1734-1739. ÆT. 23-27.
Hume leaves Bristol for France--Paris--Miracles at the Tomb of
the Abbé Paris--Rheims--La Flêche--Associations with the Abbé
Pluche and Des Cartes--Observations on French Society and
Manners--Story of La Roche--Return to Britain.--Correspondence
with Henry Home--Publication of the first and second volume of
The Treatise of Human Nature--Character of that Work--Its
Influence on mental Philosophy.
We have no account of Hume's sojourn in Bristol, except his own very
brief statement, that "in a few months," he "found that scene totally
unsuitable" to him.[48:1] He must have proceeded to France about the
middle of the year 1734, and he thus describes in his "own life," his
motives and intentions. "I went over to France, with a view of
prosecuting my studies in a country retreat; and I there laid that plan
of life, which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to
make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to
maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as
contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature."
His subsequent letters show that he proceeded in the first instance to
Paris, where he remained for a short time. Not long before his arrival
there, some occurrences had taken place which were afterwards
prominently referred to in his philosophical writings. A Jansenist,
distinguished by his sanctity and the wide circle of his charities--the
Abbé Paris, having died, a tomb was erected over his remains in the
cemetery of St. Médard. Thither the poor, whom the good man had
succoured in life, repaired to bless his memory and pray for the state
of his soul. But it was discovered that this devotion was speedily
rewarded; for the sick were cured, the blind saw, all manner of miracles
were performed; and the evidence of their genuineness was considered so
satisfactory, that the Jesuits were never able to impugn them--an
instance which it might be well for every one to recall to mind who is
told of phenomena out of the ordinary course of nature being
authenticated by the testimony of respectable and enlightened people. At
length, this series of miracles became offensive to the
government--there was no saying how far the matter might proceed. It was
resolved that there should be no more miracles performed at the tomb of
the Abbé Paris: the gates of the cemetery were closed, and the miracles
necessarily came to an end. This occurred in the year 1732, just two
years before Hume's visit; and it will easily be imagined that the
references to these wonderful events which he would hear in
conversation, suggested many trains of thought to the young philosopher.
It was not long afterwards, and probably while all this was very fresh
in his memory, that the principal theory of his Essay on Miracles was
suggested to him. In that Essay he says:
"Many of the miracles of Abbé Paris were proved immediately by witnesses
before the officialty or bishop's court at Paris, under the eye of
Cardinal Noailles, whose character for integrity and capacity was never
contested even by his enemies.
"His successor in the archbishopric was an enemy to the Jansenists, and
for that reason promoted to the see by the court. Yet twenty-two rectors
or curés of Paris, with infinite earnestness, press him to examine those
miracles, which they assert to be known to the whole world, and
indisputably certain. But he wisely forbore."
And farther on:--
"No less a man than the Duc de Chatillon, a duke and peer of France, of
the highest rank and family, gives evidence of a miraculous cure,
performed upon a servant of his, who had lived several years in his
house with a visible and palpable infirmity.
"I shall conclude with observing, that no clergy are more celebrated for
strictness of life and manners than the secular clergy of France,
particularly the rectors or curés of Paris, who bear testimony to these
impostures."
An illustration of his notice of what was passing around him in Paris,
occurs in the following passage in his "Natural History of Religion."
"I lodged once at Paris in the same hotel with an ambassador from Tunis,
who, having passed some years at London, was returning home that way.
One day I observed his Moorish excellency diverting himself under the
porch, with surveying the splendid equipages that drove along; when
there chanced to pass that way some Capucin friars, who had never seen
a Turk, as he, on his part, though accustomed to the European dresses,
had never seen the grotesque figure of a Capucin: and there is no
expressing the mutual admiration with which they inspired each other.
Had the chaplain of the embassy entered into a dispute with these
Franciscans, their reciprocal surprise had been of the same nature. Thus
all mankind stand staring at one another; and there is no beating it
into their heads, that the turban of the African is not just as good or
as bad a fashion as the cowl of the European.--'He is a very honest
man,' said the Prince of Sallee, speaking of De Ruyter; 'it is a pity he
were a Christian.'"
After leaving Paris, he resided at Rheims in the province of Champagne,
about eighty miles north-east of the metropolis. Thence he addressed to
his friend Michael Ramsay the following letter, full of observation and
thought.
HUME _to_ MICHAEL RAMSAY.
"_Rheims, September 12, 1734._
"MY DEAR MICHAEL,--I suppose you have received two letters from me,
dated at Paris, in one of which was enclosed a letter to my Lord Stair.
I am now arrived at Rheims, which is to be the place of my abode for
some considerable time, and where I hope both to spend my time happily
for the present, and lay up a stock for the future. It is a large town,
containing about forty thousand inhabitants, and has in it about thirty
families that keep coaches, though, by the appearance of the houses, you
would not think there was one. I am recommended to two of the best
families in town, and particularly to a man, who they say is one of the
most learned in France.[52:1] He is just now in the country, so that I
have not yet seen him; though, if I had seen him, it would be some time
before I could contract a friendship with him, not being yet sufficient
master of the language to support a conversation; which is a great
vexation to me, but which I hope in a short time to get over. As I have
little more than this to say about business, I shall use the freedom to
entertain you with any idle thoughts that come into my head, hoping at
least you will excuse them, if not be pleased with them, because they
come from an absent friend.
"When I parted from Paris, the Chevalier Ramsay gave me as his advice,
to observe carefully, and imitate as much as possible, the manners of
the French. For, says he, though the English, perhaps, have more of the
real politeness of the heart, yet the French certainly have the better
way of expressing it. This gave me occasion to reflect upon the matter,
and in my humble opinion it is just the contrary: viz., that the French
have more real politeness, and the English the better method of
expressing it. By real politeness I mean softness of temper, and a
sincere inclination to oblige and be serviceable, which is very
conspicuous in this nation, not only among the high but low; in so much
that the porters and coachmen here are civil, and that, not only to
gentlemen, but likewise among themselves; so that I have not yet seen
one quarrel in France, though they are every where to be met with in
England.[53:1] By the expressions of politeness, I mean those outward
deferences and ceremonies which custom has invented, to supply the
defect of real politeness or kindness, that is unavoidable towards
strangers, or indifferent persons, even in men of the best dispositions
in the world. These ceremonies ought to be so contrived, as that, though
they do not deceive nor pass for sincere, yet still they please by their
appearance, and lead the mind by its own consent and knowledge into an
agreeable delusion. One may err by running into either of the two
extremes; that of making them too like truth or too remote from it:
though we may observe, that the first is scarce possible, because
whenever any expression or action becomes customary, it can deceive
nobody. Thus, when the Quakers say, 'your friend,' they are as easily
understood, as another, that says, 'your humble servant.' The French err
in the contrary extreme, that of making their civilities too remote from
truth, which is a fault, though they are not designed to be believed;
just as it is a transgression of rules in a dramatic poet to mix any
improbabilities with his fable, though 'tis certain that, in the
representation, the scenes, lights, company, and a thousand other
circumstances, make it impossible he can ever deceive.
"Another fault I find in the French manners, is that, like their clothes
and furniture, they are too glaring. An English fine gentleman
distinguishes himself from the rest of the world, by the whole tenor of
his conversation, more than by any particular part of it; so that though
you are sensible he excels, you are at a loss to tell in what, and have
no remarkable civilities and compliments to pitch on as a proof of his
politeness. These he so smooths over, that they pass for the common
actions of life, and never put you to[55:1] trouble of returning thanks
for them. The English politeness is always greatest where it appears
least.
"After all, it must be confessed that the little niceties of French
behaviour, though troublesome and impertinent, yet serve to polish the
ordinary kind of people, and prevent rudeness and brutality. For in the
same manner as soldiers are found to become more courageous in learning
to hold their muskets within half an inch of a place appointed; and your
devotees feel their devotion increase by the observance of trivial
superstitions, as sprinkling, kneeling, crossing, &c.; so men insensibly
soften towards each other in the practice of these ceremonies. The mind
pleases itself by the progress it makes in such trifles, and while it is
so supported, makes an easy transition to something more material. And I
verily believe it is for this reason that you scarce ever meet with a
clown or an ill-bred man in France.
"You may perhaps wonder that I, who have stayed so short time in France,
and who have confessed that I am not master of their language, should
decide so positively of their manner. But you will please to observe,
that it is with nations as with particular men, where one trifle
frequently serves more to discover the character, than a whole train of
considerable actions. Thus, when I compare our English phrase of 'humble
servant,' which likewise we omit upon the least intimacy, with the
French one of 'the honour of being your most humble servant,' which they
never forget,--this, compared with other circumstances, lets me clearly
see the different humours of the nations. This phrase, of the honour of
doing or saying such a thing to you, goes so far, that my washing-woman
to-day told me, that she hoped she would have the honour of serving me
while I staid at Rheims; and what is still more absurd, it is said by
people to those who are very much their inferiors.
"Before I conclude my letter, I must tell you that I hope you will
excuse my rudeness, if I use the freedom (?)[56:1] to desire of you
that, the next time you do me the honour of writing to me, you will be
so good as to sit down a day before the post goes away; for I cannot
help being afraid that, in your haste, you have omitted many things,
which otherwise I would have had the honour and satisfaction of hearing
from you. When you are so good as to condescend to write, please to
direct so:--'A Monsieur--Monsieur David Hume, gentilhomme, Ecossois,
chez Monsieur Mesier, au Peroquet verd, proche la porte au Ferron,
Rheims.'"[56:2]
Hume states, in his "own life," that he passed "three years" very
agreeably in France. We find from a letter to Principal Campbell,[57:1]
that two of these years were spent at La Flêche, and that he had some
communication with the members of the Jesuits' College there. He says,
"It may perhaps amuse you to learn the first hint, which suggested to me
that argument which you have so strenuously attacked. I was walking in
the cloisters of the Jesuits' College of La Flêche, a town in which I
passed two years of my youth, and engaged in a conversation with a
Jesuit of some parts and learning, who was relating to me, and urging
some nonsensical miracle performed lately in their convent, when I was
tempted to dispute against him; and as my head was full of the topics of
my Treatise of Human Nature, which I was at that time composing, this
argument immediately occurred to me, and I thought it very much
gravelled my companion; but at last he observed to me, that it was
impossible for that argument to have any solidity, because it operated
equally against the Gospel as the Catholic miracles;--which observation
I thought proper to admit as a sufficient answer. I believe you will
allow, that the freedom at least of this reasoning makes it somewhat
extraordinary to have been the produce of a convent of Jesuits, though
perhaps you may think the sophistry of it savours plainly of the place
of its birth."
