'Upon further consideration, I thought I might say to him, good Charon, I have been correcting my works for a new edition. Allow me a little time, that I may see how the public receives the alterations.-There will be no end of such excuses; so, honest friend, please step into the boat -But I might still urge, Have a little patience, good Charon: I have been endeavoring to open the eyes of the public. If I live a few years longer, I may have the satisfaction of seeing the downfall of some of the prevailing systems of superstition. But Charon would then lose all temper and decency.-You loitering rogue, that will not happen these many hundred years. Do you fancy I will grant you a lease for so long a term? Get into the boat this instant, you lazy, loitering rogue.'

On the 26th of August, 1776, his physician wrote to Adam Smith: 'Dear Sir,-Yesterday, about four o'clock, afternoon, Mr. Hume expired. The near approach of his death became evident in the night between Thursday and Friday, when his disease became excessive, and soon weakened him so much that he could no longer rise out of his bed. He continued to the last perfectly sensible, and free from much pain or feelings of distress. He never dropped the smallest expression of impatience; but when he had occasion to speak to the people about him, always did it with affection and tenderness. I thought it improper to write to bring you over, especially as I heard that he had dictated a letter to you, desiring you not to come. When he became very weak, it cost him an effort to speak; and he died in such a happy composure of mind, that nothing could exceed it,'

Men who have formed high conceptions of duty, who have bridled the tumult of passion, who pass their lives in a calm sense of virtue and of dignity, are little likely to be assailed by the superstitions fears that are the nightmare of weaker minds. soul unscared by death.' On the last lived, the tribune came to ask 'for the namitas', answered the dying emperor. how to live, has learned how to die.

'Ask,' said Seneca, 'for a brave night in which Antonius Pius pass-word of the night. 'AcquaA wise man, who has studied

Style. Remarkably clear and flowing, simple, graceful, and vivacious, often impregnated with a vein of the quietest yet truest and richest humor. A finished expression was his studious care. Content to take his authorities at second hand, he was constandly subjecting the History to revision in point of style. Defending himself against the charge of coldness in the cause of virtue, he says, with an evident anxiety to be thought innocent:

'Though I am much more ambitious of being esteemed a friend to virtue than a writer of taste, yet I must always carry the latter in my eye, otherwise I must despair of ever being serviceable to virtue.'

Character. From his earliest years he had a genuine love of letters and philosophy, and consecrated himself to their pursuit:

'I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature.'

His supreme motive was the desire of greatness-not the greatness of circumstance or the blazonry of power, but the higher and more lasting distinction of mental empire:

'Such a superiority do the pursuits of literature possess above every other occupation, that even he who attains but a mediocrity in them, merits the pre-eminence above those that excel the most in the common and vulgar professions.'

He was generous, yet frugal; gentle, yet firm; modest, yet selfrespectful. Pleasantry was tempered with delicacy. Railery was without the asperity of wit,-the effusion of good nature, light, and sometimes elegant as that of Addison. Its peculiar type is most finely illustrated in his correspondence, as in the reference, in a letter of 1751, to his brother's marriage:

'Dear Madam,-Our friend at last plucked up a resolution, and has ventured on that dangerous encounter. He went off on Monday morning; and this is the first action of his life wherein he has engaged himself, without being able to compute exactly the consequences. But what arithmetic will serve to fix the proportion between good and bad wives, and rate the different classes of each? Sir Isaac Newton himself, who could measure the course of planets, and weigh the earth as in a pair of scales,-even he had not algebra enough to reduce that amiable part of our species to a just equation; and they are the only heavenly bodies whose orbits are yet uncertain.'

Possibly this will explain why he never ventured upon 'that untried state,' preferring rather to bear the ills he had than fly to others that he knew not of. Whether a great man has loved, is no unimportant feature of his history; but unhappily, in the present instance, little or no light can be shed upon the question. He frequently discusses the passion of love, divides it into its elements as systematically as if he were subjecting it to a chemical analysis; lays down rules regarding it, as if it were a system of logic: but the mood of mind in which passions are analyzed, is not that in which they are strongly felt. We suspect that, while he had a superficial admiration of women in general, he had not the depth of emotional power to be profoundly influenced by any in particular; and the suspicion is strengthened by his own declaration on hearing of the infatuation of a nobleman, whose eyes, withdrawn from severe study, had opened in a fatal moment upon the charms of a merchant's daughter of sixteen:

'They say many small fevers prevent a great one. Heaven be praised that I have always liked the persons and company of the fair sex! for by that means I hope to escape such ridiculous passions.'

Gayety of temper, which is usually accompanied with frivolous qualities of mind, was in him coupled with extensive learning, profound thought, severe application, and a general earnestness of spirit. In his last illness, a spectator of the past, facing the infinite Silence, he communed with himself:

'I am, or rather was, . . . a man of mild disposition, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humor, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no

reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men, any wise eminent, have found reason to complain of Calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked, by her baleful tooth; and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occa-ion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct; not but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they could never find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.'

Writings. Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding (1748). In this he re-cast the first part of an earlier work, Treatise on Human Nature (1737), which, he says, 'fell dead-born from the press.' Nor did his speculations now attract much more attention, though they proved eventually to be the most exciting and productive that have been promulgated in modern times. To derive any profit from the consideration of his metaphysical views, the student should remind himself,— 1. That the aim of Philosophy is to ascertain the nature and essence of things.

2. Locke was allowed to have established,

(1.) That we could have no knowledge not derived from experience.

(2.) That experience was of two kinds, namely, of external ob⚫jects and of internal operations; therefore, there were two distinct sources, sensation and reflection.

