He was for a time "professor of pneumatology and ethical philosophy" in Edinburgh University. The pneumatics are divided into the following parts : 1. A physical inquiry into the nature of such subtle and material substances as are imperceptible to the senses, and known only from their operations; 2. The nature of immaterial substances connected with matter, in which is demonstrated, by natural evidence, the immortality of the human soul; 3. The nature of immaterial created beings not connected with matter; 4. Natural theology, or the existence and attributes of God demonstrated from the light of nature. Ethics or moral philosophy is divided into the theoretical and practical parts, in treating of which the authors he chiefly uses are Cicero, Marcus Antoninus, Puffendorf, and Lord Bacon. He had lectures explaining the origin and principles of civil government, illustrated with an account of the rise and fall of the ancient governments of Greece and Rome, and a view of that form of government which took its rise from the irruptions of the northern nations. His students have also discourses presented to them upon some important heads of pneumatical or moral philosophy, which are delivered before the principal with open doors. Pringle was by no means so thorough an instructor as Stevenson. Carlyle describes him "as an agreeable lecturer, though no great master of the science he taught." "His lectures were chiefly a compilation from Lord Bacon's works, and had it not been for Puffendorf's small book, which he made his text, we should not have been instructed in the rudiments of the science." Nevertheless, we see that he discussed topics which must issue, sooner or later, in a scientific jurisprudence and political economy. We see, in the case both of Stevenson and Pringle, how much attention was paid in the Scottish universities to the practice of English composition.

Pringle's taste did not lie specially in metaphysics. He was born in Roxburghshire, in 1707, and became a physician. He settled in Edinburgh about 1734; and after 1748, resided in London, where he was elected president of the Royal Society in 1773. He died in 1782.

We wish our readers to transport themselves to the eastern border country of Scotland, and to try to realize its condition in the first half of last century. People are apt to take their views of that district from Sir Walter Scott, who passed the most interesting portion of his boyhood there, and picking up the dim traditions of the past ere they were finally lost, and tingeing them with the romantic hues of his own imagination, has presented to us such a picture as a man of the nineteenth century, in love with chivalry, would be

1 "Scot's Magazine," 1747, 1749; Chambers's "Biographical Dictionary."

likely to furnish of the ages of border strife. But the truth is, Sir Walter has given us only one side of the Scottish character; he never thoroughly sympathized with the more earnest features of the national mind, and he did not appreciate the attempts which were made in the seventeenth century to deliver the country from violence and superstition, and to promote education and a scriptural religion. The people of the eighteenth century had such traditions of the earlier ages as to be glad that the days of the border raids had passed away. At the time we wish to sketch, two classes of people were to be found in the district. There were landed proprietors, disposed to allow no opposition to their not very generous or enlightened will, but who were already catching the taste for improving the land, which has made Berwickshire one of the most advanced agricultural districts in the three kingdoms. Under them were small farmers and their servants, with the ignorance and much of the rudeness of the previous ages, and not yet awakened to independent thought and action. Between them there was scarcely any middle class, except the parish ministers, who, in the early part of the century, if not highly cultivated, were zealous preachers of the doctrines of grace, and actively seeking to raise their people to church-going habits and a decent morality; and who, at a later date, as patrons began to assert their legal rights, and colleges adopted the new philosophy, became the most vehement opponents of the evangelical party : so that, in the days of Carlyle, the Synod of Merse and Teviotdale turned the vote against popular rights, and the ministers of it, coming to the General Assembly, rushed to the theatre to hear Mrs. Siddons when she happened to be in Edinburgh. Believing that there was nothing suited to them in such a religion, the common people set up in the towns and large villages seceding congregations, which drew towards them the more earnest of the inhabitants. Out of one of these congregations sprang Thomas M'Crie, who has given us the other phase of the Scottish character.