This same Jesuits' College of La Flêche, is familiar to the
philosophical reader as the seminary in which Des Cartes was educated.
The place which Hume had just left, has been seen to be associated with
the birth and residence of a distinguished opponent of the Cartesian
theory. We now find him perfecting his work in that academic solitude,
where Des Cartes himself was educated, and where he formed his theory of
commencing with the doubt of previous dogmatic opinions, and framing for
himself a new fabric of belief. The coincidence is surely worthy of
reflective association, and it is perhaps not the least striking
instance of Hume's unimaginative nature, that in none of his works,
printed or manuscript, do we find an allusion to the circumstance, that
while framing his own theories, he trod the same pavement that had
upwards of a century earlier borne the weight of one whose fame and
influence on human thought was so much of the same character as he
himself panted to attain.
It is to Hume's early sojourn in France that we must assign the time and
the scene of Mackenzie's pleasant fiction, called the "Story of La
Roche," published in the Mirror of 1779. It is generally admitted that
the writer's materials were merely the character and habits of the
philosopher, and that there was no groundwork for the narrative in any
incident that had actually occurred. But the story must be taken as the
observations of an acute perception, and a finely adjusted taste, upon
Hume's character; and our reliance on the accuracy of the picture is
enhanced by the circumstance that Smith, deceived by its air of reality,
expressed his wonder that Hume had never told him of the incident.[58:1]
The opening description is in these words:--
"More than forty years ago, an English philosopher, whose works have
since been read and admired by all Europe, resided at a little town in
France. Some disappointments in his native country had first driven him
abroad, and he was afterwards induced to remain there, from having found
in this retreat, where the connexions even of nature and language were
avoided, a perfect seclusion and retirement, highly favourable to the
development of abstract subjects, in which he excelled all the writers
of his time.
"Perhaps in the structure of such a mind as Mr. ----'s, the fine and
more delicate sensibilities are seldom known to have place; or, if
originally implanted there, are in a great measure extinguished by the
exertions of intense study and profound investigation. Hence the idea of
philosophy and unfeelingness being united, has become proverbial; and,
in common language, the former word is often used to express the latter.
Our philosopher had been censured by some, as deficient in warmth and
feeling: but the mildness of his manners has been allowed by all; and it
is certain, that if he was not easily melted into compassion, it was at
least not difficult to awaken his benevolence."
The impression of the actions of a kind, charitable, and tolerant
disposition, conveyed by the circumstances of the narrative, cannot be
represented without incorporating it in full; and it will probably be
thought that one or two passing sketches of character, such as the
above, are all that should be taken into a work like the present, from a
book accessible to every reader. Thus, when the housekeeper comes with
the account of the distresses of the poor protestant clergyman and his
daughter:
"Her master laid aside the volume in his hand, and broke off the chain
of ideas it had inspired. His night-gown was exchanged for a coat, and
he followed his gouvernante to the sick man's apartment."
Again,--
"La Roche found a degree of simplicity and gentleness in his companion,
which is not always annexed to the character of a learned or a wise man.
His daughter, who was prepared to be afraid of him, was equally
undeceived. She found in him nothing of that self-importance which
superior parts, or great cultivation of them, is apt to confer. He
talked of every thing but philosophy or religion; he seemed to enjoy
every pleasure and amusement of ordinary life, and to be interested in
the most common topics of discourse: when his knowledge or learning at
any time appeared, it was delivered with the utmost plainness, and
without the least shadow of dogmatism."
And not less distinctly are the following sentences the echo of
Mackenzie's own observations of the character and habits of the
philosopher, that they are put in the varied shape of dialogue and
narrative.
"You regret, my friend," said [La Roche,] "when my daughter and I talk
of the exquisite pleasure derived from music, you regret your want of
musical powers and musical feelings; it is a department of soul, you
say, which nature has almost denied you, which, from the effects you see
it have on others, you are sure must be highly delightful. Why should
not the same thing be said of religion? Trust me, I feel it in the same
way, an energy, an inspiration, which I would not lose for all the
blessings of sense or enjoyments of the world. . . . . . And it would
have been inhuman in our philosopher to have clouded, even with a doubt,
the sunshine of this belief.
"His discourse was very remote from metaphysical disquisition or
religious controversy. Of all men I ever knew, his ordinary conversation
was the least tinctured with pedantry or liable to dissertation. With La
Roche and his daughter it was perfectly familiar. The country round
them, the manners of the villagers, the comparison of both with those of
England, remarks on the works of favourite authors, or the sentiments
they conveyed, and the passions they excited, with many other topics in
which there was an equality, or alternate advantage among the speakers,
were the subjects they talked on."
Nor can one, after having quoted so much, avoid giving the concluding
sentence, in which the philosopher contemplates the old clergyman's
grief for the loss of his daughter, and at the same time that he
perceives its bitterness and intensity, is made aware of the
consolations which the bereaved old man finds in religion, and "rejoices
that such consolation" is his.
"Mr. ----'s heart was smitten; and I have heard him long after confess,
that there were moments when the remembrance overcame him even to
weakness; when, amidst all the pleasures of philosophical discovery, and
the pride of literary fame, he recalled to his mind the venerable figure
of the good La Roche, and wished that he had never doubted."
The account of his sojourn in France is thus given in his "own
life:"--"During my retreat in France, first at Rheims, but chiefly at La
Flêche, in Anjou, I composed my 'Treatise of Human Nature.' After
passing three years very agreeably in that country, I came over to
London in 1737."
We must now follow him to London, where we find him occupied in carrying
his "Treatise of Human Nature," through the press. One of his early
friends was his namesake Henry Home, afterwards Lord Kames, who
pursued, but with unequal step, the same path with himself. Home was
fifteen years the elder of the two, and had joined the bar in 1723. He
had already published some of his professional works; but it was at a
subsequent period of his life, and when he perhaps became emulous of the
fame of his friend, that he attempted works in ethics, metaphysics, and
criticism. During many years of continued intimacy, these two
distinguished men enjoyed each other's mutual respect; but, in their
early intercourse, when his senior had for some time occupied a
prominent position in the eye of the public, we naturally find Hume
writing about his great project in a tone of modest deference.
HUME _to_ HENRY HOME.
"_London, December 2, 1737._
"DEAR SIR,--I am sorry I am not able to satisfy your curiosity by giving
you some general notion of the plan upon which I proceed. But my
opinions are so new, and even some terms I am obliged to make use of,
that I could not propose, by any abridgment, to give my system an air of
likelihood, or so much as make it intelligible. It is a thing I have in
vain attempted already, at a gentleman's request in this place, who
thought it would help him to comprehend and judge of my notions, if he
saw them all at once before him. I have had a greater desire of
communicating to you the plan of the whole, that I believe it will not
appear in public before the beginning of next winter. For, besides that
it would be difficult to have it printed before the rising of the
parliament, I must confess I am not ill pleased with a little delay,
that it may appear with as few imperfections as possible. I have been
here near three months, always within a week of agreeing with my
printers; and you may imagine I did not forget the work itself during
that time, where I began to feel some passages weaker for the style and
diction than I could have wished. The nearness and greatness of the
event roused up my attention, and made me more difficult to please, than
when I was alone in perfect tranquillity in France. But here I must tell
you one of my foibles. I have a great inclination to go down to Scotland
this spring to see my friends; and have your advice concerning my
philosophical discoveries; but cannot overcome a certain shamefacedness
I have to appear among you at my years, without having yet a settlement,
or so much as attempted any. How happens it that we philosophers cannot
as heartily despise the world as it despises us? I think in my
conscience the contempt were as well founded on our side as on the
other.
"Having a franked letter, I was resolved to make use of it; and
accordingly enclose some '_Reasonings concerning Miracles_,'[63:1] which
I once thought of publishing with the rest, but which I am afraid will
give too much offence, even as the world is disposed at present. There
is something in the turn of thought, and a good deal in the turn of
expression, which will not perhaps appear so proper, for want of knowing
the context: but the force of the argument you'll be judge of, as it
stands. Tell me your thoughts of it. Is not the style too diffuse?
though, as that was a popular argument, I have spread it out much more
than the other parts of the work. I beg of you to show it to nobody,
except to Mr. Hamilton, if he pleases; and let me know at your leisure
that you have received it, read it, and burnt it. Your thoughts and mine
agree with respect to Dr. Butler, and I would be glad to be introduced
to him. I am at present castrating my work, that is, cutting off its
nobler parts; that is, endeavouring it shall give as little offence as
possible, before which, I could not pretend to put it into the Doctor's
hands. This is a piece of cowardice, for which I blame myself, though I
believe none of my friends will blame me. But I was resolved not to be
an enthusiast in philosophy, while I was blaming other enthusiasms. If
ever I indulge myself in any, 'twill be when I tell you that I am, dear
Sir, yours."[64:1]
Butler, to whom Hume is thus found desiring an introduction, had, in the
immediately preceding year, published "The Analogy of Religion, Natural
and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature;" and it appears
that Hume courted the attention of the author of that clear logical work
to those speculations of his own, which, in the opinion of the world in
general, have so opposite a tendency to that of the "Analogy." The
following letter, acknowledging an introduction from Home, and dated 4th
March, 1738, tells its own tale.
"I shall not trouble you with any formal compliments or thanks, which
would be but an ill return for the kindness you have done me in writing
in my behalf, to one you are so little acquainted with as Dr. Butler;
and, I am afraid, stretching the truth in favour of a friend. I have
called upon the Doctor, with a design of delivering him your letter,
but find he is at present in the country. I am a little anxious to have
the Doctor's opinion. My own I dare not trust to; both because it
concerns myself, and because it is so variable, that I know not how to
fix it. Sometimes it elevates me above the clouds; at other times, it
depresses me with doubts and fears; so that, whatever be my success, I
cannot be entirely disappointed. Somebody has told me that you might
perhaps be in London this spring. I should esteem this a very lucky
event; and notwithstanding all the pleasures of the town, I would
certainly engage you to pass some philosophical evenings with me, and
either correct my judgment, where you differ from me, or confirm it
where we agree. I believe I have some need of the one, as well as the
other; and though the propensity to diffidence be an error on the better
side, yet 'tis an error, and dangerous as well as disagreeable.--I am,
&c.
