[681] ‘Where the church benefices are all nearly equal, none of them can be very great; and this mediocrity of benefice, though it may, no doubt, be carried too far, has, however, some very agreeable effects. Nothing but exemplary morals can give dignity to a man of small fortune. The vices of levity and vanity necessarily render him ridiculous, and are, besides, almost as ruinous to him as they are to the common people. In his own conduct, therefore, he is obliged to follow that system of morals which the common people respect the most. He gains their esteem and affection, by that plan of life which his own interest and situation would lead him to follow.’ Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. i. p. 340.

[682] Besides the evidence supplied by economical treatises, the laws in our statute-book, respecting wages, show the general conviction, that their rate could be fixed by the upper classes.

[683] ‘We rarely hear, it has been said, of the combinations of masters, though frequently of those of workmen. But whoever imagines, upon this account, that masters rarely combine, is as ignorant of the world as of the subject. Masters are always and every where in a sort of tacit, but constant and uniform, combination, not to raise the wages of labour above their actual rate. To violate this combination is every where a most unpopular action, and a sort of reproach to a master among his neighbours and equals. We seldom, indeed, hear of this combination, because it is the usual, and, one may say, the natural state of things which nobody ever hears of. Masters, too, sometimes enter into particular combinations to sink the wages of labour even below this rate.’ Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. viii. p. 28.

[684] ‘First, in almost every part of Great Britain, there is a distinction, even in the lowest species of labour, between summer and winter wages. Summer wages are always highest. But, on account of the extraordinary expense of fuel, the maintenance of a family is most expensive in winter. Wages, therefore, being highest when this expense is lowest, it seems evident that they are not regulated by what is necessary for this expense, but by the quantity and supposed value of the work.’ Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. viii. p. 31.

[685] ‘In years of scarcity, the difficulty and uncertainty of subsistence make all such people eager to return to service. But the high price of provisions, by diminishing the funds destined for the maintenance of servants, disposes masters rather to diminish than to increase the number of those they have.’ … ‘Masters of all sorts, therefore, frequently make better bargains with their servants in dear than in cheap years, and find them more humble and dependent in the former than in the latter. They naturally, therefore, commend the former as more favourable to industry.’ Wealth of Nations, book i. chap. viii. p. 35.

[686] ‘The workmen desire to get as much, the masters to give as little, as possible. The former are disposed to combine in order to raise, the latter in order to lower, the wages of labour.’ Wealth of Nations, b. i. c. viii. p. 27.

[687] ‘It seems absurd at first sight, that we should despise their persons, and yet reward their talents with the most profuse liberality. While we do the one, however, we must of necessity do the other. Should the public opinion, or prejudice, ever alter with regard to such occupation, their pecuniary recompense would quickly diminish. More people would apply to them, and the competition would quickly reduce the price of their labour. Such talents, though far from being common, are by no means so rare as imagined. Many people possess them in great perfection, who disdain to make this use of them; and many more are capable of acquiring them, if any thing could be made honourably by them.’ Wealth of Nations, book i. ch. x. p. 44.

[688] ‘Over and above the rents of those estates, the clergy possessed in the tithes a very large portion of the rents of all the other estates in every kingdom of Europe. The revenues arising from both those species of rents were, the greater part of them, paid in kind, in corn, wine, cattle, poultry, &c. The quantity exceeded greatly what the clergy could themselves consume; and there were neither arts nor manufactures, for the produce of which they could exchange the surplus. The clergy could derive advantage from this immense surplus in no other way than by employing it, as the great barons employed the like surplus of their revenues, in the most profuse hospitality, and in the most extensive charity. Both the hospitality and the charity of the ancient clergy, accordingly, are said to have been very great.’ … ‘The hospitality and charity of the clergy, too, not only gave them the command of a great temporal force, but increased very much the weight of their spiritual weapons. Those virtues procured them the highest respect and veneration among all the inferior ranks of people, of whom many were constantly, and almost all occasionally, fed by them.’ Wealth of Nations, book v. chap. i. p. 336.

[689] Burton's Life of Hume, vol. i. p. 354.

[690] See Mr. Burton's valuable Life of Hume, Edinburgh, 1846, vol. i. pp. 58, 267, vol. ii. pp. 14, 134.

