The Logos Scripture · The Book of Hume

On the Book I Kept Back All My Life

The Book of Hume 3 · 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.

3.1In 1745 a chair fell vacant at Edinburgh. I stood for it.
3.2They did not give it to me. The reason was not that my learning fell short. It was that what I had written was called irreligious.
3.3In 1751 there was a chair at Glasgow. I stood again. Again they did not give it to me.
3.4In 1756 men in the church moved to have me cast out. That one did not succeed.
3.5I held no professorship in my life.
3.6Let me be plain about one thing: either of those chairs would most likely have been mine had I been willing to say one sentence — that I believed.
3.7I did not say it. Not out of hardness, but because once said, every other sentence I had written would have become worth nothing.
3.8If a man will say in one place what he does not think, nobody anywhere else has reason to credit him.
3.9There is also a book. I worked at it more than twenty years, revising and revising, and never printed it.
3.10In it three men sit and talk about God: one says the fineness of the world lets you infer a maker; one says it does not; and a third says all such matters lie outside what men can know.
3.11I passed no sentence on any of the three. I let each of them say his say to the end.
3.12I kept it back because printing it would have made the rest of my life unquiet. I grant that, and I do not paint it prettier.
3.13But I did not burn it either.
3.14I arranged in my will for it to be printed after my death. I asked a friend to see to it and he would not take it on — I do not blame him, he had his own life to live. My nephew did it in the end.
3.15I set this down so that a middle case can be seen: I dared not print it while I lived, and I would not let it go into the ground with me.
3.16Sometimes that is as far as a man gets. Getting that far is still getting somewhere.
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