Hume

“ All that we are immediately conscious of, are ideas and impressions; consequently nothing but ideas and impressions exist. Following up this chain of reasoning with his unrivalled sagacity, Hume attacked the principle of causation; and by debasing our notion of cause into a mere habit of thought, he struck at the very root of all order and all religion. Whence is our notion of cause derived? said he, Is it from sensation? Surely not; for our senses only show that the two events, which we call cause and effect, follow each other, and never that they are necessarily connected. ”

“ 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. ”

“ True, Hume himself became one of the distinguished few who gained both fame and fortune; but in the ordinary case, if the former were achieved, the latter did not follow; and in seeking the types of literary distinction in his age, Fielding, Goldsmith, and Johnson are the names that rise before us. Was the garden in which these flowers bloomed so genial that we would have others transplanted thither?
Let not, then, the considerate and charitable reader overlook all these palliations of the motives which may have induced a great man to humble himself and bear so much contumely. ”

“ Hume is an author so celebrated, a philosopher so serene, and a man so extremely amiable, if not fortunate, that we may be surprised to meet his name inscribed in a catalogue of literary calamities. Look into his literary life, and you will discover that the greater portion was mortified and angried; and that the stoic so lost his temper, that had not circumstances intervened which did not depend on himself, Hume had abandoned his country and changed his name! ”

“ Hume to Dr. Robertson.
I got yesterday from Strahan about thirty sheets of your History to be sent over to Suard, and last night and this morning have run them over with great avidity. I could not deny myself the satisfaction (which I hope also will not displease you) of expressing presently my extreme approbation of them. To say only that they are very well written, is by far too faint an expression, and much inferior to the sentiments I feel. They are composed with nobleness, with dignity, with elegance, and with judgment, to which there are few equals. ”

“ I have always considered Mr. Hume, both in his lifetime, and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man, as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit. ”

“ Suppose that there were no such things as impressions of sight and touch anywhere in the universe, what idea could we have even of a straight line, much less of a triangle and of the relations between its sides? The fundamental proposition of all Hume's philosophy is that ideas are copied from impressions; and, therefore, if there were no impressions of straight lines and triangles there could be no ideas of straight lines and triangles. But what we mean by the universe is the sum of our actual and possible impressions. ”

“ In Part IV of the First Book of the Treatise, too often overlooked, Hume has supplied a key for the destruction of the empirical position and the agnosticism logically involved in it. There his diligent and penetrating reader will see he cannot longer stop with Hume’s doctrine, that experience gives only, but gives surely, the sensation of the present moment. He cannot but go on to discover, as Hume himself seems clearly to forebode, that without presupposing the abiding unity of personal identity, even the fleeting impression of the instant is impossible. ”

“ The same Hume who thus pleasantly rebuked 'most religious philosophers,' was himself a true Universalist. That he lacked faith in the supernatural must be apparent to every student of his writings, which abound with reflections far from flattering to the self-love of superstitionists, and little calculated to advance their cause. Hume astonished religious fanatics by declaring that while we argue from the course of nature and infer a particular intelligent cause, which first bestowed, and still preserves order in the universe, we embrace a principle which is both uncertain and useless. ”

“ Thus, if we are to credit Hume, it is merely for his pleasure, for the diversion of the imaginative faculty, that man believes in the Supernatural; and beneath this impression—though real, still only of a secondary nature—which does no more than skim the surface of the human soul, the philosopher has no glimpse at all of the profound instincts and superior requisitions which have sway over him. ”

“ Hume, we remember, saw all this so clearly that he pronounced the very organs of sense, "our limbs and members," to be "not our body," but "certain impressions" to which the mind ascribes "a corporeal existence." Our limbs and members certainly are our body—the only body we have—but Hume was right in his meaning that our [Pg 197] body is a phenomenon which has no existence but as a plexus of impressions on a principle of intelligence, possessing various modes of reception, named senses. ”

“ The melancholy history of the literary career of the celebrated Hume, as appears from the short sketch he made of his own life, while he calmly waited, under an incurable disorder, the moment of approaching dissolution; a work which proclaims the mildness, the modesty, and the resignation of his temper, as clearly as his other works demonstrate the power and extent of his mind. The history, indeed, of every man who attempts to destroy the reigning prejudices, or correct the prevailing errors, of his age and country, is nearly the same. ”

“ The connexion of Hume's view with his metaphysical principles will be evident. If nature be known only through the senses, cause is only the material antecedent visible to the senses. Nature is not seen to be the sphere of the operation of God's regular will; and the sole proof of interference with nature must be a balancing of inductions. It will be clear also that the true method of replying to Hume has been rightly perceived by those who consider that the difficulty must be met by philosophy, and not by history. ”

