Hume's Treatise of morals: and selections from the Treatise of the passions

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Preface

The student will observe that the whole of Hume's original treatise on Morals has been included in the present volume and that the selections are taken only from his work on the " Passions." Portions of the latter have been included because of their importance to a correct understanding of Hume's ethical principles. The main portion of them consists in his discussion of "free will." The whole of the treatise on Morals has been included in order to prevent the volume from being fragmentary, or at least to prevent it from being more so than is necessary for an adequate conception of his system.

I have chosen the original work rather than the revised form of 175 1, because the later contains no essential changes of view. Hume himself, in a letter to Gilbert Elliott, says: "The philosophical principles are the same in both." Even if this confession had not been made, the judgment of T. H. Green would have sufficed to justify the course taken, since he pronounced the difference between them to be too small to create any obligations of a serious kind on the part of one performing the task here undertaken.

JAMES H. HYSLOP.

Columbia College.

BIBLIOGRAPHY.

Hume's Works.

A Treatise of Human Nature. Being an attempt to introduce the experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. 3 vols. London, 1739.

Essays, Moral and Political. Vol. I., 1741 ; Vol. II., 1742.

Philosophical Essays, 1748.

Political Discourses, 1751.

Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, 1 751.

History of England. (The reigns of James I. and Charles I.), 1754; (Charles II. and James II.) 1756; (Early period of English History and down to James I.) 1762.

Four Dissertations: The Natural History of Religion; of the Passions; of Tragedy; of the Standard of Taste, 1757.

Two Essays: (On Suicide and the Immortality of the Soul),

Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, 1779.

BIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES.

My own Life. David Hume. (Preface to Editions of his works). Life and Correspondence of David Hume. By J. H. Burton. 2 vols. 1846.

An Account of the Life and Writings of David Hume. By Thomas Edward Ritchie, 1807.

Hume. By Thomas H. Huxley, 1879.

Letters of David Hume to William Strahan. By G. Birbeck Hill, 1888.

Hume. By William Knight. Blackwood's Philosophic Classics, 1886.

CRITICAL AND OTHER REFERENCES.

Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, with an Introduction. By Thomas H. Green, 1882.

Introduction to Hume's Philosophical Works. By Thomas H. Green. Philosophical Works, Vol. I.

Hume's Treatise of Human Nature. By Selby-Bigge, 1888.

Hume-Studien. A. Meinong, 1877.

Hume. Thomas H. Huxley, 1879.

Outlines of the History of Ethics, Sidgwick, 1886.

English Thought in the Eighteenth Century. Leslie Stephen, 1876.

Hume. William Knight, Blackwood's Philosophic Classics, 1886.

Grundprobleme in Hume. J. H. W. Stuckenberg, 1887.

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

David Hume was born at Edinburgh on the 26th of April (O. S.) 17 1 1. His family claimed aristocratic connections on both sides, and the fact of this connection was regarded very naturally with some pride by Hume himself. His father died when Hume was an infant, and hence the education of the son was left to the mother. Of his early life and education little is known. We might say almost nothing is known except what he himself stated in a very brief autobiography which was written shortly before his death and published in the next edition of his History of England. He appears to have entered the Greek class at the University of Edinburgh in 1723, but did not graduate. He very early acquired a passion for literature, which finally, after some vicissitudes of fortune, determined his choice of a career. It was probably this taste with the want of positive and aggressive elements in his character which led his mother to remark of him: " Our Davie's a fine, good-natured crater, but uncommon wake-minded." The former part of this judgment proved to be just and accurate, but Hume's subsequent fame and influence rather belied the second part of it. This trait was the opposite of the general characteristic in his race which is intellectually pugnacious and active, and it very probably explains his sceptical tendencies by referring them to a constitutional disposition to cautious and deliberate habits.

