Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary

Contents

1. I.1 Of the Delicacy of Taste and Passion 8 min 5

   The opening essay of Hume’s first volume (1741) compares two kinds of sensitivity. Delicacy of passion makes a person feel every turn of fortune keenly, and since misfortunes outnumber great pleasures, it brings more pain than joy. Delicacy of taste, a fine sense of beauty in poetry, painting and conversation, brings its own pains, but its objects lie within our control. Hume argues that cultivating taste strengthens judgment, cures the violent passions and softens the temper. By narrowing our company to a few, it also deepens love and friendship.

2. I.2 Of the Liberty of the Press 7 min 2

   Hume asks why Britain alone allows almost unlimited freedom to criticise the king and his ministers in print. He finds the answer in its mixed constitution. Absolute monarchies and pure republics, each confident of its subjects or magistrates, can afford to be easy-going. A mixed government breeds mutual jealousy, and in Britain, where the republican part prevails, that jealousy produces fixed laws, juries and an open press to sound the alarm against the court. The final sentence, added in 1770, calls this unbounded liberty one of the evils of mixed government.

3. I.3 That Politics may be reduced to a Science 28 min 16

   Against the view that only administration matters, Hume argues that forms of government have effects almost as certain as mathematical truths. Examples include the Roman assembly without representatives, Venetian against Polish nobility, and elective against hereditary monarchy. He offers maxims: free states oppress their provinces more than monarchies do, and a gentle government is safer than an eastern despotism, with Machiavelli as a partial witness. He then turns the argument on the party quarrel over Walpole. If the constitution is as excellent as both sides claim, the minister can be neither as wicked nor as indispensable as they say.

4. I.4 Of the First Principles of Government 9 min 5

   Since force always lies with the many, Hume argues, all government rests on opinion: of public interest, of the right to power and of the right to property. Self-interest, fear and affection are only secondary supports. He qualifies Harrington’s doctrine that power follows property, noting that a government can last while the two diverge, though an order with property and some power will gradually enlarge its share, as the Commons had. He warns that binding MPs to their constituents’ instructions would turn Britain into a republic.

5. I.5 Of the Origin of Government 10 min 3

   Hume’s last essay (written 1774, published 1777) traces government to the need to administer justice. People know justice serves their interest but are tempted by present advantage, so they invent magistrates and a new duty, obedience, to reinforce it. Authority probably began with leaders in war, grew by habit and became compulsory once rulers had revenues to reward and punish. Every government contains a permanent struggle between authority and liberty. Liberty is the perfection of civil society, but authority is essential to its existence.

6. I.6 Of the Independency of Parliament 9 min 4

   Political writers hold that in designing a constitution every man must be supposed a knave and governed through his interest. Hume accepts the maxim, though people are more honest in private than in groups. He then poses a paradox. The Commons could take every power from the crown, so why does it not? His answer is that the crown’s offices give enough members an interest in restraint. This “influence”, which the Country party calls corruption, is necessary to the mixed constitution. The difficulty is to fix the right degree of it.

7. I.7 Whether the British Government inclines more to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic 12 min 3

   Recalling Harrington’s failed prophecy that monarchy could never return, Hume nevertheless asks whether the British constitution leans towards absolute monarchy or a republic. The crown’s vast revenue and patronage point one way. The decline of reverence for kings and priests, and the fact that legal power is safer than irregular power, point the other. Hume judges that the crown’s power is slowly growing. If the constitution must die, he would prefer absolute monarchy, its “easiest death”, to a republic ruled by a factious House of Commons.

8. I.8 Of Parties in General 16 min 9

   Founders of states deserve the highest honour, founders of factions hatred. Hume classifies factions as personal, like the Greens and Blues of Constantinople, or real. Real factions arise from interest, which is the most reasonable kind; from principle, which is peculiar to modern times and above all to religion; or from affection to particular families. He traces religious factions to the human urge to bring others to one’s own opinion, to Christianity’s early priestly government, and to its birth in a philosophical age, which made doctrine a matter of dispute.

