Bayle, Berkeley, and Hume Harry M. Bracken Eighteenth-Century Studies, Vol. 11, No. 2. (Winter, 1977-1978), pp. 227-245. Stable URL: http://links.jstor.org/sici?sici=0013-2586%28197724%2F197824%2911%3A2%3C227%3ABBAH%3E2.0.CO%3B2-U Eighteenth-Century Studies is currently published by The Johns Hopkins University Press.
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Bayle, Berkeley, and Hume IIARRY M. BRACKEN
I
IN
1959, responding to criticism by Philip P. Wiener for suggesting that Hume had never read Berkeley, Richard M.Popkin published a reply in which he contended that there was very little evidence to support the old philosophical partnership of Locke, Berkeley, and Hume-e.g. there are no citations.' Popkin reminded us that Hume's own discussion of abstract ideas "hardly resembles Berkeley's" (p. 539) and that in presenting his views on our knowledge of the external world, Hume seems to be oblivious of Berkeley's arguments. Nor does Berkeley appear in Hume's discussions of mathematics or minds. Nevertheless, matters were altered by the publication of a newly discovered letter of Hume7s. Written to Michael Ramsay in 1737, it reads in part: "I desire of you, if you have Leizure, to read once over le Recherche de la VeritC of Pere Malebranche, the Principles of Human Knowledge by Dr Berkeley, some of the more metaphysical Articles of Bailes Dictionary; such as those . . [of] Zeno, & Spinoza. Ses Cartes Meditations would also be useful. . . ." He goes on to say: "These Books will make you easily comprehend the metaphysical Parts of my Reasoning. . . ."2
.
A revised version of a paper presented in the Matchette Foundation Lectures on the Philosophy of David Hume at the Catholic University of America, 11 November 1976. I am indebted to the members of the Catholic University philosophy department for many helpful criticisms. I wish also to thank Dr. George E. Davie of the University of Edinburgh for his extremely stimulating discussions concerning the subject matter of this paper. Some of the research for this paper was supported by the Canada Council and the Qu6bec Education Ministry (FCAC). 1 Philip P. Wiener, "Did Hume Ever Read Berkeley?'Journal of Phitosophy, 56 (1959), 533-35; 58 (1961), 207-9; 58 (1961), 327-28; Richard H. Popkin, "Did Hume Ever Read Berkeley?Vournal of Philosophy, 56 (1959), 535-45. There is an extended discussion with contributions by, among others, Ernest C. Mossner, Antony Flew, Graham P. Conroy, and Roland Hall. It was precipitated by Popkin's review of George Boas, Dominant Themes of Modern Philosophy (New York: Ronald Press, 1957), in Journal of Philosophy, 56 (1959), 67-71. 2 The letter is edited by Tadeusz Kozanecki and appears in Archiwum Historii I
227
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EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY STUDIES
In his 1964 paper, "So, Hume Did Read Berkeley," Popkin writes that the letter to Ramsay settles the reading question "decisively." But despite having read Berkeley there is still, according to Fopkin, no evidence that Berkeley was a major influence upon Hume. Popkin maintained that "no doctrine of Berkeley's is used by Hume to establish any of his own views." He added that "Hume's development makes more sense, I believe, in terms of the complex of thinkers he wrestled with, such as Bayle, Malebranche, Descartes, Berkeley, the Scottish moralists, the strange Chevalier Ramsay, perhaps Bishop Huet, and others" (p. 778). That certainly seems to be where we stand two hundred years after Hume's death. In this paper I shall examine several aspects of the connections among Bayle, Berkeley, and Hume. It is my contention that Bayle independently influences BerlceIey and Hume, and that Berkeley had little or no direct impact on Hume. First, there is Hume's discussion of finite vs. infinite divisibility (Treatise I, Pt. 11).Hume seems to say that (a) the parts of space are finitely, and not infinitely, divisible, (b) the constituent atoms are colored, and (c) the idea of extension enters only with several such atoms.3 As Kemp Smith comments, "Extension is the manner or mode