discovery is made or the action has begun. In a way, I believe what Hume is saying is that, we should not attempt to predetermine anything at all. That it isn’t until we have actually experienced any action to usefully use our reason and experience to predict what would happen if done again. As if every action should be looked at backwards, but at the same time to never narrow the possibility of what will happen to only one or a few outcomes because there is actually a infinite amount of different aspects that