of the church in present times. As Patrick Simson put it "His Spirit the church of old had stored With holy poems, to shew forth his praise; More sweetly we, to whom they are more plain. With gospel songs, in gospel phrase to sing? That, of his own, praise-off'rings we may bring." A. H. EVE ART. VI.-The Scepticism of Hume. BY THE REV. PROFESSOR M'COSH, LL.D., BELFAST. VERYBODY knows that Hume was a sceptic. It is not so generally known that he has developed a full system of the human mind. Students of philosophy should make themselves acquainted with it. It has in fact been the stimulating cause of all later European philosophy: of that of Reid and his school; of that of Kant, and the powerful thinkers influenced by him; and of that of M. Cousin, and his numerous followers in France, in their attempt to combine Reid and Kant. Nor is it to be omitted that Mr J. S. Mill, in the system now developed in his "Examination of Hamilton," has reproduced to a large extent the theory of Hume, but without so clearly seeing or candidly avowing the consequences. I rather think that Mr Mill himself is scarcely aware of the extent of the resemblance between his doctrines and those of the Scottish sceptic; as he seems to have wrought out his conclusions from data supplied him by his own father, Mr James Mill, who, however, has evidently drawn much from Hume. The circumstance that Mr Mill's work has been welcomed by such acclamations by the chief literary organs in London, is a proof either that the would-be leaders of opinion are so ignorant of philosophy, that they do not see the consequences; or that the writers being chiefly young men, bred at Oxford or Cambridge, are fully prepared to accept them in the reaction against the revived mediævalism which was sought to be imposed upon them. In no history of philosophy that we are acquainted with is there a good account of the system of Hume. As few persons now read, or in fact ever did read through his weighty volumes, we are in hopes that some may feel grateful to us, if in short space we give them an expository and critical account of his He derives all from Impressions. 827 philosophy, with a special facing towards the philosophy which is now being introduced among us by the British Section of the Nescient School of Comte. Hume begins thus his famous Treatise of Human Nature:"All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I call impressions and ideas. The difference betwixt them consists in the degrees of force and liveliness with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions, and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions, and emotions, as they make their first арpear ance in the soul. By ideas, I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning; such, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure or uneasiness it may occasion." He tells us, that in the use of terms, I rather restore the word idea to its original sense, from which Mr Locke had perverted it, in making it stand for all our perceptions." This theory is certainly very simple, but surely it is lamentably scanty. It will not do to place under the same head, and call by the one name of impressions, two such things as the affections of the senses on the one hand, and the mental emotions of hope, fear, joy, and sorrow, on the other. Nor can we allow him to describe all our sense-perceptions by the vague name of impressions. What is meant by impressions? If the word has any proper meaning, it must signify that there is something impressing, without which there would be no impression, and also something impressed. If Hume admits all this to be in the impression, we ask him to go on with us to inquire what is in the thing impressed and in the thing that impresses, and we are at once in the region of existences, internal and external. "I never," he says, "catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception.' His very language contradicts itself. He talks of catching himself. What is this self that he catches? But he may say it is only a perception. We reply that there is more. never observe a perception alone. We always observe self as perceiving. It is true that I never can catch myself at any time without a perception; but it is quite as certain, and we have the same evidence for it, that we never observe a perception except when we observe self perceiving. Let us unfold what is in this self, and we shall find that it no way resembles an impression, like that left by a seal upon wax.* In regard We * Mr Mill, in his recently published work, labours to derive all our ideas and convictions from sensations. He is to be met by showing that we never have a sensation without knowing a self as sentient. to certain of our perceptions, those through the senses, we ob serve not only the self perceiving, but an object perceived. He now explains the way in which ideas appear. By memory the impressions come forth in their original order and position as ideas. This is a defective account of memory, consciousness being the witness. In memory, we have not only a reproduction of a sensation, or, it may be, a mental affection. We recognise it as having been before us in time past. Of all this we have as clear evidence as we have of the presence of the idea.* In imagination the ideas are more strong and lively, and are transposed and changed. This, he says, is effected by an associating quality; and he here develops his account of the laws of association, which has been so commended. But the truth is, his views on this subject, so far from being an advance on those of Hutcheson, are rather a retrogression; they are certainly far behind those of his contemporary Turnbull. He seems to confine the operation of association to the exercise of imagination; he does not see that our very memories are regulated by the same principle; nay, he allows that the imagination can join two ideas without it. The associating qualities are said by him to be three in number: resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause or effect. "I do not find," he says, "that any philosopher has attempted to enumerate all the principles of association." But the classification propounded by him bears so close a resemblance to that of Aristotle, that we must believe that the one given by the Stagyrite had, in the course of his reading, fallen under his notice, though he had forgotten the circumstance. The difference between the two lies in Hume giving us cause and effect, instead of contrast as proposed by the Greek philosopher. It has often been remarked that Hume's arrangement is redundant, inasmuch as cause aud effect, according to him, are nothing but contiguity in