In 1761, Dr. Blair communicated to Hume the sermon by Dr. Campbell, which, when subsequently expanded, became the "Dissertation on Miracles," already referred to.[115:2] On this occasion, Hume wrote in the following terms to Dr. Blair:—

This is followed by a particular examination of some parts of Dr. Campbell's work, which may be perused to most advantage in conjunction with the Dissertation itself, along with which the letter is generally printed. He then says,—

The letter terminates with a recommendation which accounts for the absence of all observations on religious topics in the correspondence between Blair and Hume: while it shows that their intercourse had not always excluded discussions of such a character.

Hume afterwards wrote the following letter on the same subject:—

He then, in the passage already cited,[119:2] describes the occasion on which the "Theory of Miracles" was suggested to him.

In answer to this, there is a letter by Campbell, in which he endeavours to rival his opponent in candour, politeness, and gentlemanlike feeling. The happy courtesy with which he apologizes for the occasionally irascible tone of his essay, shows that the retired northern divine possessed in no small degree the qualities that might have adorned a more showy station.

FOOTNOTES:

CHAPTER XII.

In 1762 there was published, in two quarto volumes, the "History of England, from the Invasion of Julius Cæsar, to the Accession of Henry VII." The farther back we proceed from those periods of which a full narrative of historical events is preserved by contemporary chroniclers, into those more obscure ages when even the lines of kings are hardly preserved, and fragments of laws, or of long obsolete literature, and antiquarian relics, are the historian's only guide, the less satisfactory is Hume's history, when compared with other historical works. The earliest part is thus the least valuable. He had here, however, to encounter difficulties which we are only at this day able to estimate, in the absence of those materials which the industry of antiquaries has lately brought to light, to so great an extent, as almost necessarily to supersede Hume's "History of England" during the early ages, as a source of historical knowledge.[121:1]

But both in this and the other departments of his work, we are bound to estimate Hume, as we do great workmen in all departments of mental labour, not by the state of his science at the present day, but by that in which he found it. To comprehend how far it may be practicable for any one mind to create a full and satisfactory history of the island of Great Britain, without having the advantage of the previous labours of many minds, occupied in elucidating the details of the various branches of knowledge with which he has to deal, let us cast a casual glance at the prominent topics which must be fully discussed in such a History, if it be a satisfactory work.

The historian should be master of every scrap of information contained in Greek or Roman authors, about the connexion of the people of the ancient world with our island. In the works of Cæsar and Tacitus this will be a simple matter; but scattered about among the productions of the Panegyrists, and in other such obscure quarters, there are many important incidental notices, which will not be so easily found or so satisfactorily interpreted. To this the investigator must add more recondite stores of knowledge, collected from etymological investigations among the roots of languages—Celtic and Teutonic. He must study Strabo, Ptolemy, and the other geographers; and interpreting the information collected from them, and the incidents derived from the other sources above alluded to, with his etymological inquiries, he must endeavour to solve the vexed questions about the migration of races—whether the Cimbri were pure Celts? whether the Welsh are the descendants of that race? whether the Caledonii, with whom Agricola fought, were Celts? who and what were those mysterious people, called the Picts?

There must be some criticism, however unsatisfactory it may be, on the worship anterior to the introduction of Christianity, and on the vestiges of that and of other early customs supposed to be supplied by the remnants of ancient masonry and engineering, with which our island abounds. The historian must next be able to show what is truly known, and what is not, regarding the inroads of the Teutonic tribes, and must be able to fathom the learning of the German antiquaries on this department of history. Here the early literature of Ireland, of which so much has lately been printed by O'Conor and others, and the relics of Scandinavian metrical histories, will widen the inquiry, while they render it more satisfactory.

Having got these settlers from the Teutonic tribes, the Saxons as they are generally called, established in the island, the peculiar internal policy, national character, and literature of Britain, begin to assume a shape under the eye of the historian, and to gather round them their distinctive attributes as he proceeds. He will soon have to deal with the birth of laws and customs, which, modelled to the progress of an increasing population and civilisation, are still in daily practice.

From this epoch downwards, he has to watch the changes of the national literature. Observing it in its purely Anglo-Saxon period, he must estimate the extent to which it was altered by the adoption of Norman-French as a court language, while Anglo-Saxon still continued to be the tongue of the common people; and mark the continued existence of this fundamental Teutonic speech, and its action upon the language of the court, until the former became the established literary language of the day, the latter merely imparting to it one of its characteristic features. Thus tracing these elements from their respective sources down to the days of Chaucer, the influence of the revival of classical learning upon modern language and thought must find a place, and English literature must be described in its progress towards and arrival at full manhood. Along with this inquiry, there should be an ancillary investigation into the causes why the language and literature of the Scottish lowlands have so long differed from those of England, though both springing from the same root.

