Page:Philosophical Review Volume 15.djvu/40

22 produced the man of genius at one precise time rather than another, still there is observable a certain connection between the great writer or scientist and the society in which he appears. He cannot perform his work unless his environment prepares him to do so, and the nature of the society about him determines to some extent the form which his genius will take. "It is impossible, but a share of the same spirit and genius must be antecedently diffused throughout the people among whom they [men of genius] arise, in order to produce, form, and cultivate, from their earliest infancy, the taste and judgment of those eminent writers." The taste and genius which appear brilliantly in the few is dispersed to some extent among the whole people. While Hume tends to throw great emphasis upon the share which the individual has had in the production of historical institutions, in this case he allows about as much to general causes as the facts will warrant. Hume, of course, had no notion of the results which the evolutionary study of literature has since yielded, nor the relation of literary production to other kinds of national activity which more recent historians have pointed out with varying degrees of success. But that he recognizes a relationship between the genius and his social environment is worthy of notice.

As usual in Hume's philosophy, the unexceptionable portions of his political writings are the destructive criticisms. The theory of divine right and the theory of the social contract are subjected to an analysis which leaves little to be said by the later critic. Hume does not make the mistake of criticising the latter theory as an explanation of the genesis of the state. In fact, he is willing to admit that, in an attenuated form, it may express a certain amount of truth about the origin of government in a savage tribe. The essence of his criticism is, in fact, that the notion of a free contract implies a degree of individualism which is not actually found in any existing form of society; a contract between equal individuals misrepresents entirely the actual relation which subsists between individuals in the state. On every hand princes claim their subjects as their property, and in the