[691] What confirms me in this view, is the fact, that the older Hume grew, and the more he read on history, the more he became imbued with these errors; which would not have been the case if the errors had, as many of his critics say, been the result of an insufficient acquaintance with the evidence. Mr. Burton, by comparing the different editions of his History of England, has shown that he gradually became less favourable to popular liberty; softening, or erasing, in later editions, those expressions which seemed favourable to freedom. Burton's Life of Hume, vol. ii. pp. 74–77. See also pp. 144, 434. In his Own Life, p. xi (in vol. i. of Hume's Works Edinb. 1826), he says: ‘In a hundred alterations, which farther study, reading, or reflection engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made all of them invariably the Tory side.’ In one of his essays, he observes (Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 172) that ‘there is no enthusiasm among philosophers;’ a remark perfectly true, so far as he was concerned, but very unjust towards the class of men to whom it refers.

[692] Brown, in his great work,—one of the greatest which this century has produced,—candidly confesses that his own book is ‘chiefly reflective of the lights, which he’ (Hume) ‘has given.’ Brown's Inquiry into the Relation of Cause and Effect, London, 1835, p. 253. See also p. vii.

[693] While the politicians of his own time despised his views, the politicians of our time seem inclined to overrate them. Lord Brougham, for instance, in his Life of Hume, says, of his political economy, ‘Mr. Hume is, beyond all doubt, the author of the modern doctrines which now rule the world of science.’ Brougham's Works, Glasgow, 1856, vol. ii. p. 176. But so far from this being the case, the science of political economy has, since the time of Hume, received such additions, that if that illustrious philosopher were to rise from the dead, he would hardly be able to recognize it. To him, many of its largest and most fundamental principles were entirely unknown. Hume knew nothing of the causes which govern the accumulation of wealth, and compel that accumulation to proceed with different speed in different states of society; a fruitful and important study almost entirely neglected until entered upon by Rae. Neither did Hume know anything of the law of the ratio between population and wages; nor of the ratio between wages and profits. He even supposes (Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 299, Edinburgh, 1826) that it is possible for the labouring classes by combination ‘to heighten their wages;’ and again (p. 319) that the richer a nation is, and the more trade it has, the easier it will be for a poor country to undersell its manufactures, because the poor nation enjoys the advantage of a ‘low price of labour.’ Elsewhere, he asserts that coin can be depreciated without raising prices, and that a country, by taxing a foreign commodity, could increase its own population. ‘Were all our money, for instance, recoined, and a penny's worth of silver taken from every shilling, the new shilling would probably purchase every thing that could have been bought by the old; the prices of every thing would thereby be insensibly diminished; foreign trade enlivened; and domestic industry, by the circulation of a great number of pounds and shillings, would receive some increase and encouragement.’ Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 324. ‘A tax on German linen encourages home manufactures, and thereby multiplies our people and industry.’ p. 365. These are cardinal errors, which go to the very root of political economy; and when we fairly estimate what has been done by Malthus and Ricardo, it will be evident that Hume's doctrines do not ‘rule the world of science.’ This is no disparagement of Hume, who, on the contrary, effected wonderful things, considering the then state of knowledge. The mistake is, in imagining that such a rapidly advancing science as political economy can be governed by doctrines propounded more than a century ago.

[694] ‘Every thing in the world is purchased by labour, and our passions are the only causes of labour.’ Essay I. on Commerce, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 294. Hence, he saw the fallacy of the assertion of the French economists, ‘that all taxes fall ultimately upon land.’ p. 388.

[695] ‘Money is not, properly speaking, one of the subjects of commerce, but only the instrument which men have agreed upon to facilitate the exchange of one commodity for another.’ Essay on Money in Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 317. ‘It is, indeed, evident that money is nothing but the representation of labour and commodities, and serves only as a method of rating or estimating them.’ p. 321.

[696] See Essay V. on the Balance of Trade, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. pp. 348–367.

[697] Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. pp. 333–335. Even now, a knowledge of this truth is so little diffused, that, lately, when Australia and California began to yield immense quantities of gold, a notion was widely circulated that the interest of money would consequently fall; although nothing can be more certain than that if gold were to become as plentiful as iron, the interest of money would be unaffected. The whole effect would fall upon price. The remarks on this subject in Ritchie's Life of Hume, London, 1807, pp. 332, 333, are interesting, as illustrating the slow progress of opinion, and the difficulty which minds, not specially trained, experience when they attempt to investigate these subjects.

