Mackintosh some odd volumes of St. Thomas Aquinas, partly perhaps from having heard that Sir James, (then Mr. Mackintosh,) had in his lectures passed a high encomium on this canonized philosopher, but chiefly from the fact that the volumes had belonged to Mr. Hume, and had here and there marginal marks and notes of reference in his own handwriting. Among these volumes was that which contains the Parva Naturalia, in the old Latin version, swathed and swaddled in the commentary aforementioned."
On this, Sir James Macintosh says, that "the manuscript of a part of Aquinas, which I bought many years ago, (on the faith of a bookseller's catalogue,) as being written by Mr. Hume, was not a copy of the commentary on the Parva Naturalia, but of Aquinas's own Secunda Secundæ; and that, on examination, it proves not to be the handwriting of Mr. Hume, and to contain nothing written by him."[287:1] So much for the external evidence of plagiarism.
With regard to the internal evidence, the passage of Aquinas particularly referred to, which will be found below,[287:2] refers to memory not imagination; to the recall of images in the relation to each other in which they have once had a place in the mind, not to
the formation of new associations, or aggregates of ideas there; nor will it bring the theories to an identity, that, according to Hume's doctrine, nothing can be recalled in the mind unless its elements have already been deposited there in the form of ideas, because the observations of Aquinas apply altogether to the reminiscence of aggregate objects. But the classification is different: for Hume's embodies cause and effect, but not contrariety; while that of Aquinas has contrariety, but not cause and effect. In a division into three elements, this discrepancy is material; and, without entering on any lengthened reasoning, it may simply be observed, that the merit of Hume's classification is, that it is exhaustive, and neither contains any superfluous element, nor omits any principle under which an act of association can be classed.
But it is remarkable that Coleridge should have failed to keep in view, in his zeal to discover some curious thing to reward him for his researches among the fathers, that the classification is not that of Aquinas, but of Aristotle, and is contained in the very work on which the passage in Aquinas is one of the many commentaries.[288:1]
The "Essays Moral and Political," had, though it is
not mentioned by Hume in his "own life," been so well received, that a second edition appeared in 1742, the same year in which the second volume of the original edition was published. A third edition was published in London in 1748,[289:1] of which Hume, comparing them with his neglected contemporaneous publication of the Inquiry, says that they "met not with a much better reception."
Two essays, which had appeared in the previous editions, were omitted in the third. One of these, "Of Essay Writing," was evidently written at the time when the author had the design of publishing his work periodically,[289:2] and was meant as a prospectus or announcement to the readers, of the method in which he proposed to address them in his periodical papers. The other was a "Character of Sir Robert Walpole;" a curious attempt to take an impartial estimate of a man who, at the time of the first publication, had been longer in office, and was surrounded by a more numerous and powerful band of enemies, than any previous British statesman. But between the two publications the enemies had triumphed; and the statesman of forty years had been driven into retirement, where death speedily relieved him from a scene of inaction, which might have been repose to others, but was to him an insupportable solitude. Party rage had consequently changed its direction, and that air of solemn deliberation which, while the statesman was moving between the admiration of his friends and the hatred of his enemies, had an appearance of resolute stoical impartiality, might have appeared strained and affected, if the essay had been republished in 1748.
To this third edition three essays were added, "Of