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* HXJME. 309 HUME. HUME, David (1711-76). An English philosopher and historian. He was born at Edin- burgh on April 20 (0. S.), 1711. His father was the laird of Ninewells in Berwickshire, but David, being the younge.st son, had to nialce liis fortune with no other assistance than an educai lion and the influence of his family. He appears to have studied in the Universit}' of Edinburgh wiicn twelve years of age, but his education for Uie most part consisted in home reading. His family designed the law to be his profession, and he submitted to the initial steps of the proper practical training, but it was not a pursuit to his liking. Deserting it, he experimented in a mer- cantile house in Bristol, but commerce was not more congenial to him than jurisprudence, and he gave it a very short trial. To use his own words, "I now went over to France with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat, and there I laid the plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my inde- pendency, and to regard every object as con- temptible except the improvement of my talent in literature." lie spent nuich of the next three years at La FlSche, in intercourse with the Jesuits, and then he wrote his Treatise of liunian Xattire. which, however, he did not publish till 17311-40. It consists of three books, "Of the I'ndcrstandiiig," "Of the Passions," and "Of Morals." Now one of the three or four most fa- mous philosophical productions of England, at the time of its appearance "it fell dcadborn from the press without reaching such a distinc- tion as even to e.xcite a murmur among the zeal- ots." as Hume himself acknowledged, much to his mortification. He now turned to political theory, and published anonymously in 1741-42 two volumes of Ussnt/.i Moral and Political. In 1744 he was a candidate for the chair of 'ethics and pneumatic philosophy' in the University of Edinburgh, but his Trenti.ie had given him a reputation for 'heresy, deism, skepticism, athe- ism, etc.,' and the university would have none of him. In 1740 he obtained a 'vei-' genteel' ap- pointment as secretary to General Saint Clair on "10 shillings a day, perquisites, and no ex- penses." An expedition had been planned to t'anada. but an unsuccessful attack on 1,'Orient, in France, led to a recall of the general. Two years after Hume accompanied Oeneral Saint flair to the Court of Turin, as secretary and aide-de-camp, and took notes of his impressions of Hnllnnd. Cermanv, and Italy. In 1748, during his absence on the Continent, he published his F.nqniry Cnncrrninp Human Uii dprxlanilintj. The following year he returned to England; in 17,'jl he gave to the public the Enquiri/ Concernitiq thr frinrijilm of Morals, and in 17.52 the Politiral Disroumcs, said to have been the 'cradle of political economy.' At the same time he .also compo^ied Dialor/um on yatiiral Religicn, which, however, were not published till after his death. By this time he had ptit by enough money to gain him an income of f.50 a year. Besides he had "a hundred poinds' worth of books, great stores of linens and fine clothes, and near £100 in his pocket, along with order, frugality, a strong spirit of independency, good health, a contented humor, and an unabated love of study," as he himself relates. In H.')! he had removed to Edinburgh, and a year later he was elected librarian to the Faculty of Advocates at a salary of £40. In 1754 he published the first volume of the History of Great liritain. Contain- ing the Reign of James I., amd Charles /.; the second volume appeared two years afterwards. Then he took up the Tudors, and, working back- ward, finished his History of England in 1762. ]n 1757 he had publislied Four Dissertations: the Natural History of Religion; of the Pas- sions; of Tragedy; of the Standard of Taste. In nfi.S he was a member of the embassy to France under Lord Hertford, and there found himself famous. He was lionized by the frivolous society ladies, feted by the nobles, and taken by the men of letters into their friendship. After his re- turn he was made Under-Secretary of State (1767-69), and by 17G9 had an income of £1000 a year. In 1770 he retired from public life and built a home in Edinburgh on a new street, which was jocularly called 'Saint David's Street,' after him. Here lie wrote ,Iy Oirn Life, and here he died, August 25. 1770. His History of England became a classic as soon as it appeared: his economic writings were a fitting prelude to those of his friend Adam Smith (q.v.), while his philosophical works roused Kant "from his dog- Uiatic slumber," gave rise by reaction to Scottish philosophy, and are the immortal text-books of skepticism and agnosticism. His philosophy was but the consistent development of I'erke- ley's idealism. ( See Berkki.ev. ) Berkeley had de- nied the reality of matter, and had accounted for what passed for matter by making it a cimiplex of sensations and ideas, but he still held to the reality of mind as the subject of sensations and ideas. Hume dropped out mind as Berkeley had dropped out nuitter. and thus left nothing to 1)C known except 'perception' (imi)ressions and ideas), together with certain fictions of the imagination, of which he gives no satisfactory account that can be made consistent with his general position. "All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds which I shall call impressions and ideas." These differ not by reason of any difTerences in the manner in which they are produced, but merely in priority and liveliness. Ideas are simply those perceptions which, appearing later than similar perceptions, are less forceful and vivid. Tdea.s are of two sorts, ideas of the mem- ory and ideas of the imagination. Of these the former are the more lively, and retain, in great measure, the order and sequence of these orig- inal impressions, whereas ideas of the imagina- tion are fainter and -are "not restrained to the same order and form with the original impres- sions." Ideas are associated in accordance with certain principles, viz.. "Resemblance, contiguity in time or place, and cause and effect." There are no general ideas. Ideas of space are complexes of minima vi.'<ihilia. or colored points, disposed in a certain nuinner. These points are indivisible. Idea.s of time are derived from the succession of our perceptions, and as these ])erceptions are in the last instance indivisible, time is not infinitely divisible. No perce])tion has any proper external, objective reference. A cause is an object prece- dent and contiguous to another, and so tinited with it in the imagination that the idea of the one determines the mind to form the idea of the other, and the impression of the one to form a more lively idea of the other. "There is no sub- stance, hence no mind except the bundle of per-