[698] ‘Nothing is more usual, among states which have made some advance in commerce, than to look on the progress of their neighbours with a suspicious eye, to consider all trading states as their rivals, and to suppose that it is impossible for any of them to flourish, but at their expense. In opposition to this narrow and malignant opinion, I will venture to assert, that the increase of riches and commerce in any one nation, instead of hurting, commonly promotes the riches and commerce of all its neighbours.’ … ‘I go farther, and observe, that where an open communication is preserved among nations, it is impossible but the domestic industry of every one must receive an increase from the improvements of the others.’ Essay on the Jealousy of Trade, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iii. pp. 368, 369.

[699] This letter, which I have referred to in my first volume, p. 229, was published, for, I believe, the first time, in 1846, in Burton's Life and Correspondence of Hume, vol. ii. p. 486. It is, however, very difficult to determine what Adam Smith's opinion really was upon this subject, and how far he was aware that rent did not enter into price. In one passage in the Wealth of Nations (book i. chap. vi. p. 21) he says of wages, profit, and rent, ‘in every society, the price of every commodity finally resolves itself into some one or other, or all of those three parts; and in every improved society, all the three enter, more or less, as component parts, into the price of the far greater part of commodities.’ But in book i. chap. xi. p. 61, he says, ‘High or low wages and profit are the causes of high or low price; high or low rent is the effect of it.’ This latter opinion we now know to be the true one; it is, however, incompatible with that expressed in the first passage. For, if rent is the effect of price, it cannot be a component of it.

[700] Hence, when the Wealth of Nations appeared, one of our wise men gravely said that ‘Dr. Smith, who had never been in trade, could not be expected to write well on that subject, any more than a lawyer upon physic.’ See Boswell's Life of Johnson, edit. Croker, 1848, p. 478, where this remark is ascribed to Sir John Pringle.

[701] ‘He was sent to a mercantile house at Bristol in 1734; but he found the drudgery of this employment intolerable, and he retired to Rheims.’ Brougham's Life of Hume, Glasgow, 1856, p. 169. See also Ritchie's Life of Hume, p. 6. In Roberts' Memoirs of Hannah More, 2d ed. 1834, vol. i. p. 16, it is said that ‘two years of his life were spent in a merchant's counting-house in Bristol, whence he was dismissed on account of the promptitude of his pen in the correction of the letters intrusted to him to copy.’ The latter part of this story is improbable; the former part is certainly incorrect; since Hume himself says, ‘In 1734, I went to Bristol, with some recommendations to eminent merchants, but in a few months found that scene totally unsuitable to me. I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat.’ Own Life, p. v.

[702] What Sir James Mackintosh says of him is only a faint echo of the general voice of his contemporaries. ‘His temper was calm, not to say cold; but though none of his feelings were ardent, all were engaged on the side of virtue. He was free from the slightest tincture of malignity or meanness; his conduct was uniformly excellent.’ Mackintosh's Memoirs, vol. ii. p. 162. A greater than Mackintosh, and a man who knew Hume intimately, expresses himself in much warmer terms. ‘Upon the whole,’ writes Adam Smith,—‘Upon the whole, I have always considered him, both in his lifetime and since his death, as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.’ Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. p. xxv. Some notices of Hume will be found in an interesting work just published. Autobiography of Alexander Carlyle, Edinburgh, 1860, pp. 272–278. But Carlyle, though a man of considerable practical skill, was incapable of large views, and was, therefore, unable, I will not say to measure, but even to conceive, the size of such an understanding as that possessed by David Hume. Of his want of speculative power, a decisive instance appears in his remarks on Adam Smith. He gravely says (Autobiography, p. 281), ‘Smith's fine writing is chiefly displayed in his book on Moral Sentiments, which is the pleasantest and most eloquent book on the subject. His Wealth of Nations, from which he was judged to be an inventive genius of the first order, is tedious and full of repetition. His separate essays in the second volume have the air of being occasional pamphlets, without much force or determination. On political subjects, his opinions were not very sound.’ It is rather too much when a village-preacher writes in this strain of the greatest man his country has ever produced.

