on having written the dialogues cautiously and artfully, and the honours of the argument rest with the sceptic. Cleanthes may most fitly express the Deism to which Hume was strongly inclined, while Philo represents the cold, clear intellectualism which will take nothing for granted, and delights in setting forth every difficulty in the boldest and most uncompromising way. As they stand, the Dialogues are little more than a statement and criticism of the argument from design; and the inadequacy of this argument, when taken by itself and in isolation from the demands of our moral nature, is now very generally acknowledged.

The fate of the Dialogues was somewhat curious. Adam Smith had brought a storm of obloquy on his head by his eulogy of his friend Hume "as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous. man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit." Yet Smith, who had been named as Hume's literary executor, refused to have any hand in the publication of the Dialogues. Strahan, the publisher, also declined the responsibility; but Hume had provided for this contingency by enjoining the duty of publication on his nephew and namesake, at whose instance they appeared in 1779.

Latent in the speculative philosophy of Hume there were suggestions for new departures in no less than three directions. Hume had shown that the dominant philosophy issued in scepticism, and had yet admitted that scepticism was in direct opposition to the natural convictions of mankind. Might there not be an escapefrom sceptical difficulties by falling back on these natural and instinctive beliefs as possessing supreme

authority? This was the question which Reid put to himself, and which found its answer in his philosophy of common sense. It was by his remembrance of Hume that Kant also was roused from his "dogmatic slumber." Hume's impressions had failed to account for necessary truths, and therefore for those relations of ideas of which Hume himself had spoken as "instinctively or demonstratively certain." Kant, attracted especially by Hume's treatment of causation in the Inquiry, "universalised" the problem thus suggested, and asked whether this and other necessities. of thought might not be contributed by the mind itself. His answer is to be found in the Critique of Pure Reason. And, as already indicated, a school, of which Mill, Bain, and Huxley are the most distinguished representatives, has accepted the phenomenalism into which Hume drove the doctrine that all our knowledge is derived from impressions, and has adopted his "sceptical solutions" as the basis of its teaching. Thus the impulses which Hume communicated to modern thought are potent at the present hour, and his reputation as a thinker shows as yet no sign of decay.

CHAPTER V.

HENRY HOME, LORD KAMES (1696-1782).

SCOTLAND owes not a little of her culture to her lawyers. A national sentiment has been fostered by her separate system of law and legal administration, far more nearly allied with the jurisprudence of the Continent than with that of England; and the lords of the Court of Session have formed in Edinburgh a little aristocracy, closely connected in sympathy and social intercourse with the rest of the community, and especially with the bar. The briefless advocate has often devoted himself to literature, to philosophy, or to antiquities; and the ability which has led to success at the bar or to a seat in the supreme court has broadened out in many spheres of intellectual activity. In Henry Home we have a man of restless vivacity, whose duties as an advocate and on the bench left him time to become a voluminous author on many and varied subjects, and who still deserves to be called, in the words of Sir Walter Scott, the "ingenious and philosophical" Lord Kames.

He was born at Kames, in Berwickshire, in 1696, his father being a country gentleman, and his mother

a granddaughter of Robert Baillie" Baillie the Covenanter" of Carlyle's Miscellanies-who was at one time Principal of the University of Glasgow. Imperfectly instructed at home by a private tutor, he was indentured to a writer to the signet; but his ambition for the higher prizes of the profession prompted him to be an advocate; and after working hard to repair the defects of his earlier education he was called to the bar in 1724. After the publication of Remarkable Decisions in the Court of Session from 1716 to 1728, he attained a leading position at the bar. In 1752 he was made a lord of Session under the title of Lord Kames, and in 1763 he was appointed a lord of justiciary. Throughout life he bestowed a considerable portion of his time on study, besides taking a leading part in public movements, and greatly improving the estate of Blair Drummond, of which he became possessed through his wife. His unflagging industry was shown in a long list of works on law, history, literature, agriculture, education, and philosophy. He was one of David Hume's early correspondents, and a confidant of his younger friend's literary hopes and fears even before the publication of the Treatise. Later he became a recognised authority in Scotland on literature as on agriculture. He encouraged Adam Smith to deliver a course of lectures on English literature; and Smith, when congratulated on the number of able writers whom Scotland had produced, generously said: "We must every one of us acknowledge Kames for our master."

His philosophical reputation depends chiefly on his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural

Religion, published in 1751. Though Hume is not expressly mentioned, his Treatise and Essays are frequently referred to and freely criticised. But Home's own orthodoxy was called in question. An outcry was provoked by his advocacy of necessity as against liberty of the will, and especially by his statement that, though a sense of liberty has been implanted in our minds, it is a deceitful one. It is often supposed that a belief in human freedom must be uncongenial where a Calvinistic theory prevails; but in the Confession of Faith of the Church of Scotland the freedom of the human will is asserted side by side with the doctrine of Divine predestination. Home's expression of his opinions led to a prosecution in the Church Courts, and it was proposed to censure Home and Hume alike! A lively controversy ensued. Hume took the matter very coolly. Have you seen our friend Harry's Essays?" he asked a friend. "They are well wrote, and are an unusual instance of an obliging method of answering a book. Philosophers must judge of the question; but the clergy have already decided it, and say he is as bad as me! Nay, some affirm him to be worse. -as much as a treacherous friend is worse than an open enemy." The Assembly passed a general resolution expressing its abhorrence of "impious and infidel principles," but a motion to censure Hume specially was rejected in committee, and a complaint against the publishers of Home's Essays came to nothing, the leader of the heresy-hunt

-the Rev. George Anderson-opportunely dying a few days before the meeting of presbytery at which the case was heard. An Introduction to the Art of

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