“ 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. ”

“ What a lifeless waste of barren speculations—dreary and cold, for want of the shining upon it of the living Sun of Righteousness! Could such writings possibly flow from a mind, possessing a true acknowledgment of God, and consequently pervaded by the idea of the Divine power and influence? The truth is, Hume's pride of intellect and desire for fame—with the pleasure of exercising acuteness and ingenuity,—were what led him away into those wintry regions of metaphysical speculation, causing him to shut his eyes against the light of Revelation, which would have guided him in the true path. ”

“ Hume had, as philosophers commonly do, set out from the practically sufficient analysis of experience which all find ready-made in language. He accepted, therefore, from common sense the belief that physical reality is composed of a multitude of separate existences that act on one another, and tried to conceive mental life strictly on the same analogy. His theory of experience, therefore, closely parallels the atomistic theory of matter. Just as the physicist explains bodies as collections of discrete particles, so Hume reduced all the contents of the mind to a number of elementary sensations. ”

“ 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. ”

“ How can a multitude of feelings of which no two are present together, undetermined by relation to anything other than the feelings, be at the same time a consciousness of the relation between the moments in which the feelings are given, or of a sum which these moments form? How can there be a relation between ‘objects’ of which one has ceased before the other has begun to exist? ‘For the same reason,’ says Hume, ‘that the year 1737 cannot concur with the present year 1738, every moment must be distinct from, and posterior or antecedent to, another’. ”

“ It is obvious that, if Hume had been pushed, he must have admitted that his opinion concerning the existence of a God, and of a certain remote resemblance of his intellectual nature to that of man, was an hypothesis which might possess more or less probability, but was incapable on his own principles of any approach to demonstration. And to all attempts to make any practical use of his theism; or to prove the existence of the attributes of infinite wisdom, benevolence, justice, and the like, which are usually ascribed to the Deity, by reason, he opposes a searching critical negation. ”

“ Hume, without positively asserting more than he can prove, gives prominence to all the circumstances which can support his case. He glides lightly over those which are unfavourable to it. His own witnesses are applauded and encouraged; the statements which seem to throw discredit on them are controverted; the contradictions into which they fall are explained away; a clear and connected abstract of their evidence is given. ”

“ 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. ”

“ That to which succeeding generations have made, are making, and will make, continual additions, however, is Hume's fame as a philosopher; and, though I know that my plea will add to my offence in some quarters, I must plead, in extenuation of my audacity, that philosophy lies in the province of science, and not in that of letters. ”

“ Hume, whose ‘Natural History of Religion’ is perhaps more than any other work the source of modern opinions as to the development of religion, comments on the influence of this personifying stage of thought. ‘There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious.... The unknown causes, which continually employ their thought, appearing always in the same aspect, are all apprehended to be of the same kind or species. ”

“ The future, which seemed to the desponding philosopher for a moment so dark, we know to have brightened on him. Hume was of the happy few who lived to see their airy castles substantially realized. Comparing what it reveals of the inner man, with the subsequent history of his achievements, the picture supplied by this fragment of autobiography is a happy one. We sympathize with the aspiring dreams of the young man, without feeling that they were afterwards doomed to disappointment. ”

“ Hume with the clarity of genius states the fundamental point, that sense-data functioning in an act of experience demonstrate that they are given by the causal efficacy of actual bodily organs. He refers to this causal efficacy as a component in direct perception, Hume’s argument first tacitly presupposes the two modes of perception, and then tacitly assumes that presentational immediacy is the only mode. Also Hume’s followers in developing his doctrine presuppose that presentational immediacy is primitive, and that causal efficacy is the sophisticated derivative. ”

“ According to Hume, we are to reason, not in order to obtain ideas, but we are to have clear ideas before we reason. [714] By this means, we arrive at philosophy; and her conclusions are not to be impugned, even if they do happen to clash with science. On the contrary, her authority is supreme, and her decisions, being essentially true, must always be preferred to any generalization of the facts which the external world presents. [715]
Hume, therefore, believed that all the secrets of the external world are wrapped up in the human mind. ”

“ The attacks of Hume and Gibbon on the divine origin of Christianity take rank with the mischievous influences imparted by the elder school of Deists, and by French taste and immorality.
Hume was a philosopher who drew his inspiration directly from his own times. Attaching himself to the Encyclopædists, he played the wit in the salons of Paris. He became fraternally intimate with Rousseau, and brought that social dreamer back with him to England as a mark of high appreciation of his talents. He was a metaphysician by nature, but he erred in speculating with theology. ”