ESSAY IV. HUME. THE results of an attempt, which has occupied much time, labour, and thought, to evolve historical truth from a careful and impartial weighing and sifting of evidence, have tended to demonstrate to me that to some cases, at least, the remark of Hume is applicable, that if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity it is certain it must lie very deep and abtruse.' It is very remarkable that Hume himself should have acted so little in conformity with the opinion he thus expressed. From his extreme carelessness or indifference as to the accuracy of his statements, I am inclined to think that there are few 1 Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, vol. i. p. 3. It is necessary, in justice to Hume, to say that I do not find these words in the new form into which he cast his Treatise of Human Nature, under the titles of An Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding, An Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, and The Natural History of Religion. These form the 2nd volume of his Essays and Treatises, a new edition of which, in two vols., was published at Edinburgh in 1825. In an advertisement prefixed to the 2nd volume, the Treatise of Human Nature is described as a 'juvenile work which the author never acknowledged;' and the advertisement concludes thus: Henceforth the author desires that the following pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.' I am inclined to think that the following words in the 4th section of the Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding (Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 31) correspond to the words quoted in the text from the Treatise of Human Nature, 'It must certainly be allowed that Nature has kept us at a great distance from all her secrets;' and that Hume, while he thought that philosophical truth lay very deep, either thought that historical truth lay on the surface, or was indifferent about it. modern works of any pretensions that contain more examples of false generalisation than his. This remark is by no means confined to his treatment of modern, particularly English, history. His essays contain innumerable instances of conclusions drawn from false premises with regard to ancient as well as modern history. Nor was this confined to historical subjects. Some of his essays contain strange contradictions and inconsistencies. Thus, in his section on 'The Reason of Animals,' though the beginning of the section is devoted to showing 'that animals, as well as men, learn many things from experience, and infer that the same events will always follow from the same causes,' towards the end of the same section he says: Though the instinct be different, yet still it is an instinct which teaches a man to avoid the fire, as much as that which teaches a bird with such exactness the art of incubation and the whole economy and order of its nursery.'1 A man avoids the fire, not by instinct, but by an act of reasoning from experience. Instinct does not tell him, nor does he know, that fire will burn him till he has made the experiment, as is expressed in the common proverb, a burnt child dreads the fire.' Consequently this is not a case of instinct in men, nor is it in beasts. A burnt cat dreads the fire and avoids it in future, as well as a burnt child. A burnt moth is destroyed in making the experiment, if not with the fire, with the candle; consequently, never profits by that experiment. Hume's essay on The Original Contract' affords another example of just observations in startling contrast with assertions unsupported by any evidence and involving many assumptions and contradictions. 1 Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 108, 2 vols. 8vo. Edinburgh, 1825. we can reason. In his essay 'Of Civil Liberty' Hume says: 'I am apt to entertain a suspicion that the world is still too young to fix many general truths in politics which will remain true to the latest posterity. We have not yet had experience of three thousand years; so that not only the art of reasoning is still imperfect in this science, as in all others, but we even want sufficient materials upon which It is not fully known what degree of refinement, either in virtue or vice, human nature is susceptible of, nor what may be expected of mankind from any great revolution in their education, customs, or principles. Machiavelli was certainly a great genius; but, having confined his study to the furious and tyrannical governments of ancient times, or to the little disorderly principalities of Italy, his reasonings, especially upon monarchical government, have been found extremely defective; and there scarcely is any maxim in his 'Prince' which subsequent experience has not entirely refuted.'1 David Hume was, like Machiavelli, a man of genius. His mind was one of great power and originality. He was a most acute and even subtle reasoner. It has been said that the object of his reasonings was not to attain truth, but