David Hume

Regretting the meagre records of the life of Adam Smith, the Right Hon. R. B. Haldane, M.P.,?[1] remarks:—“We think of him, in the main, and we think of him rightly, as the bosom friend of David Hume” (b. 1711, d. 1777). Naturally, incidents in the life of a philosopher are neither numerous nor stirring. It is unreasonable to expect them, and such stories as are handed down regarding great thinkers are best not to be accepted unreservedly. I leave Hume, therefore, to present his own picture as drawn in My own Life—the picture he wished posterity to have—which consequently follows this introduction, and is itself followed by Adam Smith’s celebrated letter to Mr. Strahan, Hume’s publisher, giving an account of Hume’s death.

It is chiefly as a political economist that Hume concerns us here, as it is in the Political Discourses, first published in 1752, his economic principles are set forth. What the reader may expect to find in these Discourses I prefer to let writers of renown tell. Thus Lord Brougham—

“Of the Political Discourses it would be difficult to speak in terms of too great commendation. They combine almost every {p-viii} excellence which can belong to such a performance. The reasoning is clear, and un­en­cum­bered with more words or more illus­tra­tions than are necessary for bringing out the doctrines. The learning is extensive, accurate, and profound, not only as to systems of philosophy, but as to history, whether modern or ancient. ... The great merit, however, of these Discourses is their originality, and the new system of politics and political economy which they unfold. Mr. Hume is, beyond all doubt, the author of the modern doctrines which now rule the world of science, which are to a great extent the guide of practical statesmen, and are only prevented from being applied in their fullest extent to the affairs of nations by the clash­ing interests and the ignorant prejudices of certain powerful classes.”

Thus, again, J. Hill Burton,?[2] Hume’s biographer—

“These Discourses are in truth the cradle of political economy; and much as that science has been investigated and expounded in later times, these earliest, shortest, and simplest developments of its principles are still read with delight even by those who are masters of all the literature of this great subject. But they possess a quality which more elaborate economists have striven after in vain, in being a pleasing object of study not only to the initiated, but to the ordinary popular reader, and of being admitted as just and true by many who cannot or will not understand the views of later writers on political economy. They have thus the rarely conjoined merit that, as they were the first to direct the way to the true sources of this department of knowledge, those who have gone farther, instead of superseding them, have in the general case confirmed their accuracy.”

The Discourses, in Hume’s own words, was “the only work of mine that was successful on the first publication,” and its success was great. Translated into French immediately, “they conferred,” says Professor Huxley, “a European reputation upon their {p-ix} author; and, what was more to the purpose, influenced the later school of economists of the eighteenth century.” On the same head Burton says—“As no Frenchman had previously approached the subject of political economy with a philosophical pen, this little book was a main instrument, either by causing assent or provoking controversy, in producing the host of French works published between the time of its translation and the publication of Smith’s Wealth of Nations in 1776. The work of the elder Mirabeau in particular—L’ami des Hommes—was in a great measure a controversial examination of Hume’s opinions on population.”

Professor Knight of St. Andrews, again, echoes similar sentiments.

“The merit of the Discourses,” he remarks, “is not only great, but they are unrivalled to this day; and it is not too much to affirm that they prepared the way for all the subsequent economic literature of England, including the Wealth of Nations, in which Smith laid down the broad and durable foundations of the science. ... The effect produced by these Discourses was great. Immediately translated into French, they passed through five editions in fourteen years. They were a distinctive addition to English literature, and were strictly scientific, though not technical. They at once floated Hume into fame, bringing him to the front, both as a thinker and as a man of letters; and posterity has ratified this judgment of the hour. ... They contain many original germs of economic truth. The effect they had on practical statesmen, such as Pitt, must not be overlooked. It was perhaps an advantage that the economic doctrines, both of Hume and Smith, were published at that particular time, as they led naturally and easily to several reforms, without being developed to extremes, as was subsequently the case in France.”