In 1727, after leaving Edinburgh, Hume came to Ninewells, the name of his father's estate, and here he was occupied with general reading and private study in his favorite way. The next year he began the study of the law, but soon abandoned it for work more congenial to his tastes. He spent the hours on Cicero and Vergil which others supposed were spent oil Voet and Vinnius. After giving Up the law he remained six years at Ninewells before attempting to fix upon a definite career. In 1834 he decided to enter upon a commercial life and went to Bristol for this purpose. But this undertaking proved as distasteful as the law and was in its turn abandoned. His fortune being too small to guarantee his independence in England, Hume resolved after the failure at Bristol to reside in France where he could prosecute his literary studies with the small income at his command. He first settled at Rheims and afterward at La Fleche in Anjou. Here he spent three years, carrying out the plan which he had formed while at the university, and returned to London in 1737 with a perfect knowledge of the French language and the first two volumes of the Treatise on Human Nature, which he published the following year. The third volume appeared in 1740. The work, however, much to Hume's chagrin and disappointment, met with no favor. Of its reception, he himself says in his autobiography: " It fell dead born from the press, without reaching such distinction, as even to excite a murmur among the zealots."

This latter part of the remark shows that he was quite conscious of the sceptical character of his work. But his sanguine temperament soon overcame his disappointment, which at first seems to have been very keen, and we find him again at Ninewells carrying on his studies, mainly in the direction of politics and political economy. As a result of this, in 1 741 he published the first volume of his Essays, which met with some success and reanimated his hopes. A copy of the volume was sent to Bishop Butler, the famous author of the Analogy, and his high praise of the work made him a friend of Hume who entertained a very high respect for the Bishop in spite of the wide differences between them on matters of religious belief. In 1742 the second volume of the Essays was published and met with considerable success. By this time, both the man and his works were sufficiently known and respected to have him brought forward in 1744 as a candidate for the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh. But "the zealots'' seem now to have been apprised of the nature of his philosophy, and brought against him the charge of infidelity. The influence of his friends could avail nothing, and he was defeated by Mr. James Balfour, the man who had severely criticised Hume's Treatise on Human Nature. Perhaps Hume's revenge is found in the superior estimation which history has assigned him over his competitor. The grounds upon which he was rejected created a life-long bitterness in Hume against the Scottish clergy. But he ought to have had the sagacity to know either that the general tenor of his writings was out of sympathy with the religious spirit of his countrymen, or that the fanaticism of that time would not tolerate in an orthodox chair a voice so uncertain as his upon the theological questions then agitating the church. Huxley humorously reproaches him for failing to see the natural impropriety of his becoming " a Presbyterian teacher of Presbyterian youth."

In 1745 he became guardian to the Marquis of Annandale, but this appointment proved unsatisfactory and the next year found him acting as secretary to General St. Clair who was commissioned upon an expedition to Canada and afterward in 1748 as ambassador to the court of Turin, whither Hume followed him in the same capacity as before. It was in this latter year that he published the " Philosophic Essays," or " Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding." He returned to London in 1749 and, soon after, his mother died. Between this time and 1751 he resided with his brother and sister at Ninewells and occupied himself with the composition of his " Dialogues on Natural Religion," which were not published until after his death, the " Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals," and the " Political Discourses." The last two were published in 175 1, the Principles of Morals being a recast of the volume on that subject in the " Treatise." In the same year he again failed of election to a professor's chair, the chair of Logic at the University of Glasgow.

At the end of the period of which we have just spoken, Hume returned to Edinburgh and took up his residence in the Townmarket, having acquired a sufficient fortune to give him a modest competence. A year afterward the Faculty of Advocates in that city elected him their librarian, but not without considerable opposition from religious zealots. Hume writes with some humor of this and other episodes of the incident, and expresses much satisfaction at the result. The salary was only forty pounds a year, but the resources of a large library compensated him in part for this meagre remuneration and he was delighted with the opportunities which the position offered him for continuing his literary pursuits. The duties of his office allowed him leisure to write the History of England, the first volume of which appeared in 1754, the second in 1756, and the last two in 1759. Hume seems to have entertained rather extravagant expectations of its success, and if we are to accept his disappointment as a measure of the results, we should have to record the work as a failure. But its reception was much better than Hume's wounded vanity would seem to imply. For the sales were much larger than he would have us believe.

