PART FIRST. DAVID HUME. SECTION I. A BRIEF ACCOUNT OF HUME'S LIFE. In the winter of the year 1723 there entered the University of Edinburgh a boy under twelve years of age (he was born April 26, 1711), who in his future life was to undermine all previous modern speculative thinking, and constrain philosophy to begin to build anew. This was David Hume, son of Joseph Hume or Home, advocate, but who passed his life as a country gentleman at Ninewells, near the borders of England. Entering college when he should have been at school, he was introduced, after getting an imperfect acquaintance with Latin and Greek, in the classes of logic, pneumatics, and moral philosophy, to subjects fitted only for men of matured powers and enlarged knowledge. I suspect there was no ruling mind among his teachers to sway him, and he was left to follow the bent of his own original and searching intellect. We have two accounts of Hume's life, the one an autobiography, My Own Life, the other by Mr. Hill Burton, who had access to the papers collected by Baron Hume and deposited with the Royal Society of Edinburgh.' 'In this paper I have made use of the larger article on Hume in my Scottish Philosophy, Biographical, Expository, and Critical. "I was seized very early," he says in My Own Life, "with a passion for literature which has been the ruling passion of my life, and a great source of my enjoyments." In writing to a friend, July 4, 1727, he mentions having by him written papers which he will not make known till he has polished them, and these evidently contain the germs of a system of mental philosophy. He had to pass through a singular experience, which he details in a letter written, though probably never sent, to a physician, supposed by Mr. Burton to be Dr. Cheyne, author of the Philosophical Principles of Natural Religion, and a work on "Nervous Diseases." He begins with stating that he had always a strong inclination to books and letters, and that after fifteen years he had been left to his own choice in reading. "I found it to incline almost equally to books of reasoning and philosophy, and to poetry and the polite authors. Every one who is acquainted either with the philosophers or critics knows that there is nothing yet established in either of these sciences, and that they contain little more than endless disputes on the most fundamental articles. Upon examination of these I found a certain boldness of temper growing in me which was not inclined to submit to any authority on these subjects, but led me to seek out some new medium by which truth might be established. After much study and reflection on this, at last, when I was about eighteen years of age, there seemed to be opened up to me a new scene of thought which transported me beyond measure, and made me, with an ardour natural to young men, throw up every other pleasure or business to apply entirely to it. The law, which was the business I designed to follow, appeared nauseous to me, and I could think of no other way of pushing my fortune in the world but that of scholar and philosopher. I was infinitely happy in this course of life for some months, till at last, about the be ginning of September, 1729, all my ardour seemed in a moment to be extinguished, and I could no longer raise my mind to that pitch which formerly gave me such excessive pleasure. I felt no uneasiness or want of spirits when I laid aside my book; and, therefore, never imagined there was any bodily distemper in the case, but that my coldness proceeded from a laziness of temper which must be overcome by redoubling my application. In this condition I remained for nine months, very uneasy to myself, but without growing any worse-which was a miracle. There was another particular which contributed more than anything to waste my spirits and bring on me this distemper, which was, that having read many books of morality, such as Cicero, Seneca, and Plutarch, and being smit with their beautiful representations of virtue and philosophy, I undertook the improvement of my temper and will, along with my reason and understanding. I was continually fortifying myself with reflections against death and poverty, and shame and pain, and all the other calamities of life. These no doubt are exceeding useful when joined with an active life, because the occasion being presented along with the reflection, works it into the soul and makes it take a deep impression; but in solitude they serve to little other purpose than to waste the spirits, the force of the mind meeting with no resistance, but wasting itself in the air like our arm when it misses the aim. This, however, I did not learn but by experience, and till I had already ruined my health, though I was not sensible of it.” He then describes the symptoms, scurvy spots breaking out on his fingers the first winter, then a wateryness in the mouth. Next year, about May, 1731, there grew upon him a ravenous appetite and a palpitation of heart. In six weeks, from "being tall, lean, and rawboned, he became on a sudden the most sturdy, robust, healthful-like fellow |