time and place. He now shows how our complex ideas are formed. Following Locke, he represents these as consisting of substances, modes, and relations. He dismisses Substance very summarily. He proceeds on the view of substance given by Locke, one of the most defective and unsatisfactory parts of his philosophy. * Mr Mill is in difficulties at this point, and avows it in a footnote, p. 174. "Our belief in the veracity of memory is evidently ultimate; no reason can be given for it which does not presuppose the belief, and assume it to be well grounded." The full facts of the Recognitive Power of Memory are not embraced in this brief enunciation, but there is much stated, and more implied; he should have inquired how much is involved, and he would have seen that there is truth admitted fatal to his system. He should also have shown on what ground he proclaims this belief to be “evidently ultimate," and then we might have shewn that, on the same ground, that is self evidence, we are entitled to call in the other ultimate beliefs. His View of Substance. 829 Locke stood up for some unknown thing, called substance, behind the qualities. Berkeley had shown that there is no evidence of the existence of such a substratum. Hume assumes that we have no idea of external substance different from the qualities, and he proceeds to shew that we have no notion of the substance mind distinct from particular perceptions. "I believe none will assert that substance is either a colour, or a sound, or a taste. The idea of substance must therefore be derived from an impression of reflection, if it really exist. But the impressions of reflection resolve themselves into our pas sions and emotions, none of which can possibly represent a substance." A substance is thus nothing else than a collection of particular qualities united by the imagination. He thus suits the idea to his preconceived theory, instead of looking at the peculiar idea, and suiting his theory to the facts. Now we give up the idea of an unknown substratum behind the qualities. We stand up only for what we know. In consciousness, we know self, and in sense-perception we know the external object as existing things exercising qualities. In this is involved what we reckon the true idea of substance. We can as little know the qualities apart from an object exercising them, as we can an object apart from qualities. We know both in one concrete act, and we have the same evidence of the one as the other. When he comes to Modes, he examines them by the doctrine of abstract or general ideas propounded by Berkeley, which he characterises as one of the greatest and most valuable discoveries that has been made of late years in the republic of letters." According to this very defective theory (as it appears to us), all abstract or general ideas are nothing but particular ones annexed to a certain term. Like Locke, Hume confounds abstract and general ideas, which should be carefully distinguished: the former meaning the notion of the part of an object as a part, more particularly an attribute; the other, the notion of objects possessing common attributes, the notion being such that it embraces all the objects possessing the common attributes. Abstraction and generalization are most important intellectual operations, the one bringing specially to view what is involved in the concrete knowledge (not impression) of the individual, and the other exhibiting the qualities in respect of which objects agree. Without such elaborative processes, we should never know all that is involved in our original perceptions by sense and consciousness. Nor is it to be forgotten, that when the concrete is a real object, the abstract is a real quality existing in the object; and that when the singulars are real, the universal is also real, that is, a class, all the objects in which possess common qualities. Here again we find Hume overlooking one of the most essential of our mental attributes, and thus degrading human intelligence. In relation to the particular end for which he introduces his doctrine, we hold that substance and mode are known in one concrete act, and that we can separate them by abstraction for more particular consideration; the one having quite as real an existence as the other, and both having their reality in the singular object known by sense and consciousness. He goes on to a very subtle discussion as to our ideas of space and time. He says, that "it is from the disposition of visible and tangible objects we receive the idea of space, and from the succession of ideas and impressions we form the idea of time." The statement requires to be amended. It is not from the disposition of separate objects we have the idea of space, but in the very perception of material objects we know them as extended, that is, occupying space; and in the very remembrance of events we have time in the concrete, that is, events happening in time past. He is therefore wrong in the sceptical conclusion which he draws, that the ideas of space and time are no distinct ideas, for they are ideas formed by a high intellectual process from things immediately known. Taking a defective view of the nature and function of abstraction, he denies that we can form any idea of a vacuum or extension without matter. He maintains that the idea we form of any finite quality is not infinitely divisible. The dispute, he says, should not be about the nature of mathematical points, but about our ideas of them; and that, in the division of our ideas, we come to a minimum, to an indivisible idea. This whole controversy seems to us to arise from a misapprehension. Our idea of space, it is evident, is neither divisible nor indivisible; and as to space, it is not divisible either finitely or infinitely; for while we can divide matter, that is, have a space between, we cannot separate any portion of space from all other space space is and must be continuous. He is evidently jealous of the alleged certainty of mathematics, which seemed to be opposed to his universal scepticism. He maintains that the objects of geometry are mere ideas in the mind. We admit that surfaces, lines, points, have no independent existence, but they have all an existence in solid bodies. By an excess of ingenuities and subtleties, he would drive us to the conclusion that space and time are mere ideas, for which we need not seek a corresponding reality; a conclusion unfortunately accepted by Kant, who thus opened the way to the empty idealism which so long reigned in the German philosophy.* * Mr Mill's treatment of Space and Time is superficial. He brings in Time quietly without noticing it, or giving any account of it. He does not see that |