About this time an incident took place which is of interest in estimating the influences affecting Hume's attitude towards religion. In 1754 the presentment by the grand jury of Middlesex against the philosophic works of Lord io BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH.

Bolinbroke led in the following year to the prosecution of Hume for heresy before the courts of the General Assembly of Scotland. After considerable discussion upon the questions whether Hume was amenable to this court, whether he was a Christian, and whether there was any propriety in proceeding against him, the matter was dropped and came to nothing. The Presbytery dismissed the process and Hume thus fortunately escaped the dangerous consequences of a clerical inquisition.

While the History was in process of publication Hume was active in other lines of literature. In 1757 appeared four dissertations, one on "The Natural History of Religion," one on "Tragedy," one on "The Standard of Taste," and one on "The Passions," the last being a revision and modification of the second book of the "Treatise." In the meanwhile the bitterness which he had felt on account of the imagined failure of his History, assumed a violent form of animosity against the English whom he supposed to be in a conspiracy to hold the Scotch in contempt. As a consequence of these rancorous feelings toward the English, the second portion of his History became a mere party pamphlet in favor of the Tories and against the Whigs, and he even went so far as to purge the first volumes of all statements which might seem to savor of Whig sympathies. The fact is interesting as showing an underlying vein of dogmatism and bias in a man who has generally passed as the Coryphaeus of scepticism, and may explain certain features of his style in his philosophic works when first published.

In 1763 Hume accepted the post of secretary to Lord Hertford who went as ambassador to France. Here he became acquainted with that brilliant coterie of French philosophers and literati of that time, including Montesquieu, Helvetius, Diderot, Rousseau, and Turgot, with some of whom he had before exchanged correspondence. On

BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH. n

his return from Paris in 1766 he was accompanied by Rousseau whose suspicious and ungrateful temper soon provoked a quarrel which separated them, although only after Hume had acquitted himself of all blame in the matter. For two years after his return he remained in London as under-secretary to General Conway, and finally settled in 1769 at Edinburgh with an income increased to ^"iooo a year and with the determination of spending the remainder of his days in ease. His home in St. David's Street, which was so named because of a humorous and ironical allusion to Hume's religious beliefs by some one who chalked the name upon the wall, " was the centre of the accomplished and refined society which then distinguished Edinburgh." In the spring of 1775 he fell ill with the malady that had carried off his mother, and died on August 26th, 1776. He was buried on the eastern slope of Calton Hill.

Hume very early showed traces of a predisposition to philosophy. A remarkable letter written at sixteen years of age shows unusual precocity of philosophic taste and expression, although it indicates no more than his brooding over a vague and indistinct ideal which was an aspiration to realize the attainments he admired in the classic models of Greece and Rome. When he was eighteen he passed through an intellectual crisis which Mr. Huxley compares with a similar event in the life of John Stuart Mill. The comparison seems a little strained, but the incident is of interest because it turns upon the question of virtue and moral discipline, qualities which came in to divert Hume's attention from his philosophic dreaming, and to suggest another form of culture than that which at first attracted his imagination. For a while Hume gave himself up to serious reflections after the manner of ancient moralists. He lost during this period some of his native intellectual balance, but soon afterward he regained his natural robust health and with it recovered his former equability of temperament.