"I lodge at present in the Rainbow Coffeehouse, Lancaster Court."[65:1]
The transactions between authors and booksellers are seldom accompanied
by any formidable array of legal formalities; but Hume and his
publishers seem to have thought it necessary to bind each other in the
most stringent manner, to the performance of their respective
obligations, by "articles of agreement, made, concluded, and agreed,
upon the 26th day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand
seven hundred and thirty-eight, and in the twelfth year of the reign of
our sovereign lord King George the Second,--between David Hume of
Lancaster Court of the one part, and John Noone of Cheapside, London,
bookseller, of the other part." By this very precise document, it is
provided, that "the said David Hume shall and will permit and suffer the
said John Noone to have, hold, and enjoy, the sole property, benefit,
and advantage of printing and publishing the first edition of the said
book, not exceeding one thousand copies thereof." The author, in return,
receives £50, and twelve bound copies of the book.[66:1] The transaction
is on the whole creditable to the discernment and liberality of Mr.
Noone. It may be questioned, whether, in this age, when knowledge has
spread so much wider, and money is so much less valuable, it would be
easy to find a bookseller, who, on the ground of its internal merits,
would give £50 for an edition of a new metaphysical work, by an unknown
and young author, born and brought up in a remote part of the empire.
These articles refer to the first and second of the three volumes of the
"Treatise of Human Nature;" and they were accordingly published in
January, 1739. They include "Book I. Of the Understanding," and "Book
II. Of the Passions."
It has been generally and justly remarked, that the Treatise is among
the least systematic of philosophical works--that it has neither a
definite and comprehensive plan, nor a logical arrangement. It was,
indeed, so utterly deficient in the former--there was so complete a want
of any projected scope of subject which the author was bound to exhaust
in what he wrote--that an attempt to divide and subdivide the matter
after it had been written, according to a logical arrangement, would
only, as a sort of _experimentum crucis_, have exposed the imperfect
character of the original plan. The author, therefore, very discreetly
allowed his matter to be arranged as the subjects of which he treated
had respectively suggested themselves, and bestowed on his work a title
rather general than comprehensive,--a title, of which all that can be
said of its aptness to the subject is, that no part of his book can be
said to be wholly without it, while he might have included an almost
incalculable multitude of other subjects within it. He called it simply
"A Treatise of Human Nature;" and by a subsidiary title, explanatory
rather of his method than definitive of his matter, he called it "an
attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral
subjects."
The purely metaphysical,[67:1] and, at the same time, the most original
portion of the work, and that which has most conspicuously rendered
itself a constituent part of the literature of intellectual philosophy,
is "Book I. Of the Understanding." "Book II. Of the Passions," contains
mixed metaphysics and ethics, with occasional notices of phenomena,
which, though Hume does not, other writers would be likely to connect
with physiological inquiries. The third book, "Of Virtue and Vice in
General," published a year later, is of an ethical character, being an
inquiry into the origin and proper system of morals, and an application
of the system to government and politics.
The "Treatise of Human Nature" afforded materials for the criticism of
two very distinct classes of writers. The one consisted of men imbued
with a spirit of inquiry kindred to that of Hume, and a genius capable
of appreciating his services in the cause of truth; who, as the teachers
of systems of which they were themselves the architects, had to attack
or to defend the principles promulgated in the Treatise, according as
these differed from or corresponded with their own. It is in the
writings of these men that the true immortality of Hume as a philosopher
consists. Whether they find in him great truths to acknowledge, or
subtle and plausible errors to attack, they are the vital evidence of
the originality of his work, of the genius that inspired it, and of its
great influence on human thought and action. The other class of critics
are those who, in pamphlets, or works more ambitious but not rising in
real solidity above that fugitive class, or in occasional digressions
from other topics, have endeavoured to prejudice the minds of their
readers against the principles of the Treatise, by exaggeration, or by
the misapplication of their metaphysical doctrines to the proceedings of
every-day life,--a set of literary efforts of quick production and as
quick decay.
To the former class of authors, it is of course not within the scope of
the present writer's ambition to belong, and he sees no occasion to
attempt to imitate the latter. In a work, however, which professes to
give a life of David Hume, it is necessary to say something about the
"Treatise of Human Nature;" and as a preliminary to such an attempt, it
may be well to mark the boundaries within which the writer conceives
that the duty he has assumed calls on him for a description of the work,
neither impugning nor defending any of the opinions it sets forth.
It seems to be right that some attempt should be made to describe the
character and strength of the author's intellect, and the method of its
operations; and to give a view of the fundamental characteristic
principles by which he professes to distinguish his own philosophy from
that of other writers on metaphysical subjects. An attempt should also
be made to tell in what respect Hume has made incidental suggestions
which have either been admitted as new truths in metaphysics, or have,
as original but perhaps fallacious suggestions, afforded to other
thinkers the means of establishing truths. These being the general
objects to be kept in view, there is no intention to take them in any
precise order, or to exhaust them in remarks on this one work. To
attempt an analysis of the work would be out of place. There can be no
more repulsive matter for reading than condensed metaphysics; and
probably there is nothing less instructive than those abridgments,
which, necessarily suppressing the author's discursive arguments, appeal
almost entirely to the memory. To seize on and give a descriptive rather
than an analytical account of the prominent features of the system, will
be the chief aim of these remarks. Moreover, the Treatise bears on
subjects which are nearly all recalled in its author's subsequent works;
and while there are some things in the critical history of Hume's
opinions which may be appropriately viewed in connexion with his first
publication, there are others which it may be more expedient to examine
when he is found reconsidering the subjects in his later works; and
again, others which may be viewed in a general attempt to describe the
extent of his literary achievements.
The Treatise has been already spoken of as embracing two great objects,
metaphysics and ethics; or three, if politics be considered as distinct
from ethics. The great leading principle of the metaphysical department,
and a principle which is never lost sight of in any part of the book,
is, that the materials on which intellect works are the _impressions_
which represent immediate sensation, whether externally as by the
senses, or internally as by the passions, and _ideas_ which are the
faint reflections of these impressions. Thus to speak colloquially, when
I see a picture, or when I am angry with some one, there is an
_impression_; but when I think about this picture in its absence, or
call to recollection my subsided anger, what exists in either case is an
_idea_. Hume looked from words to that which they signified, and he
found that where they signified any thing, it must be found among the
things that either are or have been impressions. The whole varied and
complex system of intellectual machinery he found occupied in the
representation, the combination, or the arrangement of these raw
materials of intellectual matter. If I say I see an object, I give
expression to the fact, that a certain impression is made on the retina
of my eye. If I convey to the person I am speaking to an accurate notion
of what I mean, I awaken in his mind ideas left there by previous
impressions, brought thither by his sense of sight.[70:1] Thus, in the
particular case of the external senses, when they are considered as in
direct communication between the mind and any object, there are
impressions: when the senses are not said to be in communication with
the object, the operations of the mind in connexion with it, are from
vestiges which the impressions have left on the mind; and these vestiges
are called ideas, and are always more faint than the original
impressions themselves. And a material circumstance to be kept in view
at the very threshold of the system is, that there is no specific and
distinct line drawn between impressions and ideas. Their difference is
in degree merely--the former are stronger, the latter weaker. There is
no difference in kind; and there is sometimes doubt whether that which
is supposed to be an impression may not be a vivid idea, and that which
is supposed to be an idea a faint impression.
When Hume examined, with more and more minuteness, the elements of the
materials on which the mind works, he could still find nothing but these
impressions and ideas. Looking at language as a machinery for giving
expression to thought, he thus established for himself a test of its
adaptation to its right use,--a test for discovering whether in any
given case it really served the purpose of language, or was a mere
unmeaning sound. As he found that there was nothing on which thought
could operate but the impressions received through sensation, or the
ideas left by them, he considered that a word which had not a meaning to
be found in either of these things, had no meaning at all. He looked
upon ideas as the goods with which the mind was stored; and on these
stores, as being of the character of impressions, while they were in the
state of coming into the mind. When any one, then, in reasoning, or any
other kind of literature, spoke of any thing as existing, the principle
of his theory was, that this storehouse of idealized impressions should
be searched for one corresponding to the term made use of. If such an
impression were not found, the word was, so far as our human faculties
were concerned, an unmeaning one. Whether there was any existence
corresponding to its meaning, no one could say: all that the sceptical
philosopher could decide was, that, so far as human intellect was put in
possession of materials for thought, it had nothing to warrant it in
saying, that this word represented any thing of which that intellect had
cognizance.
This limitation of the material put at the disposal of the mind, was
largely illustrated in the course of the work; and the illustrations
assumed some such character as this:--Imaginative writers present us
with descriptions of things which never, within our own experience, have
existed,--of things which, we believe, never have had existence. Yet,
however fantastic and heterogeneous may be the representations thus
presented to our notice, there is no one part, of which we form a
conception, that is any thing more than a new arrangement of ideas that
have been left in the mind by impressions deposited there by sensation.
The most extravagant of eastern or classical fictions there find their
elements. If it be a three-headed dog, a winged horse, a fiery dragon,
or a golden palace, that is spoken of, the reader who forms a conception
of the narrative puts it together with the ideas left in his mind by
impressions conveyed through the external senses. If a spectre is said
to be raised, it may be spoken of as not denser than the atmosphere, yet
the attributes that bring a conception of it to the intellect are the
form and proportions of a human being,--expression, action, and
habiliments: all elements the ideas of which the mind has received
through the impressions of the senses. If words were used in a book of
fiction which did not admit of being thus realized by the mind putting
together a corresponding portion of the ideas stored up within
it--supplying, as it were, the described costume from this
wardrobe--then, according to Hume's philosophy, the word would be a
sound without meaning. He maintained a like rule as to books of
philosophy. If the authors used terms which were not thus represented in
the storehouse of the matter of thought and language, they were not
reasoning on what they knew; they were not using words as the signs of
things signified, but printing unmeaning collections of letters, or
uttering senseless sounds.
The system, if it were to be classed under the old metaphysical
divisions, was one of nominalism. Such words as shape, colour, hardness,
roughness, &c. the author of the Treatise could only admit to have a
meaning in as far as they signified ideas in the mind; and these ideas
could only be there as the relics of impressions derived through the
senses. Thus, general terms, such as the categories of Aristotle, could
have no existence except in so far as they represented and called up
particulars. Of the abstract term colour, our notion is derived solely
from the ideas left in the mind by the actual impressions made through
the senses. Heat, cold, and largeness, so far as these words represent
what is really in the mind, have no other foundation.
