Hume / (English Men of Letters Series)

nly have no character in common, but it is inconceivable that they should have any. On the assumption, that the attributes of the two were wholly diffe

has no extension cannot be divisible, it seemed that th

s of Descartes either found themselves obliged, with the Occasionalists, to call in the aid of the Deity, who was supposed to be a sort of go-between betwixt matter and spirit; or they had recourse, with Leibnitz, to the doctrine of pre-established harmony, which denied any influence of the body on the soul, or vice versa, and compared matter and spirit to two clocks so accurately regulated to keep time with one another, that the one struck when ever the other pointed to the

. And Hume's sound common sense led him to defend this thesis, which Locke had already foreshadowed, with respect to the question of the substance of the soul. Hume enunciates two opinions. The first is that the question itself is unintelligible, and therefore ca

st by itself, the definition does not distinguish the soul from perceptions. It is perfectly easy to conceive that states of consciousness are self-subsistent. And, if the substance of the soul is defined as that in which perceptions inhere

w do we know that it is different from the substance, which, on l

of a substance which remains the same while the accidents of perception

nd sleep, so long am I insensible of myself, and may be truly said not to exist. And were all my perceptions removed by death, and I could neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate, after the dissolution of my body, I should be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is further requisite to make me a perfect nonentity. If any one, upon serious and unpr

is a kind of theatre, where several perceptions successively make their appearance, pass, repass, glide away, and mingle in an infinite variety of postures and situations. There is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different, whatever natural propension we may hav

o answer this question, we must distinguish between personal identity as it regards our thought and imagination, and as it regards our passions, or the concern we take in ourselves. The first is our present subject; and to e

or more objects which are separated by intervals of space and periods of time. But, in both these cases, there is no sharp li

wo animals adherent together, and the limit between these conditions is purely arbitrary. So in mineralogy, a crystal of a definite chemical compositio

which it is composed: every attribute it possesses is constantly changing, and yet we say that it is always one and the same individual. And if, in this case, we attribute identity without su

y division of it into parts separated by time or space. Every experience we have of it is as one thing and not as two; and we sum up our ex

present moment are inextricably mixed up with the memories of yesterday and the

ssions and ideas, without losing his identity. Whatever changes he endures, his several parts are still connected by the relation of causation. And in this view our identity with regard to the passio

ur persons, beyond our memory, and can comprehend times, and circumstances, and actions, which we have entirely forgot, but suppose in general to have existed. For how few of our past actions are there of which we have any memory? Who can tell me, for instance, what were his thoughts and actions on the first of January, 1715, the eleventh of March, 1719, and the third of August, 1733? Or will he affirm, because he has entirely forgot the incidents of those days, that the p

es. Identity depends on the relations of ideas, and these relations produce identity by means of that easy transition they occasion. But as the relations, and the easiness of the transition may diminish by insensible degrees, we have no just standard by which we can decide any dispute

nt parts are bound together by a close relation, operates upon the imagination after much the same manner as one perfectly simple and undivisible, and requires not a much greater stretch of thought in order to its conceptio

stitute our mental existence; and we have no more reason, in the latter case, than in the former, to suppose that there is anything beyond the phenomena which answers to the name. In the case of the soul, as in that

mere figment of the imagination; and that, whether it exists or not, we can by no possibili

phenomena which make up an individual mind; it remains open to us to ask, whether that series commenced with, or before, the series of phenomena which constitute the corresponding individual body; and whether it terminates with the e

ed, possibly, for that reason, its influence has been manifested in unexpected quarters, and its main arguments have been adduced by archiepiscopal and episcopal authority in evidence of the value of revelation. Dr. Wha

ted an acute logician like Whately, for it is a model of clear and vigorous statement.