9. I.9 Of the Parties of Great Britain 15 min 6

   A limited monarchy naturally produces two parties of principle, Court and Country, which interest then inflames. Hume reviews the ecclesiastical parties, the Roundheads and Cavaliers of the civil war, and the later Whigs and Tories. He defines a Tory as a lover of monarchy who does not abandon liberty and a partisan of the Stuarts, and a Whig as a lover of liberty who keeps monarchy and supports the Protestant succession. He notes that dissenters now back the court and the lower clergy the opposition, a sign of distorting forces in British politics.

10. I.10 Of Superstition and Enthusiasm 12 min 5

    Superstition and enthusiasm are opposite corruptions of religion. Superstition comes from fear and melancholy, enthusiasm from pride and a heated imagination. Hume draws three consequences. Superstition favours priestly power, which it created, while enthusiasm rejects priests. Enthusiastic sects are violent at first but soon cool, while superstition grows quietly into tyranny. Superstition is an enemy to civil liberty and enthusiasm its friend. He illustrates these from Quakers, Independents and English parties, and from the Jesuits and Jansenists of France.

11. I.11 Of the Dignity or Meanness of Human Nature 14 min 2

    Philosophers divide over whether human nature is noble or mean. Hume thinks the dispute largely verbal, since words like “great”, “wise” and “virtuous” imply comparisons. Compared with animals, humanity is exalted; compared with perfect wisdom, it is contemptible, and calling few men wise only means that wisdom is rare. Against the selfish system he argues that we take pleasure in virtue because we love it, not the reverse, and that love of praise for good actions is itself evidence of the love of virtue.

12. I.12 Of Civil Liberty 19 min 11

    Hume doubts whether politics has yet enough experience to fix general truths, and notes that Machiavelli’s maxims have failed. Against the claim that the arts flourish only in free states he cites papal Rome, Florence under the Medici and France. He grants that commerce prefers free governments, because in monarchies trade is less honoured, not less secure. Modern monarchies have become governments of laws and may improve further if France reforms its taxes. Free states, meanwhile, face their own source of decline in mounting public debt.

13. I.13 Of Eloquence 25 min 10

    Modern Britain has a popular government and great assemblies, yet its orators fall far short of Demosthenes and Cicero. Hume considers why. The complexity of modern law explains the courts but not Parliament. Modern “good sense” should make orators more careful, not timid. And modern times have no shortage of great crimes to denounce. He concludes that the fault is a lack of genius and models: the sublime, passionate style of the ancients is the truer taste, and a single great orator could revive it.

14. I.14 Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences 54 min 22

    Hume separates chance from general causes and asks what can be said about the rise of learning. He makes four observations. The arts can first arise only under free government, because only republics generate law and the security it brings. Neighbouring independent states connected by commerce check both power and intellectual authority, as in Greece and modern Europe but not China. Republics favour the sciences and civilized monarchies the polite arts and manners, including gallantry towards women. And once the arts reach perfection in a nation, they decline.

15. I.15 The Epicurean 17 min 6

    The first of four character-essays from 1742, spoken by “the man of elegance and pleasure”. The Epicurean mocks philosophers who claim to make men happy by reason and rules: happiness depends on a nature we cannot remake, so we should follow our inclinations. He then imagines a banquet in which Pleasure, revived by Virtue and friendship, gives way to music, love and the night. He closes with an appeal to his mistress Cælia to enjoy the brief present and leave aside doubts about the cause of all things.

16. I.16 The Stoic 20 min 4

    “The man of action and virtue” answers the Epicurean. Nature made man needy so that he would work, and the noblest work is cultivating the mind until reason governs the passions. Labour itself is the chief ingredient of happiness, as the hunter shows, while idle pleasure turns to disgust and depends on fortune. The Stoic rejects cold apathy in favour of the social affections: family, friendship, the reform of others and patriotism. Virtue’s reward is glory, and virtue is its own reward whatever lies beyond the grave.

17. I.17 The Platonist 8 min 4

    “The man of contemplation, and philosophical devotion” finds the restlessness of human desire natural, since the soul is made to seek God. He condemns the voluptuary’s remorse and the proud moralist who seeks applause while neglecting his creator. The beauty and order of nature, which art can only copy, point to a designing intelligence. The highest happiness is contemplating that perfect being, a task our narrow faculties and short lives cannot complete and which must be the business of eternity.