The application of this system to the mathematics, and to natural
philosophy, was so startling as to afford to some readers almost a
_reductio ad absurdum_. The infinite divisibility of matter was
arraigned by Hume as so far from being a truth, that it was not even
capable of being conceived by the mind, which had never yet received any
impressions through the senses corresponding to the expression. Every
man had seen matter divided--some into smaller fragments than others;
but where our ideas, derived from actual experiment, stopped in
minuteness of division, the conception of divisibility stopped also. The
truth of geometrical demonstration, as applicable to practice, he did
not deny; but he maintained, or rather seemed to maintain, for his
reasoning here is of a highly subtle order, that we have a conception of
these operations only in as far as they concur with really existing
things, or, more properly speaking, with the ideas in the mind conveyed
thither by the senses. Of the point, which has no breadth, depth, or
length; of the straight line, which is deficient in the first and
second, and not in the last of these qualities, he denied that we could
have an idea, unless that idea were just as much the representative of
an actual existence as any other idea is.
Infinity of space was an expression to which he had an objection on
similar grounds; it had no idea corresponding to it lodged in the mind.
Of space finite in various quantities, the mind possessed ideas stored
up from repeated impressions, and by adding these ideas together, more
or less vastness in the conception of finite space was afforded. But any
thing beyond this definitive increase, attested as it was by the senses,
the mind had no means of conceiving. Whatever might be in another
intellectual world, there was no idea corresponding to infinity of space
in the mind of man. It thence followed, that space unoccupied was a
conception of which the mind was incapable, because the impressions
originally conveyed to the mind were the medium through which the
conception of space existed, and where there were no ideas of such
impressions, an aggregate idea of space was wanting. In the same manner
it was held, that it was in a succession of impressions, with ideas
corresponding, that the conception of time consisted, and that without
such a succession, time would be a thing unknown and unconceived. Our
ideas of numbers he found to be but the collected ideas of the
impressions of the units of which the senses have received distinct
impressions; and in confirmation of this he appealed to the distinctness
of our notion of small numbers, which our mind has been accustomed to
find represented by units, and our imperfect conception of those large
numbers, which we have never had presented to us in detail. How readily
we have a notion of six, but how imperfectly the mind receives the
conception of six millions; how clearly we perceive, in units, the
difference between six and twelve, but how imperfect is our notion of
the difference between six millions and twelve millions.[75:1]
All human consciousness being of these two materials, impressions and
ideas, the answer to the question, What knowledge have we of an external
world, resolved itself into this, that there were certain impressions
and ideas which we supposed to relate to it--further we knew not. When
we turn, according to this theory, from the external world, and, looking
into ourselves, ask what certainty we have of separate self-existence,
we find but a string of impressions and ideas, and we have no means of
linking these together into any notion of a continuous existence. Such
is that boasted thing the human intellect, when its elements are
searched out by a rigid application of the sceptical philosophy of Hume.
Not a thing separate and self-existent, which was, and is, and shall
continue; but a succession of mere separate entities, called in one view
impressions, in another ideas.[76:1]
It may make this brief sketch more clear, to notice a circumstance in
the history of philosophy, which, perhaps, serves better in an
incidental manner to mark the boundaries of the field of Hume's inquiry,
than many pages of discursive description. The transcendentalists took
him up as having examined the materials solely, on which pure reason
operates; not pure reason itself. They said that he had examined the
classes of matter which come before the judge, but had omitted to
describe the judge himself, the extent of his jurisdiction, and his
method of enforcing it. They maintained, that all these things, which
with Hume appeared to be the constituent elements of philosophy, were
nothing but the materials on which philosophy works,--that to presume
them to be of service presupposed a reason which could make use of
them,--that Hume himself, while thus speculating and telling us that his
mind consisted but of a string of ideas, left behind by certain
impressions, was himself making use of that pure reason which was in him
before the ideas or impressions existed, and was through that power
adapting the impressions and ideas to use. He characterized his system
as "an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into
moral subjects:" but they said that there was another and a preliminary
matter of inquiry--the faculty, to speak popularly, which suggested what
experiments should be made, and judged of their results.
Hume may be found indirectly lamenting the fate of his own work on
metaphysics, in his remarks on other works of a kindred character; and
in these criticisms we have a clue to the expectations he had formed. In
his well-known rapid criticism on the literature of the epoch of the
civil wars, he says of Hobbes: "No author in that age was more
celebrated both abroad and at home than Hobbes. In our times, he is much
neglected: a lively instance how precarious all reputations founded on
reasoning and philosophy! A pleasant comedy which paints the manners of
the age, and exposes a faithful picture of nature, is a durable work,
and is transmitted to the latest posterity. But a system, whether
physical or metaphysical, owes commonly its success to its novelty; and
is no sooner canvassed with impartiality, than its weakness is
discovered."
Like the majority of literary prophecies dictated by feeling and not by
impartial criticism, this one, whether as it refers to "The Leviathan,"
of which it is ostensibly uttered, or to the "Treatise of Human Nature,"
the fate of which doubtless suggested it, has proved untrue. The
influence of Hobbes has revived, as that of the Treatise remained
undiminished from the time when it was first fully appreciated. And in
both cases their influence has arisen from that element which seems
alone to be capable of giving permanent value to metaphysical thought.
It is not that in either case the fundamental theory of the author is
adopted, as the disciples of old imbibed the system of their masters,
but that each has started some novelties in thought, and, either by
themselves sweeping away prevailing fallacies, or suggesting to others
the means of doing so, have cleared the path of philosophy. As a general
system, the philosophy of Hobbes has been perhaps most completely
rejected at those times when its incidental discoveries and suggestions
made it most serviceable to philosophy, and were the cause of its being
most highly esteemed. "Harm I can do none," says Hobbes, when speaking
of the metaphysicians who preceded him, "though I err not less than
they, for I leave men but as they are, in doubt and dispute." There is
indeed nothing in the later history of metaphysical writing to show that
the triumphs in that department of thought are to stretch beyond the
establishment of incidental truths, the removal of fallacies, and the
suggestion of theories that may teach men to think. The field is a
republic: incidental merit has its praise, and is allowed its
pre-eminence; but no one mind, it may safely be pronounced, holds in it
that monarchical sway which Adam Smith retains over the empire of
political economy. The ancient systems anterior to Christianity allowed
of such empire. The pupil did not follow his master merely in this and
that incidental truth developed, but adopted the system in all its
details and proportions as his system and his creed. In later times it
would probably be found that the most devoted admirers of great writers
on metaphysics do not adopt their opinions in the mass; and it seems
that men must now go elsewhere than to the produce of human reason, for
the grand leading principles of the philosophy of belief and disbelief.
To those who hold that the writings of the great metaphysicians are thus
to be esteemed on account, not of their fundamental principles, but of
the truths they bring out in detail, a new theory is like a new road
through an unfrequented country, valuable, not for itself, but for the
scenery which it opens up to the traveller's eye. The thinker who adopts
this view, often wonders at the small beginnings of philosophical
systems--wonders, perhaps, at the circumstance of Kant having believed
that his own system started into life at one moment as he was reading
Hume's views of Cause and Effect. But the solution is ready at hand. We
feel that the philosopher of Königsberg had in his mind the impulses
that would have driven him into a new path had no Hume preceded him. We
owe it to the Essay on Cause and Effect that it was the starting-point
at which he left the beaten track; but, had it not attracted his
attention, his path would have been as original, though not, perhaps, in
the same direction. And so of Hume himself. If the main outline of his
theory had never occurred to him, he would still have been a great
philosopher; for in some form or other he would have found his way to
those incidental and subsidiary discoveries, which are admitted to have
reality in them by many who repudiate his general theory.
Of all the secondary applications of the leading principle of the
Treatise, none has perhaps exercised so extensive an influence on
philosophy, as this same doctrine of cause and effect. Looking to those
separate phenomena, of which in common language we call the one the
cause of the other, and the other the effect of that cause, he could see
no other connexion between them than that the latter immediately
followed the former. He found that the mind, proceeding on the inductive
system, when it repeatedly saw two phenomena thus conjoined, expected,
when that which had been in use to precede the other made its
appearance, that the other would follow; and he found that by repeated
experiment this expectation might be so far strengthened, that people
were ready to stake their most important temporal interests on the
occurrence of the phenomenon called the effect, when that called the
cause had taken place. But if there were any thing else but this
conjunction, of which a knowledge was demanded--if the unsatisfied
investigator sought for some power in the one phenomenon which enabled
it to be the fabricator of the other--the sceptical reasoner would
answer, that for all he could say to the contrary such a thing might be,
but he had no clue to that knowledge--no impression of any such quality
passed into his intellect through sensation--his mind had no material
committed to it by which the existence or non-existence of any such
thing could be argued.
The vulgar notion of this theory was, that it destroyed all our notions
of regularity and system in the order of nature; that it made no
provision for unseen causes, and contemplated only the application of
the doctrines of cause and effect to things which were palpably seen
following each other. But the inventor of the theory never questioned
the regularity of the operations of nature as established by the
inductive philosophy; he only endeavoured to show how far and within
what limits we could acquire a cognizance of the machinery of that
regularity. He denied not that when the spark was applied, the gunpowder
would ignite, or that when the ball was dropped, it would proceed to the
earth with the accelerated motion of gravitation; but he denied that we
could see any other connexion between the cause and effect in either
case, than that of uniform sequence. When it was scientifically adopted,
the theory was found to be productive of the most important results. The
view that when any effect was observed, that phenomenon which was most
uniform in its precedence was the one entitled to be termed the cause,
was a salutary incentive to close and patient investigation, by laying
before the philosopher the simple, numerical question--what was that
phenomenon which, by the uniformity of its precedence, was entitled to
be termed the cause?[81:1] The test became of the simplest kind; and, if
the experimentalist had at a particular time considered some phenomenon
as a cause,--if the farther progress of patient and unprejudiced inquiry
showed that another, by the occurrence of instances in which it
preceded the effect while the former did not, had a preferable title to
be termed the cause, the mind in its unbiassed estimate of numbers at
once admitted the claim. But when, according to the antagonist
system,[82:1] it became settled that any given phenomenon had in it the
power of bringing into existence another, that power was viewed as a
quality of the object. When things are admitted to have qualities, it is
not easy for the mind at once to assent to their non-existence and to
admit that others have the proper title to these qualities. Analogy, the
great source of fallacies, comes to increase the difficulty, by a
confusion of what are termed the qualities of bodies, and those
endowments with which we invest our fellow-creatures. In this respect
Hume's theory of cause and effect has been of great service to inductive
philosophy.
