"P. 244, l. 7.[149:3] You are so much afraid to derive any thing of virtue from artifice or human conventions, that you have neglected what seems to me the most
satisfactory reason, viz. lest near relations, having so many opportunities in their youth, might debauch each other, if the least encouragement or hope was given to these desires, or if they were not easily repressed by an artificial horror inspired against them.
"P. 263, l. 14. As the phrase is true Latin, and very common, it seemed not to need an apology, as when necessity obliges one to employ modern words.[150:1]
"P. 266, l. 18, et quæ seq.[150:2] You imply a condemnation of Locke's opinion, which, being the received one, I could have wished the condemnation had been more express.
"These are the most material things that occurred to me upon a perusal of your ethics. I must own I am pleased to see such just philosophy, and such instructive morals to have once set their foot in the schools. I hope they will next get into the world, and then into the churches.
Nil desperandum, Teucro duce et auspice Teucro.
"Edinb. Jan. 10, 1743."
Among the Scottish gentry of Hume's day, there were many men of high education and accomplishments; and the glimpses we occasionally obtain into the society which he frequented, show us a circle possessing a much less provincial tone than later times would probably
have exhibited in the same class. The notion that a university was a seat of learning, where the scholarship of all the world should meet, and not a provincial school, still lingered in our country, and prompted the gentry to educate their sons abroad. In the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the registers of the universities of Paris, Bourgès, Bologna, and Leyden, were crowded with familiar Scottish names, whom we find holding as great a proportion among the teachers as among the learners; and thus a Wilson, a Barclay, a Bellenden, a Jack, and many others, whose fame hardly reached their native country, are conspicuous among the literary ornaments of the foreign universities. It is perhaps in a great measure to the lingering continuance of this practice through part of the eighteenth century, that we may attribute the learning and accomplishments of the society in Scotland during that period.[151:1]
"Many are poets who have never penned their inspiration, and perchance the best." Many also are philosophers who have never either penned their philosophy, or put it into shape in their own minds. The two operations of induction and analysis proceed in every human mind with more or less success; but it is only when literary ambition, or pecuniary necessity, or the desire to head a system, prompts a man to collect and put into shape their results, that