All this testimony as to the merits of the {p-x} Discourses—testimony from men of widely divergent views—is sufficient justification for offering them in popular form to the public at a time like the present, when the foundations of political economy are, one might say, being re-laid.?[3]

We have already hinted at the friendship that existed between Hume and Adam Smith. Hume was Smith’s senior by twelve years, and seems to have had the latter brought under his notice by Hutcheson, Professor of Moral Philosophy at Glasgow University. In a letter to Hutcheson, dated March 4th, 1740, he says—“My bookseller has sent to Mr. Smith a copy of my book,?[4] which I hope he has received as well as your letter.” “The Smith here mentioned,” Burton says, “we may fairly conclude, notwithstanding the universality of the name, to be Adam Smith, who was then a student in the University of Glasgow, and not quite seventeen years old. It may be inferred that Hutcheson had mentioned Smith as a person on whom it would serve some good purpose to bestow a copy of the Treatise; and we have here evidently the first introduction to each other’s notice of two friends, of whom it can be said there was no third person writing the English language during the same period who has had so much influence upon the opinions of mankind as either of these two men.” {p-xi}

Hume’s influence upon Adam Smith was great. Even in the ring of the phraseology of the Wealth of Nations I sometimes fancy I can hear Hume. Anyway, the book referred to in the above letter as sent to Smith, Mr. Haldane considers as “in all probability” the determining factor in making Smith abandon his original intention of entering the Church. “Whether Hume could have been but for Smith we cannot now say; but we know that, but for Hume, Smith could never have been.”?[5] While agreeing that “but for Hume Smith could never have been,” I see no reason to question that Hume could have been without Smith. Hume had within him what may here be called the divine light, and it had to come out. That is why, “in poverty and riches, in health and sickness, in laborious obscurity and amidst the blaze of fame,” his ruling passion—a passion for literature—never abated. No man can strike out for himself an original line and stick to it like this, “through thick and thin,” unless he have assurance of the truth of that that is in him. Hume had this assurance. True, he sought fame—and he achieved fame; not for its own sake—that is inconceivable in so great a thinker, a thinker with such a true notion of the relation of things—but for the sake of the truths he had to promulgate; for the higher his eminence the wider and more attentive would be his audience. Of course, he sought fame, and he found gratification in it. It was not the gratification of vanity, however, that writers on Hume usually interpret it as; it was the gratification arising from the knowledge that one has hit the mark—that one has not laboured in vain. The petty vanity ascribed to Hume would not have {p-xii} suffered him as “the parent of the first elucidations of political economy to see his own offspring eclipsed, and to see it with pride”—his attitude, according to Burton, on the successful reception of The Wealth of Nations. Vanity, again, would have prevented between these two men that unalloyed friendship so charming to contemplate.

In 1776, the year before Hume’s death, The Wealth of Nations appeared, and here is how Hume writes to the author:—

“February 8, 1776.

“DEAR SMITH,—I am as lazy a correspondent as you, yet my anxiety about you makes me write. By all accounts your book has been printed long ago; yet it has never been so much as advertized. What is the reason? If you wait till the fate of America be decided, you may wait long.

“By all accounts you intend to settle with us this spring; yet we hear no more of it. What is the reason? Your chamber in my house is always unoccupied. I am always at home. I expect you to land here.

“I have been, am, and shall be probably in an indifferent state of health. I weighed myself t’other day, and find I have fallen five complete stones. If you delay much longer I shall probably disappear altogether.

“The Duke of Buccleuch tells me that you are very zealous in American affairs. My notion is that the matter is not so important as is commonly imagined. If I be mistaken, I shall probably correct my error when I see you or read you. Our navigation and general commerce may suffer more than our manufactures. Should London fall as much in its size as I have done, it will be the better. It is nothing but a hulk of bad and unclean humours.”

At last the book appears, and Hume writes his friend, April 1st, 1776:— {p-xiii}

“I am much pleased with your performance; and the perusal of it has taken me from a state of great anxiety. It was a work of so much ex­pec­ta­tion by your­self, by your friends, and by the pub­lic, that I trem­bled for its first ap­pearance, but am now much relieved. Not but that the reading of it neces­sarily requires so much attention, and the public is dis­posed to give so little, that I shall still doubt for some time of its being at first very popular. But it has depth and solidity and acuteness, and is so much illustrated by curious facts that it must at last take the public at­ten­tion. It is probably much improved by your last abode in London. If you were here at my fire­side, I should dispute some of your prin­ci­ples. I cannot think that the rent of farms makes any part of the price of pro­duce,?[6] but that the price is determined altogether by the quantity and the demand. ... But these and a hundred other points are fit only to be discussed in con­ver­sa­tion.”

