Part 15 (1/2)

In the second part of this remarkable essay, Hume considers the real, or supposed, i the weighty observation that

”When any opinion leads to absurdity, it is certainly false; but it is not certain that an opinion is false because it is of dangerous consequence”--(IV p 112)

And, therefore, that the atteerous consequences to religion and ical as it is reprehensible

It is said, in the first place, that necessity destroys responsibility; that, as it is usually put, we have no right to praise or blame actions that cannot be helped Hume's reply amounts to this, that the very idea of responsibility implies the belief in the necessary connexion of certain actions with certain states of the mind A person is held responsible only for those acts which are preceded by a certain intention; and, as we cannot see, or hear, or feel, an intention, we can only reason out its existence on the principle that like effects have like causes

If a man is found by the police busy with ”jeht, the , reasons frolarious” ideas and volitions, with perfect confidence, and punishes hi would be grossly unjust, if the links of the logical process were other than necessarily connected together The advocate who should atteet the man off on the plea that his client need not necessarily have had a felonious intent, would hardly waste his tiles of a triangle is not two right angles, but three

Ato do with the causation of these acts, but depends on the frae tells us this, when it uses ”well-disposed” as the equivalent of ”good,” and ”evil- which puts B in a violent passion, it is quite possible to admit that B's passion is the necessary consequence of A's act, and yet to believe that B's fury is ht to control it In fact, a calm bystander would reason with both on the assu in doing a thing which you knew (that is, of the necessity of which you were convinced) would irritate B” And he would say to B, ”You are wrong to give way to passion, for you know its evil effects”--that is the necessary connection between yielding to passion and evil

So far, therefore, fro moral responsibility, it is the foundation of all praise and blame; and moral adoodness to the Deity

To the statement of another consequence of the necessarian doctrine, that, if there be a God, he ives no real reply--probably because none is possible

But then, if this conclusion is distinctly and unquestionably deducible from the doctrine of necessity, it is no less unquestionably a direct consequence of every known fors, hethe rest; if he is oe of evil; if he is aluishi+ng evil And to say that an all-knowing and all-powerful being is not responsible for what happens, because he only permits it, is, under its intellectual aspect, a piece of childish sophistry; while, as to the moral look of it, one has only to ask any decently honourable et rid of his responsibility by such a plea

Hume's _Inquiry_ appeared in 1748 He does not refer to Anthony Collins'

essay on Liberty, published thirty-three years before, in which the saular force and lucidity It may be said, perhaps, that it is not wonderful that the two freethinkers should follow the sa; but no such theory will account for the fact that in 1754, the famous Calvinistic divine, Jonathan Edwards, President of the College of New Jersey, produced, in the interests of the straitest orthodoxy, a demonstration of the necessarian thesis, which has never been equalled in power, and certainly has never been refuted

In the ninth section of the fourth part of Edwards' _Inquiry_, he has to deal with the Arminian objection to the Calvinistic doctrine that ”it makes God the author of sin”; and it is curious to watch the struggle between the theological controversialist, striving to ward off an ade his side, and the acute logician, conscious that, in so with a _tu quoque_, that the Arminian doctrine involves consequences as bad as the Calvinistic view, he proceeds to object to the ter that, in a certain sense, it is applicable; he proves from Scripture, that God is the disposer and orderer of sin; and then, by an elaborate false analogy with the darkness resulting froest that he is only the author of it in a negative sense; and, finally, he takes refuge in the conclusion that, though God is the orderer and disposer of those deeds which, considered in relation to their agents, arebeen infinitely good, they are not evil relatively to him

And this, of course, may be perfectly true; but if true, it is inconsistent with the attribute of omnipotence It is conceivable that there should be no evil in the world; that which is conceivable is certainly possible; if it were possible for evil to be non-existent, thethe existence of evil in that world, did not prevent it, either did not really desire it should not exist, or could not prevent its existence It ical consequences of necessarianisical consequences of theism; which are not only the same, when the attribute of O out, from the existence of moral evil, a hopeless conflict between the attributes of Infinite Benevolence and Infinite Pohich, with no less assurance, are affir

