The Relation of the Treatise to the Enquiries

Abstract

HUME left instructions that on his tomb there should be no inscription save his name, with the dates of his birth and death “ leaving it to posterity to add the rest ”. Posterity, we find, has for the most part dealt very harshly with the author of the Treatise. Even if we consider only those of his critics who are in sympathy with the empirical type of philosophy for which he stands, and who might therefore be expected to have, if anything, a prejudice in his favour, what do we find ? We have, for instance, the judgment passed upon Hume by John Stuart Mill:

Hume possessed powers of a very high order; but regard for truth formed no part of his character. He reasoned with surprising acuteness; but the object of his reasonings was, not to attain truth, but to show that it is unattainable. His mind too was completely enslaved by a taste for literature; not those kinds of literature which teach mankind to know the causes of their happiness and misery, that they may seek the one and avoid the other; but that literature which without regard for truth or utility, seeks only to excite emotion.¹