BOOK I.

66

"more indecent to employ a long letter in talking entirely " of myself, I shall only say, that I read them with great "satisfaction; the reasonings are solid, the conjectures ingenious, and the whole instructive. The style is also very good; correct and nervous, and very pure; only a very "few Scotticisms, as conform for conformable, which I re"marked. You do me the honour to borrow some princi

66

66

ples from a certain book: but I wish they be not esteem"ed too subtile and abstruse."

In the following year (1748), he thus writes to his friend Mr Home, from London, when preparing to set out for the Continent with General Sinclair, whom he attended as Secretary, in his embassy to the Courts of Vienna and Turin :

"DEAR SIR,

London, Feb. 9. 1748.

"The doubt and ambiguity with which I came hither was soon removed. General Sinclair positively refused to accept of a Secretary from the Ministry; and I go along with him in the same station as before. Every body congratulates me upon the pleasure I am to reap from this jaunt and really I have little to oppose to this prepossession, except an inward reluctance to leave my books, and leisure and retreat. However, I am glad to find this passion still so fresh and entire; and am sure, by its means, to pass my latter days happily and cheerfully, whatever fortune may attend me.

" I

"I leave here two works going on, a new edition of my Essays, all of which you have seen, except one, of the Protestant Succession, where I treat that subject as coolly and indifferently, as I would the dispute betwixt Cæsar and Pompey. The conclusion shows me a Whig, but a very sceptical one. Some people would frighten me with the consequences that may attend this candour, considering my present station; but I own I cannot apprehend any thing.

"The other work is the Philosophical Essays, which you dissuaded me from printing. I wont justify the prudence of this step, any other way than by expressing my indifference

about all the consequences that may follow. I will expect to hear from you; as you may from me. Remember me to Mrs Home, and believe me to be yours most sincerely,

DAVID HUME."

"P. S.-We set out on Friday next for Harwich."

CHAP. IV.

VOL. I.

R

CHAP.

CHAPTER V.

Mr Home's metaphysical writings.-Essays on Morality and Natural Religion.-Object and general scope of that work. -David Hume's System of Utility as the Foundation of Morals. His opinions concerning Cause and Effect.-Objections to Mr Home's system.-His frequent reference to Final Causes. His doctrines keenly attacked.—Illiberal attempts to subject him to public censure.—The subject brought before the General Assembly-And Presbytery of Edinburgh.—It is finally quashed.—Mr Home retracts some opi

nions as erroneous.

BOOK I.

لها

Mr Home's metaphysical writings. Essays on

Morality and

Natural Religion.

AMIDST all the pressure of Mr Home's professional employment, when now at the head of the bar, he still found leisure for those metaphysical speculations to which his mind was peculiarly turned. In the attentive examination which his regard for their author led him to bestow on the writings of David Hume, he perceived a train of conclusions drawn by that acute metaphysician, which deeply affected the great interests of society, and seemed to shake the foundation of the moral agency of man, and consequently both of his right

conduct

conduct in the present life, and of his best grounded hopes of futurity. We see from a passage in the foregoing corrcspondence, that he had endeavoured to dissuade his friend from publishing those Philosophical Essays, in which the principal doctrines of the Treatise on Human Nature are clothed in a more ornamented dress, and their perusal thus rendered more likely to be generally extended and as his endeavours had been unsuccessful for the suppression of those opinions, it now became his earnest concern to counteract their pernicious influence, by exposing the error and sophistry of the reasonings on which they are founded. This seems to have been the main scope and purpose of a work which he published in the year 1751, entitled, Essays on the Principles. of Morality and Natural Religion.

The object of this work, which though in the form of detached disquisitions, has sufficient unity of design, is to prove, that the great laws of morality, which influence the conduct of man as a social being, have their foundation in the human constitution; and are as certain and immutable as those physical laws which regulate the whole system of nature: Hence he argues, that as a just survey of the natural world, and an examination of the moral constitution of man, furnish alike the most pregnant and convincing evidence of order, harmony and beauty, which evince the utmost skill, combined with the most benevolent design, we are thus irresistibly

R 2

CHAP. V.

Object and general scope of that work.

BOOK I.

resistibly led to the perception of a FIRST CAUSE, unbounded in power, intelligence and goodness.

A work of this kind, involving a connected chain of argument on topics of the most abstruse nature, is no proper subject for analysis or abstract. Yet, it is not difficult to unfold in a few words the leading train of thought which runs through these Essays, and indeed through the whole of Mr Home's philosophical writings.

It appeared to him that the great error of philosophers lies in the passion for simplifying the objects of their research, and attempting to account for the whole fabric of the human mind, and all the motives of conduct in man, by recurring to one or to a few general laws, to which they endeavour to reduce all the phenomena of our moral nature. Thus, the principles of Self-love, of Universal Benevolence, of Sympathy, of Utility, of Consonance to the Divine Will, have, all in their turn, been assigned by ingenious men as the sole foundation of morality; and elaborate works have been composed to prove the universal and exclusive influence of each of those principles in the regulation of human conduct. It is the purpose of the author of these Essays to demonstrate the error and fallacy of all such narrow schemes; to shew that man, considered in a moral view, is a complicated being, actuated by various passions and affections; and whose conduct is regulated, not by one, or even a few, but by all of the

principles