of arrangement in which unextended sensibilia appear to the mind."4 He subsequently adds that Hume seems to be saying that "two unexfended sensibles, if contiguous, will generate what is genuinely extended!" (p. 300). Berkeley, on the other hand, means by a minimum visible that point which marks the threshold of visual acuity. Locke estimates (Essay 11, xv, $ 9) that it is from thirty seconds to a minute "of a circle, whereof the eye is the centre." Thus a color spot operationally defined at the minimum level would not be further divisible. If an effort were made to divide a minimum, it would simply cease to exist. Visual minima constitute a sort of visual grid. This grid is not affected by magnification glasses, since it is not characterized in terms of dots in the world but in terms of thresholds of sensory MySli SpoEecznej, 9 (1964). It is reprinted in Popkin, "So Hume Did Read Berkeley," Jourr~alof Philosophy, 61 (1964), 773-78. 3 David Hume, A Treatise o f Human Nature, ed. T . H. Green and T. H. Grose, 2 vols. (London, 1898), I, 341 (hereafter G&G), or the edition of Hume's Treatise ed. Ernest C. Mossner (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1969), pp. 82-83 (hereafter Mossner). 4 Norman Kemp Smith, The Philosophy o f David Hume (London, 1949), p. 297.
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229
a ~ u i t y While .~ Hume does speak briefly of minima (Treatise I, Pt. 11, 8 i), his idea that one point of color is not extended, but two are, simply makes no sense in Berkeley's terms. Their accounts of minima sensibilia as well as of extension are plainly at variance with one another. In the Theory of Vision and the Principles Berkeley defends the radical thesis that extension is a sensation. Berkeley, unlike Locke, accords priority to extension among the primary qualities. And again, unlike Locke, Berkeley uses the so-called mentalization arguments derived from the skeptics, i.e., the appeal to variations in sense experience, in discussing secondary qualitie~.~ He extends the logic of rnentalization to the primary qualities. In so doing he is pursuing a line of reasoning rooted not in Locke but in B a ~ l eThe .~ other steps in Berkeley's articulation of immaterialism are not relevant to present purposes. My concern is only that we should appreciate that Berkeley is extremely sensitive to the role of extension because extension constitutes, for the Cartesians, the essence of body or matter. Accordingly, Berkeley is most anxious to show that color cannot be separated from extension and that both color and extension are sensations. Since color as a sensation could be "in the mind" unproblematically (cf. Principles, 8 49), Berkeley sought very explicitly to do the same thing for extension. Hume proceeds in a radically different way from Berkeley. He does not consider extension a sensation but a manner of perception. He finds color and extension separable. His definition of modern philosophy in terms of the primarylsecondary quality distinction (a topic this putative follower of Berkeley almost never mentions) seems to come from the definition found in B a ~ l eHad . ~ Hume been developing Berkeley's account, I believe he would have given reasons for the differences. Instead, what we have are two independent developments from a common source, Pierre Bayle. Kemp Smith Wee The Works o f George Berkeley, ed. A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop, 9 vols. (London, 1948-57), I, 204 F . (NTV 080 f.). See also Philosophical Commentaries, entries 18, 343, 438-40, 464, 632 in Berkeley's Works, vol. I, or in the new and revised text edited and published by George H. Thomas (Alliance, Ohio, 1976). 6 See the excellent paper by David Berman, "On Missing the Wrong Target. A Criticism of Some Chapters in Jonathan Bennett's Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes," Hermathena, 113 (1972), 54-67. 7 Bayle: Historical and Critical Dictionary-Selections, ed. and trans. Richard Popkin (Indianapolis, Ind., 1965), Article Pyrrho, remark B (hereafter DictionarySelections). 8 Dictionary-Selections, Art. Pyrrho, rem. B, pp. 197 f.