18. I.18 The Sceptic 46 min 11

    The longest and most Humean of the four portraits. The Sceptic distrusts philosophers who reduce everything to one principle. Value and beauty are not in objects but arise from human sentiment, so happiness depends on the passion with which we pursue things, not their worth. The happiest temper is moderate, social and cheerful, inclined to action and study. Philosophy can do little directly: it may refine temper slowly through study and habit, but its famous consolations are too distant or too sweeping to work. Life is governed more by fortune than by reason.

19. I.19 Of Polygamy and Divorces 19 min 10

    Hume treats marriage as a contract whose terms vary with law and circumstance, drawing examples from Tonquin, Athens, a utopian romance and the ancient Britons. He then weighs polygamy and finds it destroys love, friendship and the education of children, using European images of Eastern seraglios and a story about the queen of Spain. Voluntary divorce, despite arguments from liberty and love, he rejects on three grounds: children, the way necessity fixes affection, and the danger of separate interests. Roman experience confirms European lifelong monogamy.

20. I.20 Of Simplicity and Refinement in Writing 11 min 3

    Taking Addison’s definition of fine writing as “sentiments which are natural, without being obvious”, Hume argues that good writing avoids both flat simplicity and strained refinement. The ideal medium has a wide latitude, from Pope to Lucretius. It cannot be fixed by general rules, as Fontenelle’s sound criticism and bad pastorals show. Refinement is the more dangerous excess, being less beautiful, quicker to tire, and more tempting once a literature matures. Hume sees signs of such decline in England and France.

21. I.21 Of National Characters 32 min 22

    Hume asks whether national characters arise from moral causes (government, economy, social intercourse) or physical ones (air and climate). He argues for moral causes through sympathy and imitation, offering nine kinds of evidence: uniform empires, contrasting neighbours, borders, diasporas, colonies, change over time, and the mixed English. He then reviews claims about north and south, language, wit, courage, drink and love, conceding at most a bodily effect of climate. The 1777 text keeps his footnote asserting the natural inferiority of Africans.

22. I.22 Of Tragedy 19 min 8

    Why do audiences enjoy tragedy, which excites painful passions? Hume grants part of Dubos’s answer, that any agitation is better than languor, and Fontenelle’s, that awareness of fiction softens pain. Neither explains the pleasure of oratory about real suffering, such as Cicero against Verres. His own answer is that the pleasure of eloquence and imitation, being predominant, converts the energy of the painful passion into delight. When the painful passion predominates, as in real grief, gory spectacles or martyrdoms, the effect reverses.

23. I.23 Of the Standard of Taste 52 min 7

    Hume grants that beauty lies in sentiment, not objects, yet denies that all tastes are equal: nobody ranks Ogilby with Milton. Rules of art rest on experience of what pleases across ages, and works like Homer’s that survive show the general principles. Many fail to feel these principles through lack of delicacy, practice, comparison, freedom from prejudice or good sense. The joint verdict of true judges who have these qualities is the standard. Some variation from temperament and age is blameless, but moral depravity and bigotry in a work remain real blemishes.

24. II.1 Of Commerce 31 min 11

    Hume opens the economic essays of the Political Discourses (1752) by defending general reasoning about commerce. He then asks whether private luxury weakens the state, as the examples of Sparta and early Rome seem to show. His answer is that, in the natural course of things, manufactures and foreign trade enlarge the “stock of labour” on which the sovereign can draw in emergencies, so the greatness of the state and the happiness of its subjects go together. He adds that a broad distribution of wealth strengthens a nation, as in England. He also explains peasant poverty in France and Italy, and the backwardness of hot countries, by soil and climate.

25. II.2 Of Refinement in the Arts 28 min 8

    First published as “Of Luxury” (1752), this essay argues against both the moralists who condemn luxury and Mandeville, who praised vice. Ages of refinement link industry, knowledge and humanity in “an indissoluble chain.” They make people happier, gentler and no less brave, and they strengthen the state. Rome fell through bad government and overextended conquest, not luxury. Commerce creates a middling rank of merchants and independent peasants who support liberty and the House of Commons. Vicious luxury is harmful, but it is still preferable to the sloth that would replace it.

