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That in history, in science, in the conduct of every-day life, and particularly in the formation of the minds of the young, this rule of belief is of the highest practical utility, few will doubt. The parish clergyman, who assists in throwing discredit on all the [284]superstitious stories of spectres, witchcrafts, and demoniacal possessions with which his neighbourhood may be afflicted, is but an active promulgator of the doctrine. It was a narrow view that Campbell adopted when he said, that if we heard of a ferry boat, which had long crossed the stream in safety, having sunk, we would give credit to the testimony concerning it.[284:1] Our experience teaches us that ferry boats are made of perishable materials, liable to be submerged; and thus, in this case, there is no balance of incredibility against the narrator. To have tried Campbell's practical faith in Hume's theory, he should have had before him a person professing to have become aware of the sinking of the boat, by some unprecedented means of perception, called a magnetic influence, in the absence of a more distinct name; while it is shown that the same person had an opportunity of being informed, through the organs of hearing, of the circumstance which had taken place. It would then be seen, whether that sagacious philosopher would have given the sanction of his belief to a phenomenon contrary to all previous experience—the ascertainment of an external event, without the aid of the senses; or would have acceded to the too commonly illustrated [285]phenomenon, that human beings are capable of falsehood and folly.
It is much to be regretted that Hume employed the word miracles in the title of this inquiry. He thus employed a term which had been applied to sacred subjects, and raised a natural prejudice against reasonings, applicable to contemporary events, and to the rules of ordinary historical belief. He might have found some other title—such as, "The Principles of Belief in Human Testimony," which would have more satisfactorily explained the nature of the inquiry.
But it is not improbable that the odium thus occasioned first introduced Hume's philosophical works to controversial notoriety. Though disappointed by the silence of the public immediately on his arrival from abroad, he has soon to tell us in his "own life,"—"Meanwhile, my bookseller, A. Millar, informed me, that my former publications (all but the unfortunate Treatise) were beginning to be the subject of conversation; that the sale of them was gradually increasing, and that new editions were demanded. Answers by reverends and right reverends came out two and three in a year;[285:1] and I found, by Warburton's railing, that the books were beginning to be esteemed in good company."[285:2]
[286]It was in the "Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding," that Hume promulgated the theory of association, which called forth so much admiration of its simplicity, beauty, and truth. "To me," he says, "there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, Resemblance, Contiguity in time or place, and Cause or Effect.
"That these principles serve to connect ideas, will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original [Resemblance.] The mention of one apartment in a building, naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse concerning the others [Contiguity:] and if we think on a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it [Cause and Effect.]"[286:1]
In connexion with this theory a curious charge has been brought forward by Coleridge, who says, "In consulting the excellent commentary of St. Thomas Aquinas, on the Parva Naturalia of Aristotle, I was struck at once with its close resemblance to Hume's essay on association. The main thoughts were the same in both. The order of the thoughts was the same, and even the illustrations differed only by Hume's occasional substitution of more modern examples. I mentioned the circumstance to several of my literary acquaintances, who admitted the closeness of the resemblance, and that it seemed too great to be explained by mere coincidence; but they thought it improbable that Hume should have held the pages of the angelic doctor worth turning over. But some time after, Mr. Payne of the King's Mews, showed Sir James [287]Mackintosh some odd volumes of St. Thomas Aquinas, partly perhaps from having heard that Sir James, (then Mr. Mackintosh,) had in his lectures passed a high encomium on this canonized philosopher, but chiefly from the fact that the volumes had belonged to Mr. Hume, and had here and there marginal marks and notes of reference in his own handwriting. Among these volumes was that which contains the Parva Naturalia, in the old Latin version, swathed and swaddled in the commentary aforementioned."
On this, Sir James Macintosh says, that "the manuscript of a part of Aquinas, which I bought many years ago, (on the faith of a bookseller's catalogue,) as being written by Mr. Hume, was not a copy of the commentary on the Parva Naturalia, but of Aquinas's own Secunda Secund; and that, on examination, it proves not to be the handwriting of Mr. Hume, and to contain nothing written by him."[287:1] So much for the external evidence of plagiarism.
With regard to the internal evidence, the passage of Aquinas particularly referred to, which will be found below,[287:2] refers to memory not imagination; to the recall of images in the relation to each other in which they have once had a place in the mind, not to [288]the formation of new associations, or aggregates of ideas there; nor will it bring the theories to an identity, that, according to Hume's doctrine, nothing can be recalled in the mind unless its elements have already been deposited there in the form of ideas, because the observations of Aquinas apply altogether to the reminiscence of aggregate objects. But the classification is different: for Hume's embodies cause and effect, but not contrariety; while that of Aquinas has contrariety, but not cause and effect. In a division into three elements, this discrepancy is material; and, without entering on any lengthened reasoning, it may simply be observed, that the merit of Hume's classification is, that it is exhaustive, and neither contains any superfluous element, nor omits any principle under which an act of association can be classed.
But it is remarkable that Coleridge should have failed to keep in view, in his zeal to discover some curious thing to reward him for his researches among the fathers, that the classification is not that of Aquinas, but of Aristotle, and is contained in the very work on which the passage in Aquinas is one of the many commentaries.[288:1]
The "Essays Moral and Political," had, though it is [289]not mentioned by Hume in his "own life," been so well received, that a second edition appeared in 1742, the same year in which the second volume of the original edition was published. A third edition was published in London in 1748,[289:1] of which Hume, comparing them with his neglected contemporaneous publication of the Inquiry, says that they "met not with a much better reception."
