Page 76 of 109
Agur's prayer is sufficiently noted—"Two things have I required of thee; deny me them not before I die: remove far from me vanity and lies; give me neither poverty nor riches; feed me with food convenient for me, lest I be full and deny thee, and say, who is the Lord? or lest I be poor, and steal, and take the name of my God in vain."—The middle station is here justly recommended, as affording the fullest security for virtue; and I may also add, that it gives opportunity for the most ample exercise of it, and furnishes employment for every good quality which we can possibly be possessed of. Those who are placed among the lower ranks of men, have little opportunity of exerting any other virtue besides those of patience, resignation, industry, and integrity. Those who are advanced into the higher stations, have full employment for their generosity, humanity, affability, and charity. When a man lies betwixt these two extremes, he can exert the former virtues towards his superiors, and the latter towards his inferiors. Every moral quality which the human soul is susceptible of, may have its turn, and be called up to action; and a man may, after this manner, be much more certain of his progress in virtue, than where his good qualities lie dormant, and without employment.[341:1]
[342]The following letter, of a somewhat later date, gives a view of his definitive intentions.
Hume to Michael Ramsay.
"Ninewells, 22d June, 1751.
"Dear Michael,—I cannot sufficiently express my sense of your kind letter. The concern you take in your friends is so warm, even after so long absence, and such frequent interruptions as our commerce has unhappily met with of late years, that the most recent familiarity of others can seldom equal it. I might perhaps pretend, as well as others, to complain of fortune; but I do not, and should condemn myself as unreasonable if I did. While interest remains as at present, I have 50 a-year, a hundred pounds worth of books, great store of linens and fine clothes, and near 100 in my pocket; along with order, frugality, a strong spirit of independency, good health, a contented humour, and an unabating love of study. In these circumstances I must esteem myself one of the happy and fortunate; and so far from being willing to draw my ticket over again in the lottery of life, there are very few prizes with which I would make an exchange. After some deliberation, I am resolved to settle in Edinburgh, and hope I shall be able with these revenues to say with Horace—
Besides other reasons which determine me to this resolution, I would not go too far away from my sister, who thinks she will soon follow me; and in that case, we shall probably take up house either in Edinburgh, or the neighbourhood. Our sister-in-law behaves well, and seems very desirous we should both stay. . . . . . . [343]And as she (my sister) can join 30 a-year to my stock, and brings an equal love of order and frugality, we doubt not to make our revenues answer. Dr. Clephane, who has taken up house, is so kind as to offer me a room in it; and two friends in Edinburgh have made me the same offer. But having nothing to ask or solicit at London, I would not remove to so expensive a place; and am resolved to keep clear of all obligations and dependencies, even on those I love the most."[343:1]
In fulfilment of the design thus announced, he tells us, in his "own life," "In 1751, I removed from the country to the town, the true scene for a man of letters." We find, from the dating of his letters, that Hume's residence in Edinburgh was for a year or two in "Riddell's Land," and that it was afterwards in "Jack's Land." Since the plan of numbering the houses in each street extended to the Scottish capital, these names have no longer been in general use; but I find that the former applied to an edifice in the Lawnmarket, near the head of the West Bow, and that the latter was a tenement in the Canongate, right opposite to a house in which Smollet occasionally resided with his sister. The term "Land" applied to one of those edifices—some of them ten or twelve stories high,—in which the citizens of Edinburgh, pressed upwards as it were by the increase of the population within a narrow circuit of walls, made stair-cases supply the place of streets, and erected perpendicular thoroughfares. A single floor of one of these edifices was, a century ago, sufficient to accommodate the family of a [344]Scottish nobleman; and we may be certain, that a very small "Flat" would suit the economical establishment of Hume.
In 1751, appeared the "Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals,"[344:1] the full development, so far as it was made by Hume, of the utilitarian system. The leading principle kept in view throughout this work, is, that its tendency to be useful to mankind at large, is the proper criterion of the propriety of any action, or the justness of any ethical opinion. In this spirit he examines many of the social virtues, and shows that it is their usefulness to mankind that gives them a claim to sympathy, and a title to be included in the list of virtues. The defects of this exposition of the utilitarian system, are marked by the manner in which it was critically attacked. In 1753 a controversial examination of it was made, with temper and ability, by James Balfour of Pilrig,[344:2] who in 1754 succeeded [345]to the chair, in the university of Edinburgh, which Hume had been desirous of filling.[345:1] Mr. Balfour's great argument is the universality of the admission by [346]mankind, in some shape or other, of the leading cardinal virtues, and the unhesitating adoption and practice of them by men on whom the utilitarian theory never dawned, and who are unconscious that their isolated acts are the fulfilment of any general or uniform law. Mr. Balfour argued that we must thus look to something else than utility, as the criterion of moral right and wrong. But a supporter of the utilitarian system, as it has been more fully developed in later days, would probably only take from Mr. Balfour's argument a hint to enlarge the scope of Hume's investigations. To the inquiry, how far utility is the proper end of human conduct, he would add the inquiry, how far the theory has been practically adopted by mankind at large. Though Bacon first laid down the broad rule of unvarying induction from experiment, many experiments were made, and many inductions derived from them, before he saw the light; and so before the utilitarian theory was first formally suggested—as it appears to have been by Aristotle in his Nicomachean Ethics—utility may frequently have been a rule of action.
It does not necessarily follow, that because a practice is universal, because it is adopted "by saint, by savage, and by sage," it is therefore not the dictate of utility, provided it be admitted that utility was an influencing motive with men before the days of Hume. The followers of established customs may often be blind; but if we hunt back a practice to its first institution, we may find that the leaders were quick-sighted, and kept utility in view, so far as the state of things they had to deal with permitted. A minute [347]inquiry into national prejudices and customs frequently surprises the speculative philosopher, by developing these practices and opinions of the vulgar and illiterate, as the fruit of great knowledge and forethought. Exhibiting, in their full extravagance, the contrasts between different codes of morality, was one of Hume's literary recreations; and it might have been worth his while to have inquired, had it occurred to him, how much of his own favourite utilitarian principle is common to all, or at least to many, of the systems he has thus contrasted with each other.
