These sentiments considered, the reader will not be surprised to learn that our author, after a preparatory college training in the main doctrines of Self-interest—to wit, Evasion and Inconsistency—ends happily and usefully for himself by the successful abduction of his host's daughter—and by advertising a propaganda of certain European manners and observances unknown in Erewhon, to be carried out by kidnapping its healthy inhabitants and training them properly on our sugar plantations. What genuine disciple of Utilitarianism can conceive a brighter moral triumph than the union of private self-interest with the interested aims of a great sugar-growing people? Matter-of-fact Baconians may argue that Utility substitutes a misplaced and one-sided "why" for the "what" required by Moralists,—but our traveller's answer is plain—he argues on data;—given the premises—his is the inevitable conclusion. The defence of the former will be an interest to plenty of people—philosophic and unphilosophic. Leave the data to them; or if necessary make a further appeal to the religious aims of society. In Erewhon the great feminine Divinity Ydgrun is supreme; she is sovereign amongst ourselves also;—only we twist her name and call the Goddess "Grundy."
[64] Preface to the Philosophical Works. pp. 56, 57.
[65] Works. Vol. i. p. 167.
[66] De Augmentis. iii. 5. init.
[67] Dr. Whewell rises into poetry—yet is not more poetical than the philosopher on whom he thus comments. "If he" (Bacon) "had had occasion to develop his simile, full of latent meaning as his similes so often are, he would probably have said, that to these final causes barrenness was no reproach, seeing they ought to be, not the mothers but the daughters of our natural sciences; and that they were barren, not by imperfection of their nature, but in order that they might be kept pure and undefiled, and so fit ministers in the temple of God."—Bridgewater Treatise. B. III. Ch. vii. sub. fin.
[68] It is a pleasure to confirm this paragraph by a definition of Design taken from a writer who must be frequently quoted in these pages, because his philosophy is of unusually wide scope, and embraces the mixed sciences employed by a natural theologian:—"We direct our thoughts to an action which we are about to perform; we intend to do it: we make it our aim: we place it before us, and act with purpose (propositum): we design it, or mark it out beforehand (designo)."—Whewell's Elements of Morality, Book I., Chap. i., p. 7.
[69] The Soul, p. 35.
[70] Right and Wrong, p. 31.
[71] Dans plusieurs passages de ses écrits, quand il insiste avec le plus de force sur l'impossibilité où est la raison humaine d'atteindre à la certitude, il semble tout près d'accepter la révélation divine comme source de certaines grandes verités que nous ne saurions repousser, quoiqu'il ne nous soit pas possible de les démontrer. Un soir qu'à Paris il soupait chez le baron d'Holbach, on vint à parler de la religion naturelle; Hume déclara que pour sa part il n'avait jamais rencontré d'athée. On sait la réponse de son hôte. "Parbleu, vous avez de la chance; pour la première fois vous en rencontrez dix-sept du même coup." Hume ne demanda point à être compté comme le dix-huitième. Dix ans auparavant, il se trouvait à Londres lorsque lui arriva la nouvelle de la mort de sa mère; son ami Boyle, frère du comte de Glasgow, témoin de la douleur profonde où le jeta cette perte, exprima le regret qu'il ne pût trouver de consolation dans les croyances chrétiennes sur la destinée des justes et sur la vie future. "Ah! mon ami," dit Hume en sanglotant, "je peux bien publier mes spéculations pour occuper les savans et les métaphysiciens; mais ne croyez pas que je sois si loin que vous le supposez de penser comme le reste des hommes." Deux Mondes, 1856, Vol. VI., pp. 118, 19. The latter anecdote will be found in Burton at rather greater length. Vol. I. 293, 4.
[72] These Dialogues were posthumously published in obedience to their author's will. Hume had kept the MS. by him for twenty-seven years, and had corrected it from time to time, yet had delayed publication from deference to the judgment of his friends. He directed his literary executor, Adam Smith, to publish the Dialogues within two years of his death; but, in consequence of Smith's distaste for the task, this duty devolved upon Hume's nephew. They were printed in 1779 translated into German in 1781, and commented on by Jacobi in 1787.