Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 12.djvu/359

347 HUME 347 was after tliat left to my own choice in my reading.&quot; We may conclude, then, that about the year 1726 Hume returned to Ninewells with a fair knowledge of Latin, slight acquaintance with Greek, and literary tastes decidedly inclining to &quot; books of reasoning and philosophy, and to poetry and the polite authors.&quot; He has nowhere given any indications of an explicit character with regard to his reading, or to the works which contributed most in forming his own opinions; and in his writings, save where the subject is of an historical kind, literary references are con spicuous by their rarity. Yet it seems possible from what we know of the sources open to him, of his own preferences, of the problems with which he first busied himself, and of the general current of his speculations regarding them, to infer with some exactness the course of his studies. It is to be noted that at a very early period of his life the dominant passion had declared itself. The love of literature for its own sake was combined with the keen overmastering desire for a literary reputation. At an unusually early age he had determined for himself his future course, and no induce ment was strong enough to make him swerve from it. His temperament, on the whole placid and even phlegmatic, readily inclined him to seek as his mode of life the golden mean, equally removed from such external influences as could distract or disturb contemplative repose. He practised what he taught and learned of the Stoic rules, and was concerned only to obtain such external fortune as would place him above the necessity of wasting his powers on temporary and transient objects. His prudence was as remarkable as his moderation; and his life, on the whole, may be regarded as one of the most perfect and successful instances of constant devotion to literary aims. While he was thus fortunate in choosing early and maturely the object towards which all his industry was to be directed, he was no less fortunate in the selection of the special form of literary work to which he was to devote himself. It is clear that his inclinations at a very early age led him towards the analysis of human nature, from which all his later writings take their origin. Speculation upon the nature and certainty of knowledge, whether in its abstract form, that of mere psychology, or in its more concrete applica tions, as in theology, seems to have been the earliest occu pation of his thought; and in this speculation we cannot doubt he was directed largely by the writings of Cicero and Seneca, though the main factor was unquestionably the great English works which had begun to exert their influence at the time. While we trace the matter of Hume s later reflexions to Locke, Berkeley, and Butler, we must not overlook the great part in his mental develop ment which is due to the sceptical or academical writings of the earlisr thinkers. The philosophical treatises of Cicero were familiar to Hume, whose writings have a colouring . undeniably due to this source. The form in which he cast some of the most important of his speculations is an imitation, more or less conscious, of these ancient models. We see Hume, then, in the years during which the influences that mould a man s character and career are most actively at work, resolutely devoting himself to a life of literature, possessed by the most intense ambition for literary fame, and busying himself with reflexion upon those problems of &quot; philosophy and critics &quot; in which, as he found, &quot;nothing was yet established.&quot; His means were slender, and it was necessary for him, even in view of his primary object, to endeavour after independence. The first choice of a profession, that of law, made for him by his relatives, who thought it suited to his &quot; studious habits, obriety, and industry,&quot; proved unsuccessful. Although his intellect was acute and practical, yet at this period he was so entirely devoted to the more subtle and speculative problems that law could present nothing beyond a barren waste of technical jargon. While his friends thought &quot;he was poring over Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors he was secretly devouring.&quot; The intensity of his studies, the agitation due to the novelty of the ideas which began to crowd upon him as he tried to carry out systematically the first principles of human knowledge which he learned from Locke and Berkeley, combined to throw him for a time into a state of physical exhaustion and lassitude. His health was gradually restored by more careful regimen; but, as we learn from the curious diagnosis he made of his own state, the vigour requisite for protracted and connected speculation seemed to have vanished. &quot;I have collected,&quot; he writes, the &quot; rude materials for many volumes; but in reducing these to words, when one must bring the idea he comprehended in gross nearer to him, so as to contemplate its minutest parts, and keep it steadily in his eye, so as to copy these parts in order, this I found impracticable for me, nor were my spirits equal to so severe an employment.&quot; In these circumstances he determined to try the effect of complete change of scene and occupation. &quot;I resolved to seek out a more active life, and, though I could not quit my pretensions to learning but with my last breath, to lay them aside for some time, in order the more effectually to resume them.&quot; The effectual remedy which commended itself to him was the trial of a mercantile life, and early in 1734 he set out for Bristol, armed with recom mendations to some eminent merchants. A residence of a few months was sufficient to convince him that in this attempt at least he had not hit the mark. He found &quot; the scene wholly unsuitable &quot; to him, and about the middle of the year 1734 set out for France, resolved to spend some years in quiet study and retirement. He visited Paris, resided for a time at Rheims, and then settled at La Fleche, famous in the history of philosophy as the school of Descartes. His health seems to have been perfectly restored, and during the three years of his stay in France his speculations were worked into systematic form in the Treatise of Human Nature, In the autumn of 1737 he was in London negotiating with publishers and printers regarding the appearance of his great work, and carefully pruning and polishing it in preparation for the judgments of the learned. In January 1739 there appeared the first and second volumes of the Treatise of Human Nature, being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects, containing book i., Of the Understanding, and book ii. + Of the Passions. The third volume, containing book iii., Of Morals, was published in the following year. Few phrases are better known than the laconic sentence in which Hume, looking back on his own life, tells the tale of his first venture. &quot;Never literary attempt was more unfortunate; it fell dead-lorn from the press, without reach ing such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots.&quot; &quot;But,&quot; he adds, &quot;being naturally of a cheerful and sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the blow, and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country.&quot; This brief notice, however, is not sufficient to explain the full significance of the event for Hume s own life. The work undoubtedly failed to do what its author expected from it; even the notice, otherwise not unsatisfactory, which it obtained in the Hislori/ of the Works of the Learned, then the principal critical journal, did not in the least appreciate the true bearing of the Treatise on the current philosophical and theological discussions. Hume, who had been living in abstractions, to whom the disputes of the time had presented themselves in their real nature as fundamental differences of philosophical analysis, naturally expected that the world would see with as great clearness as he did the connexion between the concrete problems agitat ing contemporary thought and the abstract principles on which their solution depended. Accordingly he looked for