David Hume

“ Finding it impossible to tell enough falsehoods to hide the truth, a few of the more intelligent among the priests admitted that Hume not only died without showing any particular fear, but was guilty of unbecoming levity. The first charge was that he died like a coward; the next that he did not care enough, and went through the shadowy doors of the dread unknown with a smile upon his lips. The dying smile of David Hume scandalized the believers in a God of love. They felt shocked to see a man dying without fear who denied the miracles of the Bible ”

“ 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. ”

“ Hume at Turin, has given the following account of his habits and appearance, penned apparently with a greater aim at effect than at truth, yet somewhat characteristic of the philosopher: ‘Nature, I believe, never formed any man more unlike his real character than David Hume. The powers of physiognomy were baffled by his countenance; neither could the most skilful in the science pretend to discover the smallest trace of the faculties of his mind in the unmeaning features of his visage. His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility. ”

“ Morality is a subject that interests us above all others: We fancy the peace of society to be at stake in every decision concerning it; and it is evident, that this concern must make our speculations appear more real and solid, than where the subject is, in a great measure, indifferent to us. What affects us, we conclude can never be a chimera; and as our passion is engaged on the one side or the other, we naturally think that the question lies within human comprehension; which, in other cases of this nature, we are apt to entertain some doubt of. ”

“ The quick sensibility, which, on this head, is so universal among mankind, gives a philosopher sufficient assurance, that he can never be considerably mistaken in framing the catalogue, or incur any danger of misplacing the objects of his contemplation: he needs only enter into his own breast for a moment, and consider whether or not he should desire to have this or that quality ascribed to him, and whether such or such an imputation would proceed from a friend or an enemy. The very nature of language guides us almost infallibly in forming a judgement of this nature ”

“ Rousseau had triumphantly written, hither and thither, that Hume dared not publish the "indictment." He had said, that if he did not see David Hume exposed ere he died, he would cease to believe in Providence. He was occupied in writing his celebrated Confessions, and had significantly hinted to Hume that he would find himself pilloried there. It is possible to create an ideal image of a mind that would have calmly resisted all these impulses, and let the traducer proceed unnoticed in his frantic labours. ”

“ The history of the miserable quarrels and intrigues [199] connected with Hume's residence in the Annandale family, is a sad picture, not only of the position of the individual, but of his class,—the poor scholars, the servile drudges for bread. The modern literary labourer—or hack, as he is called by those who deem the word labourer too respectable to be employed on such an occasion—may look from the narrow bounds of his own independent home, with a feeling of sincere though not boastful superiority on David Hume, living in the splendid bondage of a peer's mansion. ”

“ Ce qu'il y a encore de plaisant, c'est que toutes les jolies femmes se le sont arraché, et que le gros philosophe Ecossais s'est plu dans leur société. C'est un excellent homme, que David Hume; il est naturellement serein, il entend finement, il dit quelquefois avec sel, quoiqu'il parle peu; mais il est lourd, il n'a ni chaleur, ni grâce, ni agrément dans l'esprit, ni rien qui soit propre à s'allier au ramage de ces charmantes petites machines qu'on appelle jolies femmes. ”

“ Our friend, David Hume, along with his friend, Principal Robertson, continue to maintain their ground at these convivial meetings. To see the lion and the lamb lying down together, the deist and the doctor, is extraordinary; it makes one hope that some day Hume will say to him, "Thou almost persuadest me to be a Christian." He is a constant morning visiter of ours. ”

“ Andrew Stuart, known by his letters to Lord Mansfield, who before 1763 was much employed in France in connexion with the Douglas cause, and appears to have been admitted into the best company there, writes to Sir William Johnstone on 16th December, 1762: "When you have occasion to see our friend, David Hume, tell him that he is so much worshipped here, that he must be void of all passions, if he does not immediately take post for Paris. In most houses where I am acquainted here, one of the first questions is, Do you know Monsr. Hume, whom we all admire so much? ”

“ No quality of human nature is more remarkable, both in itself and in its consequences, than that propensity we have to sympathize with others, and to receive by communication their inclinations and sentiments, however different from, or even contrary to our own. This is not only conspicuous in children, who implicitly embrace every opinion proposed to them; but also in men of the greatest judgment and understanding, who find it very difficult to follow their own reason or inclination, in opposition to that of their friends and daily companions. ”

“ The correspondence was of the lady's seeking and pursuing. Frequently, when there is a pause, an impassioned letter from her rouses up the philosopher; who starts into a sort of artificial excitement, and, when it is over, sinks into lethargy again. Yet it must be admitted that Hume acted his part pretty well, and that the fat philosopher was not far behind the vivacious Frenchwoman. But with him it is visibly all acting; and there is a total absence of the playful ease which adorns those letters to his own chosen friends, with whom he was in heart and habits at ease. ”

