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Hume, Newton and ‘the Hill called Difficulty’
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 January 2010
Extract
In a celebrated passage in ‘Of the Standard of Taste’, Hume tells us that those readers who prefer Bunyan's writings to Addison's are merely ‘pretended critics’ whose judgment is ‘absurd and ridiculous’; this is ‘no less an extravagance, than if he had maintained a mole-hill to be as high as TENERIFFE, or a pond as extensive as the ocean’ (GG, iii, p. 269). Hume shows a decisiveness and vehemence in his judgment against Bunyan that has greater significance than that of being a mere reflection of his aesthetic principles. Hume does, after all, wish to make ‘durable admiration’ the foundation of his standard of taste, and both the number of eighteenth-century reprints of The Pilgrim's Progress and Johnson's comment that this work has as ‘the best evidence of its merit, the general and continued approbation of mankind’ testify to the lasting popularity of Bunyan's work (GG, iii, p. 27i). Hume's critical judgment on Bunyan is not merely a consequence of a mechanical application of his standard of taste, but is rather a reflection of what I will term Hume's ‘epistemology of ease’.
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NOTES
1 In-text references to Hume's writings have been provided using the following abbreviations: ENQS - Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A., rev. Nidditch, P. H. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 3rd edition, 1975)Google Scholar; GG - The Philosophical Works of David Hume, eds. Green, T. H. and Grose, T. H. (London, Longmans, Green & Co., 1874–1875)Google Scholar; I — An Inquiry concerning Human Understanding, with a supplement, ‘An Abstract of A Treatise of Human Nature’, ed. Hendel, Charles W. (New York, Liberal Arts Press, 1955)Google Scholar; L - The Letters of David Hume, ed. Greig, J. Y. T. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1932)Google Scholar; NHR - ‘The Natural History of Religion’ and ‘Dialogues concerning Natural Religion’, eds. Colver, A. Wayne and Price, John Valdimir (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1976)Google Scholar; T — A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. Selby-Bigge, L. A. (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1888).Google Scholar
2 Boswell, James, Boswell's Life of Johnson, ed. Hill, G. Birkbeck (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1887), ii, P. 238.Google Scholar Johnson also comments, ‘Few books, I believe, have had a more extensive sale’ - a sale evidenced by the fact that in 1799 A. Millar was publishing what purported to be ‘The hundred and twenty first edition’ of the two volumes, and Millar's count was by no means all inclusive.
3 Bunyan, John, The Pilgrim's Progress from this World to That Which is to Come, ed. Wharey, James Blanton (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2nd edition, rev. Roger Sharrock, 1960), pp. 27–8, 41, 69, 100, 17–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
4 Ibid. p. 15.
5 Thus, for example, James Noxon argues that the analogue is incongruous in Hume's Philosophical Development: A Study of his Methods (Oxford, Clarendon Press, corrected edition 1975)Google Scholar; Passmore, John that it is also incomplete in Hume's Intentions (London, Duckworth, rev. edition 1968)Google Scholar; Norman Kemp Smith that it is also inconsistent with Hume, 's ‘naturalism’ in The Philosophy of David Hume (London, Macmillan, 1941).Google Scholar These judgements have begun to be undermined by the work of Gapaldi, Nicholas in David Hume: The Newtonian Philosopher (Boston, Twayne, 1975)Google Scholar, and Deme, Nelly, ‘La Méthode Newtonienne et les Lois Empirique de l'Anthropologie dans Traité II’, David Hume: Bicentenary Papers, ed. Morice, G. P. (Edinburgh University Press, 1977).Google Scholar However, neither of these authors discuss the central role played by ‘ease’ and ‘unease’ - the topic of this paper.
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11 Rogers, G. A. J., ‘The Empiricism of Locke and Newton’, above pp. 5, 15, 19–20.Google Scholar Rogers quotes Newton: University Library, Cambridge, Add. MS. 3970.9, f. 619.
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15 Brown, Stuart, ‘The “Principle” of Natural Order: Or What the Enlightened Sceptics did not Doubt’, below pp. 70 ff.Google Scholar
16 The consistency of the two scepticisms justifies my treatment of the two Enquiries as mere extensions of the argument in the Treatise, and my concentration on the eventually repudiated youthful work. If time permitted I would explain here how Hume's own philosophical development could be traced to his attempt to render his own writings consistent with his ‘principle of ease’, where ‘ease’ does not only affect style but also subject-matter.
17 Kemp Smith, p. 72; Kuhns, Richard, ‘Hume's Republic and the Universe of Newton’, Eighteenth-Century Studies Presented to Arthur M. Wilson, ed. Gay, Peter (University of New England, 1972), pp. 86, 88, for example.Google Scholar
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24 Anthony, , Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, ed. Robertson, John M. (Indianapolis, Bobbs-Merrill, 1964), ii, p. 280 Google Scholar: ‘Miscellaneous Reflections’, IV, I Google Scholar; on goodness see, for example, i, pp. 237 ff.: ‘An Inquiry concerning Virtue or Merit’.
25 Mandeville, Bernard, The Fable of the Bees: Or, Private Vices, Publick Benefits, ed. Kaye, F. B. (Oxford, Clarendon, 1924), i, p. 324 Google Scholar; i, P. 3335 ii, P. 176; ii, P. 180.
26 Hutcheson, , Essay, p. 16 Google Scholar; and see Jensen, Henning, Motivation and the Moral Sense in Francis Hutcheson's Ethical Theory (The Hague, Nijhoff, 1971), pp. 10–25.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
27 The Whole Works of Joseph Butler (London, 1843), ii, p. 157 Google Scholar: ‘Sermon XIV’; ii, p. 63 Google Scholar: ‘Sermon VI’; i, p. 33 Google Scholar: ‘The Analogy of Religion’, I, III; ii, p. 148 Google Scholar: ‘Sermon XIII’.
28 Passmore, p. 122. Forbes, Duncan, Hume's Philosophical Politics (Cambridge University Press, 1975), p. 10.Google Scholar In a footnote Forbes connects ‘inertia’ with Malebranche's influence on Hume. He is certainly right to make this connection - one that cannot be explored in the confines of this lecture. It is not only the scattered insights of British philosophers that Hume synthesizes into a comprehensively Newtonian science of man.
29 ‘Beattie's “The Castle of Scepticism”: An Unpublished Allegory against Hume, Voltaire and Hobbes’, ed. Mossner, E. C., University of Texas Studies in English, xxvii (1948), pp. 121–2.Google Scholar
30 Ibid. p. 123, and see pp. 124, 127, 133.
31 For the Vanity-Fair metaphor see Bunyan, pp. 88 ff.
32 Bunyan, , pp. 19, 18.Google Scholar