nts for it are commonly derived either from metaphysical topics, or moral, or physical. But in r

act reasonings cannot decide any question of fact or existence. But admitting a spiritual substance to be dispersed throughout the universe, like the ethereal fire of the Stoics, and to be the only inherent subject of thought, we have reason to conclude from analogy, that nature uses it after the manner she does the other substance, matter. She employs it as a kind of paste or clay; modifies it into a variety of forms or existences; dissolves after a time each modification, and from its substance erects a new form. As the same material substance may successively compose the bodies of all animals, the same spiritual substance may compose their minds: Their consciousness, or that system of thought which they formed during life, may be continually dissolved by death, and nothing interest

consider the moral a

s supposed to be further interested in the future pu

this life?[42] Our sole means of knowing anything is the reasoning faculty which God has given us; and that reasoning faculty not only denies us any conc

he whole scope and intention of man's creation, so far as we

than the needs of this life require, that they suggest a

, nay, almost always, are too slender for the business assigned them. A pair of shoes, perhaps, was never yet wrought to the highest degree of perfection that commodity is capable of attaining; yet it is necessary, at least very useful, that there should be some politicians and moralists, even

e and nothing more, it is surely inconsistent with any conception of justice that we should be dealt with, as if we had all along had a clear knowledge of the fact thus carefully concealed from us. What should we t

ly irreconcilable with our notions of justice that he should punish another for that which he has, in fact, done himself. Moreover, j

ure as man? Can any one approve of Alexander's rage, who intended to exterm

Were one to go round the world with the intention of giving a good supper to the righteous and a sound drubbing to the wicked, he would freq

eal conditions which determine men's acts the less one finds either to praise or blame. For kindly David Hume, "the damnation of one man is an infinitely greater evil in

ce, it is an abuse of language to employ the name of justice for the attribute described by it. But, as against those who choose to argue that there is nothing in what is known to us of the attributes of the Deity inconsistent with a future state of rewards and punishments, Hume's pleadings have no force. Bishop Butler's argument that, inasmuch as the visitation of our acts by rewards and punishments takes place

strong desire that a certain occurrence should happen should be put forward as evidence that it will happen. If my intense desire to see the friend, from whom I have parted, does not bring him from the other side of the world, or take me thither; if the mother's agonised prayer that her child should live has not prevented him from dying; experience certainly affor

hose of the Deity, then, logic is powerless and reason silent.

hom I have long been seeking. All knowledge (touching an object of mere reason) can be communicated, and therefore I might hope to see my own knowledge increased to this prodigious extent, by his instruction. No; our conviction in these matters is not logical, but moral certainty; and, inasmuch as it rests upon subject

ave them aside, and suppose a mind quite indifferent to moral laws, the inquiry started by reason becomes merely a subject for speculation; and [the

and a future state. To this end, no more is necessary than that he can at least have no certainty that there is no such being, and no future life; for, to make this conclusion demonstratively certain, he must be able to prove the impossibility o

yond the bounds of experience? Nothing more than two articles of faith? Common

erests all men shall transcend the common understanding and be discovered for you only by philosophers? The very thing which you make a reproach, is the best confirmation of the justice of the previous conclusions, since it shows that which could not, at first, have been anticipated: namely, that in

not disprove the immortality of the soul, and as the belief therein is very useful for moral purposes, you may assume it. To which, had Hume lived half a century later, he would probably have r

f the soul; but he carries the war into the enemy's camp, and accuses those who affirm the immateriality, simplicity

of beings, and both Spinoza and orthodox philosophers agree, that the necessary substratum of eac

serve another sun, moon, and stars; an earth and seas, covered and inhabited by plants and animals, towns, houses, mountains, rivers; and, in short, everything I can discover or conceive in the first system. Upon my inquiring concerning these, theologians present themselves, and tell me that these also are modifications, and modifications of one simple, uncompounded, and indivisible substance. Immediately upon which I am deafened with the noise of a

ay rest satisfied that both hypotheses are unintelligible, without plunging any further among

TNO

ing." "There is no means whatever by which we can learn anything respecting the constitution of the soul, so

gion, (Essay I. Revelation of a Future State), by Richard What

, Moral, and Scriptural, with the Design of showing the Value of the Gospel Revelatio

e most literal sense, which implies that the revelation of the doctrine is peculiar to His Gospel, see

) that, whether it be material or immaterial, "in both cases the metaphysical arguments for the immortality of the soul are equally

oss to understand clearly, till it shall have been clearly determined what matter is. We

one difficulty, viz. that all their arguments apply, with exactly the same force, to prove an immortality, not only of b

ure state does not account fully for these irregularities. It may explain, indeed, how present evil may be conducive to future good, but not why the good could not be attained without t

ess pretension."-Whately, l.c. p. 101. On the other hand, however, the Archbishop sees no unreasonableness in a man's earning for himself an immortality of intense unhappiness by the practice of vic

nen Vernunft. Ed. H