He had all his life a cheerful and complacent disposition and this characteristic fitted him for a literary life and for the sceptical pursuits which he chose to follow. He was equally disqualified by temperament, by circumstances, and by the company with which he associated, for the defence or advocacy of positive convictions upon the more abstruse subjects of philosophic speculation. This may or may not have been a merit. Which of the two it is not necessary to decide. The fact is referred to as indicating a constitutional quality which more or less determined the negative nature of his convictions on the more abstract questions of philosophy. To all who have gotten beyond the need of defending the peculiar philosophic and theological theories of that time, this mental poise and sceptical self-control over misdirected enthusiasm has much to admire in it. It must be confessed, however, that Hume did not sustain this attitude in an equal measure toward all subjects. His experience with the clergy and religious problems generally sufficed to make him a sceptic always in this direction, but politics and disappointed vanity soured his temperament only to make him quite positive in his political beliefs after the doubts of his earlier years had been dispelled by maturer reflection and a larger experience. But in his first works we feel the force and example of a very cool and subtle judgment, and the irony of its passionless reflections very naturally annoys those who have a disposition for enthusiasm, and who must accept the first theory at hand, for the peculiar purposes of advocates. This characteristic he retained to the last in spite of his positive views in politics and economics.

Introduction

Preliminary Observations on Hume's Scepticism.

The task of correctly estimating the philosophy of Hume is incumbered with unusual difficulties. We have first to determine whether he really had a system or not; whether, in . order to expose their contradictions, he was merely developing views for which he himself claimed no personal responsibility, or whether he meant to present positive doctrines in the place of the systems of Locke and Berkeley. We generally assume to know that a man is either a realist, an idealist, a sensationalist, a rationalist, a materialist, an empiricist, a transcendentalist, a sceptic, or what not. With this knowledge we have an opportunity to discuss his point of view accordingly, to estimate its agreement or disagreement with facts. We may defend it, or we may criticise it. But in all cases our method of treating a man will be determined solely by the consideration whether we are dealing with his doctrine, or with his reasoning, or with both. If he is supposed to occupy a given position in philosophy we may defend or attack it in its relation to facts, or in its relation merely to logical reasoning. But if a man cannot be said to have any positive opinions of his own we are limited to the consideration of his reasoning. For instance, an idealist or a realist may be exposited, defended, or criticised. We may test his doctrine by its conformity or non-conformity with admitted truths. We may take him seriously to mean what his language implies. But if a man be a sceptic we have nothing to do with his private opinions, but only with his reasoning.

A sceptic is a man who presumably has no opinions of his own upon the subject at hand, but assumes certain premises which others furnish him, and then merely deduces conclusions that flow from them. He claims no responsibility for the truth of the premises, nor for the conclusion, but only for the legitimacy of the process by which that conclusion is reached, Were processes of reasoning infallible there would be no escape from his clutches. The strength of his position, however, lies in the superior security of logical processes as compared with the psychological which are in the first instance, the originators of knowledge. Hence, inasmuch as he is not responsible for the data of his argument, he can be judged only at the bar of logic. He applies his method only in order to develop contradictions, or such disagreeable results as those who admit the premises are not disposed to accept. He is careful not to embarass himself with the duties of an advocate. A man of this kind is not subject to criticism for his opinions, but only for the character of his reasoning. It is probable also that he is chargeable with no other fallacy than an equivocation or a non sequitur. He is never exposed to the charge of a petitio principii which is the fallacy of a man who has opinions. But the possibility of an equivocation or a non sequitur is great enough to offer good opportunities for impeachment. Yet fallacies of this kind may be less frequent than errors of assumption, and hence the sceptic, not making any assumptions of his own, is exempt from so many liabilities which affect others that he is less vulnerable to attack, and not at all by the usual weapons of controversy.

The ideal sceptic may not often be realized. He may alternate between dogmatism and scepticism as convenience requires, or he may be an imperfect master of his method. Again he may merely simulate scepticism on emergency for the sake of the immunity which it affords against criticism, or he may push the method to such extremities that it breaks down under its own weight. Such were the ancient sceptics among the Greeks. Their scepticism was so naive and extravagant that it was very ineffective against the convictions of common sense. This was mainly because it was directed against perception and not against reasoning. But modern sceptics have been much more secure against ridicule. They have enjoyed the immunity of impeaching doctrines and accepting facts while they appeared to be discrediting both of them. They have been shrewd enough to accept the facts of knowledge, and only to dispute the theories of it and to suggest its limitations. Consequently, wherever they appear they are the signal either ior general assault, or for a more profound investigation of philosophical problems.

