Life and Correspondence of David Hume, Volume 1

by John Hill Burton

To the former class of authors, it is of course not within the scope of the present writer's ambition to belong, and he sees no occasion to attempt to imitate the latter. In a work, however, which professes to give a life of David Hume, it is necessary to say something about the "Treatise of Human Nature;" and as a preliminary to such an attempt, it may be well to mark the boundaries within which the writer conceives that the duty he has assumed calls on him for a description of the work, neither impugning nor defending any of the opinions it sets forth.

It seems to be right that some attempt should be made to describe the character and strength of the author's intellect, and the method of its operations; and to give a view of the fundamental characteristic principles by which he professes to distinguish his own philosophy from that of other writers on metaphysical subjects. An attempt should also be made to tell in what respect Hume has made incidental suggestions which have either been admitted as new truths in metaphysics, or have, as original but perhaps fallacious suggestions, afforded to other thinkers the means of establishing truths. These being the general objects to be kept in view, there is no intention to take them in any precise order, or to exhaust them in remarks on this one work. To attempt an analysis of the work would be out of place. There can be no more repulsive matter for reading than condensed metaphysics; and probably there is nothing less instructive than those abridgments, which, necessarily suppressing the author's discursive arguments, appeal almost entirely to the memory. To seize on and give a descriptive rather than an analytical account of the prominent features of the system, will be the chief aim of these remarks. Moreover, the Treatise bears on subjects which are nearly all recalled in its author's subsequent works; and while there are some things in the critical history of Hume's opinions which may be appropriately viewed in connexion with his first publication, there are others which it may be more expedient to examine when he is found reconsidering the subjects in his later works; and again, others which may be viewed in a general attempt to describe the extent of his literary achievements.

The Treatise has been already spoken of as embracing two great objects, metaphysics and ethics; or three, if

politics be considered as distinct from ethics. The great leading principle of the metaphysical department, and a principle which is never lost sight of in any part of the book, is, that the materials on which intellect works are the impressions which represent immediate sensation, whether externally as by the senses, or internally as by the passions, and ideas which are the faint reflections of these impressions. Thus to speak colloquially, when I see a picture, or when I am angry with some one, there is an impression; but when I think about this picture in its absence, or call to recollection my subsided anger, what exists in either case is an idea. Hume looked from words to that which they signified, and he found that where they signified any thing, it must be found among the things that either are or have been impressions. The whole varied and complex system of intellectual machinery he found occupied in the representation, the combination, or the arrangement of these raw materials of intellectual matter. If I say I see an object, I give expression to the fact, that a certain impression is made on the retina of my eye. If I convey to the person I am speaking to an accurate notion of what I mean, I awaken in his mind ideas left there by previous impressions, brought thither by his sense of sight.[70:1] Thus, in the particular case of the external senses, when they are considered as in direct communication between the mind and any object, there are impressions: when the senses are not said

to be in communication with the object, the operations of the mind in connexion with it, are from vestiges which the impressions have left on the mind; and these vestiges are called ideas, and are always more faint than the original impressions themselves. And a material circumstance to be kept in view at the very threshold of the system is, that there is no specific and distinct line drawn between impressions and ideas. Their difference is in degree merely—the former are stronger, the latter weaker. There is no difference in kind; and there is sometimes doubt whether that which is supposed to be an impression may not be a vivid idea, and that which is supposed to be an idea a faint impression.

When Hume examined, with more and more minuteness, the elements of the materials on which the mind works, he could still find nothing but these impressions and ideas. Looking at language as a machinery for giving expression to thought, he thus established for himself a test of its adaptation to its right use,—a test for discovering whether in any given case it really served the purpose of language, or was a mere unmeaning sound. As he found that there was nothing on which thought could operate but the impressions received through sensation, or the ideas left by them, he considered that a word which had not a meaning to be found in either of these things, had no meaning at all. He looked upon ideas as the goods with which the mind was stored; and on these stores, as being of the character of impressions, while they were in the state of coming into the mind. When any one, then, in reasoning, or any other kind of literature, spoke of any thing as existing, the principle of his theory was, that this storehouse of idealized impressions should be searched for one corresponding to the term made use

of. If such an impression were not found, the word was, so far as our human faculties were concerned, an unmeaning one. Whether there was any existence corresponding to its meaning, no one could say: all that the sceptical philosopher could decide was, that, so far as human intellect was put in possession of materials for thought, it had nothing to warrant it in saying, that this word represented any thing of which that intellect had cognizance.

This limitation of the material put at the disposal of the mind, was largely illustrated in the course of the work; and the illustrations assumed some such character as this:—Imaginative writers present us with descriptions of things which never, within our own experience, have existed,—of things which, we believe, never have had existence. Yet, however fantastic and heterogeneous may be the representations thus presented to our notice, there is no one part, of which we form a conception, that is any thing more than a new arrangement of ideas that have been left in the mind by impressions deposited there by sensation. The most extravagant of eastern or classical fictions there find their elements. If it be a three-headed dog, a winged horse, a fiery dragon, or a golden palace, that is spoken of, the reader who forms a conception of the narrative puts it together with the ideas left in his mind by impressions conveyed through the external senses. If a spectre is said to be raised, it may be spoken of as not denser than the atmosphere, yet the attributes that bring a conception of it to the intellect are the form and proportions of a human being,—expression, action, and habiliments: all elements the ideas of which the mind has received through the impressions of the senses. If words were used in a book of fiction which did not admit of being thus realized by the

mind putting together a corresponding portion of the ideas stored up within it—supplying, as it were, the described costume from this wardrobe—then, according to Hume's philosophy, the word would be a sound without meaning. He maintained a like rule as to books of philosophy. If the authors used terms which were not thus represented in the storehouse of the matter of thought and language, they were not reasoning on what they knew; they were not using words as the signs of things signified, but printing unmeaning collections of letters, or uttering senseless sounds.

The system, if it were to be classed under the old metaphysical divisions, was one of nominalism. Such words as shape, colour, hardness, roughness, &c. the author of the Treatise could only admit to have a meaning in as far as they signified ideas in the mind; and these ideas could only be there as the relics of impressions derived through the senses. Thus, general terms, such as the categories of Aristotle, could have no existence except in so far as they represented and called up particulars. Of the abstract term colour, our notion is derived solely from the ideas left in the mind by the actual impressions made through the senses. Heat, cold, and largeness, so far as these words represent what is really in the mind, have no other foundation.