At the beginning of the century, the most remarkable man in the district was undoubtedly Thomas Boston. Born at Dunse in the previous century, he remembered his going, when a boy, to the prison of his native place to keep his father company when he was incarcerated for resisting the imposition of Prelacy. All his life he is most sedulous and consistent in discountenancing the system of church patronage, which is being steadily introduced. Settled as a minister first in Simprin, and then in Ettrick, he is consumingly earnest in visiting once a year, in catechising twice a year, and in preaching on Sabbath-day and week-day to, an ignorant and careless people just rising out of barbarism. But he contrived to retain a literary taste amidst his active parochial employments. With a difficulty in getting books, and rejoicing so when a good one came in his way, he was able, by his own independent study, to develop views in regard to the importance of Hebrew points which were far in advance of those attained in his time by any British scholar. Endowed with a clear, logical mind, he has, in his “Fourfold State" and "Covenant of Grace," given us perhaps the best exposition we have of the old Scotch theology in its excellencies, — some would add, in its exclusiveness. Living and breathing in the doctrine of free grace, he seized with avidity and valued excessively the "Marrow of Modern Divinity,"

which he found in the cottage of one of his people, and he vigorously opposed the moral or legal preaching which was fast coming in with the new literature and philosophy. Singularly single-minded, earnest, and fervent in his piety, this man becomes a favorite and a power, first in his district, and, in the end, by his theological works all over Scotland. In reading his Memoirs, we observe that he was painfully careful in watching his moods of mind, often referring to spiritual interposition what arose from wretched health; and that he was ever looking on events occurring in God's providence as signs indicating that he should pursue a particular line of conduct. It needed a philosophy — we regret that it should have been an infidel one which did the work—to correct these errors of a narrow theology.1

ALREADY the old orthodoxy was being troubled. Mr. David Dudgeon published, in 1732, a work entitled "The Moral World." We have no record of the early history of this man, and we do not know whether he received a college education. When he comes under our notice, he is tenant of a large farm called Lennel Hill, in the parish of Coldstream. In the work referred to he maintains, with clearness and ability, a doctrine like that of Anthony Collins, whom he had read. He asserts "that there is no evil in the moral world but what necessarily ariseth from the nature of imperfect creatures, who always pursue their good, but cannot but be liable to error or mistake," and "that evil or sin is inseparable in some degree from all created beings, and most consistent with the designs of a perfect Creator." On account of the errors in this work, he was summoned before the Presbytery, where two charges are brought against him: 1st, That he denies and destroys all distinction and difference between moral good and evil, or else makes God the author of evil, and refers all evil to the imperfection of creatures; 2d, That he denies the punishment of another life, or that God punishes men for sin in this life, yea, that man is accountable. He appears before the court, and holds it to be contrary to Scripture that man has free-will in the Arminian sense, but holds that man is accountable and punishable for practising contrary to the divine precepts of our Saviour, the practice of which tends to make all men happy. The case goes up from presbytery to synod, and from synod to General Assembly, which remits it to the Commission of Assembly in 1733, again in 1734, again in 1735, and again in 1736, with no evidence that the commission ever vent

1 The representative book of the age then passing away was "Natural Relig. ion Insufficient, and Revealed Necessary to Man's Happiness in his Present State" by the late Rev. Thomas Halyburton, professor of divinity in the University of St. Andrews (born 1674, died 1712). It is a clearly written, respectably learned work, and establishes its point. It was superseded by the deeper discus. sions raised by Hume. ("Life and Writings," by Burns.)