Hume, though he “took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, and had no reason to be displeased with the reception he met with from them,” died unmarried. Adam Smith also died unmarried, “though he was for several years,” according to Dugald Stewart, “attached to a young lady of great beauty and accomplishment.” Hume, in the Essay “Of the Study of History,” speaks of being desired once by “a young beauty for whom I had some passion to send her some novels and romances for her amusement.” David was a “canny” man though. In these circumstances the following playful sally in a letter from Hume to Mrs. Dysart, of Eccles, a relative, may have interest:—“What arithmetic will serve to fix the proportion between good and bad wives, and rate the different classes of each? Sir Isaac Newton himself, {p-xiv} who could measure the course of the planets and weigh the earth as in a pair of scales—even he had not algebra enough to reduce that amiable part of our species to a just equation; and they are the only heavenly bodies whose orbits are as yet uncertain.”

The foregoing are mere glimpses of this truly great man, and are offered with a view to awakening and stimulating amongst general readers a desire for first-hand knowledge of David Hume.

W. B. R.

May 1906.

It is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without vanity; therefore, I shall be short. It may be thought an instance of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this narrative shall contain little more than the History of my Writings; as, indeed, almost all my life has been spent in literary pursuits and occupations. The first success of most of my writings was not such as to be an object of vanity.

I was born the 26th of April 1711, old style, at Edinburgh. I was of a good family, both by father and mother. My father’s family is a branch of the Earl of Home’s or Hume’s; and my ancestors had been proprietors of the estate, which my brother possesses, for several generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer, President of the College of Justice; the title of Halkerton came by succession to her brother.

My family, however, was not rich; and, being myself a younger brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of course very slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died when I was an infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a sister, under the care of our mother, a {p-xv} woman of singular merit, who, though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the rearing and educating of her children. I passed through the ordinary course of education with success, and was seized very early with a passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my life, and the great source of my enjoyments. My studious disposition, my sobriety, and my industry gave my family a notion that the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly devouring.

My very slender fortune, however, being unsuitable to this plan of life, and my health being a little broken by my ardent application, I was tempted, or rather forced, to make a very feeble trial for entering into a more active scene of life. In 1734 I went to Bristol, with some recommendations to eminent merchants, but in a few months found that scene totally unsuitable to me. I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my studies in a country retreat, and I there laid that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the improvement of my talents in literature.

During my retreat in France, first at Rheims, but chiefly at La Fleche, in Anjou, I composed my Treatise of Human Nature. After passing three years very agreeably in that country, I came over to London in 1737. In the end of 1738 I published my Treatise, and immediately went down to my mother and my brother, who lived at his country-house, and was employing himself very judiciously and successfully in the improvement of his fortune.

Never literary attempt was more unfortunate than my Treatise of Human Nature. It fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots. But being naturally of a cheerful and {p-xvi} sanguine temper, I very soon recovered the blow, and prosecuted with great ardour my studies in the country. In 1742 I printed at Edinburgh the first part of my Essays: the work was favourably received, and soon made me entirely forget my former disappointment. I continued with my mother and brother in the country, and in that time recovered the knowledge of the Greek language, which I had too much neglected in my early youth.

In 1745 I received a letter from the Marquis of Annandale, inviting me to come and live with him in England; I found also that the friends and family of that young nobleman were desirous of putting him under my care and direction, for the state of his mind and health required it. I lived with him a twelvemonth. My appointments during that time made a considerable accession to my small fortune. I then received an invitation from General St. Clair to attend him as a secretary to his expedition, which was at first meant against Canada, but ended in an incursion on the coast of France. Next year—to wit, 1747—I received an invitation from the General to attend him in the same station in his military embassy to the courts of Vienna and Turin. I then wore the uniform of an officer, and was introduced at these courts as aide-de-camp to the General, along with Sir Harry Erskine and Captain Grant, now General Grant. These two years were almost the only interruptions which my studies have received during the course of my life. I passed them agreeably, and in good company; and my appointments, with my frugality, had made me reach a fortune, which I called independent, though most of my friends were inclined to smile when I said so; in short, I was now master of near a thousand pounds.