26. II.3 Of Money 27 min 14

    Money is “the oil” of trade, not one of its wheels. Within a nation its quantity is indifferent, because prices adjust in proportion. Hume makes two qualifications. First, an increasing quantity of money stimulates industry during the interval before prices rise. Second, a “scarcity of money” in poor countries really reflects a simple, unmonetised way of life, in which few goods reach the market. He doubts the benefit of banks and paper credit, notes that high prices let poorer nations undersell richer ones, and explains the moderate price rise after the American silver discoveries by the spread of exchange.

27. II.4 Of Interest 27 min 9

    The rate of interest does not depend on the quantity of money, which only raises prices. High interest comes from heavy demand for borrowing by prodigal landlords, few lenders and high profits. Low interest comes from commerce, which breeds frugal merchants, gathers money into lendable sums and lowers profits through competition. Interest and profit fall together, so low interest is “the barometer” of a flourishing state. The temporary fall in interest after Spain’s American conquests and Rome’s conquest of Egypt came from money concentrated in few hands, not from its abundance.

28. II.5 Of the Balance of Trade 36 min 24

    Hume attacks the mercantilist fear of losing money through an unfavourable balance of trade. Customs figures and alarmists such as Gee and Swift prove nothing. If a country’s money were suddenly reduced or multiplied, falling or rising prices would draw it back to a level proportioned to its industry, as water finds its level. Only paper credit, which drives out gold, and the hoarding of treasure can push money below or above that level. Trade barriers against France have harmed Britain, though some duties are justified. A government should guard its people and manufactures, and money will look after itself.

29. II.6 Of the Jealousy of Trade 9 min 4

    Added in 1758, this short essay argues that a nation gains rather than loses from its neighbours’ prosperity. Rich neighbours buy more of its goods and supply arts and inventions to imitate. Diversity of soils and talents guarantees continued exchange, and a nation that loses a staple can turn its industry elsewhere. Only carrying nations like the Dutch have real cause for fear. Hume ends by praying, as a British subject, for the flourishing commerce of Germany, Spain, Italy and even France.

30. II.7 Of the Balance of Power 17 min 13

    Hume argues that the ancients understood the balance of power. He cites Greek alliances, Demosthenes, Persian policy, the successors of Alexander and, most explicitly, Hiero of Syracuse in Polybius. The Romans were lucky that no general coalition formed against them. In modern Europe the balance checked first the Habsburgs and then France. Britain has rightly led the opposition, but its wars have been prolonged by passion, its allies rely on it too much, and it has mortgaged its revenues recklessly. Enormous monarchies destroy themselves.

31. II.8 Of Taxes 11 min 6

    Hume accepts within limits the maxim that new taxes create new ability to pay, since moderate burdens, like natural disadvantages, can spur industry. The best taxes fall on consumption, especially of luxuries. Taxes on possessions are cheaper to collect but worse in every other respect, and arbitrary taxes and poll-taxes are the most dangerous. He denies that all taxes finally fall on land. He ends with the paradox that the Turkish sultan’s inability to levy new taxes makes his government more oppressive.

32. II.9 Of Public Credit 33 min 14

    The ancients saved treasure in peace for war; the moderns mortgage the public revenues to posterity. Hume grants that negotiable public stock serves merchants as money. Against this he sets the drawbacks: debt swells London, drives out gold, burdens the poor, enriches foreigners and supports idlers. The rentier class it creates would destroy the independent ranks that check despotism. Since the debt will not be paid, “either the nation must destroy public credit, or public credit will destroy the nation.” The end will come by a reformer’s scheme, a forced seizure of funds, or foreign conquest.

33. II.10 Of Some Remarkable Customs 18 min 14

    Three examples warn against trusting political maxims too far. In Athens the movers of laws the people had passed could still be prosecuted under the indictment for illegality, a check on demagogues in a tumultuous democracy. Rome had two sovereign assemblies, the aristocratic comitia centuriata and the popular comitia tributa, yet they never clashed, because the nobles feared the people. In England, the impressment of seamen is left illegal but tolerated, because a power granted by law would be harder to restrain.