[703] He speaks of him in the following extraordinary terms. ‘If we consider the variety of talents displayed by this man; as a public speaker, a man of business, a wit, a courtier, a companion, an author, a philosopher; he is justly the object of great admiration. If we consider him merely as an author and philosopher, the light in which we view him at present, though very estimable, he was yet inferior to his contemporary Galileo, perhaps even to Kepler.’ … ‘The national spirit which prevails among the English, and which forms their great happiness, is the cause why they bestow on all their eminent writers, and on Bacon among the rest, such praises and acclamations as may often appear partial and excessive.’ Hume's History of England, vol. vi. pp. 194, 195, London, 1789.

[704] See the note in vol. i. p. 250, of Buckle's History of Civilization.

[705] Thus, for instance, in his remarkable Essay on the Balance of Trade, he says (Philosophical Works, vol. iii. p. 349), ‘Every man who has ever reasoned on this subject, has always proved his theory, whatever it was, by facts and calculations, and by an enumeration of all the commodities sent to all foreign kingdoms;’ therefore (p. 350), ‘It may here be proper to form a general argument to prove the impossibility of this event, so long as we preserve our people and our industry.’

[706] ‘I have no great faith in political arithmetic.’ Wealth of Nations, book iv. chap. v. p. 218.

[707] Indeed, the only possible objection to them is that the language of their collectors is sometimes ambiguous; so that, by the same return, one statistician may mean one thing, and another statistician may mean something quite different. This is well exemplified in medical statistics; whence several writers, unacquainted with the philosophy of scientific proof, have supposed that medicine is incapable of mathematical treatment. In point of fact, however, the only real impediment is the shameful state of clinical and pathological terminology, which is in such confusion as to throw doubt upon all extensive numerical statements respecting disease.

[708] ‘Upon his return to England in the autumn of 1766, he went to reside with his mother at his native town of Kirkaldy, and remained there for ten years. All the attempts of his friends in Edinburgh to draw him thither were vain; and from a kind and lively letter of Mr. Hume upon the subject, complaining that, though within sight of him on the opposite side of the Frith of Forth, he could not have speech of him, it appears that no one was aware of the occupations in which those years were passed.’ Brougham's Life of Adam Smith, p. 189. Occasionally, however, he saw his literary friends. See Dugald Stewart's Biographical Memoirs, p. 73, Edinb. 1811, 4to.

[709] ‘He was certainly not fitted for the general commerce of the world, or for the business of active life. The comprehensive speculations with which he had been occupied from his youth, and the variety of materials which his own invention constantly supplied to his thoughts, rendered him habitually inattentive to familiar objects and to common occurrences; and he frequently exhibited instances of absence, which have scarcely been surpassed by the fancy of La Bruyère.’ Stewart's Biographical Memoirs, p. 113. See also Ramsay's Reminiscences, 5th edit. Edinb. 1859, p. 236. Carlyle, who knew him well, says, ‘he was the most absent man in company that I ever saw, moving his lips, and talking to himself, and smiling, in the midst of large companies.’ Autobiography of the Rev. Alexander Carlyle, 2nd edit. Edinb. 1860, p. 279.

[710] A Scotch philosopher of great repute, but, as it appears to me, of ability not quite equal to his repute, has stated very clearly and accurately this favourite method of his countrymen. ‘In examining the history of mankind, as well as in examining the phenomena of the material world, when we cannot trace the process by which an event has been produced, it is often of importance to be able to show how it may have been produced by natural causes.’ … ‘To this species of philosophical investigation, which has no appropriated name in our language, I shall take the liberty of giving the title of Theoretical or Conjectural History; an expression which coincides pretty nearly in its meaning with that of Natural History as employed by Mr. Hume, and with what some French writers have called Histoire Raisonnée.’ Dugald Stewart's Biographical Memoirs, pp. 48, 49. Hence (p. 53), ‘in most cases, it is of more importance to ascertain the progress that is most simple, than the progress that is most agreeable to fact; for, paradoxical as the proposition may appear, it is certainly true, that the real progress is not always the most natural. It may have been determined by particular accidents, which are not likely again to occur, and which cannot be considered as forming any part of that general provision which nature has made for the improvement of the race.’

