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[52:1] It is not improbable that the person here alluded to is the Abb Pluche, a native of Rheims, the greatest literary ornament of that city, and one who filled no small place in the lettered aristocracy of France, where he held in many respects the position which Paley occupied in England. He filled successively the chairs of Humanity and Rhetoric, in the University of Rheims. His promotion in the Church was checked by his partiality for Jansenism. He had the rare merit of uniting to a firm belief in the great truths of Christianity a wide and full toleration for the conscientious opinions of others; and he enjoyed, what is no less rarely possessed by those who meddle in theological disputes, the good opinion of his opponents. He was a great scholar, and wrote some works on etymological and archological subjects; but he is chiefly known for his writings on natural theology, celebrated for their clear and animated enunciation of the harmonies of nature, and not only popular in their own country, but translated into most of the European languages. His "Spectacle de la Nature," written in a series of dialogues, was sketched while he acted as instructor to the son of Lord Stafford; and the master and pupil, with the father and mother of the latter, are the interlocutors. One of its main objects is, by tracing effects in the operations of nature to their causes, to prove and illustrate the beneficence and wisdom of the Deity. This work has been a treasure to many an English schoolboy, in its well-known translation, with the title, "Nature Displayed." An answer by Pluche to some esprits forts, who wondered why a philosopher could believe so much, has been preserved by his contemporaries: "It is more reasonable," he said, "to believe in the dictates of the Supreme Being than to follow the feeble lights of a reason bounded in its operations and subject to error."
It must be granted that what Hume calls the association of contrariety has in some measure caused this digression, and that the Abb Pluche would not have been so amply discussed as the possible learned man that Hume had an introduction to, had there not been so much that is common in the subjects treated of by both, and so much that is contrasted in the mode of treatment. Pluche was an opponent of Des Cartes, and thus a name far greater than his, and as many will hold greater than Hume's, is introduced into the circle of these local associations.
[53:1] The following passage in a recent work, Mrs. Shelley's "Rambles in Germany and Italy," seems appropriate to this observation:—
"By this time I became aware of a truth which had dawned on me before, that the French common people have lost much of that grace of manner which once distinguished them above all other people. More courteous than the Italians they could not be; but, while their manners were more artificial, they were more playful and winning. All this has changed. I did not remark the alteration so much with regard to myself, as in their mode of speaking to one another. The 'Madame,' and 'Monsieur,' with which stable boys, and old beggar women, used to address each other with the deference of courtiers, has vanished. No trace of it is to be found in France; a shadow faintly exists among the Parisian shopkeepers when speaking to their customers, but only there is the traditional phraseology still used: The courteous accent, the soft manner, erst so charming, exists no longer. I speak of a thing known and acknowledged by the French themselves. . . . . . Their phraseology, once so delicately and even to us more straightforward people, amusingly deferential (not to superiors only, but toward one another,) is become blunt, and almost rude. The French allege several causes for this change, which they date from the Revolution of 1830: some say it arises from every citizen turning out as one of the national guard in his turn, so that they all get a ton de garnison: others attribute it to their imitation of the English. Of course, in the times of the ancien regime, the courtly tone found an echo and reflexion, from the royal anti-chambers down to the very ends of the kingdom. This has faded by degrees, till the Revolution of 1830 gave it the coup-de-grce."
[55:1] Sic in MS.
[56:1] This word is nearly obliterated. The passage appears to be a sort of caricatured pompous politeness.
[56:2] MS. R.S.E.
[57:1] Dated 7th January, 1762, and written in relation to a copy of Campbell's "Dissertation on Miracles," sent to him by Dr. Blair.
[58:1] It may be said, that, as Mackenzie's description of Hume's character, this subject belongs to a later period of his life—the time when Mackenzie was acquainted with him. But Mackenzie intended it to be a true view of Hume's character as a young man; and it appears that it properly belongs to that chronological period to which its author assigned it.
[63:1] See above, p. 50. These reasonings appeared probably in a shape more consonant with the author's later views in the "Philosophical Essays," 1748.
[64:1] Tytler, Life of Kames, i. 84.
[65:1] Tytler, Life of Kames, i. 88.
[66:1] Original MS. R.S.E.
[67:1] According to some acceptations of the word metaphysical, which seem to make it synonymous with transcendental, and referable solely to the operations of pure reason, to the rejection of whatever is founded on experiment, none of Hume's works are properly metaphysical; and by the very foundation he has given to his philosophy, he has made it empirical and consequently not metaphysical. The word metaphysical is, however, here used in its ordinary, and, as it may be termed, popular acceptation, and as applicable to any attempt to analyze mind or describe its elements,—a subject in relation to which the word ontology is also sometimes used.
[70:1] The term "ideas," in the philosophical nomenclature of Hume, is thus used in a sense quite distinct from its previous current acceptations, and as different from its vernacular use by Plato, in reference to the archetypes of all the empirical objects of thought, as from its employment by Locke, who used it to express "whatsoever is the object of the understanding when a man thinks."
