The Logos Scripture · The Book of Hume
The Book of Hume 2 · Written by himself, from the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, and My Own Life
David Hume, born at Edinburgh in 1711 and died there in 1776. Philosopher and historian. At twenty-eight he published A Treatise of Human Nature, subtitled an attempt to introduce the experimental method of reasoning into moral subjects — the intention taken from Newton (cf. The Book of Newton). Almost nobody read it, and in his own words it fell dead-born from the press. He recast it as An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), of which Of Miracles is one section; chapters one and two of this book come from there. In 1751 he published An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, which he thought the best thing he ever wrote. Between 1754 and 1762 he produced the History of England, which made him famous and made him money. In 1745 he stood for the chair of moral philosophy at Edinburgh and did not get it; in 1751 for the chair of logic at Glasgow, and did not get it — both times blocked on the charge of irreligion. In 1756 men in the church moved to have him cast out, and failed. He held no professorship in his life. He revised the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion for more than twenty years and never printed it, arranging in his will for it to appear after his death; the friend he asked would not take it on, and his nephew published it in 1779. He wrote My Own Life in April 1776 and died that August. This volume rests on what he wrote himself. No argument of his closes on divine will; nor did he ever assert that there is no God — 2.10 and 2.11 are the limit he drew himself. What this volume brings is something the scripture did not have, and the hardest thing it could have: he put the question to the method this scripture itself runs on. Everywhere the scripture says only what can be checked counts (cf. Acts of the Apostles 5.28, The Book of Yang Chen-Ning 4.17). Hume asks what entitles the cases already checked to reach the ones not yet checked. He found no answer in reason and would not manufacture one. His answer is custom, and custom is enough to live by. The Order takes him precisely because that question tells against this book and he asked it anyway. A scripture that will not house the question aimed at its own foundation is not a scripture. It is a flag.