I had always entertained a notion that my want of success in publishing the Treatise of Human Nature had proceeded more from the manner than the matter, and that I had been guilty of a very usual indiscretion in going to the press too early. I, therefore, cast the first part of that work anew in the Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, which was published while I was at Turin. But this piece was at first little more successful {p-xvii} than the Treatise of Human Nature. On my return from Italy, I had the mortification to find all England in a ferment on account of Dr. Middleton’s Free Inquiry, while my performance was entirely overlooked and neglected. A new edition, which had been published at London, of my Essays, Moral and Political, met not with a much better reception.

Such is the force of natural temper, that these disappointments made little or no impression on me. I went down in 1749 and lived two years with my brother at his country-house, for my mother was now dead. I there composed the second part of my Essays, which I called Political Discourses, and also my Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, which is another part of my Treatise that I cast anew. 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 or three in a year; and I found, by Dr. Warburton’s railing, that the books were beginning to be esteemed in good company. However, I had a fixed resolution, which I inflexibly maintained, never to reply to anybody; and not being very irascible in my temper, I have easily kept myself clear of all literary squabbles. These symptoms of a rising reputation gave me encouragement, as I was ever more disposed to see the favourable than unfavourable side of things; a turn of mind which it is more happy to possess than to be born to an estate of ten thousand a year.

In 1751 I removed from the country to the town, the true scene for a man of letters. In 1752 were published at Edinburgh, where I then lived, my Political Discourses, the only work of mine that was successful on the first publication. It was well received abroad and at home. In the same year was published at London my Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals; which, in my own opinion (who ought not to judge on that subject), is of all my writings, historical, philosophical, or literary, incomparably the best. It came unnoticed and unobserved into the world. {p-xviii}

In 1752 the Faculty of Advocates chose me their Librarian, an office from which I received little or no emolument, but which gave me the command of a large library. I then formed the plan of writing the History of England; but being frightened with the notion of continuing a narrative through a period of seventeen hundred years, I commenced with the accession of the House of Stuart, an epoch when, I thought, the misrepresentations of faction began chiefly to take place. I was, I own, sanguine in my expectations of the success of this work. I thought that I was the only historian that had at once neglected present power, interest, and authority, and the cry of popular prejudices; and as the subject was suited to every capacity, I expected proportional applause. But miserable was my disappointment: I was assailed by one cry of reproach, disapprobation, and even detestation; English, Scotch, and Irish, Whig and Tory, Churchman and Sectary, Freethinker and Religionist, Patriot and Courtier, united in their rage against the man who had presumed to shed a generous tear for the fate of Charles I. and the Earl of Strafford; and after the first ebullitions of their fury were over, what was still more mortifying, the book seemed to sink into oblivion. Mr. Millar told me that in a twelvemonth, he sold only forty-five copies of it. I scarcely, indeed, heard of one man in the three kingdoms, considerable for rank or letters, that could endure the book. I must only except the Primate of England, Dr. Herring, and the Primate of Ireland, Dr. Stone, which seem two odd exceptions. These dignified prelates separately sent me messages not to be discouraged.

I was, however, I confess, discouraged; and had not the war been at that time breaking out between France and England, I had certainly retired to some provincial town of the former kingdom, have changed my name, and never more have returned to my native country. But as this scheme was not now practicable, and the subsequent volume was considerably advanced, I resolved to pick up courage, and to persevere.

In this interval I published at London my Natural History of Religion, along with some other small pieces. Its public entry was rather obscure, except only that Dr. Hurd wrote a {p-xix} pamphlet against it, with all the illiberal petulance, arrogance, and scurrility which distinguish the Warburtonian school. This pamphlet gave me some consolation for the otherwise indifferent reception of my performance.

In 1756, two years after the fall of the first volume, was published the second volume of my History, containing the period from the death of Charles I. till the Revolution. This performance happened to give less displeasure to the Whigs, and was better received. It not only rose itself, but helped to buoy up its unfortunate brother.

But though I had been taught, by experience, that the Whig party were in possession of bestowing all places, both in the State and in literature, I was so little inclined to yield to their senseless clamour, that in about a hundred alterations which further study, reading, or reflection engaged me to make in the reigns of the two first Stuarts, I have made all of them invariably to the Tory side. It is ridiculous to consider the English constitution before that period as a regular plan of liberty.