“ The value of Hume’s philosophy lies in its being an attempt to carry out the antithesis more rigorously—to clear the real, whether under the designation of mind or of its object, of all that could not be reckoned as given in feelings which occur to us ‘whether we will or no.’ The consequence is a splendid failure, a failure which it might have been hoped would have been taken as a sufficient proof that a theory, which starts from that antithesis, cannot even be stated without implicitly contradicting itself. ”

“ A perception detached from all others, left out of the ‘heap which we call a mind,’ being out of all relation, has no qualities—is simply nothing. We can no more ‘consider’ it than we can see vacancy. Yet it is by the consideration of such nonentity, by supposing a world of unperceived perceptions, of ‘existences’ without relation or quality, that the mind, according to Hume—itself only ‘a heap of perceptions’—arrives at that fiction of a continued being which, as involved in the supposition of identity, is the condition of our believing in a world of real things at all. ”

“ First, we have already observed, that the mind is determined by custom to pass from any cause to its effect, and that upon the appearance of the one, 'tis almost impossible for it not to form an idea of the other. Their constant conjunction in past instances has produced such a habit in the mind, that it always conjoins them in its thought, and infers the existence of the one from that of its usual attendant. When it considers the dye as no longer supported by the box, it cannot without violence regard it as suspended in the air ”

“ 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. ”

“ The person with whom David Hume was thus connected was the last Marquis of Annandale, on whose death that title became dormant. On the 5th of March, 1748, he was found, on an inquest from the Court of Chancery in England, to be a lunatic, incapable of governing himself and managing his own affairs, and to have been so since 12th December, 1744, a few months anterior to Hume's engagement with him. The correspondence does not give the [172] reader the notion of one reduced to so abject a mental state, but rather that of a man nervously timid and reserved ”

“ The Humes, it appears, were a remote branch of the family of Lord Hume of Douglas. Hume's father was Joseph Hume, of Ninewells, a minor Scotch laird, who died when his son was an infant. David Hume was born at Edinburgh on April 26th, 1711, during a visit of his parents to the Scotch capital. Hume tells us that his father passed for a man of parts, and that his mother, who herself came of good Scottish family, "was a woman of singular merit; though young and handsome, she devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children." At school Hume won no special distinction. ”

“ Hume was conscious of his own power, probably while his countrymen were making him a theme of their uncouth derision; and he seems to have had a prescience that he had not yet gathered all his fame. . . . . . . I am much mistaken if the name of this profound thinker does not yet receive the encomiastic epithets of a grateful posterity; and if, when his errors have passed away, he does not yet come to be regarded as the philosopher who has made the most penetrating and successful researches in the intricate science of human nature. ”

“ Affected by this generosity, I threw myself into your arms; you brought me to England, apparently to procure me an asylum, but in fact to bring me to dishonour. You applied to this noble work, with a zeal worthy of your heart, and a success worthy of your abilities. You needed not have taken so much pains: you live and converse with the world; I with myself in solitude. The public love to be deceived, and you were formed to deceive them. I know one man, however, whom you can not deceive ”

“ Envy and jealousy, remarks David Hume in treating of the recognition of real genius, have too much place in a narrow circle, and even familiar acquaintance with the person of one thus gifted may diminish the applause due to his performance—that is, among those of his own age and country. Pindar and Æschylus, we are told, left their country because those who were born their equals could not endure to see them rise their superiors. “What a war against the gods is this!” ”

“ 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, invironed 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. ”

“ The more pious he is, the more readily will he assent to the affirmative, and the more will he be disposed to magnify the difference: He will even assert, that the difference is of a nature which cannot be too much magnified. I next turn to the Atheist, who, I assert, is only nominally so, and can never possibly be in earnest; and I ask him, whether, from the coherence and apparent sympathy in all the parts of this world, there be not a certain degree of analogy among all the operations of Nature, in every situation and in every age ”

“ The existence of an object would, to him, mean no more than the occurrence of an impression; but that one impression should occur, and then another and then another, is the exact opposite of their coexistence as a sum of impressions, and it is such co-existence that is implied when the impressions are counted and pronounced so many. Thus when Hume tells us that a single object, by being ‘multiplied in order to be conceived at once as existent in different points of time,’ gives us the idea of number, we are forced to ask him what precisely it is which thus, being one, can become manifold. ”

“ Whichever side he chuses, he runs himself into equal difficulties. If he affirms, that in tracing these figures in his imagination, he can imagine them to touch only in a point, he allows the possibility of that idea, and consequently of the thing. If he says, that in his conception of the contact of those lines he must make them concur, he thereby acknowledges the fallacy of geometrical demonstrations, when carryed beyond a certain degree of minuteness; since it is certain he has such demonstrations against the concurrence of a circle and a right line ”