[711] Part of this view is well expressed in Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, book iii. part ii. ‘This, however, hinders not but that philosophers may, if they please, extend their reasoning to the supposed state of nature; provided they allow it to be a mere philosophical fiction, which never had, and never could have, any reality.’ … ‘The same liberty may be permitted to moral, which is allowed to natural philosophers; and ’tis very usual with the latter to consider any motion as compounded and consisting of two parts separate from each other, though, at the same time, they acknowledge it to be in itself uncompounded and inseparable.’ Philosophical Works, vol. ii. p. 263.

[712] And, conversely, that whatever was ‘demonstratively false,’ could ‘never be distinctly conceived by the mind.’ Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 33. Here, and sometimes in other passages, Hume, though by no means a Cartesian, reminds us of Descartes.

[713] ‘Here, then, is the only expedient from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches, to leave the tedious, lingering method, which we have hitherto followed, and instead of taking now and then a castle or a village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital, or centre of these sciences, to human nature itself; which, being once masters of, we may every where else hope for an easy victory. From this station we may extend our conquests over all those sciences which more immediately concern human life, and may afterwards proceed, at leisure, to discover more fully those which are the objects of pure curiosity.’ Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. p. 8. See also, in vol. ii. pp. 73, 74, his remarks on the way ‘to consider the matter à priori.’

[714] ‘No kind of reasoning can give rise to a new idea, such as this of power is; but wherever we reason, we must antecedently be possessed of clear ideas, which may be the objects of our reasoning.’ Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. p. 217. Compare vol. ii. p. 276, on our arriving at a knowledge of causes ‘by a kind of taste or fancy.’ Hence, the larger view preceding the smaller, and being essentially independent of it, will constantly contradict it; and he complains, for instance, that ‘difficulties, which seem unsurmountable in theory, are easily got over in practice.’ vol. ii. p. 357; and again, in vol. iii. p. 326, on the effort needed to ‘reconcile reason to experience.’ But, after all, it is rather by a careful study of his works, than by quoting particular passages, that his method can be understood. In the two sentences, however, just cited, the reader will see that theory and reason represent the larger view; while practice and experience represent the smaller.

[715] ‘’Tis certainly a kind of indignity to philosophy, whose sovereign authority ought every where to be acknowledged, to oblige her on every occasion to make apologies for her conclusions, and justify herself to every particular art and science, which may be offended at her. This puts one in mind of a king arraigned for high treason against his subjects.’ Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. pp. 318, 319.

[716] ‘A barbarous, necessitous animal (such as a man is on the first origin of society), pressed by such numerous wants and passions, has no leisure to admire the regular face of nature, or make inquiries concerning the cause of those objects to which, from his infancy, he has been gradually accustomed. On the contrary, the more regular and uniform, that is the more perfect, nature appears, the more is he familiarized to it, and the less inclined to scrutinize and examine it. A monstrous birth excites his curiosity, and is deemed a prodigy. It alarms him from its novelty, and immediately sets him a trembling, and sacrificing, and praying. But an animal complete in all its limbs and organs is to him an ordinary spectacle, and produces no religious opinion or affection. Ask him whence that animal arose? He will tell you, from the copulation of its parents. And these, whence? From the copulation of theirs. A few removes satisfy his curiosity, and set the objects at such a distance that he entirely loses sight of them. Imagine not that he will so much as start the question, whence the first animal, much less whence the whole system, or united fabric of the universe arose. Or, if you start such a question to him, expect not that he will employ his mind with any anxiety about a subject so remote, so uninteresting, and which so much exceeds the bounds of his capacity.’ Natural History of Religion, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 439. See also pp. 463–465.

[717] ‘By degrees, the active imagination of men, uneasy in this abstract conception of objects, about which it is incessantly employed, begins to render them more particular, and to clothe them in shapes more suitable to its natural comprehension. It represents them to be sensible, intelligent beings like mankind; actuated by love and hatred, and flexible by gifts and entreaties, by prayers and sacrifices. Hence the origin of religion. And hence the origin of idolatry, or polytheism.’ Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 472. ‘The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events,’ p. 498.

