Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/57

Rh portions of the work, which at his suggestion the author amended; and he personally wrote to Dr Campbell, with his usual calm politeness, thanking him for treatment so unexpected from a clergyman of the church of Scotland; and, with the statement that he had made an early resolution not to answer attacks on his opinions, acknowledged that he never felt so violent an inclination to defend himself. The respect which Campbell admitted himself to entertain for the sceptic is thus expressed:

" The Essay on Miracles deserves to be considered as one of the most dangerous attacks that have been made on our religion. The danger results not solely from the merit of the piece: it results much more from that of the author. The piece itself, like every other work of Mr Hume, is ingenious; but its merit is more of the oratorical kind than of the philosophical. The merit of the author, I acknowledge, is great. The many useful volumes he has published of history, as well as on criticism, politics, and trade, have justly procured him, with all persons of taste and discernment, the highest reputation as a writer. "In such analysis and exposition, which I own, I have attempted without ceremony or reserve, an air of ridicule is unavoidable; but this ridicule, I am well aware, if founded on misrepresentation, will at last rebound upon myself."

Dr Campbell was a man of strong good sense, and knew well the description of argument which the world would best appreciate, approve, and comprehend, in answer to the perplexing subtilties of his opponent. He struck at the root of the system of perceptions merging into experience, and experience regulating the value of testimony, which had been erected by his adversary, and appealing, not to the passions and feelings in favour of religion, but to the common convictions which we deem to be founded on reason, and cannot separate from our minds, maintained that "testimony has a natural and original influence on belief, antecedent to experience," from which position he proceeded to show, that the miracles of the gospel had received attestation sufficient to satisfy the reason. With his usual soundness and good sense, though scarcely with the profundity which the subject required, Dr Paley joined the band of confutors, while he left Hume to triumph in the retention of the effects attributed to experience, maintaining that the principle so established was counteracted by our natural expectation that the Deity should manifest his existence, by doing such acts contrary to the established order of the universe, as would plainly show that order to be of his own fabrication, and at his own command.

Before leaving the subject of the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, we may mention that Mr Coleridge in his Biographia Literaria, has accused Hume of plagiarizing the exposition of the Principles of Association in that work, from the unexpected source of the Commentary of St Thomas Aquinas, on the Parva Naturalia of Aristotle, and the charge, with however much futility it may be supported, demands, when coming from so celebrated a man, the consideration of the biographer. Mr Coleridge's words are, "In consulting the excellent Commentary of St Thomas Aquinas, on the Parva Naturalia of Aristotle, I was struck at once with its close resemblance to Hume's Essay on Association. The main thoughts were the same in both, the order of the thoughts was the same, and even the illustrations differed only by Hume's occasional substitution of modern examples. I mentioned the circumstance to several of my literary acquaintances, who admitted the closeness of the resemblance, and that it seemed too great to be explained by mere coincidence ; but they thought it improbable that Hume should have held the pages of the angelic doctor worth turning over. But some time after, Mr Payne, of the King's Mews, showed Sir