Robert Adamson and John Malcolm Mitchell

“ But as each perception is in consciousness only as a contingent fact, which might not be or might be other than it is, we must admit that the mind can conceive no necessary relations or connexions among the several portions of its experience. ”

“ We mistake the subjective transition resting upon custom or past experience for an objective connexion independent of special feelings. All reasoning about matters of fact is therefore a species of feeling, and belongs to the sensitive rather than to the cogitative side of our nature. It should be noted that this theory of Causation entirely denies the doctrine of Uniformity in Nature, so far as the human mind is concerned. All alleged uniformity is reduced to observed similarity of process. The idea is a mere convention, product of inaccurate thinking and custom. ”

“ While, then, the general idea of a theory of knowledge as based upon psychological analysis is the groundwork of the Treatise, it is a particular consequence of this idea that furnishes to Hume the characteristic criterion applied by him to all philosophical questions. If the relations involved in the fact of cognition are only those discoverable by observation of any particular portion of known experience, then such relations are quite external and contingent. ”

“ To sum up, it may be said that Hume enunciated the principle that “everything in the world is purchased by labour, and our passions are the only causes of labour”; and further, that, in analysing the complex phenomena of commerce, he is superior sometimes to Adam Smith in that he never forgets that the ultimate causes of economic change are the “customs and manners” of the people, and that the solution of problems is to be sought in the elementary factors of industry. ”

“ But when an idea is so roused up by a present impression, and when this idea, being a consequence of memory, has in itself a certain vivacity or liveliness, we regard it with a peculiar indefinable feeling, and in this feeling consists the immense difference between mere imagination and belief. ”

“ It is almost superfluous to remark, first, that Hume here deliberately gives up his fundamental principle that ideas are but the fainter copies of impressions, for it can never be maintained that order of disposition is an impression, and, secondly, that he fails to offer any explanation of the mode in which coexistence and succession are possible elements of cognition in a conscious experience made up of isolated presentations and representations. ”

“ We only feel a connexion or determination of the thought to pass from one object to another. It follows, therefore, that the thought alone feels personal identity, when, reflecting on the train of past perceptions that compose a mind, the ideas of them are felt to be connected together and naturally introduce each other.
“However extraordinary this conclusion may seem, it need not surprise us. Modern philosophers seem inclined to think that personal identity arises from consciousness, and consciousness is nothing but a reflected thought or perception. ”

“ Cleanthes, pointing out that from a nature thoroughly evil we can never prove the existence of an infinitely powerful and benevolent Creator, hazards the conjecture that the deity, though all-benevolent, is not all-powerful. Philo, however, pushing his principles to their full consequences, shows that unless we assumed (or knew) beforehand that the system of nature was the work of a benevolent but limited deity, we certainly could not, from the facts of nature, infer the benevolence of its creator. Cleanthes’s view is, therefore, an hypothesis, and in no sense an inference. ”

“ In the first instance, then, Hume’s philosophical work is to be regarded as the attempt to supply for empiricism in psychology a consistent, that is, a logically developed theory of knowledge. In Locke, indeed, such theory is not wanting, but, of all the many inconsistencies in the Essay on the Human Understanding, none is more apparent or more significant than the complete want of harmony between the view of knowledge developed in the fourth book and the psychological principles laid down in the earlier part of the work. ”

“ Nor does the a priori argument in any of its forms fare better, for reason can never demonstrate a matter of fact, and, unless we know that the world had a beginning in time, we cannot insist that it must have had a cause. Demea, who is willing to give up his abstract proof, brings forward the ordinary theological topic, man’s consciousness of his own imperfection, misery and dependent condition. Nature is throughout corrupt and polluted, but “the present evil phenomena are rectified in other regions and in some future period of existence.” ”

“ He holds, apparently, that the foundation of all the science of number is the fact that each element of conscious experience is presented as a unit, and adds that we are capable of considering any fact or collection of facts as a unit. This manner of conceiving is absolutely general and distinct, and accordingly affords the possibility of an all-comprehensive and perfect science, the science of discrete quantity. (See Works, i. 97.)
(c) In respect to the third point, the nature, extent and certainty of the elementary propositions of mathematical science, Hume’s utterances are far from clear. ”

“ For in the problem of real cognition he is brought face to face with the characteristic feature of knowledge, distinction of self from matters known, and reference of transitory states to permanent objects or relations. Deferring his criticism of the significance of self and object, Hume yet makes use of both to aid his explanation of the belief attaching to reality. The reference of an idea to past experience has no meaning, unless we assume an identity in the object referred to. ”

“ Hume’s eminence in the fields of philosophy and history must not be allowed to obscure his importance as a political economist. Berkeley had already, in the Querist, attacked the mercantile theory of the nature of national wealth and the functions of money, and Locke had, in a partial manner, shown that Economics. political economy could with advantage be viewed in relation to the modern system of critical philosophy. But Hume was the first to apply to economics the scientific methods of his philosophy. ”

“ The perception of relations, which, according to him, is the essence of cognition, the demonstrative character which he thinks attaches to our inference of God’s existence, the intuitive knowledge of self, are doctrines incapable of being brought into harmony with the view of mind and its development which is the keynote of his general theory. ”

“ Hume sees distinctly that if conscious experience be taken as containing only isolated states, no progress in explanation of cognition is possible, and that the only hope of further development is to be looked for in a radical change in our mode of conceiving experience. The work of the critical philosophy is the introduction of this new mode of regarding experience, a mode which, in the technical language of philosophers, has received the title of transcendental as opposed to the psychological method followed by Locke and Hume. ”