[718] ‘It seems certain, that, according to the natural progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first entertain some grovelling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch their conception to that perfect Being who bestowed order on the whole frame of nature. We may as reasonably imagine, that men inhabited palaces before huts and cottages, or studied geometry before agriculture, as assert that the Deity appeared to them a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a powerful though limited being, with human passions and appetites, limbs and organs. The mind rises gradually from inferior to superior. By abstracting from what is imperfect, it forms an idea of perfection; and slowly distinguishing the nobler parts of its own frame from the grosser, it learns to transform only the former, much elevated and refined, to its divinity. Nothing could disturb this natural progress of thought, but some obvious and invincible argument, which might immediately lead the mind into the pure principles of theism, and make it overleap, at one bound, the vast interval which is interposed between the human and the Divine nature. But though I allow, that the order and frame of the universe, when accurately examined, affords such an argument, yet I can never think that this consideration could have an influence on mankind, when they formed their first rude notions of religion.’ Natural History of Religion, in Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 438.

[719] Not that he was by any means devoid of genius, though he holds a rank far below so great and original a thinker as Hume. He had, however, collected more materials than he was able to wield; and his work on the Intellectual System of the Universe, which is a treasure of ancient philosophy, is badly arranged, and, in many parts, feebly argued. There is more real power in his posthumous treatise on Eternal and Immutable Morality.

[720] ‘I once believed this doctrine of ideas so firmly, as to embrace the whole of Berkeley's system in consequence of it; till, finding other consequences to follow from it, which gave me more uneasiness than the want of a material world, it came into my mind more than 40 years ago, to put the question, What evidence have I for this doctrine that all the objects of my knowledge are ideas in my own mind? From that time to the present, I have been candidly and impartially, as I think, seeking for the evidence of this principle but can find none, excepting the authority of philosophers.’ Reid's Essays on the Powers of the Human Mind, edit. Edinburgh, 1808, vol. i. p. 172. And, in a letter which he wrote to Hume in 1763, he, with a simple candour which must have highly amused that eminent philosopher, confesses that ‘your system appears to me not only coherent in all its parts, but likewise justly deduced from principles commonly received among philosophers; principles which I never thought of calling in question, until the conclusions you draw from them in the “Treatise on Human Nature” made me suspect them.’ Burton's Life and Correspondence of Hume, vol. ii. p. 155.

[721] ‘Suppose a man to be found dead on the high-way, his skull fractured, his body pierced with deadly wounds, his watch and money carried off. The coroner's jury sits upon the body, and the question is put, What was the cause of this man's death, was it accident, or felo de se, or murder by persons unknown? Let us suppose an adept in Mr. Hume's philosophy to make one of the jury, and that he insists upon the previous question, whether there was any cause of the event, or whether it happened without a cause.’ Reid's Essays on the Powers of the Mind, vol. ii. p. 286. Compare vol. iii. p. 33: ‘This would put an end to all speculation, as well as to all the business of life.’

[722] ‘The obligation of contracts and promises is a matter so sacred, and of such consequence to human society, that speculations which have a tendency to weaken that obligation, and to perplex men's notions on a subject so plain and so important, ought to meet with the disapprobation of all honest men. Some such speculations, I think, we have in the third volume of Mr. Hume's “Treatise of Human Nature,” and in his “Enquiry into the Principles of Morals;” and my design in this chapter is, to offer some observations on the nature of a contract or promise, and on two passages of that author on this subject. I am far from saying or thinking, that Mr. Hume meant to weaken men's obligations to honesty and fair dealing, or that he had not a sense of these obligations himself. It is not the man I impeach, but his writings. Let us think of the first as charitably as we can, while we freely examine the import and tendency of the last.’ Reid's Essays on the Powers of the Mind, vol. iii. p. 444. In this, as in most passages, the italics are my own.

[723] ‘Without repeating what I have before said of causes in the first of these Essays, and in the second and third chapters of this, I shall here mention some of the consequences that may be justly deduced from this definition of a cause, that we may judge of it by its fruits.’ Reid's Essays, vol. iii. p. 339.

[724] ‘Bishop Berkeley surely did not duly consider that it is by means of the material world that we have any correspondence with thinking beings, or any knowledge of their existence, and that by depriving us of the material world, he deprived us at the same time of family, friends, country, and every human creature; of every object of affection, esteem or concern, except ourselves. The good bishop surely never intended this. He was too warm a friend, too zealous a patriot, and too good a Christian to be capable of such a thought. He was not aware of the consequences of his system’ (poor, ignorant Berkeley), ‘and therefore they ought not to be imputed to him; but we must impute them to the system itself. It stifles every generous and social principle.’ Reid's Essays, vol. ii. pp. 251, 252.