to show that it was unattainable. I am inclined to think that his frequent failures in attaining truth are rather attributable to a bad habit he had acquired, through indolence, of carelessness or indifference about the accuracy of his facts. Indeed, those conclusions which are not true or are defective, like Machiavelli's, on political subjects, can often only be avoided by great labour and careful and accurate observation. We should not know, if it were not for the minutes of the proceedings 1 Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 81, Edinburgh, 1825. of the Council of State of the Commonwealth of England, the inaccuracy of the assertions made by politicians and political writers respecting the number of members of which a Cabinet or Executive Council of State ought to consist-assertions which form an instructive example of the truth of a remark of David Hume, 'That where men are the most sure and arrogant, they are commonly the most mistaken.' 1 That David Hume, though he might be an acute and subtle reasoner, was a careless and inaccurate observer, appears from his essay 'Of Civil Liberty' before referred to. In that essay he says: 'But though all kinds of government be improved in modern times, yet monarchical government seems to have made the greatest advances towards perfection. It may now be affirmed of civilised monarchies, what was formerly said in praise of republics alone, that they are a government of laws, not of men.2 They are found susceptible of order, of method, and constancy, to a surprising degree. Property is there secure; industry encouraged; the arts flourish; and the prince lives secure among his subjects, like a father among his children.'3 These remarks, and many more to the same effect, show in Hume a very great ignorance of the real condition of the great body of the people in France at that time, some fifty years before the French Revolution. This ignorance is the more surprising, as Hume had lived several years in France. The writings of Turgot, of Mirabeau the Elder, of Arthur Young, and many others, show the 1 Hume's Essays, vol. ii. p. 315, Edinburgh, 1825. 3 Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 87. 4 Among these I may mention Bishop Berkeley, from whose letters I give one or two extracts which are very significant as to the condition of France, The inaccuracy of Hume's account of the state of France, where, according to him, the prince lives secure among his subjects, like a father among his children.' Hume saw nothing but security, prosperity, and content. elder Mirabeau saw the portent, the black foreshadowing of a great social and political convulsion; of a revolution that would sadly belie Hume's rose-coloured picture of paternal government. Hume begins his essay on the question whether the British Government inclines more to absolute monarchy or to a republic' with the remark that no prudent man, however sure of his principles, dares prophecy concerning any event, or foretell the remote consequences of things.' 1 Nevertheless, he concludes his essay by doing what he says, at the beginning, that no prudent man dares to do. and present a picture the reverse of Hume's. In a letter to Mr. Thomas Prior, dated Paris, Nov. 25, 1713 (N.S.), Berkeley says:- 'I have some reasons to decline speaking of the country or villages that I saw as I came along.' And in another letter to the same person, dated Leghorn, Feb. 26, 1714 (N.S.), he says:-' I shall not anticipate your pleasure by any description of Italy or France. Only, with regard to the latter, I cannot help observing that the Jacobites have little to hope, and others little to fear, from that reduced nation. The king, indeed, looks as though he wanted neither meat nor drink, and his palaces are in good repair; but throughout the land there is a different face of things.' He mentions in the letter first quoted a fact in strong contrast with the present speed of travelling :-'I embarked at Calais on Nov. 1 in the stage-coach, and that day sennight came to Paris.' And in another letter, dated Turin, Jan. 6,1714 (N.S.), he says:-'Savoy was a perpetual chain of rocks and mountains almost impassable for ice and snow. And yet I rode post through it, and came off with only four falls, from which I received no other damage than the breaking my sword, my watch, and my snuff-box. On new year's day we passed Mount Cenis. We were carried in open chairs by men used to scale these rocks and precipices. My life often depended on a single step.'-Berkeley's Letters prefixed to the 1st vol. of his works. Berkeley's wearing a sword, as appears from this extract, might lead to the inference that he was not then in holy orders, were it not that he was then travelling to Italy in quality,' as he says himself in a letter to Pope, dated Leghorn, May 1, 1714, 'by the favour of my good friend the Dean of St. Patrick's (Swift), of chaplain to the earl of Peterborough.' 1 Hume's Essays, vol. i. p. 42, Edinburgh, 1825. |