It was an objection to it that it made no allowance for unseen causes;
but it was part of its author's system, that the uniformity which our
observation teaches us, proceeds unseen in those cases to which our
observation cannot penetrate. It was part of the theory, that where
there is a want of the absolute uniformity in the sequence of two
phenomena, they are not respectively cause and effect. This principle is
of vital importance in physical science. It is a notion with the vulgar,
and one that sometimes perhaps lurks unseen in scientific operations,
that the cause sometimes does not produce its effect by reason of some
failure in the operating power. It is from a vague amplification of this
heresy, that the popular notion of chance is derived. Hume's theory
nips the bud of such a fallacy by denying, whenever there is a break in
the sequence, that the phenomena which have in other instances followed
each other, really are cause and effect. It is perhaps in the
unscientific application of therapeutics, that the popular fallacy is
most widely and most dangerously exemplified. The whole of the
complexity of that wondrous science consists in the immediate causes and
effects being unseen--in the phenomena immediately conjoined not being
ascertained, but in attempts being made to estimate them through the
connexion between those external causes to which the internal causes may
have had the relation of effects, and those external effects of which
these internal effects may have been the causes. The character of unseen
causes was aptly illustrated by Hume himself, from the throwing of a
die. The vulgar mind can see no cause and effect in the operation,
because there is a series of causes and effects, which are hidden from
the sight, in the interior of the box; but the philosopher knows not the
less, that those laws of motion, which induction has established to him
as truths, are taking place; and that there is no turn made by the die,
which is not as much the effect of some cause, as the turning of the
hands of a watch, or the parallel motion in a steam engine.
It is one of the peculiar features of the history of mental philosophy,
that there is scarcely ever a new principle, associated with the name of
a great author, but it is shown that it has been anticipated, in some
oracular sentence, probably by an obscure writer. Joseph Glanvill is
pretty well known as the author of "Saducismus Triumphatus," a
vindication of the belief in witches and apparitions, which must have
been perused by all the curious in this species of lore. Glanvill was
the author of various tracts on biblical subjects, but it was not
generally known that he wrote a book on sceptical philosophy, called
"Scepsis Scientifica, or, Confest Ignorance the Way to Science," until
it was unearthed by the persevering inquiries of Mr. Hallam. In that
book there is the passage, "all knowledge of causes is _deductive_, for
we know none by simple intuition, but through the medium of their
effects; so that we cannot conclude any thing to be the cause of another
but from its continual accompanying it, for the causality itself is
_insensible_."[84:1] This is an addition to the many instances where
writers have almost, as it were by chance, laid down principles, of
which they show, by neglecting to follow them to their legitimate
conclusions, that they have not understood their full meaning; if it do
not rather illustrate the view already noticed, that in metaphysics our
assent is secured, not to general propositions as such, but to their
particular applications; and that it is not in the laying down of first
principles that important truths are exhibited to the world, but in
those subsidiary expositions by which the discoverer endeavours to show
their application.
The subsequent history of Hume's theory of Cause and Effect, is a marked
illustration of the danger of bringing forward as an argument against
theories purely metaphysical, the statement that they are dangerous to
religion. It is difficult to see where there is a difference between
adducing that argument in the sphere of natural philosophy, from which
it has been long scouted by common consent, and bringing it forward as
an answer to the theories of the metaphysician. In either case it is a
threat, which, in the days of Galileo, bore the terror of corporal
punishment, and in the present day carries the threat of unpopularity,
to the person against whom it is used.[86:1] If any one should suppose
that he finds lurking in the speculations of some metaphysical writer,
opinions from which it may be inferred that he is not possessed of the
hopes and consolations of the Christian, humanity to the unhappy author
should suggest that he ought rather to be pitied than condemned, and
respect for the religious feelings of others should teach that there is
no occasion to endeavour, by a laborious pleading, to demonstrate that a
man who has said nothing against religion is in reality an enemy to
Christianity. They are surely no enlightened friends to religion, who
maintain that the suppression of inquiry as to the material or the
immaterial world, is favourable to the cause of revealed truth. The
blasphemer who raises his voice offensively and contentiously against
what his fellow citizens hold sacred, invokes the public wrath, and is
no just object of sympathy. The extent of his punishment is regretted
only when, by its vindictive excess, it is liable to excite retaliatory
attacks from the same quarter. But the speculative philosopher, who does
not directly interfere with the religion of his neighbours, should be
left to the peaceful pursuit of his inquiries; and those who, instead of
meeting him by fair argument, cry out irreligion, and call in the mob to
their aid, should reflect first, whether it is absolutely certain that
they are right in their conclusion, that his inquiries, if carried out,
would be inimical to religion--whether some mind more acute and
philosophical than their own, may not either finally confute the
sceptical philosopher's argument, or prove that it is not inimical to
religion; and secondly, whether they are not likely to be themselves the
greatest foes to religion, by holding that it requires such defence, and
the practical blasphemers, by proclaiming that religion is in danger?
Kant, the most illustrious opponent of Hume, in allusion to those who
have appealed against him to our religious feelings, asks, what the man
is doing that we should meddle with him; says he is but trying the
strength of human reason, and bids us leave him to combat with those who
are giving him specimens of the fabric on which to try his skill--tells
us to wait and see who will produce one too strong to be broken to
pieces--and not cry treason, and appeal to the angry multitude, who are
strangers to these refined reasonings, to rush in. Shall we ask reason
to give us lights, and prescribe beforehand what they are to show
us?[88:1] "The observation of human blindness and weakness," says Hume
himself, "is the result of all philosophy, and meets us at every turn,
in spite of our endeavours to elude or avoid it." A solemn saying, and
characteristic of one who has done more than any other man to show the
feebleness of poor human reason, and to teach man that he is not all
sufficient to himself.
Those revelations in astronomy and geology, the first glimmerings of
which made the timid if not doubting friends of their cause tremble,
have enlarged year by year in rapid progression; but revealed religion
is not less firm on her throne; and many of those who held that Hume's
theory of Cause and Effect was inimical to revelation, lived to see how
startlingly that argument could be turned against themselves. It has
been well observed by Dugald Stewart, that this theory is the most
effectual confutation of the gloomy materialism of Spinoza, "as it lays
the axe to the very root from which Spinozism springs." "The cardinal
principle," he says, "on which the whole of that system turns is, that
all events, physical and moral, are _necessarily_ linked together as
causes and effects; from which principle all the most alarming
conclusions adopted by Spinoza follow as unavoidable and manifest
corollaries. But if it be true, as Mr. Hume contends, and as most
philosophers now admit, that physical causes and effects are known to us
merely as _antecedents_ and _consequents_; still more if it be true that
the word _necessity_, as employed in this discussion, is altogether
unmeaning and insignificant, the whole system of Spinoza is nothing
better than a rope of sand, and the very proposition which it professes
to demonstrate is incomprehensible by our faculties."[89:1]
It will be remembered how signally, in the question in the General
Assembly of the Church of Scotland, as to Sir John Leslie's
professorship, the argument of irreligion was retaliated; and it was
shown that, in the theory of an existing machinery in nature enabling
the universe to proceed in its regular course, the cause having within
it the adequate power for producing its effect, the omnipresence of a
Deity was dispensed with, and there was substituted for the
all-pervading influence of a superior wisdom, a mere material machine,
having within itself the elements of its own regular motion. Thus, in
instances where writers have claimed credit for having aided the cause
of religion by carrying out the principles of natural theology, this
merit has in many cases, and among certain classes of devout religious
thinkers, been sternly denied them; and it has been said that their
labours are rather adverse than favourable to revealed religion,
because, through their tendency to make people believe in an established
order in nature, by which causes produce their effects according to a
fixed system, they have the effect of making mankind forget the
existence of a revealed, omnipresent Deity, whose all-competent
superintendence regulates the world, and they supply a religion
independent of the religion of revelation.
Perhaps in this little history we may find an illustration of the view,
that the greatest service which the Treatise has done to philosophy is
that purely incidental one of teaching human reason its own weakness--of
showing how easily the noblest fabric of human thought may be
undermined, by a destroying agency of power not greater than that of the
constructive genius which has raised it. In this respect it has done to
philosophy the invaluable service of teaching philosophers their own
fallibility. In all the departments of thought, and not only in the
world of thought but in that of action, the spirit of human
infallibility is the greatest obstacle to truth and goodness. Whether it
appear to protect a system which the thinker has framed for himself, or
assume the more modest shape of maintaining, that among conflicting
systems he has made choice of that which is absolutely and certainly
right, while all others which in any way differ from it are as
absolutely and certainly wrong; this offspring of the pride of human
intellect is an equally dangerous enemy of human improvement; and to
have contributed to its downfal is of itself no small achievement for
one mind.
Such are a few remarks on the matter of the first part of the "Treatise
of Human Nature"--given not by any means as an analysis of the doctrines
there taught, but merely as an attempt to characterize them by their
prominent features. It will naturally be expected that a similar attempt
should be made to characterize the form in which these doctrines were
promulgated. As to the style of the Treatise, it possesses the
clearness, flexibility, and simplicity that distinguish the maturity of
its author's literary career, though not quite in all the perfection in
which they afterwards attended his pen. There are occasional
Scoticisms--a defect which he took infinite pains to cure, but of which
he was never entirely rid. He uses a few obsolete and now harsh sounding
forms of expression, from which he afterwards abstained: such as the
elliptical combination 'tis, for it is. Here, and in the first editions
of his History, he frequently neglects the increment on the perfect
tense, as by saying, "I have forgot," instead of, I have forgotten; "I
have wrote," instead of I have written.
The Treatise has that happy equality of flight, which distinguishes the
author's maturer productions. There is no attempt to soar, and none of
those ambitious inequalities which often deform the works of young
authors. His imagination and language seem indeed to have been kept
permanently chained down by the character of his inquiries. His constant
aim is to make his meaning clear; and in the subtleties of a new and
intricate system of metaphysics, he seems to have felt that there lay
upon him so heavy a responsibility to make use on all occasions of the
clearest and simplest words, that any flight of imagination or eloquence
would be a dangerous experiment.
There is a corresponding absence of pedantic ornament. A young writer
who has read much, is generally more anxious to show his learning and
information than his own power of thought. With many the defect lasts
through maturer years, and they write as if to find a good thing in some
unknown author, were more meritorious than to have invented it.
Montesquieu, whom Hume has been accused of imitating, carried this
defect to a vice, and often distorted the order of his reasoning, that
he might introduce an allusion to something discovered in the course of
his peculiar learning. That Hume had read much in philosophy before he
undertook his great work, cannot be doubted, but he does not drag his
readers through the minutiæ of his studies, and is content with giving
them results. In many respects, indeed, one would have desired to know
more of his appreciation of his predecessors. The name of Aristotle is,
it is believed, not once mentioned in the work, and there are only some
indirect allusions to him, and these not very respectful, in casual
remarks on the opinions of the Peripatetics. One would have expected
from Hume a kindred sympathy with the great master of intellectual
philosophy, and a respectful appreciation of one whose inquiries were
conducted with a like acute severity, but whose mind took so much more
wide and comprehensive a grasp of the sources of human knowledge.