(3.) That all knowledge could consist only in the agreement or disagreement of ideas.

(4.) Finally, that we could never know things in themselves but only as they affect us; that is, we could know only our ideas.

He supposes the mind to begin its acts of entelligence with impressions ; by which is meant the lively sensations we have when we hear, see, feel, love, hate, desire, will. When we reflect on any impression, as in acts of memory or imagination, the result is an idea. An idea is, then, the faint image or copy of an impression. Thus, when I see a picture, there is an impression; when I think about this picture in its absence, there is an idea. The difference between impressions and ideas is one of degree merely the former are stronger, the latter weaker; the first are the originals, the second are the vestiges. When, in reasoning, a thing is said to exist, we are to search for an impression (new or.old) corresponding to the word used. If no such impression is found, the word, so far as our human faculties are concerned, has no meaning at all. Whether there is any existence corresponding to its meaning, no one can tellthere may or may not be. Hence, whether there be an infinite mind behind the veil of phenomena, no mortal may presume to say. That idea

is reached by magnifying the human attributes of wisdom and goodness. If it be asked what knowledge we have of an external world, the answer is, that there are certain impressions and ideas which we suppose to relate to it further we know not. If we look into ourselves, and, watching the figures as they come and go, seek for assurance of our identity and continuity, we find but a string of separate entities, a procession of shadows, called in one view impressions, in another ideas; not something self-existent, which was, is, and shall continue:

'Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations, succeed each other and never exist at the same time. It can not, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is derived; and consequently there is no such idea. . . For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without perception, and can never observe anything but the perception.'

Hume's philosophical significance is connected chiefly with his speculations concerning causality. No sooner is an event perceived than we conclude at once that it is an effect, and begin to inquire the cause. Between these two terms he could see no other connection, than that the former immediately follows the latter, as in the melting of wax before the flame of a taper. When they are seen to be conjoined repeatedly, we learn to expect that, when the one accustomed to precede makes its appearance, the other will follow; and this expectation strengthens as the repetitions multiply. If now the unsatisfied investigator demands a power in the one, which enables it to produce the other, the answer is, such a thing may be—we have no clue to it—no impression of it, by which its existence or non-existence may be argued. Our belief in the maxim, that like causes produce like effects, is based not on any knowledge of the hidden force, through which the one thing brings the other into being, but on habit:

'When we look about us towards external objects, and consider the operation of causes, we are never able in a single instance to discover any power or necessary connection, any quality, which binds the effect to the cause, and renders the one an infallible consequence of the other, The impulse of one billiard-ball is attended with motion in the second. This is the whole that appears to the outward senses. The mind feels no sentiment or inward impression from this succession of objects; consequently there is not in any single instance of cause and effect, any thing which can suggest the idea of power or necessary connection.'

The mind can not perceive any necessary connection between events, but only an invariableness of antecedence and sequence. The ground of our belief that some power is involved in every causal act, is custom. If I believe that the sun will rise tomorrow, it is merely because it has always risen. If I believe that fire will burn, it is merely because it has always burned:

'When many uniform instances appear and the same object is always followed by the same event, we then begin to entertain the notion of cause and connection. We then feel

a new sentiment, to wit, a customary connection in the thought between one object and its usual attendant; and this sentiment is the original of that idea which we seek for.'

Hence, the causal idea, owing to its origin in habit, admits of use only within the field of experience; and our pains are vain, if we attempt to ascend from data given empirically, to that which lies beyond the whole range of experience,-God and immortality. Again, if we can not infer the exercise of power in a material cause, neither can we in an immaterial one. As in the world of matter, so in the world of spirit, events are merely conjoined. Impulses and motives, which date their origin from sensation only, impressed by matter and material law, chase each other through the corridors of the unresisting mind like boulders and pebbles in a river bed. Man, receptive to the ever-shifting train of 'impressions', is bound fast in fate. Once more, where experience teaches that two things are related by an invariable sequence, if we hear of an instance in which this has not been the case, we ought to doubt the truth of the narrative. Which is the more probable, that men should make false statements, designedly or otherwise, or that an event should have occurred which contradicts all previous authenticated experience? Therefore, to prove a miracle is impossible, if by miracle is meant an interference with the usual order of nature; for it is simpler to believe that the evidence is mistaken than that the course of nature is not uniform.

It is not here proposed to inquire whether these views, with their quiet and indifferent yet momentous applications, will bear scrutiny. The present business is neither to impugn nor to defend, but to describe.

Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (1751), 'which, in my own opinion, (who ought not to judge on that subject), is of all my writings, historical, philosophical or literary, incomparably the best.' The work is a full development, so far as made by Hume, of the utiltarian system. Actions are virtuous, if they tend to increase the pleasures or diminish the pains of mankind; vicious, if they have, or tend to have, the opposite effect. The motive to virtue is an enlightened self-interest. Temperance and chastity should be encouraged, not because they are right and obligatory in themselves, but for the mutual benefit of the individual and the public. The leading principle of his system was very explicitly given ten years earlier, in a letter to Hutcheson :

'Now, I desire you to consider if there be any quality that is virtuous without having a tendeney either to the public good or to the good of the person who possesses it. If there be none without these tendencies, we may conclude that their merit is derived from sympathy. I desire you would consider only the tendencies of qualities, not their actual operations, which depend on chance. Brutus riveted the chains of Rome faster by his opposition; but the natural tendency of his noble dispositions- his public spirit and magnanimity-was to establish her liberty.'

*That is, from our natural sympathy with the person benefitted.