“ In dealing with money, he refutes the Mercantile School, which had tended to confound it with wealth. “Money,” said Hume, “is none of the wheels of trade; it is the oil which renders the motion of the wheels more smooth and easy.” “Money and commodities are the real strength of any community.” ”

“ How then are the primary data of mathematical cognition to be derived from an experience containing space and time relations in the manner just stated? It is important to notice that Hume, in regard to this problem, distinctly separates geometry from algebra and arithmetic, i.e. he views Mathematics. extensive quantity as being cognized differently from number. With regard to geometry, he holds emphatically that it is an empirical doctrine, a science founded on observation of concrete facts. ”

“ Dealing with the phenomena of interest, he exposes the old fallacy that the rate depends upon the amount of money in a country; low interest does not follow on abundance of money. The reduction in the rate of interest must, in general, result from “the increase of industry and frugality, of arts and commerce.” In connexion with this he emphasizes a too generally neglected factor in economic phenomena, “the constant and insatiable desire of the mind for exercise and employment.” ”

“ Yet when we compare Hume with Adam Smith, the advance which Hume had made on his predecessors in lucidity of exposition and subtlety of intellect becomes clear, and modern criticism is agreed that the main errors of Adam Smith are to be found in those deductions which deviate from the results of the Political Discourses. A very few examples must suffice to illustrate his services to economics. ”

“ The psychological conception, then, on the basis of which Hume proceeds to discuss the theory of knowledge, is that of conscious experience as containing merely the succession of isolated impressions and their fainter copies, ideas, and as bound together by merely natural or external links of connexion, Association. the principles of association among ideas. The foundations of cognition must be discovered by observation or analysis of experience so conceived. ”

“ A somewhat detailed consideration of Hume’s doctrine with regard to mathematical science has been given for the reason that this portion of his theory has been very generally overlooked or misinterpreted. It does not seem necessary to endeavour to follow his minute examination of the principle of real Real cognition and causation. cognition with the same fulness. It will probably be sufficient to indicate the problem as conceived by Hume, and the relation of the method he adopts for solving it to the fundamental doctrine of his theory of knowledge. ”

“ Now this is an appeal to the general appearances of objects to the imagination or senses” (iv. 180) . “Though it (i.e. geometry) much excels, both in universality and exactness, the loose judgments of the senses and imagination, yet [it] never attains a perfect precision and exactness” (i. 97) . Any exactitude attaching to the conclusions of geometrical reasoning arises from the comparative simplicity of the data for the primary judgments.
So far, then, as geometry is concerned, Hume’s opinion is perfectly definite. ”

“ Viewing the contents of mind as matter of experience, he can discover among them only one distinction, a distinction expressed by the terms impressions and ideas. Ideas are secondary in nature, Ideas and impressions. copies of data supplied we know not whence. All that appears in conscious experience as primary, as arising from some unknown cause, and therefore relatively as original, Hume designates by the term impression, and claims to imply by such term no theory whatsoever as to the origin of this portion of experience. ”

“ Hume endeavours to show that polytheism was the earliest as well as the most natural form of religious belief, and that theism or deism is the product of reflection upon experience, thus reducing the validity of the historical argument to that of the theoretical proofs. ”

“ To some extent Berkeley removed this radical inconsistency, but in his philosophical work it may be said with safety there are two distinct aspects, and while it holds of Locke on the one hand, it stretches forward to Kantianism on the other. Nor in Berkeley are these divergent features ever united into one harmonious whole. It was left for Hume to approach the theory of knowledge with full consciousness from the psychological point of view, and to work out the final consequences of that view so far as cognition is concerned. ”

“ The nature of space and time as elements in conscious experience is considered by Hume in relation to a special problem, that of their supposed infinite divisibility. Evidently upon his view of conscious experience, of the world of imagination, such infinite divisibility must be a fiction. The ultimate Space and time. elements of experience must be real units, capable of being represented or imagined in isolation. ”

“ In the Treatise of Human Nature, which is in every respect Philosophy. the most complete exposition of Hume’s philosophical conception, we have the first thorough-going attempt to apply the fundamental principles of Locke’s empirical psychology to the construction of a theory of knowledge, and, as a natural consequence, the first systematic criticism of the chief metaphysical notions from this point of view. ”

“ Putting aside, then, the various obscurities of terminology, such as the distinction between the objects known, viz. “points” or several mental states, and the impressions themselves, which disguise the full significance of his conclusion, we find Hume reduced to the following as his theory of space and time. Certain impressions, the sensations of sight and touch, have in themselves the element of space, for these impressions (Hume skilfully transfers his statement to the points) have a certain order or mode of arrangement. ”

“ Cleanthes, who maintains that the doctrine of the incomprehensibility of God is hardly distinguishable from atheism, is compelled by the arguments of Philo to reduce to a minimum the conclusion capable of being inferred from experience as regards the existence of God. ”

“ For the modern expedient of raising money for national emergencies by way of loan he has a profound distrust. He was convinced that what is bad for the individual credit must be bad for the state also. A national debt, he maintains, enriches the capital at the expense of the provinces ”

“ In order to make perfectly clear the full significance of the principle which Hume applied to the solution of the chief philosophical questions, it is necessary to render somewhat more precise and complete the statement of the psychological view which lies at the foundation of the empirical theory, and Theory of knowledge. ”

“ Ask a mathematician what he means when he pronounces two quantities to be equal, and he must say that the idea of equality is one of those which cannot be defined, and that it is sufficient to place two equal quantities before any one in order to suggest it. ”