Kant's ular

That the phenomena of the mind follow fixed relations of cause and effect is, to him, as unquestionable as it is to Hu an sich_, the _Noumenon_, or Kantian equivalent for the substance of the soul This, being out of the phenomenal world, is subject to none of the laws of phenomena, and is consequently as absolutely free, and as completely powerless, as a mathematical point, _in vacua_, would be Hence volition is uncaused, so far as it belongs to the noumenon; but, necessary, so far as it takes effect in the pheno us that we know nothing whatever, and can know nothing, about the nouative predicates; the infor out of reach of the law of causation, is about as valuable as the assertion that it is neither grey, nor blue, nor square For practical purposes, it must be admitted that the inward possession of such a noumenal libertine does not amount tobut definitely regulated phenoht for the dead body of Moses, its presence must have been of about the sa parties, as that of Kant's noues in the breast of man Metaphysicians, as a rule, are sadly deficient in the sense of hu propositions which, when stripped of the verbiage in which they are disguised, appear to the profane eye to be bare shams, naked but not ashamed

CHAPTER XI

THE PRINCIPLES OF MORALS

In his autobiography, Hume writes:--

”In the sa the Principles of Morals_; which in e on that subject) is of all s, historical, philosophical, and literary, incomparably the best It came unnoticed and unobserved into the world”

It may commonly be noticed that the relative value which an author ascribes to his oorks rarely agrees with the estimate formed of them by his readers; who criticise the products, without either the power or the wish to take into account the pains which they may have cost the producer Moreover, the clear and dispassionate co the Principles of Morals_ hly-seasoned _Inquiry concerning the Hu_

Whether the public like to be deceived, or not, may be open to question; but it is beyond a doubt that they love to be shocked in a pleasant and mannerly way Now Hume's speculations on moral questions are not so remote from those of respectable professors, like Hutcheson, or saintly prelates, such as Butler, as to present any striking novelty And they support the cause of righteousness in a cool, reasonable, indeed slightly patronising fashi+on, ehteenth century; which adour which the age called fanaticis applied the ordinary methods of scientific inquiry to the intellectual phenomena of the mind, it was natural that Huation to its moral phenomena; and, in the true spirit of a natural philosopher, he coroup of those states of consciousness hich every one's personal experience must have made him familiar: in the expectation that the discovery of the sources of moral approbation and disapprobation, in this co them where they are more recondite

”We shall analyse that complication of mental qualities which form what, in common life, we call PERSONAL MERIT: We shall consider every attribute of the mind, which renders a man an object either of esteem and affection, or of hatred and contempt; every habit or sentiment or faculty, which if ascribed to any person, iyric or satire of his character and manners The quick sensibility which, on this head, is so universal aives a philosopher sufficient assurance that he can never be considerably er ofthe objects of his contemplation: He needs only enter into his own breast for a moment, and consider whether he should or should not desire to have this or that quality assigned to him, and whether such or such an imputation would proceed frouides us alue possesses one set of words which are taken in a good sense, and another in the opposite, the least acquaintance with the idio and arranging the estimable or bla is to discover the circumstances on both sides, which are common to these qualities; to observe that particular in which the estiree on the one hand, and the blamable on the other, and thence to reach the foundation of ethics, and find their universal principles, from which all censure or approbation is ultimately derived As this is a question of fact, not of abstract science, we can only expect success by following the experieneral maxims from a comparison of particular instances The other scientifical eneral abstract principle is first established, and is afterwards branched out into a variety of inferences and conclusions, may be more perfect in itself, but suits less the imperfection of human nature, and is a common source of illusion and mistake, in this as well as in other subjects Men are now cured of their passion for hypotheses and systeuments but those which are derived from experience It is full time they should attempt a like reformation in all moral disquisitions; and reject every systeenious, which is not founded on fact and observation”--(IV pp 242-4)

No qualities give a reater claim to personal merit than benevolence and justice; but if we inquire why benevolence deserves so e reference to the utility of that virtue to society; and as for justice, the very existence of the virtue iin; and the measure of its usefulness is also the standard of itshe wanted, and no one had the power to interfere with such possession; or if no e his fellow-man, justice would have no part to play in the universe But as Hume observes:--

”In the present disposition of the human heart, it would perhaps be difficult to find coed affections; but still we may observe that the case of faer thethe individuals, the nearer it approaches, till all distinction of property be in a greatthem