Returning to the Anglo-Saxon period, another and more laborious inquiry opens in the department of the laws and public institutions. There must be a search after those which were peculiar to the Anglo-Saxons; and in dealing with authorities posterior to the conquest, the historian must carefully sift them, that he may ascertain the extent to which any law or custom was undoubtedly Anglo-Saxon. After having ascertained how much of the spirit of feudal institutions had tinged the purely Saxon usages, he must next follow the progress of feudalism abroad, and fully explain the effect produced on Britain by its full grown importation at the era of the Conquest. In conjunction with this large inquiry, the jurisprudence of Rome must be kept in view; first, as some relics of it in municipal institutions, and otherwise, may have been associated with the very earliest forms of internal organization in modern Europe; and secondly, after its letter had been buried for centuries, as it was resuscitated by the civilians and canonists, and brought in array against the common law of England, and amalgamated with the feudal system in Scotland. From these elements the history of Parliament and of municipal bodies, the prerogatives of the crown, and the rights and privileges of the subject, together with the practical administration of the law, ought all to be developed in their origin and growth. The state of knowledge and of opinion among the people at large, on political matters, and particularly on the manner in which they are governed, should form a part of this constitutional inquiry.

The history of religion should occupy a conspicuous place in the historian's studies. In the folios of the Bollandists, no inconsiderable portion of the scanty records of the civil history of the period are to be found. A full and patient study of the Roman Catholic creed and polity in their rise and development, is necessary for the effectual employment of the knowledge thus acquired; and it is needless to say how many other creeds and systems must be studied by the historian of Britain. By observing its mere results on the outward history of a people, the inquirer will never know the real influence of any system of religious tenets. A brief survey shows us the outward demonstrations. But to be acquainted with the character of the internal impulses of any religious creed, to see how the fire glows and radiates within the bosom of the votary, we must study the vital elements of the creed itself with industry and with zeal.

The language and literature of the country have already been alluded to. The state of the arts at different times must be carefully watched and explained. To accomplish this task, the historian should possess a wide knowledge of the principles and practice of art: not that conventional knowledge which teaches him how to distinguish from all that are below them those efforts which are entitled to the approbation of the fastidious, but the catholic spirit, which enables the mind fully to estimate progress before perfection is reached.

All the departments of the historian's knowledge are more or less blended with each other. From the sixth century downwards, for several ages, the coinage of the realm only marks the state of the arts or serves to adjust disputed chronologies: gradually, however, the historian feels it becoming involved with more complex elements connected with the state of society, and at last the great question of the currency and the monetary system of the country has to be grappled with. Here the whole field of political economy is opened up. It is needless to say, that the historian, especially he who treats of a people in any degree civilized, must be thoroughly imbued with political economy.

The state of manufactures and of the sciences should not be neglected. A history of Britain during the nineteenth century, containing no account of the triumphs of the steam engine, or of the progress of railway engineering, would give a very imperfect view of the living progress of the nation. The history of the early period would be more satisfactory, if it informed us when the pump and the potter's wheel were first used in Britain. Closely akin to this subject is the progress of agriculture, which, however, is a matter simpler and more easy of attainment than many of the historian's other objects of inquiry.

In truth, it may be safely said, that every circumstance that can be discovered concerning the particular country, and every thing, whether animate or inanimate that is on its surface, comes within the compass of its history, using that word in the sense of merely civil history,—unless in so far as it belongs to what is natural history. And yet even from this science civil history has many lights to receive. Human physiology is intimately connected with the elucidations of the historian; and it would appear that, in regard to the influence of political institutions on the physical as well as the moral state of races of men, we are still only on the threshold of knowledge. Here the physiologist, and the recorder of political events, who heretofore have travelled on different roads, may some day or other find a common object of exertion, and may tell us, by their united labours, why the race that inhabited ancient Egypt, from being the most inventive, should have been among the most supine of people; why the Chinese should have passed through an epoch of active discovery, and should have thenceforth, unlike the rest of the world, neither forgotten nor improved the fruits of their original enterprise; why the Celts, once the nurses of European learning, should, at a later time, have appeared as if doomed to retire before the ardent genius of the Teutonic race; and why this race, after being long inferior to other branches of the Caucasian family, should appear, with British enterprise and German thought, likely to absorb the faculties of the rest of mankind.

The historian must not wholly neglect other natural productions. The inferior animals and the vegetable kingdom are intimately connected with the fate of the human beings who are the immediate object of his labours. With geology he may appear to have comparatively little concern; yet the marble of Greece, and the coal and iron of Britain, have had no little influence on the destinies of these nations.

Hume did so much towards the completion of that circle of knowledge with which the historian has to deal, that he was the first to add to a mere narrative of events, an inquiry into the progress of the people, and of their arts, literature, manners, and general social condition. This attempt was so original, that, as it embodied in some measure the theory developed in Voltaire's "Essai sur les Moeurs," first published in 1756, when the first volume of the "History of the Stuarts" had been two years before the public, it was supposed that Hume might have borrowed the idea from some fragments of that work which had been surreptitiously printed with the title "Abrégé de l'Histoire Universelle." There seems to be no room, however, for such a supposition. Hume's own "Political Discourses" are as close an approach to this method of inquiry as the work of Voltaire; and if we look for such productions of other writers as may have led him into this train of thought, it would be more just to name Bacon and Montesquieu.[129:1] The works of such authors as Guizot and Hallam may teach us that much had to be added to Hume's system of historical composition, to render it perfect; but they do so in the same manner as the last steam engine shows us how many improvements have been made on the inventions of Watt.

We now resume the correspondence with Millar. The letter immediately following, puts beyond a doubt, what had only been partially believed, that Hume had, at one time, expressed an intention of writing an ecclesiastical history. Of the manner in which he would have executed such a task, opinions will widely vary.