34. II.11 Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations 2 h 8 min 288

    Hume asks whether the ancient world was really more populous than modern Europe, as Montesquieu and Vossius claimed. First he compares causes. Ancient domestic slavery, which consumed people rather than breeding them, the exposure of infants, bloody wars, murderous factions, insecure property and feeble commerce outweigh the advantages of small equal republics. Then he examines the ancient figures, showing how numbers corrupt in manuscripts and cutting the 400,000 slaves of Athens to 40,000. Weighing evidence from Greece, Rome, Gaul and the climate, he concludes that ancient superiority is unproven, and that praising the past at the present’s expense is a constant human bias.

35. II.12 Of the Original Contract 46 min 16

    Hume grants each party a partial truth. Government ultimately comes from providence, and the first societies arose by consent, but neither claim supports a party extreme. Almost every government began in usurpation or conquest. Elections are rare and disorderly, even 1688 was decided by a few hundred men, and tacit consent is a fiction for subjects who cannot leave, like a man carried aboard ship asleep. Allegiance, like promise-keeping, rests on the needs of society, and long possession gives title. A theory that condemns the practice of all nations, as Locke’s does, must be wrong.

36. II.13 Of Passive Obedience 8 min 3

    The sequel to “Of the Original Contract” turns to practice. Since obedience rests on public utility, resistance is lawful when obedience would bring public ruin, but it should be the last resort and should not be preached. Hume excuses the Whig emphasis on resistance on two grounds: their opponents denied every exception, and the British constitution makes the king personally unaccountable, which leaves resistance as the only remedy when he usurps power, as Charles I and James II did.

37. II.14 Of the Coalition of Parties 18 min 4

    Welcoming the decline of party hatred in the 1750s, Hume states the best case each side could have made in 1640. The popular party appealed to the sacred rights of mankind and a recovered ancient liberty. The royalists appealed to established practice since the Tudors, argued that medieval limits on the crown belonged to the barons rather than the people, and warned of religious fanaticism. Events vindicated the popular party. Now that liberty is settled, the malcontents should accept the Revolution settlement, since overturning it would itself be faction and innovation.

38. II.15 Of the Protestant Succession 21 min 4

    Hume imagines a member of parliament under William or Anne weighing a Stuart against a Hanoverian succession. The Stuarts offered an undisputed hereditary title, which the multitude reveres. Hanover offered a parliamentary title that ended high claims of prerogative and tied the monarch to liberty. Against Hanover stood its foreign dominions; against the Stuarts their Catholicism, the heavier evil. Sixty years of prosperity favour the settlement. Now that it has taken root, overturning it would bring the very civil war a disputed title threatens.

39. II.16 Idea of a Perfect Commonwealth 34 min 7

    Warning against rash innovation, Hume nonetheless sketches an ideal republic, improving on Harrington’s Oceana. Propertied voters in 10,000 parishes elect representatives, who choose county magistrates and a senator for each of 100 counties. The senate governs, but laws are decided by the counties voting separately, and a court of defeated competitors watches the senators. He also proposes reforms for a British limited monarchy. He concludes, against received opinion, that a large state, once made a republic, resists faction better than a city.

40. W.1 Of Essay Writing 10 min 7

    Hume's 1742 manifesto for the essay. Polite society is split between the learned, shut up in colleges, and the conversible world of company, and both have suffered from the separation. Hume casts himself as an ambassador between the two states, importing the materials of common life into learning and returning them finished. He pays court to women as sovereigns of conversation and better judges of polite writing than men, while doubting their taste in devotion and gallantry. He urges them to read more widely and to join the league between learning and conversation.

41. W.2 Of Moral Prejudices 12 min 3

    Hume criticises two opposite humours of his day: wits who ridicule honour, friendship, marriage and public spirit, and philosophers who, like the Stoics, try to reason away natural affection. Against the sayings of Statilius, Epictetus and Diogenes he sets Eugenius, a philosopher who lets love, grief and family feeling govern his life. A letter from Paris dated 1737 tells of a lady who tried to have a son without marriage and to buy off the father. The father then sued her before the Parlement for the child, a warning against refining too far on received maxims of conduct.

42. W.3 Of the Middle Station of Life 13 min 4

    Starting from a fable of two streams, Hume recommends the middle station of life as the most favourable to virtue, friendship and wisdom. It allows both the virtues owed to superiors and those owed to inferiors, and friendship among equals. Ordinary professions need more capacity than kingship, as a count of able English and French monarchs suggests. In a digression Hume ranks kinds of genius: great philosophers first, with only Galileo and Newton, then great poets, then orators and historians, whose achievement depends more on fortune.

