BOOKS.

PROFESSOR KNIGHT'S " HUME."*

HUMS is, perhaps, to English readers, the most interesting subject,. except Bishop Butler, with whom Professor Knight's valuable, series has had to deal, and the first with whom the editor of the series has dealt personally. It would not be easy to speak of this little volume in too high terms. It is at once genuinely popular and genuinely philosophical, i.e., as popular as it could. be, to be in the true sense philosophical; for if it had aimed at more popularity, it would not have been a philosophical work at all. As it is, it is genuinely philosophical, and yet so interesting that to any one with a philosophical turn at all,—and no such series could be intended for those who have none,—it will be in the highest degree attractive.

Perhaps there is no stranger incident in the last century than the reception which David Hume met with when he- visited France in the diplomatic train of the Marquis of Hert- ford. He was corpulent; his expression did no justice to his intellect; he wore his uniform, according to Lord Charlemont„ "like a grocer of the train-bands ;" and though we are not sure- that in the train of Lord Hertford he wore one at all, as he cer- tainly did when he went with General Sinclair to Turin, with a uniform or without he must have presented a very strange figure, receiving formal speeches of welcome from three Princes. who were all of them afterwards Kings,—namely, Louis XVI., Louis XVIIL, and Charles X.,—accepting the compliments of Madame de Pompadour, solicited for his friendship by the Duchesse de Choiseul, and even confessing himself a little mor- tified that Louis the bien-aime himself did not pay him any particular compliment, until he was consoled by hearing that the King never said anything to anybody on the first introduction. Lord Charlemont describes Hume as having a wide month,.

• Philosophical Classics for English lisaders. Edited by William Knight, LL.D.„ Professor of Moral Philosophy, 'University of St. Andrews. 'Hums." By William Knight, LL.D. Edinturgh and London : W. Blackwocd and Sons. '.without any other expression than that of imbecility," his eyes as being "vacant and spiritless," his English as "rendered ridiculous by the broadest Scotch accent," and his French as, "if possible, still more laughable." Yet "at the opera, his broad, unmeaning face was usually seen entre deux jolis minois. The ladies in France gave the ton, and the ton was deism ; a species of philosophy ill-suited to the softer sex." This is Lord Cherie- moat's description, and may be, as Professor Knight thinks it

is, decidedly exaggerated. But Grimm's account entirely con- firms it

Ce y a encore de plias' ant, &est quo totes lee jolies femmea se le sent arrache, et que le gros philoaophe ecoasais West pin dans lear societe. C'est nn excellent homme, quo David flume; il eat naturellement serein, ii entend finement, II dit quelquefois avec sel quoiqn'il pane peu ; mais il eat loud, il a ni chalear, ni grace, ni agrement dans l'esprit, ni rien qui soit propre a s'allier an ramage de °es charmantes petites machines qu'on appelle jolies femmes." (Burton's Life of David Hume, Vol. II., p. 223.) Yet this was the man caressed by the finest of the French fine ladies, mainly, we suppose, because he was known to be a sceptic and a pillar of the sceptical philosophy ; for while the cultivated Frenchmen seem to have been taken chiefly by his political and economical essays, it was the Natural History of Religion which took most hold of the enthusiastic women. Madame d'Epinity described his first introduction to the homage of these French beauties in a well-known passage :— "II fit son debut chez Madame de T—; on lui avait destine le role d'un Staten assis entre deux Esolaves, employant tonte son eloquence pour e'en faire aimer; lea tronvant inexorables, il devait cheroher le sujet de leur peines et de 'ear resistance; on le place sur un sopha entre les deux plus jolies femmes de Paris, il lea regards, attentive- ment, il ee frappe le ventre et lea genonx plusienrs reprises et no trouve jamaie autre chose a leur dire quo: Eh hien ! mes demoiselles. Eh bien ! vous voila done! Vona voila! voile voila ioi Cette phrase dura un quart d'heure sans Tell plat en Borth% rine d'elles se leva d'impatience. Ah, dit elle, je m'en etais bien dontee, cet homme n'est bon qu'a manger du veau." (Ibid., p. 224.)