Hume has always been regarded as a sceptic, and he himself would probably not have cared to dispute this verdict. So general has this view of him been that it would be taken as presumption to qualify or to deny it, and it would open new possibilities to most students if they could be made to believe that Hume's reputation in this respect was a mistaken one. For it would expose him to new methods of attack. It is not my purpose, however, to dispute the general correctness of the prevalent judgment, because it is not to be denied that Hume was a master of sceptical methods. But nevertheless I am disposed to qualify this opinion in order to explain certain characteristics in his writings and certain inconsistencies in those who regard him as a sceptic and yet speak of his philosophic system.

Before doing so, however, it is well to remark the radical difference between two states of mind which go under the name of scepticism. They are religious scepticism and philosophic scepticism. They are both alike in the respect that they represent a state of doubt. But the former is a doubt of certain facts and beliefs, and the other is a doubt of the grounds of them, or the theories explaining them. It is true that there are cases where the two forms of doubt coincide, and these are those in which theology and philosophy interpenetrate. But usually religious scepticism is a doubt of the validity and certitude of asserted facts which are assumed to attest the truth and authority of something else, while philosophic scepticism does not necessarily impeach the value of any facts, but only the grounds on which they are assumed to rest; that is, the proof of them. The disbelief of a fact or an assumed truth may be felt without reference to any of its supposed grounds, and merely on the principle that it is opposed to experience, but the disbelief of a philosophic theory is not incompatible with the acceptance of all that the theory endeavored to support, while it often has the effect of implying a distrust of facts on the frequently accepted but false assumption that unproved truths are inadmissible. Were it not for this advantage dogmatism might more easily triumph over its opponent.

In regard to Hume there can be no doubt that he was a religious sceptic. His life and works leave this fact indubitable. It is quite as certain that he must be considered a philosophic sceptic, but with a qualification. His reputation for being a sceptic comes from two considerations. The first is his emphatic repudiation of the main doctrines which characterized the religious mind of the time, and the second is his cautiousness about admitting anything for which he may be made responsible. The latter means that he had assumed his premises from predecessors and had drawn conclusions from these premises which were not agreeable to the defenders of the reigning philosophy. But there is a characteristic in the style of Hume which suggests a criticism of the loose habit of calling him a sceptic, because, although he is a sceptic quite frequently, he is not always one. This characteristic has two features in it. The first is the discussion of his subject in a manner to make most readers believe that he is enunciating his own doctrines. Not only the air of seriousness, but the mode of expression would induce most persons to interpret him in this light. The second feature is the modification of the fundamental conceptions of Locke and Berkeley in such a way that, instead of seeming to argue from premises which he assumes neither to affirm nor deny, he appears to be stating views of his own. This characteristic is so strong that most readers would have to be told not to take him too seriously in order to realize that he is a sceptic. Undoubtedly we can suppose him assuming the premises of Locke and Berkeley, but the dogmatic style of his statements and his persistent silence about these two philosophers would generally prevent the suspicion of a purely sceptical motive. One writer tells us that there is no reason to suppose that Hume did not accept as true the principles from which he argued, and the same writer implies in his remarks that the hesitancy and doubt which gave rise to Hume's reputation for scepticism came from a real perplexity about the problems he was trying to solve, and not from any desire to evade responsibility for his premises. However this may be it is certain that his style is much more that of a dogmatist than of a sceptic.