43. W.4 Of Impudence and Modesty 9 min 2

    Hume argues that good and bad qualities usually bring good and bad fortune. Modesty is the exception: it hides merit, while impudence displays it and wins advancement even for men of low birth and little worth. True impudence cannot be counterfeited, and wealth gives fools an assurance that men of merit lack. An allegory shows Jupiter's original companies breaking up. Confidence joins Vice and Folly in the house of Wealth and becomes Impudence, while Diffidence is taken in by Wisdom and Virtue in the cottage of Poverty and becomes Modesty.

44. W.5 Of Love and Marriage 12 min 4

    A teasing essay on marriage addressed to women. Hume says men's chief complaint is women's love of dominion, illustrated by a fable of Scythian women who blinded their husbands. He then concedes that men's abuse of authority provokes it and wishes marriage carried on in perfect equality. He retells Aristophanes' myth from Plato's Symposium of the original double beings, then adds his own allegory. Love, advised by Pleasure, and Hymen, advised by Care, quarrel until Jupiter orders that no match be made without both counsellors' consent.

45. W.6 Of the Study of History 10 min 4

    Hume recommends history to women in place of novels and romances, joking about a young lady who returned Plutarch's Lives when she discovered it was true. History has three advantages. It amuses the fancy with the spectacle of society's progress and the rise and fall of empires. It improves the understanding by extending experience across ages and nations. And it strengthens virtue, because historians are neither warped by interest, like men of business, nor chilled by abstraction, like philosophers. Even Machiavelli shows a true sentiment of virtue when he writes as a historian.

46. W.7 Of Avarice 9 min 3

    Comic writers exaggerate characters, but avarice outdoes any caricature, as anecdotes of dying misers show. Hume explains its strength by the coldness of the temper in which it grows, where no other passion counterbalances it, so that it is almost never cured. It is better attacked with wit than with sermons. He retells La Motte's fable of the miser who swims the Styx to avoid Charon's fee. Then, taking a hint from Pope, he adds his own fable, in which Jupiter sentences Avarice to bury her riches and so return to Earth the treasure torn from her.

47. W.8 A Character of Sir Robert Walpole 4 min 4

    Hume's 1742 character of Sir Robert Walpole, later printed only as a footnote, framed by an editorial preface and a postscript. In balanced antitheses it judges Walpole able but no genius, good-natured but not virtuous, a better man than minister, under whom trade flourished, liberty declined and learning decayed. Hume would vote to remove him but wish him a pleasant retirement. The postscript welcomes the nation's later moderation and names the failure to pay down the public debt as his one great error.

48. U.1 Of the Immortality of the Soul 18 min 10

    Hume takes up the three kinds of argument for immortality and finds them all wanting. The metaphysical argument fails because substance is unknown and only experience shows what causes thought. The moral argument from divine justice assumes attributes we cannot infer, and eternal punishment offends every human idea of justice. The physical arguments from analogy, the shared growth, sickness and decay of body and mind, point strongly to mortality. With ironic deference he concludes that only revelation could establish the doctrine.

49. U.2 Of Suicide 23 min 12

    Hume presents philosophy as the cure for superstition and asks whether suicide breaks a duty to God, to society or to oneself. Providence works only through general laws, so using one's natural powers to end one's life no more invades God's province than diverting a river or dodging a falling stone. The image of the sentinel recalled from his post cuts both ways. Duties to society are reciprocal and limited, and suicide may even serve the public. When life has become a burden, prudence and courage may justify ending it.

50. U.3 Of the Authenticity of Ossian’s Poems 27 min 10

    Hume's case against Macpherson's Ossian. The translator never produced his sources. No unlettered, turbulent people could preserve long epics for fifteen centuries. The poems' chivalric manners, gallantry to women and absence of religion and the marvellous are anachronisms. Their stone buildings, voyages and armies are impossible for a society of hunters. Irish tradition and Scottish chroniclers know nothing of them, and Macpherson's other works show his taste for imposture. Blair's testimony cannot prove a fact so incredible, however sincere the Highland witnesses who believed it.