It has been often observed, that a person so original in his opinions as
Hume, ought to have made a new nomenclature for the new things which he
taught. But he has no philosophical nomenclature; he appears indeed to
have despised that useful instrument of method, and means of
communicating clear ideas to learners. This want has prevented his
system from being clearly and fully learned by the student, while it has
at the same time probably made his works less repulsive to the general
reader. He seems indeed hardly to have been conscious of the advantage
to all philosophy, of uniformity of expression. Using the words "force,"
"vivacity," "solidity," "firmness," and "steadiness," all with the same
meaning, he speaks of this usage as a "variety of terms which may seem
so unphilosophical;" and then observes, more in the style of one who is
tired of philosophical precision than of a philosopher, "Provided we
agree about the thing, 'tis needless to dispute about the terms."
This is a kindred defect to that absence of method which has been
already taken notice of. A fixed nomenclature is a beacon against
repetition and discursiveness. But the Treatise has no pretension to be
a work of which he who omits paying attention to any part, thereby drops
a link in a chain, the loss of which will make the whole appear broken
and inconsistent. There are, it is true, places where the essential
parts of the author's philosophy are developed, the omission of which
would render that which follows hard to be understood, but in general
each department of the work is intelligible in itself. Its author
appears to have composed it in separate fragments; holding in view,
while he was writing each part, the general principle of his theory, but
not taking it for granted that the reader is so far master of that
principle, as not to require it to be generally explained in connexion
with the particular matter under consideration. He seems indeed rather
desirous to dwell on it, as something that the reader may have seen in
the earlier part of the work, but may have neglected to keep in his mind
while he reads the other parts. Perhaps the true model of every
philosophical work is to be found in the usual systems of geometry,
where, whatever is once proposed and proved, is held a fixed part of
knowledge, and is never repeated; but as far as psychological reasoning
is from the certainty of geometrical, so distant perhaps, will ever be
the precision of its method from that of geometry.
It may safely be pronounced, that no book of its age presents itself to
us at this day, more completely free from exploded opinions in the
physical sciences. With the exception perhaps of occasional allusions to
"animal spirits," as a moving influence in the human body, the author's
careful sifting sceptical mind seems, without having practically tested
them, to have turned away from whatever doctrines were afterwards
destined to fall before the test of experiment and induction. It was not
that he was so much of a natural philosopher himself as to be able to
test their truth or falsehood, but that with a wholesome jealousy,
characteristic of the mind in which the Disquisition on Miracles was
working itself into shape, he avoided them as things neither coming
within the scope of his own analysis, nor bearing the marks of having
been satisfactorily established by those whose more peculiar province it
was to investigate their claims to be believed. At a later date, his
friend D'Alembert admitted judicial astrology and alchemy as branches of
natural philosophy in his "Systême Figuré des Connoissances Humaines."
Cudworth, and even the scrutinizing Locke, dealt gravely with matters
doomed afterwards to be ranked among popular superstitions, and Sir
Thomas Browne, in some respects a sceptic, eloquently defended more
"vulgar errors" than he exposed. Hobbes was, in the midst of the darkest
scepticism, a practical believer in the actual presence of the spirits
of the air; and Johnson, whose name, however, it may scarcely be fair to
class in this list, as he did not profess, except for conversational
triumph, to be a reducer and demolisher of unfounded beliefs, along
with his partial admission of the existence of spectres, has left behind
him many dogmatic announcements of physical doctrines, which the
progress of science has now long buried under its newer systems.
It is by no means maintained that Hume was beyond his age--or even on a
par with its scientific ornaments, in physical knowledge; but merely
that he showed a judicious caution in distinguishing, in his published
work, those parts of physical philosophy which had been admitted within
the bounds of true and permanent science, from those which were still in
a state of mere hypothesis. His knowledge of physical science was
probably not very extensive. A small portion of a collection of his
notes on subjects that attracted his attention bear on this subject. The
collection from which they are taken will be noticed in the next
chapter; but as those which are set apart from the others, and are
headed "Natural Philosophy," seem to have been written at an earlier
period than the rest of the collection, and are appropriate to the
present subject, they are here given. It is not expected that they will
awaken in the natural philosopher any great respect for the extent of
Hume's inquiries in this department of knowledge.
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY.
"A ship sails always swiftest when her sides yield a little.
"Two pieces of timber, resting upon one another, will bear as much as
both of them laid across at the distance of their opening.
"Calcined antimony more heavy than before.[95:1]
"A proof that natural philosophy has no truth in it, is, that it has
only succeeded in things remote, as the heavenly bodies; or minute, as
light.
"'Tis probable that mineral waters are not formed by running over beds
of minerals, but by imbibing the vapours which form these minerals,
since we cannot make mineral waters with all the same qualities.
"Hot mineral waters come not a-boiling sooner than cold water.
"Hot iron put into cold water soon cools, but becomes hot again.
"There falls usually at Paris, in June, July, and August, as much rain
as in the other nine months.
"This seems to be a strong presumption against medicines, that they are
mostly disagreeable, and out of the common use of life. For the weak and
uncertain operation of the common food, &c. is well known by experience.
These others are the better objects of quackery."
The system of philosophy to which the foregoing remarks apply, was
published when its author was twenty-six years old, and he completed it
in voluntary exile, and in that isolation from the counsel and sympathy
of early friends, which is implied by a residence in an obscure spot in
a foreign country. While he was framing his metaphysical theory, Hume
appears to have permitted no confidential adviser to have access to the
workings of his inventive genius; and as little did he take for granted
any of the reasonings and opinions of the illustrious dead, as seek
counsel of the living. Nowhere is there a work of genius more completely
authenticated, as the produce of the solitary labour of one mind; and
when we reflect on the boldness and greatness of the undertaking, we
have a picture of self-reliance calculated to inspire both awe and
respect. The system seems to be characteristic of a lonely mind--of one
which, though it had no enmity with its fellows, had yet little sympathy
with them. It has few of the features that characterize a partaker in
the ordinary hopes and fears, the joys and sorrows, of humanity; little
to give impulse to the excitement of the enthusiast; nothing to dry the
tear of the mourner. It exposes to poor human reason her own weakness
and nakedness, and supplies her with no extrinsic support or protection.
Such a work, coming from a man at the time of life when our sympathies
with the world are strongest, and our anticipations brightest, would
seem to indicate a mind rendered callous by hardship and disappointment.
But it was not so with Hume. His coldness and isolation were in his
theories alone; as a man he was frank, warm, and friendly. But the same
impulses which gave him resolution to adopt so bold a step, seem at the
same time to have armed him with a hard contempt for the opinions of the
rest of mankind. Hence, though his philosophy is sceptical, his manner
is frequently dogmatical, even to intolerance; and while illustrating
the feebleness of all human reasoning, he seems as if he felt an innate
infallibility in his own. He afterwards regretted this peculiarity; and
in a letter, written apparently at an advanced period of life, we find
him deprecating not only the tone of the Inquiry, but many of its
opinions. He says:--
"Allow me to tell you, that I never asserted so absurd a proposition as
_that any thing might arise without a cause_. I only maintained that our
certainty of the falsehood of that proposition proceeded neither from
intuition nor demonstration, but from another source. _That Cæsar
existed_, that there is such an island as Sicily,--for these
propositions, I affirm, we have no demonstration nor intuitive
proof,--would you infer that I deny their _truth_, or even their
certainty? There are many different kinds of certainty; and some of them
as satisfactory to the mind, though perhaps not so regular as the
demonstrative kind.
"Where a man of sense mistakes my meaning, I own I am angry; but it is
only with myself, for having expressed my meaning so ill, as to have
given occasion to the mistake.
"That you may see I would no way scruple of owning my mistakes in
argument, I shall acknowledge (what is infinitely more material) a very
great mistake in conduct, viz. my publishing at all the 'Treatise of
Human Nature,' a book which pretended to innovate in all the sublimest
paths of philosophy, and which I composed before I was five-and-twenty;
above all, the positive air which prevails in that book, and which may
be imputed to the ardour of youth, so much displeases me, that I have
not patience to review it. But what success the same doctrines, better
illustrated and expressed, may meet with, _adhuc sub judice lis est_.
The arguments have been laid before the world, and by some philosophical
minds have been attended to. I am willing to be instructed by the
public; though human life is so short, that I despair of ever seeing the
decision. I wish I had always confined myself to the more easy parts of
erudition; but you will excuse me from submitting to a proverbial
decision, let it even be in Greek."[98:1]
The reader, who passes from the first book of the Treatise, on "the
Understanding," to the second, on "the Passions," will, in many
instances, feel like one who is awakened from a dream, or as if, after
penetrating in solitude and darkness into the unseen world of thought,
he had come forth to the cheerful company of mankind, and were holding
converse with a shrewd and penetrating observer of the passing world. As
Hume was never totally insensible to the elements of social enjoyment,
but had indeed an ample sympathy with the joys and sorrows of his fellow
men, he appears occasionally, in the midst of his most subtle
speculations, to experience a desire to burst from the dark prison of
solitude, into which he had voluntarily immured himself, and bask in the
sunshine of the world. "Man," he says, in his Treatise, "is the creature
of the universe who has the most ardent desire of society, and is fitted
for it by the most advantages. We can form no wish which has not a
reference to society. A perfect solitude is, perhaps, the greatest
punishment we can suffer. Every pleasure languishes when enjoyed apart
from company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable." In a
remarkable passage, in which, after having long proceeded in enthusiasm
with his solitary labours, he seems to have stopped for a moment, and
recalling within himself the feelings and sympathies of an ordinary man,
to have reflected on the scope and tendency of the system in which he
was involving himself, he thus expresses himself, regarding its gloomy
tendency, and the effect it has in destroying, in the mind of its
fabricator, those stays of satisfactory belief in which it is so
comfortable for the wearied intellect to find a resting-place:--
Before I launch out into those immense depths of philosophy
which lie before me, I find myself inclined to stop a moment
in my present station, and to ponder that voyage which I have
undertaken, and which undoubtedly requires the utmost art and
industry to be brought to a happy conclusion. Methinks I am
like a man, who, having struck on many shoals, and having
narrowly escaped shipwreck in passing a small frith, has yet
the temerity to put out to sea in the same leaky
weather-beaten vessel, and even carries his ambition so far as
to think of compassing the globe under these disadvantageous
circumstances. My memory of past errors and perplexities makes
me diffident for the future. The wretched condition, weakness,
and disorder of the faculties, I must employ in my inquiries,
increase my apprehensions. And the impossibility of amending
or correcting these faculties, reduces me almost to despair,
and makes me resolve to perish on the barren rock, on which I
am at present, rather than venture myself upon that boundless
ocean which runs out into immensity. This sudden view of my
danger strikes me with melancholy; and, as 'tis usual for that
passion, above all others, to indulge itself, I cannot forbear
feeding my despair with all those desponding reflections which
the present subject furnishes me with in such abundance.
