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Those revelations in astronomy and geology, the first glimmerings of which made the timid if not doubting friends of their cause tremble, have enlarged year by year in rapid progression; but revealed religion is not less firm on her throne; and many of those who held that Hume's theory of Cause and Effect was inimical to revelation, lived to see how startlingly that argument could be turned against themselves. It has been well observed by Dugald [89]Stewart, that this theory is the most effectual confutation of the gloomy materialism of Spinoza, "as it lays the axe to the very root from which Spinozism springs." "The cardinal principle," he says, "on which the whole of that system turns is, that all events, physical and moral, are necessarily linked together as causes and effects; from which principle all the most alarming conclusions adopted by Spinoza follow as unavoidable and manifest corollaries. But if it be true, as Mr. Hume contends, and as most philosophers now admit, that physical causes and effects are known to us merely as antecedents and consequents; still more if it be true that the word necessity, as employed in this discussion, is altogether unmeaning and insignificant, the whole system of Spinoza is nothing better than a rope of sand, and the very proposition which it professes to demonstrate is incomprehensible by our faculties."[89:1]

It will be remembered how signally, in the question in the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, as to Sir John Leslie's professorship, the argument of irreligion was retaliated; and it was shown that, in the theory of an existing machinery in nature enabling the universe to proceed in its regular course, the cause having within it the adequate power for producing its effect, the omnipresence of a Deity was dispensed with, and there was substituted for the all-pervading influence of a superior wisdom, a mere material machine, having within itself the elements of its own regular motion. Thus, in instances where writers have claimed credit for having aided the cause of religion by carrying out the principles of natural theology, this merit has in many cases, and among certain classes of devout religious thinkers, [90]been sternly denied them; and it has been said that their labours are rather adverse than favourable to revealed religion, because, through their tendency to make people believe in an established order in nature, by which causes produce their effects according to a fixed system, they have the effect of making mankind forget the existence of a revealed, omnipresent Deity, whose all-competent superintendence regulates the world, and they supply a religion independent of the religion of revelation.

Perhaps in this little history we may find an illustration of the view, that the greatest service which the Treatise has done to philosophy is that purely incidental one of teaching human reason its own weakness—of showing how easily the noblest fabric of human thought may be undermined, by a destroying agency of power not greater than that of the constructive genius which has raised it. In this respect it has done to philosophy the invaluable service of teaching philosophers their own fallibility. In all the departments of thought, and not only in the world of thought but in that of action, the spirit of human infallibility is the greatest obstacle to truth and goodness. Whether it appear to protect a system which the thinker has framed for himself, or assume the more modest shape of maintaining, that among conflicting systems he has made choice of that which is absolutely and certainly right, while all others which in any way differ from it are as absolutely and certainly wrong; this offspring of the pride of human intellect is an equally dangerous enemy of human improvement; and to have contributed to its downfal is of itself no small achievement for one mind.

Such are a few remarks on the matter of the first [91]part of the "Treatise of Human Nature"—given not by any means as an analysis of the doctrines there taught, but merely as an attempt to characterize them by their prominent features. It will naturally be expected that a similar attempt should be made to characterize the form in which these doctrines were promulgated. As to the style of the Treatise, it possesses the clearness, flexibility, and simplicity that distinguish the maturity of its author's literary career, though not quite in all the perfection in which they afterwards attended his pen. There are occasional Scoticisms—a defect which he took infinite pains to cure, but of which he was never entirely rid. He uses a few obsolete and now harsh sounding forms of expression, from which he afterwards abstained: such as the elliptical combination 'tis, for it is. Here, and in the first editions of his History, he frequently neglects the increment on the perfect tense, as by saying, "I have forgot," instead of, I have forgotten; "I have wrote," instead of I have written.

The Treatise has that happy equality of flight, which distinguishes the author's maturer productions. There is no attempt to soar, and none of those ambitious inequalities which often deform the works of young authors. His imagination and language seem indeed to have been kept permanently chained down by the character of his inquiries. His constant aim is to make his meaning clear; and in the subtleties of a new and intricate system of metaphysics, he seems to have felt that there lay upon him so heavy a responsibility to make use on all occasions of the clearest and simplest words, that any flight of imagination or eloquence would be a dangerous experiment.

There is a corresponding absence of pedantic ornament. A young writer who has read much, is [92]generally more anxious to show his learning and information than his own power of thought. With many the defect lasts through maturer years, and they write as if to find a good thing in some unknown author, were more meritorious than to have invented it. Montesquieu, whom Hume has been accused of imitating, carried this defect to a vice, and often distorted the order of his reasoning, that he might introduce an allusion to something discovered in the course of his peculiar learning. That Hume had read much in philosophy before he undertook his great work, cannot be doubted, but he does not drag his readers through the minuti of his studies, and is content with giving them results. In many respects, indeed, one would have desired to know more of his appreciation of his predecessors. The name of Aristotle is, it is believed, not once mentioned in the work, and there are only some indirect allusions to him, and these not very respectful, in casual remarks on the opinions of the Peripatetics. One would have expected from Hume a kindred sympathy with the great master of intellectual philosophy, and a respectful appreciation of one whose inquiries were conducted with a like acute severity, but whose mind took so much more wide and comprehensive a grasp of the sources of human knowledge.

It has been often observed, that a person so original in his opinions as Hume, ought to have made a new nomenclature for the new things which he taught. But he has no philosophical nomenclature; he appears indeed to have despised that useful instrument of method, and means of communicating clear ideas to learners. This want has prevented his system from being clearly and fully learned by the student, while it has at the same time probably made his works less repulsive to the [93]general reader. He seems indeed hardly to have been conscious of the advantage to all philosophy, of uniformity of expression. Using the words "force," "vivacity," "solidity," "firmness," and "steadiness," all with the same meaning, he speaks of this usage as a "variety of terms which may seem so unphilosophical;" and then observes, more in the style of one who is tired of philosophical precision than of a philosopher, "Provided we agree about the thing, 'tis needless to dispute about the terms."