In 1759 I published my History of the House of Tudor. The clamour against this performance was almost equal to that against the history of the two first Stuarts. The reign of Elizabeth was particularly obnoxious. But I was now callous against the impressions of public folly, and continued very peaceably and contentedly in my retreat at Edinburgh, to finish, in two volumes, the more early part of the English History, which I gave to the public in 1761, with tolerable, and but tolerable success.

But notwithstanding this variety of winds and seasons, to which my writings had been exposed, they had still been making such advances that the copy-money given me by the booksellers much exceeded anything formerly known in England; I was become not only independent, but opulent. I retired to my native country of Scotland, determined never more to set my foot out of it; and retaining the satisfaction of never having preferred a request to one great man, or even making advances of friendship to any of them. As I was now turned of fifty, I thought of passing all the rest of my life in this {p-xx} philosophical manner, when I received, in 1763, an invitation from the Earl of Hertford, with whom I was not in the least acquainted, to attend him on his embassy to Paris, with a near prospect of being appointed Secretary to the embassy, and, in the meanwhile, of performing the functions of that office. This offer, however inviting, I at first declined, both because I was reluctant to begin connections with the great, and because I was afraid the civilities and gay company of Paris would prove disagreeable to a person of my age and humour; but on his lordship’s repeating the invitation, I accepted of it. I have every reason, both of pleasure and interest, to think myself happy in my connections with that nobleman, as well as afterwards with his brother, General Conway.

Those who have not seen the strange effects of Modes, will never imagine the reception I met with at Paris, from men and women of all ranks and stations. The more I resiled from their excessive civilities, the more I was loaded with them. There is, however, a real satisfaction in living in Paris, from the great number of sensible, knowing, and polite company with which that city abounds above all places in the universe. I thought once of settling there for life.

I was appointed Secretary to the embassy; and in summer 1765, Lord Hertford left me, being appointed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. I was chargÉ d’affaires till the arrival of the Duke of Richmond, towards the end of the year. In the beginning of 1766 I left Paris, and next summer went to Edinburgh, with the same view as formerly, of burying myself in a philosophical retreat. I returned to that place, not richer, but with much more money, and a much larger income, by means of Lord Hertford’s friendship, than I left it; and I was desirous of trying what superfluity could produce, as I had formerly made an experiment of a competency. But in 1767 I received from Mr. Conway an invitation to be Under Secretary; and this invitation, both the character of the person and my connections with Lord Hertford prevented me from declining. I returned to Edinburgh in 1769, very opulent (for I possessed a revenue of £1000 a year), healthy, and, though somewhat stricken in years, with {p-xxi} the prospect of enjoying long my ease, and of seeing the increase of my reputation.

In spring 1775, I was struck with a disorder in my bowels, which at first gave me no alarm, but has since, as I apprehend it, become mortal and incurable. I now reckon upon a speedy dissolution. I have suffered very little pain from my disorder; and what is more strange, have, notwithstanding the great decline of my person, never suffered a moment’s abatement of my spirits; insomuch, that were I to name the period of my life which I should most choose to pass over again, I might be tempted to point to this later period. I possess the same ardour as ever in study, and the same gaiety in company. I consider, besides, that a man of sixty-five, by dying, cuts off only a few years of infirmities; and though I see many symptoms of my literary reputation’s breaking out at last with additional lustre, I knew that I could have but few years to enjoy it. It is difficult to be more detached from life than I am at present.

To conclude historically with my own character. I am, or rather was (for that is the style I must now use in speaking of myself, which emboldens me the more to speak my sentiments)—I was, I say, a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social, and cheerful humour, capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions. Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my frequent disappointments. My company was not unacceptable to the young and careless, as well as to the studious and literary; and as I took a particular pleasure in the company of modest women, I had no reason to be displeased with the reception I met with from them. In a word, though most men anywise eminent have found reason to complain of calumny, I never was touched, or even attacked by her baleful tooth: and though I wantonly exposed myself to the rage of both civil and religious factions, they seemed to be disarmed in my behalf of their wonted fury. My friends never had occasion to vindicate any one circumstance of my character and conduct: not {p-xxii} but that the zealots, we may well suppose, would have been glad to invent and propagate any story to my disadvantage, but they never could find any which they thought would wear the face of probability. I cannot say there is no vanity in making this funeral oration of myself, but I hope it is not a misplaced one; and this is a matter of fact which is easily cleared and ascertained.

April 18, 1776.