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Hume follows Locke and sees all human knowledge as deriving from experience.
He sees the contents of the mind as perceptions, implying that they have been
observed in some empirical fashion, and he divides these perceptions into
impressions and ideas. Impressions derive from the immediate data of experience
through the senses, while the latter, the ideas, are seen by Hume as the copies or
faint images of impressions in thinking and reasoning. Another way he
differentiates the two is in terms of their vividness, or the degree of power with
which they infuse themselves into the mind. The perceptions which have the most
power and enter the mind with the most force are called impressions, and these
include all our sensations as well as our emotions and passions. Ideas, on the other
hand, are the faint images appearing in thinking and reasoning. They are somewhat
like recollections of the earlier, stronger impressions. In a broad sense, Hume is
trying to differentiate between the immediate data of experience and the thoughts
we have about that data.

However complex this analysis of the different types of ideas and impressions may
get, the underlying truth of the approach is that experience is necessary for there to
be knowledge. Generally, Hume rejects a priori knowledge entirely, though
experience can be indirect and can lead to the creation of what seem to be a priori
or innate ideas. Hume considers the meaning of substance and concludes that we
can have no idea of t

says Hume, that causes and effects are discoverable not by reason but by
experience, and he uses the analogy of two pieces of smooth marble to show it.
Present such marble to a man with no knowledge of natural philosophy and he will
never discover that they will adhere together so as to require great force to separate
them in a direct line while making a small resistance to a lateral pressure. He could
only know this by experience. This is the case with all other causes and effects
possible from objects which might be presented as well. The object is the cause,
and the mind cannot find the effect by contemplating the supposed cause. Only
through experience can the mind come to understand the relations between cause
and effect. Hume writes, Were any object presented to us, and were we required to
pronounce concerning the effect, which will result from it, without consulting past
observation; after that manner, I beseech you, must the mind proceed in this
operation?. . . The mind can never find the effect in the supposed cause, by the
most accurate scrutiny and examination. For the effect is totally different from the
cause, and consequently can never be discovered in it (614). Another example
 Hume uses to demonstrate caus