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has sketched Hume's indebtedness to Bayle's article Zeno. Bayle's fantastically elaborated versions of the four paradoxes, his applications of them to seventeenth-century atomists, scholastics, and Cartesians, were the locus classicus of the divisibility question throughout the eighteenth century. We find in Bayle detailed discussions of mathematical points and of the penetrations of dimensions and we find echoes of these very discussions in Hume (Treatise I, Pt. 11, 8 iii). Indeed, as Kemp Smith and Popkin have remarked, a number of passages from Part I1 seem clearly to have been taken from Bayle's Z e n ~ . ~ Bayle as a common source is also evident in Berkeley's minima because they were explicitly designed to resolve Zeno-type problems.1° A typical Philosophical Commentaries entry on the subject reads : "M [inimum] S [ensible] is that wherein there are not contain'd distinguishable parts, now how can that wchhath not sensible parts be divided into sensible parts? if you say it may be divided into insensible parts. I say these are nothings" (Entry 439). Bayle presented Berkeley not only with various forms of the finitelinfinite divisibility paradoxes, but also with an attack on the primary/ secondary quality distinction and an argument to limit the domain of the intelligible to the ideal. Bayle even expresses doubts about the existence of matter.I1 Most crucially, Berkeley's esse is percipil percipere was designed to eliminate that very distinction between what is perceived and what is real which had been the perennial target of the skeptical dialectic.12 A second area of profound disagreement between Berkeley and Hume concerns necessary connections. I again wish to maintain that Berkeley and Hume hold very different positions. The necessary connection matter bears directly on a third and closely related area of disagreement: mind or spirit or mental substance--which is both the most important area of disagreement and the most difficult to appreciate. Via the old Locke-Berkeley-Hume mythology two suggestions continue to be insinuated: (1) Berkeley merely had a weakened Lockean theory of substance, and (2) Hume directed a sustained critical attack upon that remnant in Berkeley. One ad9 See 10 D.
also Richard A. Watson, The Downfall of Cartesianism (The Hague, 1966).
M. Armstrong, Berkeley's Theory of Vision (Melbourne, 1960), p. 43.
11Dictionary-Selections, Art. Zeno, rem. H, pp. 373 f.
12See my Early Reception o f Berkeley's Immaterialism: 1710-1733, 2nd ed.
(The Hague, 1965), and especially my Berkeley (London, 1974).
BAYLE, BERKELEY, AND HUME
23 1
vantage of the emphasis on the role of Malebranche and Bayle, an emphasis recommended by such scholars as A. A. Luce and T. E. Jessop over the past forty years, is that it encourages one to look anew at Berkeley. In the light of the new historical and scholarly data one reads the texts of Berkeley alerted to Cartesian, Malebranchian, and Baylean elements in his thought. On topics as varied as innate ideas or that the soul always thinks, Berkeley sides with the Cartesian tradition.13 Accordingly, not only does a new Berkeley emerge, it becomes clear that Hume's arguments were neither aimed at nor did they strike Berkeley. Hume's thesis that there can be unextended color atoms runs directly counter to Berkeley's claim that "extension, figure, and motion, abstracted from all other qualities, are inconceivable" (Principles § 10). Some of Berkeley's necessary connection claims are rooted in the antiabstractionism which he had articulated in the Introduction to the Principles. "For can there," he asks in Principles Q 5, "be a nicer strain of abstraction than to distinguish the existence of sensible objects from their being perceived, so as to conceive them existing unperceived?" Berkeley goes on to say that he is able to conceive "separately such objects, as it is possible may really exist or be actually perceived asunder." On the other hand, while Hume may claim to be a supporter of Berkeley's attack on abstract general ideas (Treatise I, Pt. I, § vii), he appears to have been unaware of the line Berkeley takes in Principles § 5 and elsewhere. Hume rejects Berkeley's criterion and advances his own principle: "Whatever is distinct, is distinguishable; and whatever is distinguishable, is separable by the thought or imagination."14 As he says, "Where-ever the imagination perceives a difference among ideas, it can easily produce a separation" (Treatise I, Pt. I , $ iii). Like Locke, Hume finds he must dissolve connections. They both found it necessary to deny that there was a discoverable substance to which a quality had a necessary connection; nor was there a necessary connection binding one quality to another. Berkeley, however, did not espouse those denials. Berkeley finds a necessary 13 These themes are central to my Berkeley and "Berkeley: Irish Cartesian," Philosophical Studies (Dublin), 24 (1976), 39-51. Although Descartes did not deny the existence of matter, the immaterialist tendencies in his thought (even in the titles of Meditations 11, V, and VI) are clear. They were clear to Malebranche and Bayle before Berkeley revolutionized the arguments. 1 4 Hume, Treatise, Appendix (G&G,I , 558; Mossner, p. 676).
