Life and Correspondence of David Hume, Volume 1

by John Hill Burton

Butler, to whom Hume is thus found desiring an introduction, had, in the immediately preceding year, published "The Analogy of Religion, Natural and Revealed, to the Constitution and Course of Nature;" and it appears that Hume courted the attention of the author of that clear logical work to those speculations of his own, which, in the opinion of the world in general, have so opposite a tendency to that of the "Analogy." The following letter, acknowledging an introduction from Home, and dated 4th March, 1738, tells its own tale.

"I shall not trouble you with any formal compliments or thanks, which would be but an ill return for the kindness you have done me in writing in my behalf, to one you are so little acquainted with as Dr. Butler; and, I am afraid, stretching the truth in favour of a friend. I have called upon the Doctor,

with a design of delivering him your letter, but find he is at present in the country. I am a little anxious to have the Doctor's opinion. My own I dare not trust to; both because it concerns myself, and because it is so variable, that I know not how to fix it. Sometimes it elevates me above the clouds; at other times, it depresses me with doubts and fears; so that, whatever be my success, I cannot be entirely disappointed. Somebody has told me that you might perhaps be in London this spring. I should esteem this a very lucky event; and notwithstanding all the pleasures of the town, I would certainly engage you to pass some philosophical evenings with me, and either correct my judgment, where you differ from me, or confirm it where we agree. I believe I have some need of the one, as well as the other; and though the propensity to diffidence be an error on the better side, yet 'tis an error, and dangerous as well as disagreeable.—I am, &c.

"I lodge at present in the Rainbow Coffeehouse, Lancaster Court."[65:1]

The transactions between authors and booksellers are seldom accompanied by any formidable array of legal formalities; but Hume and his publishers seem to have thought it necessary to bind each other in the most stringent manner, to the performance of their respective obligations, by "articles of agreement, made, concluded, and agreed, upon the 26th day of September, in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hundred and thirty-eight, and in the twelfth year of the reign of our sovereign lord King George the Second,—between David Hume of Lancaster Court of the one part, and John Noone of Cheapside,

London, bookseller, of the other part." By this very precise document, it is provided, that "the said David Hume shall and will permit and suffer the said John Noone to have, hold, and enjoy, the sole property, benefit, and advantage of printing and publishing the first edition of the said book, not exceeding one thousand copies thereof." The author, in return, receives £50, and twelve bound copies of the book.[66:1] The transaction is on the whole creditable to the discernment and liberality of Mr. Noone. It may be questioned, whether, in this age, when knowledge has spread so much wider, and money is so much less valuable, it would be easy to find a bookseller, who, on the ground of its internal merits, would give £50 for an edition of a new metaphysical work, by an unknown and young author, born and brought up in a remote part of the empire. These articles refer to the first and second of the three volumes of the "Treatise of Human Nature;" and they were accordingly published in January, 1739. They include "Book I. Of the Understanding," and "Book II. Of the Passions."

It has been generally and justly remarked, that the Treatise is among the least systematic of philosophical works—that it has neither a definite and comprehensive plan, nor a logical arrangement. It was, indeed, so utterly deficient in the former—there was so complete a want of any projected scope of subject which the author was bound to exhaust in what he wrote—that an attempt to divide and subdivide the matter after it had been written, according to a logical arrangement, would only, as a sort of experimentum crucis, have exposed the imperfect character of the original plan. The author, therefore,

very discreetly allowed his matter to be arranged as the subjects of which he treated had respectively suggested themselves, and bestowed on his work a title rather general than comprehensive,—a title, of which all that can be said of its aptness to the subject is, that no part of his book can be said to be wholly without it, while he might have included an almost incalculable multitude of other subjects within it. He called it simply "A Treatise of Human Nature;" and by a subsidiary title, explanatory rather of his method than definitive of his matter, he called it "an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects."

The purely metaphysical,[67:1] and, at the same time, the most original portion of the work, and that which has most conspicuously rendered itself a constituent part of the literature of intellectual philosophy, is "Book I. Of the Understanding." "Book II. Of the Passions," contains mixed metaphysics and ethics, with occasional notices of phenomena, which, though Hume does not, other writers would be likely to connect with physiological inquiries. The third book, "Of Virtue and Vice in General," published a year later, is of an ethical character, being an inquiry into the origin and proper system of morals, and an application of the system to government and politics.

The "Treatise of Human Nature" afforded materials for the criticism of two very distinct classes of writers. The one consisted of men imbued with a spirit of inquiry kindred to that of Hume, and a genius capable of appreciating his services in the cause of truth; who, as the teachers of systems of which they were themselves the architects, had to attack or to defend the principles promulgated in the Treatise, according as these differed from or corresponded with their own. It is in the writings of these men that the true immortality of Hume as a philosopher consists. Whether they find in him great truths to acknowledge, or subtle and plausible errors to attack, they are the vital evidence of the originality of his work, of the genius that inspired it, and of its great influence on human thought and action. The other class of critics are those who, in pamphlets, or works more ambitious but not rising in real solidity above that fugitive class, or in occasional digressions from other topics, have endeavoured to prejudice the minds of their readers against the principles of the Treatise, by exaggeration, or by the misapplication of their metaphysical doctrines to the proceedings of every-day life,—a set of literary efforts of quick production and as quick decay.