When Hume wrote the Treatise of Human Nature he was decidedly more sceptical than he was in his latter days. The age at which he wrote precluded the probability that he would be so assured in his convictions as to be wholly dogmatic and self-dependent, and it also rendered it unlikely that his mastery of philosophic method would be so complete as to prevent the betrayal of a style against which a trained sceptic would be secure. But there was an element in Hume's temperament and mental constitution which conflicted with perfectly sceptical deportment. He was not wholly indifferent about philosophic principles. He had too keen an insight into truth to be wholly the victim of that intellectual paralysis which is the mark of certain kinds of scepticism. A true philosophic sceptic is a man who either has no power to perceive truth and always doubts it for that reason, or effectively conceals his perception in order to discredit the arguments by which it is sought to be established. In other words he is a man who only sees, or only affects to see, a weakness in constructive theories about things. Hume undoubtedly had many qualities of a genius for this task of breaking down theories. He had a well balanced judgment, and above all that freedom from bias which a healthy man always has, who does not allow himself to be frightened by ignorant fears about unlikely consequences, and who knows that truth is too often associated with ideas that have no necessary connection with it. His sceptical tendencies were supplemented by a native insight into the possibility or probability of what could not be demonstrated, and this gave him the consciousness of knowledge while he saw as clearly the weakness of the constructive theories which endeavored to import extrinsic and often irrelevant evidence into the support of truth.

His intuitive insight was as good as his ratiocinative powers, and often led him to betray in his style the existence of opinions which an astute sceptic would effectually conceal. It is only a false emphasis upon the value of theoretical and ratiocinative knowledge that ever leads to scepticism, and it does this by disparaging a natural trust in one's insight for the less exempted power of reason. Hume's scepticism thus came from a desire to see both capacities in harmony. He had no intellectual difficulties in seeing the truth, but he desired to enjoy the traditional security of seeing it put beyond question by a process of proof, and as he perceived the fallacies in existing arguments directed to that end he could appear only as a man questioning the validity of general beliefs. Others did not see the distinction which he drew or implied, and which Kant made emphatic, between the world of experience and the world of dialectic conceptions, and hence they mistook the nature and scope of his scepticism, and failed as well to notice the element of dogmatism in his intuitive acceptance of empirical truths. Had Hume not longed too much to give these truths a ratiocinative basis he would have been more constructive in his methods, and would have escaped the imputation of scepticism along with Locke and Berkeley. But failing to distinguish between empirical and " transcendental " knowledge, he brought the former under the impeachment which his scepticism produced against the latter. And yet his native insight into truth is so clear and his sympathy with empirical and scientific knowledge is so strong, that he cannot evade the manners of a dogmatist in various emergencies of his speculations. He cannot always maintain the scoffing indifference of an ideal sceptic and hence it is almost impossible to avoid thinking that he has simulated this attitude merely to purchase the immunities which such a position confers.

There are some interesting facts which confirm the view here taken of Hume. In the first place the third volume of the Treatise does not draw so distinctly from the philosophy of Locke and Berkely as does the first book. The same might be said of the second book which treats of the passions, except that portion which treats of the freedom of the will. Unlike these two books also the third did not run counter to the generally accepted theory of ethics, except, perhaps, in the matter of the relation of " reason " to moral distinctions; and even this was in conflict only with a small school of thinkers, whom Mr. Martineau describes as " intellectualists," and who did not represent the prevalent theory of the day. Hume drew from other systems for his ethics what Locke and Berkeley did not directly supply for him. The consequence was that there were no reasons for suspecting scepticism in this part of his speculations, because they were in accord with the prevailing doctrines of the time. His evident sympathy with the position that moral conceptions were the product of a " moral sense," or a " sentiment," advocated by Hutcheson and Shaftesbury, allied him very closely with the schools who opposed the explanations of moral ideas by association, because this view eviscerated those ideas of their moral content. This is the more remarkable because, having made havoc in the first book of speculations about causal connection by means of the doctrine of association, it was open to him as a sceptic to dissolve the moral systems of the day in the same manner, instead of accepting with them the appeal to a form of intuitive ideas. But his scepticism seems to extend no farther than metaphysics, while his ethics escapes its analysis. The conflict between theology and utilitarianism had not yet begun, and hence Hume could accept the position of Hutcheson and Shaftesbury without fear of controversy.