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connection between color and extension, i.e., between two qualities. He also says that his reason for using the word idea was "because a necessary relation to the mind is understood to be implied by that term," i.e., between a substance and a quality.15 Berkeley thus deals with necessary connections in two very clear sorts of cases. He appeals positively, one might say, to a principle of logical "cement." Thus Berkeley's attack on the primarylsecondary quality distinction, which follows Bayle, utilizes the inseparability of the ideas. Insofar as Hume presents an attack on the primarylsecondary quality distinction at all, it follows from his massive application of separability, i.e., by a radical atomization of our data. There is a hint at Treatise I, Pt. I, 8 vii that Hume appreciates the problem in separating the "colour and figure" of a white marble globe. And in violation of his separability principle, he introduces a new factor: "distinction of reason." But as in the case he admits of the idea of a shade of blue not derived from a simple impression (Treatise I, Pt. I, $ i), Hume is undeterred by exceptions; his principles are made to stand. Nor does he turn to Berkeley's discussion of primary/ secondary qualities. With respect to necessary connections holding among qualities or between a substance and a quality, there is no shortage of comments by Locke. Locke rejects the idea of substance because he can have no clear and distinct idea of it (e.g., Essay 11, xxiii, $ 4). Moreover, no logical necessity binds the constituent elements together in the complex idea (cf. Essay 11, xxiii, § 26 and also IV, vi, 5 § 5 and 10). Indeed, Locke finally entertains the possibility that matter may think, thereby reaching the high point in his doubts about necessary connections.16 On these and related matters, Hume can much more sensibly be interpreted as building upon Lockean rather than Berkeleian themes. The third area of disagreement between Berkeley and Hume specifically concerns mind or spirit or mental substance. Berkeley gives us a collection of brief comments from which we must extrapolate to his doctrine. Supposedly, Part I1 of the Principles would 1 5 Third of the Three Dialogues in Works 11, 235-36. 16 Compare Locke's views on the subject (Essay IV,
I, Pt. IV, § v. (G&G, I, 532; Mossner, p. 298).