Yet the impatient young lady was quite mistaken. David Hume was good for a great deal beside that; he was very good for making men doubt, and all the better, perhaps, for that purpose, that he felt no great desire to make them doubt, though the only sayings which expressed his real thought on the deepest of all subjects, unquestionably had that tendency. France, twenty- five years before the Revolution, desired nothing so much as to doubt; even those who, as the event proved, were to suffer most from the consequences of universal doubt, desired to doubt as much as any one else. They did not see that doubt, which they regarded as a sort of privilege of culture, would undermine the existing order far more completely than mere rebellion,—would undermine the confidence of the aristocracy in their own rights, as well as furnish the people with hundreds of enthusiastic leaders and guides. Hame's doubt, like so much of the doubt which influences the nations, was conservative in its attitude, and not democratic. It made him shrink from change, as one shrinks from walking near a wall after one has perceived that all the mortar which once held the stones together, has fallen out of it. But the doubt he spread took hold of men who did not share his conservatism, who thought anything better than what they saw. And even those who were reassured by flume's conservatism to think doubt not only fashionable but safe, were in their restlessness and dissatisfaction with themselves, and in their reluctance to

see how deep-rooted was the evil, some of the chief elements of danger. They wished, if they could, to keep things as they

were, but to enjoy the excitement of being convinced that all the conventions which rendered change difficult, had no better foundation than a custom which they despised.

Professor Knight's account of David flume's singularly cool, not to say frigid, though friendly life, is quite a sufficient one, though it is hardly as good, we think, as the philosophical part of the book. But then, that is more than good ; it is simply excellent, clear, subtle, graphic, the work of a man with a rare capacity for philosophical exposition. As Professor Knight says, flume's scepticism was never in any degree propagandist. He was not a preacher of the doctrine that nothing could be known, but rather a thinker of great ability who, after making explorations of his own in various directions, had persuaded himself that there were so many difficulties in the way of knowing anything with confidence, that he deemed it best for himself to turn aside from the pursuit of speculative truth, though without crying aloud to the world that speculative truth was unattainable. This, however, he had said in his earliest work,

the Treatise on Human Nature, and that was why he afterwards decidedly condemned its too positive tone. In his later works, he took a more diffident attitude, the attitude of a profoundly dubious mind, but not of one which knew for certain that truth was unattainable. Here,' he seemed to say, are my tentatives towards the solution of the greatest problems. They are all fruitless. I do not say that other men may not be more for- tunate, but still I think that if they are, they should show how my preliminary difficulties are to be met. 1, at least, despair of meeting them.'

In a brief notice of this kind, we cannot go over the ground which Professor Knight has gone over; but we must give one or two illustrations of his admirable expositions and criticisms. Take first his terse and lucid criticism on flume's teaching that ideas are nothing but fainter or revived copies of sensory im- pressions, and that all our knowledge arises out of " impressions " made on us through the senses :—

"What is an 'impression' P Is it thinkable, in and by itself ? Does it not require something other than itself to make it intelligible ? It is the impression of an object external to us. So far good ; but on

what does the impression light ? In order to the impress of any im- pression being conscious, is not the existence of a self—that is to say, of a subject capable of being impressed—necessary ? In other

words, if we analyse our consciousness of any single • impression,' we find that we must first of all assume the existence of a conscious self ; and neither the single impression nor a series of impressions can create the self, if the existence of the self is necessary to the con- sciousness of the impression. Hume affirmed that all our ideas were derived from prior impressions ; but if we must bring in an idea to esspiain an impresaion, and to account for the first impression, the theory is a hysteron proteron. If we ask what an impression is, in answering the question, we must put the impression into a class or mental category. And what does that mean ? It means that in order to make an impression intelligible, we must make use of an

idea. To explain it is to predicate certain things regarding it—that is to say, to bring it under some common notion, or to think it under an idea. The first objection, therefore, to each a theory of the origin of knowledge as Home advances, is that it is untrue to fact. Tested by experience, it is contrary to experience ; because a sensation never exists, and cannot possibly exist, without a conscious subject.