I am first affrighted and confounded with that forlorn
solitude in which I am placed in my philosophy, and fancy
myself some strange uncouth monster, who, not being able to
mingle and unite in society, has been expelled all human
commerce, and left utterly abandoned and disconsolate. Fain
would I run into the crowd for shelter and warmth, but cannot
prevail with myself to mix with such deformity. I call upon
others to join me, in order to make a company apart, but no
one will hearken to me. Every one keeps at a distance, and
dreads that storm which beats upon me from every side. I have
exposed myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians,
mathematicians, and even theologians; and can I wonder at the
insults I must suffer? I have declared my disapprobation of
their systems; and can I be surprised if they should express a
hatred of mine and of my person? When I look abroad, I foresee
on every side dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny, and
detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but
doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and
contradict me; though such is my weakness, that I feel all my
opinions loosen and fall of themselves, when unsupported by
the approbation of others. Every step I take is with
hesitation, and every new reflection makes me dread an error
and absurdity in my reasoning.
For with what confidence can I venture upon such bold
enterprises, when, beside those numberless infirmities
peculiar to myself, I find so many which are common to human
nature? Can I be sure that, in leaving all established
opinions, I am following truth? and by what criterion shall I
distinguish her, even if fortune should at last guide me on
her footsteps? After the most accurate and exact of my
reasonings, I can give no reason why I should assent to it,
and feel nothing but a _strong_ propensity to consider objects
_strongly_ in that view under which they appear to me.[101:1]
Occasionally, seduced by some impulse of playful candour, we find him
giving us admission as it were into the chamber of his thoughts, and
desiring that some one would drag him into the common circle of the
world. When there, he consents for a short time to comport himself as a
man, is social and sympathetic with his kind, and pleased with what is
passing around; when anon the ambition which had prompted his solitary
musings stirs his soul, tells him that in active life and the world at
large, the sphere of his true greatness is not placed, and prompts him
to reimprison himself, and pursue the great aim of his existence.
But what have I here said, that reflections very refined and
metaphysical have little or no influence upon us? This opinion
I can scarce forbear retracting, and condemning from my
present feeling and experience. The _intense_ view of these
manifold contradictions and imperfections in human reason has
so wrought upon me, and heated my brain, that I am ready to
reject all belief and reasoning, and can look upon no opinion
even as more probable or likely than another. Where am I, or
what? From what causes do I derive my existence, and to what
condition shall I return? Whose favour shall I court, and
whose anger must I dread? What beings surround me? and on whom
have I any influence, or who have any influence on me? I am
confounded with all these questions, and begin to fancy myself
in the most deplorable condition imaginable, environed with
the deepest darkness, and utterly deprived of the use of every
member and faculty.
Most fortunately it happens, that since Reason is incapable of
dispelling these clouds, Nature herself suffices to that
purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and
delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some
avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which
obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of
backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and
when, after three or four hours' amusement, I would return to
these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and
ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them
any farther.
Here, then, I find myself absolutely and necessarily
determined to live, and talk, and act like other people in the
common affairs of life. But notwithstanding that my natural
propensity, and the course of my animal spirits and passions
reduce me to this indolent belief in the general maxims of the
world, I still feel such remains of my former disposition,
that I am ready to throw all my books and papers into the
fire, and resolve never more to renounce the pleasures of life
for the sake of reasoning and philosophy. For those are my
sentiments in that splenetic humour which governs me at
present. I may, nay I must yield to the current of nature, in
submitting to my senses and understanding; and in this blind
submission I show most perfectly my sceptical disposition and
principles. But does it follow that I must strive against the
current of nature, which leads me to indolence and pleasure;
that I must seclude myself, in some measure, from the commerce
and society of men, which is so agreeable; and that I must
torture my brain with subtilties and sophistries, at the very
time that I cannot satisfy myself concerning the
reasonableness of so painful an application, nor have any
tolerable prospect of arriving by its means at truth and
certainty? Under what obligation do I lie of making such an
abuse of time? And to what end can it serve, either for the
service of mankind, or for my own private interest? No: if I
must be a fool, as all those who reason or believe any thing
_certainly_ are, my follies shall at least be natural and
agreeable. Where I strive against my inclination, I shall have
a good reason for my resistance; and will no more be led
a-wandering into such dreary solitudes, and rough passages, as
I have hitherto met with.
These are the sentiments of my spleen and indolence; and
indeed I must confess, that philosophy has nothing to oppose
to them, and expects a victory more from the returns of a
serious good-humoured disposition, than from the force of
reason and conviction. In all the incidents of life, we ought
still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe that fire
warms, or water refreshes, 'tis only because it costs us too
much pains to think otherwise. Nay, if we are philosophers, it
ought only to be upon sceptical principles, and from an
inclination which we feel to the employing ourselves after
that manner. Where reason is lively, and mixes itself with
some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does
not, it never can have any title to operate upon us.
At the time, therefore, that I am tired with amusement and
company, and have indulged a _reverie_ in my chamber, or in a
solitary walk by a river side, I feel my mind all collected
within itself, and am naturally _inclined_ to carry my view
into all those subjects, about which I have met with so many
disputes in the course of my reading and conversation. I
cannot forbear having a curiosity to be acquainted with the
principles of moral good and evil, the nature and foundation
of government, and the cause of those several passions and
inclinations which actuate and govern me. I am uneasy to think
I approve of one object, and disapprove of another; call one
thing beautiful, and another deformed; decide concerning truth
and falsehood, reason and folly, without knowing upon what
principles I proceed. I am concerned for the condition of the
learned world, which lies under such a deplorable ignorance in
all these particulars. I feel an ambition to arise in me of
contributing to the instruction of mankind, and of acquiring a
name by my inventions and discoveries. These sentiments spring
up naturally in my present disposition; and should I
endeavour to banish them, by attaching myself to any other
business or diversion, I _feel_ I should be a loser in point
of pleasure; and this is the origin of my philosophy.[104:1]
The acuteness which the solitary metaphysician brought to his aid when
he chose to contemplate mankind, is not the least interesting feature in
his book. That he could have seen much of men, since his life had been
but brief and his converse with books great, is not probable; yet
Chesterfield and Rochefoucauld did not observe men more clearly and
truly, though they may have done so more extensively. The following
sketch of the mental features of a vain man, would not have been
unworthy of Theophrastus.
Every thing belonging to a vain man is the best that is any
where to be found. His houses, equipage, furniture, clothes,
horses, hounds, excel all others in his conceit; and 'tis easy
to observe, that from the least advantage in any of these, he
draws a new subject of pride and vanity. His wine, if you'll
believe him, has a finer flavour than any other; his cookery
is more exquisite; his table more orderly; his servant more
expert; the air in which he lives more healthful; the soil he
cultivates more fertile; his fruits ripen earlier, and to
greater perfection; such a thing is remarkable for its
novelty; such another for its antiquity: this is the
workmanship of a famous artist; that belonged to such a prince
or great man; all objects, in a word, that are useful,
beautiful, or surprising, or are related to such, may, by
means of property, give rise to this passion. These agree in
giving pleasure, and agree in nothing else. This alone is
common to them, and therefore must be the quality that
produces the passion, which is their common effect.[104:2]
FOOTNOTES:
[48:1] A literary friend suggests that Hume has a quiet allusion to the
intellectual faculties of the people of Bristol, in the description of
James Naylor's attempts to personify our Saviour, where it is said, "he
entered Bristol mounted on a horse--I suppose from the difficulty in
that place of finding an ass." Retrospect of manners &c., at the end of
the History of the Commonwealth.
[52:1] It is not improbable that the person here alluded to is the Abbé
Pluche, a native of Rheims, the greatest literary ornament of that city,
and one who filled no small place in the lettered aristocracy of France,
where he held in many respects the position which Paley occupied in
England. He filled successively the chairs of Humanity and Rhetoric, in
the University of Rheims. His promotion in the Church was checked by his
partiality for Jansenism. He had the rare merit of uniting to a firm
belief in the great truths of Christianity a wide and full toleration
for the conscientious opinions of others; and he enjoyed, what is no
less rarely possessed by those who meddle in theological disputes, the
good opinion of his opponents. He was a great scholar, and wrote some
works on etymological and archæological subjects; but he is chiefly
known for his writings on natural theology, celebrated for their clear
and animated enunciation of the harmonies of nature, and not only
popular in their own country, but translated into most of the European
languages. His "Spectacle de la Nature," written in a series of
dialogues, was sketched while he acted as instructor to the son of Lord
Stafford; and the master and pupil, with the father and mother of the
latter, are the interlocutors. One of its main objects is, by tracing
effects in the operations of nature to their causes, to prove and
illustrate the beneficence and wisdom of the Deity. This work has been a
treasure to many an English schoolboy, in its well-known translation,
with the title, "Nature Displayed." An answer by Pluche to some _esprits
forts_, who wondered why a philosopher could believe so much, has been
preserved by his contemporaries: "It is more reasonable," he said, "to
believe in the dictates of the Supreme Being than to follow the feeble
lights of a reason bounded in its operations and subject to error."
It must be granted that what Hume calls the association of contrariety
has in some measure caused this digression, and that the Abbé Pluche
would not have been so amply discussed as the possible learned man that
Hume had an introduction to, had there not been so much that is common
in the subjects treated of by both, and so much that is contrasted in
the mode of treatment. Pluche was an opponent of Des Cartes, and thus a
name far greater than his, and as many will hold greater than Hume's, is
introduced into the circle of these local associations.