ured to take it up. In 1734, he published a vindication of the "Moral World," in reply to a pamphlet against him, said to be written by Andrew Baxter; and therein he maintains that when a rogue is hanged he is set free to enter a state where he may be reformed. His most important work is "Philosophical Letters concerning the Being and Attributes of God," first printed in 1737. These letters were written, in the midst of pressing agricultural cares, to the Rev. Mr. Jackson, author of a work written in the spirit of Clarke, "The Existence and Unity of God." In these letters, Dudgeon reaches a species of refined Spinozism, mingled with Berkeleyanism. He denies the distinction of substances into spiritual and material, maintains that there is no substance distinct from God, and that "all our knowledge but of God is about ideas; they exist only in the mind, and their essence and modes consist only in their being perceived." In 1739, he published a "Catechism founded upon Experience and Reason, collected by a Father for the use of his Children;" and, in an introductory letter, he wishes that natural religion alone was embraced by all men, and states that, though he believes there was an extraordinary man sent into our world seventeen hundred years ago to instruct mankind, yet he doubts whether he "ever commanded any of those things to be written concerning him which we have." The same year, he published "A View of the Necessitarian or Best Scheme, freed from the Objections of M. Crousaz, in his Examination of Pope's 'Essay on Man.'"

Dudgeon died at Upsettlington, on the borders of England, January, 1743, at the age of thirty-seven. His works were published in a combined form in 1765, in a volume without a printer's name attached, showing that there was not as yet thorough freedom of thought in Scotland. His writings had for a time a name in the district (the "Catechism" reached a third edition), but afterwards passed away completely from public notice. The late Principal Lee was most anxious to know more of his history, and in particular whether he could have influenced David Hume in personal intercourse or by his writings. As they lived in the same district, Hume must have heard of the case, which appeared when Hume was cogitating his own system. There are points in which Dudgeon anticipated Hume. Thus, Dudgeon maintains that all knowledge is about ideas, the essence of which is that they are perceived. He says that the words "just, unjust, desert, &c., are necessarily relative to society;" and that if we allow that there is not justice in the government of this world, we cannot argue that there is justice in the world to come. Dudgeon, too, is a stern necessarian. But in all these points Dudgeon had himself been anticipated by others. In other respects the two widely differ. Dudgeon assumes throughout a much higher moral tone than Hume ever did. Dudgeon had evidently abandoned a belief in Christianity, but he stood up resolutely for a rational demonstration of the existence of God as the cause of the ideas which come under our experience; and he has a whole system of natural religion whereas Hume undermines all religion, natural as well as revealed. 1 The author of this work has been aided in his researches on this subject by the great kindness of the Rev. Alexander Christison, clerk to the Presbytery of Chirnside.

Dudgeon had superior philosophic abilities; and in other circumstances might have had a chance of becoming the head of a new philosophic heresy. But there was a young man in his own neighborhood being trained to supersede and eclipse him in his own line, and to go beyond deism to atheism. It is thus that error advances till it corrects itself.

XIX. - DAVID HUME.

DAVID HUME was born at Edinburgh, on April 26, 1711. He was the second son of Joseph Home or Hume, of Ninewells, so called from a number of springs which may still be seen as fresh as when the name was given. The mansion is in the parish of Chirnside, in Berwickshire, and is situated on the green slope of a hill which rises from the river Whitadder, immediately in front. The situation is remarkably pleasant, and from the heights above there are extensive views of the whole eastern border country, now associated in the minds of all reading people with tales of romance. Here David Hume passed the greater portion of his younger years, and much of the quieter and more studious parts of his middle age. But he never refers to the scenes of his native place, not even (as Mr. Burton has remarked) when he has occasion in his "History of England" to relate events which might have led him to do so. It is clear that his taste for the beauties of nature was never very keen; the time had not come when all people rave about natural scenery; he was in no way disposed. to expose himself to English prejudice by betraying Scottish predilections, and I rather think that he was glad that the time of border raids had for ever passed away.

His father was a member of the Faculty of Advocates, but passed his life as a country gentleman. His mother was a daughter of Sir D. Falconer of Newton, who had been a lawyer in the times of the Stuarts, and had filled the office of president of the Court of Session from 1682 to 1685. So far as the youth was exposed to hereditary predilections, they were those of Scotch landlords, who ruled supreme in their own estates, of hard-headed Edinburgh lawyers, and of old families

"My own Life," by David Hume; "Life and Correspondence of David Hume," by John Hill Burton, &c.