On the basis of his investigations into human consciousness Hume felt obliged to reason thus: My consciousness, as I know it, has no contact with the external world other than that of a mere outside onlooker. What it wins for its own content from the outer world is in the nature of single, mutually unrelated parts. Whatever may unite these parts into an objective whole within the world itself can never enter my consciousness; and any such unifying factor entertained by my thought can be only a self-constructed, hypothetical picture. Hume summed up his view in two axioms which he himself described as the alpha and omega of his whole philosophy. The first runs: ‘All our distinct perceptions are distinct existences.’ The other: ‘The Mind never perceives any real connexions between distinct existences.’ (Treatise of Human Nature.)