[53:1] The following passage in a recent work, Mrs. Shelley's "Rambles
in Germany and Italy," seems appropriate to this observation:--
"By this time I became aware of a truth which had dawned on me before,
that the French common people have lost much of that grace of manner
which once distinguished them above all other people. More courteous
than the Italians they could not be; but, while their manners were more
artificial, they were more playful and winning. All this has changed. I
did not remark the alteration so much with regard to myself, as in their
mode of speaking to one another. The 'Madame,' and 'Monsieur,' with
which stable boys, and old beggar women, used to address each other with
the deference of courtiers, has vanished. No trace of it is to be found
in France; a shadow faintly exists among the Parisian shopkeepers when
speaking to their customers, but only there is the traditional
phraseology still used: The courteous accent, the soft manner, erst so
charming, exists no longer. I speak of a thing known and acknowledged by
the French themselves. . . . . . Their phraseology, once so delicately
and even to us more straightforward people, amusingly deferential (not
to superiors only, but toward one another,) is become blunt, and almost
rude. The French allege several causes for this change, which they date
from the Revolution of 1830: some say it arises from every citizen
turning out as one of the national guard in his turn, so that they all
get a _ton de garnison_: others attribute it to their imitation of the
English. Of course, in the times of the _ancien regime_, the courtly
tone found an echo and reflexion, from the royal anti-chambers down to
the very ends of the kingdom. This has faded by degrees, till the
Revolution of 1830 gave it the _coup-de-grâce_."
[55:1] Sic in MS.
[56:1] This word is nearly obliterated. The passage appears to be a sort
of caricatured pompous politeness.
[56:2] MS. R.S.E.
[57:1] Dated 7th January, 1762, and written in relation to a copy of
Campbell's "Dissertation on Miracles," sent to him by Dr. Blair.
[58:1] It may be said, that, as Mackenzie's description of Hume's
character, this subject belongs to a later period of his life--the time
when Mackenzie was acquainted with him. But Mackenzie intended it to be
a true view of Hume's character as a young man; and it appears that it
properly belongs to that chronological period to which its author
assigned it.
[63:1] See above, p. 50. These reasonings appeared probably in a shape
more consonant with the author's later views in the "Philosophical
Essays," 1748.
[64:1] Tytler, Life of Kames, i. 84.
[65:1] Tytler, Life of Kames, i. 88.
[66:1] Original MS. R.S.E.
[67:1] According to some acceptations of the word metaphysical, which
seem to make it synonymous with transcendental, and referable solely to
the operations of pure reason, to the rejection of whatever is founded
on experiment, none of Hume's works are properly metaphysical; and by
the very foundation he has given to his philosophy, he has made it
empirical and consequently not metaphysical. The word metaphysical is,
however, here used in its ordinary, and, as it may be termed, popular
acceptation, and as applicable to any attempt to analyze mind or
describe its elements,--a subject in relation to which the word ontology
is also sometimes used.
[70:1] The term "ideas," in the philosophical nomenclature of Hume, is
thus used in a sense quite distinct from its previous current
acceptations, and as different from its vernacular use by Plato, in
reference to the archetypes of all the empirical objects of thought, as
from its employment by Locke, who used it to express "whatsoever is the
object of the understanding when a man thinks."
[75:1] "If we take as the utmost bounds of this system the orbit Uranus,
we shall find that it occupies a portion of space not less than three
thousand six hundred millions of miles in extent. The mind fails to form
an exact notion of a portion of space so immense; but some faint idea of
it may be obtained from the fact, that, if the swiftest race-horse ever
known, had begun to traverse it at full speed, at the time of the birth
of Moses, he could only as yet have accomplished half his
journey."--Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, pp. 1-2. Here an
attempt is made to give a conception of abstract numbers, by calling up
in the mind the ideas deposited there from actual impressions. Hume had,
in the application of his theory to mathematics, to struggle with the
fact that no truths had a clearer and more distinct existence in the
mind than the abstract truths of the exact sciences; and feeling the
difficulty he thus had to encounter, he did not recur in his subsequent
works to this part of the sceptical theory. Kant seems to have filled up
the blank for him, by treating those truths as synthetical intuitions
anterior to experience in their abstract existence, though depending on
experience in the knowledge of their concrete application; but it may be
observed, that at the beginning of sect. 4. of his Inquiry, Hume seems
to have nearly anticipated some such principle.
[76:1] "If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that
impression must continue invariably the same, through the whole course
of our lives: since self is supposed to exist after that manner. But
there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief
and joy, passions and sensations, succeed each other, and never all
exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these
impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is derived;
and consequently there is no such idea. . . . . For my part, when
I enter most intimately into what I call _myself_, I always stumble
on some perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love
or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch _myself_ at any time
without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the
perception."--Treatise, B. i. p. iv. sect. 6.
[81:1] One cannot escape a feeling of astonishment on finding so great a
philosopher as Reid saying, (Active Powers, ch. ix.) that on this theory
day and night might be called mutually the cause and effect of each
other, on account of their mutual sequence: as if the observation of
those who have gone so far in civilisation as just to have seen ignited
bodies, had not data for concluding that that phenomenon which most
uniformly preceded the ramification of rays of light, was the appearance
of a luminous body.
[82:1] This refers to the notion, which may now be termed obsolete, at
least in philosophy, of an inherent power in the cause to produce the
effect--not to Kant's theory, which does not appear to be inconsistent
with the scientific application of Hume's.
[84:1] "Scepsis Scientifica; or, Confest Ignorance the Way to Science,
in an essay of the vanity of dogmatizing and confident opinion." By
Joseph Glanvill, M.A. 1665, 4to, p. 142. See this coincidence commented
on in the _Penny Cyclopædia_, art. Scepticism. The style of Glanvill's
work, in its rich variety of logical imagery and its powerful use of
antithesis, is formed on that of Sir Thomas Browne, whose "Vulgar
Errors" had been first published fifteen years earlier. That one who
wrote a book so full of wisdom--so bold, original, and firm in its
attacks on received fallacies, should also have been the champion of
belief in witchcraft, in which his prototype, Sir Thomas Browne, was
also a believer, is one of those inconsistencies in poor human nature,
which elicit much wonder, but no explanation. The following passages
from this curious and rare book are offered for the reader's
amusement:--
"We conclude many things impossibilities, which yet are easie
_feasables_. For by an unadvised transiliency, leaping from the effect
to its remotest cause, we observe not the connexion through the
interposal of more immediate causalities, which yet at last bring the
extremes together without a miracle. And hereupon we hastily conclude
that _impossible_ which we see not in the proximate capacity of its
_efficient_."--pp. 83-84.
"From this last-noted head ariseth that other of _joyning causes with
irrelevant effects_, which either refer not at all unto them, or in a
remoter capacity. Hence the Indian conceived so grossly of the _letter_
that discovered his theft; and that other who thought the watch an
_animal_. From hence grew the impostures of _charmes_ and _amulets_, and
other insignificant ceremonies; which to this day impose upon common
belief, as they did of old upon the _barbarism_ of the uncultivate
_heathen_. Thus effects unusual, whose causes run under ground, and are
more remote from ordinary discernment, are noted in the book of _vulgar
opinion_ with _digitus Deî_, or _Dæmonis_; though they owe no other
dependence to the _first_ than what is common to the whole _syntax_ of
beings, nor yet any more to the _second_ than what is given it by the
imagination of those unqualified judges. Thus, every unwonted _meteor_
is portentous; and the appearance of any unobserved _star_, some divine
_prognostick_. Antiquity thought _thunder_ the immediate voyce of
_Jupiter_, and impleaded them of impiety that referred it to natural
causalities. Neither can there happen a _storm_ at this remove from
_antique_ ignorance, but the multitude will have the _Devil_ in
it."--pp. 84-85.
_On the Influence of Education._
"We judge all things by our _anticipations_; and condemn or applaud
them, as they agree or differ from our _first receptions_. One country
laughs at the _laws_, _customs_, and _opinions_ of another as absurd and
ridiculous; and the other is as charitable to them in its conceit of
theirs."--pp. 93-94.
"Thus, like the hermite, we think the sun shines nowhere but in our
cell, and all the world to be darkness but ourselves. We judge truth to
be circumscribed by the confines of our belief, and the doctrines we
were brought up in; and, with as ill manners as those of _China_, repute
all the rest of the world _monoculous_. So that, what some astrologers
say of our _fortunes_ and the passages of our lives, may, by the
allowance of a metaphor, be said of our _opinions_--that they are
written in our _stars_, being to the most as fatal as those involuntary
occurrences, and as little in their power as the _placits_ of _destiny_.
We are bound to our country's _opinions_ as to its _laws_; and an
accustomed assent is tantamount to an infallible conclusion. He that
offers to dissent shall be an _outlaw_ in reputation; and the fears of
guilty Cain shall be fulfilled on him--whoever meets him _shall slay
him_."--pp. 95-96.
"We look with superstitious reverence upon the accounts of preterlapsed
ages, and with a supercilious severity on the more deserving products of
our own--a vanity which hath possessed all times as well as ours; and
the _golden age_ was never present. . . . We reverence gray-headed
doctrines, though feeble, decrepit, and within a step of dust: and on
this account maintain opinions which have nothing but our _charity_ to
uphold them."--p. 102.
[86:1] "Had I done but half as much as he [Hume] in labouring to subvert
principles which ought ever to be held sacred, I know not whether the
friends of truth would have granted me any indulgence, I am sure they
ought not. Let me be treated with the lenity due to a good citizen no
longer than I act as becomes one."--Beattie's Essay on the Nature and
Immutability of Truth, &c. p. 20.
On this Priestley says, "Certainly the obvious construction of this
passage is, that Mr. Hume ought not to be treated with the indulgence
and lenity due to a good citizen, but ought to be punished as a bad one.
And what is this but what a Bonner and a Gardiner might have put into
the preamble of an order for his execution. . . I for my part am truly
pleased with such publications as those of Mr. Hume, and I do not think
it requires any great sagacity or strength of mind, to see that such
writings must be of great service to religion, natural and revealed.
They have actually occasioned the subject to be more thoroughly
canvassed, and consequently to be better understood than ever it was
before, and thus _vice cotis funguntur_."[86:A]
[86:A] Examination of Dr. Reid's Inquiry, &c. Dr. Beattie's
Essay, &c. and Dr. Oswald's Appeal, &c. 1774, pp. 191-193.
[88:1] Critik der reinen Vernunft, (Methodenlehre,) 7th ed. p. 571.
[89:1] Preliminary Dissertation to the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 210.
[95:1] A scientific friend observes, that this is the germ of the theory
of oxidation.
[98:1] I have been favoured by Mr. Chambers with an old copy of this
letter, in which it is titled as a letter to Gilbert Stuart. The
original is among the MSS. R.S.E. where there is a note in Baron Hume's
handwriting, with a supposition that it was addressed to Dr. Traill.
[101:1] B. i. part iv. sect. 7.
[104:1] B. i. part iv. sect. 7.
[104:2] B. ii. part i. sect. 10.