[725] In his Essays, vol. i. p. 179, he says of Berkeley, one of the deepest and most unanswerable of all speculators, ‘But there is one uncomfortable consequence of his system which he seems not to have attended to, and from which it will be found difficult, if at all possible, to guard it.’

[726] ‘This doctrine is dishonourable to our Maker, and lays a foundation for universal scepticism. It supposes the Author of our being to have given us one faculty on purpose to deceive us, and another by which we may detect the fallacy, and find that he imposed upon us.’ … ‘The genuine dictate of our natural faculties is the voice of God, no less than what he reveals from heaven; and to say that it is fallacious, is to impute a lie to the God of truth.’ … ‘Shall we impute to the Almighty what we cannot impute to a man without a heinous affront? Passing this opinion, therefore, as shocking to an ingenuous mind, and, in its consequences, subversive of all religion, all morals, and all knowledge,’ &c. Reid's Essays, vol. iii. p. 310. See also vol. i. p. 313.

[727] ‘His reasoning appeared to me to be just; there was, therefore, a necessity to call in question the principles upon which it was founded, or to admit the conclusion.’ Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, p. v. ‘The received doctrine of ideas is the principle from which it is deduced, and of which, indeed, it seems to be a just and natural consequence.’ p. 53. See also Reid's Essays, vol. i. pp. 199, 200, vol. ii. p. 211.

[728] ‘The laws of nature are the most general facts we can discover in the operations of nature. Like other facts, they are not to be hit upon by a happy conjecture, but justly deduced from observation. Like other general facts, they are not to be drawn from a few particulars, but from a copious, patient, and cautious induction.’ Reid's Inquiry into the Human Mind, pp. 262, 263.

[729] ‘Such discoveries have always been made by patient observation, by accurate experiments, or by conclusions drawn by strict reasoning from observations and experiments; and such discoveries have always tended to refute, but not to confirm, the theories and hypotheses which ingenious men had invented.’ Reid's Essays, vol. i. p. 46.

[730] ‘This is Mr. Hume's notion of a cause.’ … ‘But theory ought to stoop to fact, and not fact to theory.’ Reid's Essays, vol. iii. p. 276.

[731] ‘But yet there seems to be great difference of opinions among philosophers about first principles. What one takes to be self-evident, another labours to prove by arguments, and a third denies altogether.’ Reid's Essays, vol. ii. p. 218. ‘Mr. Locke seems to think first principles of very small use.’ p. 219.

[732] ‘All reasoning must be from first principles; and for first principles no other reason can be given but this, that, by the constitution of our nature, we are under a necessity of assenting to them.’ Reid's Inquiry, p. 140. ‘All reasoning is from principles.’ … ‘Most justly, therefore, do such principles disdain to be tried by reason, and laugh at all the artillery of the logician when it is directed against them.’ p. 372. ‘All knowledge got by reasoning must be built upon first principles.’ Reid's Essays, vol. ii. p. 220. ‘In every branch of real knowledge there must be first principles, whose truth is known intuitively, without reasoning, either probable or demonstrative. They are not grounded on reasoning, but all reasoning is grounded on them.’ p. 360.

[733] ‘For, when any system is grounded upon first principles, and deduced regularly from them, we have a thread to lead us through the labyrinth.’ Reid's Essays, vol. ii. p. 225.

[734] ‘I call these “first principles,” because they appear to me to have in themselves an intuitive evidence which I cannot resist.’ Reid's Essays, vol. iii. p. 375.

[735] ‘If any man should think fit to deny that these things are qualities, or that they require any subject, I leave him to enjoy his opinion, as a man who denies first principles, and is not fit to be reasoned with.’ Reid's Essays, vol. i. p. 38.

[736] ‘No other account can be given of the constitution of things, but the will of Him that made them.’ Reid's Essays, vol. i. p. 115.

[737] Reid's Essays, vol. i. pp. 36, 37, 340, 343, vol. ii. p. 245.