The tabula rasa state can never be disclosed to consciousness; because the tabula is no longer rasa, when conscious life begins.

Empiricists direct us to sensation,' pure and simple, as the origin of ideas. But what, we must again ask, is meant by a 'pure,' or 'simple,' or 'single' sensation ? It must have certain features, which mark it off from other sensations. It must exist in place, and in time; and it must have a special character, as weak, or strong. But in each of these elements of place, time, and degree, certain features differentiate it from other sensations. Then as each indi- vidual impression reaches us, it comes not singly, but in definite relation to others, which are contemporaneous as well as suooessive ; and it is what it is, in virtue of its relation to these other impressions. Whether the sensation has been often felt, or only once experienced, these relations to what is beyond itself are necessarily involved in its very existence ; so that it may be categorically affirmed that no sensation is ever simple,' in the sense that it does not carry us beyond itself. Instead, therefore, of affirming with Hume that. there is nothing in any object which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it,' we affirm that, unless we transcend it we cannot even know it, and that our first knowledge of it is due to the fact of our getting beyond it." (pp. 137-9.)

It would hardly be possible to give a more effective criticism of flume's philosophy of perception than Professor Knight has compressed into these few sentences. Again, let us take flume's most celebrated doctrine, his philosophy of causation :—

"Phenomenon A precedes, phenomenon B succeeds. Sequence is all that we know, because all that the senses take cognisance of is succession in time ; and we call that the cause which precedes the effect, and that the effect which succeeds the cause. We do this by habit, and get so accustomed to the associations of succession, that we come to believe that they must go on as they do ; that is to say, we impose upon ourselves, and tarn a trick of custom into a relation of absolute necessity. Now, this may seem to be a theory of nescience, an agnostic position ; but it really contains a dogmatio presupposition upbound with it. It positively affirms that there is no power within the antecedent adequate to produce the consequent, that the notion of such clausal power is a fiction of the imagination. We are told that in imagining efficiency, or causality, or productiveness (name it as you will) to be lodged within an antecedent, or even within a group of antecedents, as co-operative con-causes, we are the dupes of custom—the slaves of use and wont. We may validly ask for an ex- planation of the use and wont, or for the source of the custom, if custom be all in all. But lest this should seem a circular argument, the affirmation of Hume may, in the second place, be still more validly met by the counter-affirmation, that—in each and every occurrence—there is more than simple antecedence and sequence ; that there is a continuous exercise of power within the successive phenomena, dynamic force, or direct causal efficiency. Given the whole sum of concurrent conditions that go before an event—(and the group may be very large, and is in all cases indefinite) —in order to the production of any result, power must be exerted, an interior canal energy lodged within the phenomena must operate to produce the effect. The longer it is looked at, the theory that resolves causation into sequence will be seen to be the emptiest of theorise. It. ignores the question at issue ; it tries to solve the problem by cutting the knot, and then affirming that there is nothing to untie. To put casual in place of causal succession (which Hume does), is to put the cart before the horse, not only metaphorically but really ; because it is only in the causal relations of phenomena that we find power, or drawing force. The only thing that Hume recognises in the opera- tions or ongoings of the universe is (as we have seen) mere sequence. An event happens, it takes place, evenit,—that is all that we can say in explanation of it. The isolated particulars, in the continuous chain of phenomenal succession, these we do know, as they occur in time and in place ; but as to any tie between them, connecting them, we are absolutely in the dark. Now here (just as in the parallel flaw we already traced in his theory of perception) it is pre- cisely the reverse. We do not know the particulars, as they succeed each other, simply as detached occurrences. If we know them at all, we know them in relation to each other ; and the larger half of our knowledge of each is our knowledge of its relation to the rest. A cause has no meaning except in relation to its effect, and the effect has none except in relation to its cause. But the special point to be noted is that we know the cause as productive of the effect, or we do not know it at all ; and we know the effect as pro- duced by the cause, or we do not know it at all ; and since all phenomena are, alternatively, both causes and effects, according as we regard them—the cause being just the effect concealed, and the effect being merely the cause revealed—we find an interior power or causality within every single link of the chain. Take any small section of the continuous area of phenomenal succession (for we mast remember that the chain is never broken), select two or three links. You apply a match to gunpowder, and you see the flame and smoke, and hear the sound of an explosion. You perceive a violent change in the position and the relations of certain particles of matter. The application of the spark to the powder you call the cause, the explosion you name the effect ; but there were many things besides the application of the spark that were equally influential in determining the result, and without which that result could not have taken place,—elements, states, and conditions, indefinitely numerous, but all concurring and co-operating. And all the result lay potentially within the cause, or the sum of the con-causes ; the explosion merely made it visible. It displayed the working of the cause or causes in a certain manner. In other words, the force which separated the atoms formerly slumbered within them. It was latent, and it became active. Of course we are not to suppose that there is a non-material entity lying in some sort of crypt amongst the material atoms, alternately caught and released, now passive, and again active in its wanderings to and fin; but within every atom, as its interior essence, and therefore throughout the whole area of Nature, this force or causal power resides. This, however, is to anticipate." (pp. 158-61.) We give these clear and graphic passages as specimens only of the kind of exposition and criticism which fills the latter part of this admirable little book. Professor Knight could not have been more lucid, and could not have been much more terse. Moreover, he catches admirably flume's general drift and character when he speaks as follows in relation to flume's most notable literary achievement, the posthumously published work, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion :— "Three characters are introduced—Demea, Cleanthes, and Philo. Demea is the orthodox a priori theologian ; Cleanthes the liberal. minded theist, who adopts the teleological argument from design, and combats the narrower theology of Demea ; while Philo is the sceptic, who meditates between both. Hume tells us it was not Philo but Cleanthes whom he meant to make the hero of his dialogue. It must not be forgotten, however, that he had a certain amount of sympathy with all the characters ; and that each of them (Demea included) alternately mirrored his own ever-changing mood. This kaleidoscopic character of flume's mind has not been sufficiently recognised, and it is quite consistent with his prevailing tendenoy towards agnosticism." (pp. 209-10.)

That epithet, "kaleidoscopic," is the happiest possible for Hume,—unless, indeed, it may give the hasty reader a con- ception of a mind delighting in colour, resembling Carlyle's rather than flume's, a mind which presents to itself everything through a coloured image, and not through the pure intellect. flume's mind was not pictorial, though it was keen and coherent in its grasp of what it saw. He looked more at the most striking qualities than at the most striking visible elements of the objects he viewed ; but he looked at them now from one side and now from another, so that they came before him in all their aspects, both the aspects which he thought the least instructive and the aspects which he thought the most instructive. And this is what Professor Knight means by his being "kaleidoscopic." Further, Professor Knight seizes a most important feature of flume's mind when he teaches us that he was very far indeed from a doctrinaire, that he was a sceptic because he could find no " stereoscopic " view, so to speak, which reconciled the various aspects in which human nature presented itself to him, rather than because he thought any one of these aspects the only one to be implicitly trusted. The more carefully this admirable study is considered, the more highly it will be valued. In the personal study, perhaps, Professor Knight makes too little of the frigidity of flume's temperament, which brightened up only when it depreciated enthusiasm, and which, true to itself, chose Lucian's wit for the consolation of its last days. On almost the last of those days, he pleased himself with imagining what excuse he could give to Charon for leaving him a little longer on this side of Sty; and how easily Charon would refute him. In other words, even on the verge of death he was true to his own con- ception of life as a state in which it was much easier to be amused than deeply interested,—in which thought itself, though a delightful is not a very serious occupation, and death may be regarded as only a new experience not altogether serious either.