iii,
§
6) with Hume's Treatise
BAYLE, BERKELEY, AND HUME
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have dealt with minds but the manuscript was lost on his Italian travels.17 What emerges from his brief comments is a variant of a Cartesian doctrine of mind. I shall examine spirit under three headings: (1) spirit as substance and perceiver of succession, (2) spirit as cause, and (3) spirit as an entity not knowable by idea. (1) At Principles 5 2 Berkeley writes: "This perceiving, active being is what I call mind, spirit, soul or my self. By which words I do not denote any one of my ideas, but a thing entirely distinct from them. .. ." At $ 7 he says that "there is not any other substance than spirit, or that which perceives." He adds that "for an idea to exist in an unperceiving thing, is a manifest contradiction." At $ 26 he tells us that "we perceive a continual succession of ideas." These ideas require a cause. The cause cannot be an idea because ideas are passive and inert. "It must therefore be a substance . . . an incorporeal active substance or spirit." In $ 27 he writes: "Such is the nature of spirit or that which acts, that it cannot be of it self perceived, but only by the effects which it produceth." He adds: "so far as I can see, the words will, soul, spirit, do not stand . . . for any idea at all, but for something which is very different from ideas, and which being an agent cannot be like unto, or represented by, any idea whatsoever." I take the first point to be essentially Cartesian in that like Descartes, Berkeley is saying that our experience comes dual: there is a perceiver and a perceived. When we perceive succession, we accord the status of substance to that which does the perceiving. Thus the spirit is a necessary condition for the perception of succession. I submit that this explains why Berkeley and the Cartesians do not trouble with the question of personal identity. Like Butler, and later Thomas Reid, an identical spirit or substantial self is a presupposition for the perception of succession and for memory. It is a presupposition rooted in the most primitive "given" of human experience. But note Hume's remarks on inhesion in relation to substance: We have no perfect idea of any thing but a perception. A substance is xtirely different from a percepltion. We have, therefore, no idea of a 17 Reported in Berkeley's 25 November 1729 letter to Samuel Johnson of Coniiectlcut, Works 11, 282.
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substance. Inhesion in something is suppos'd to be requisite to support the existence of our perceptions. Nothing appears requisite to support the existence of a perception. We have, therefore, no idea of inhesion.ls In Treatise I, Pi. IV, § v, Hume "pronounces" his "final decision" that the consequence of all our perceptions being separable is that we cannot conceive how they can be tied to any substance-"all our perceptions are not susceptible of a local union, either with what is extended or unextended. . . ."lg At Treatise I, Pt. IV, § vi, he seeks the source of the identity which "binds" the perceptions: "Memory not only discovers the identity, but also contributes to its production, by producing the relation of resemblance among the percept i o n ~ . ' How ' ~ ~ memory can "discover" an identity and also help produce it, is unclear. Does he mean that there must be a component in each perception which is the foundation for the relation of resemblance? This is perhaps the sort of passage which led Butler and Reid to consider as question-begging any appeals to memory in establishing identity. Hume's formulation suggests a dilemma: on the one side he appears to be moving in the direction of a substantial self by locating an identical component among his perceptions; on the other he is asking whether a given "perception" is "really different" from every other. If there is some element which is identical with or resembles elements in other "perceptions" and there is something different, then it would seem that "perceptions" are themselves complex. And if complex, they fall under Hume's ever-present separability principle (i.e., "Every thing, that is different is distinguishable: and every thing, that is distinguishable, may be separated. . ."). I have already cited, under the rubric necessary connection, the passage in which Berkeley says that he chose the word idea "because a necessary relation to the mind is understood to be implied by that term."22 Hume and Berkeley thus hold radically different positions. What is plausible to Hume is profoundly implausible to Berkeley. 18 Hume, Treatise I, Pt. IV, 5 v (G&G, I, 518; Mossner, p. 19 G&G, I, 532; Mossner, p. 298. See also Treatise I, Pt.
282). IV, 5 vi (G&G, I, 534; ii (G&G, I, 495; Mossner, p. 257).
Mossner, p. 300), and Treatise I, Pt. IV, § 20 G&G, I, 541; Mossner, p. 308. z1 E.g., Treatise I, Pt. 11, 5 iii (G&G, I, 343; Mossner, p. 85). See also the discussion of the identity of perceived objects and the "falsifying" role of the imagination at Treatise I, Pt. IV, 5 ii (G&G, I, 496-97; Mossner, pp. 258-59) and C. V. Salmon, T h e Central Problem o f David Hume's Philosophy (Halle, 1929). 22 Berkeley, Works 11, 235-36.
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Berkeley had already seen the difficulties generated by Locke's attack on substance. Given that awareness, his reversion to a substance type philosophy shows this to be a considered feature of his position. At Principles $ 98 Berkeley writes: "Time therefore being nothing, abstracted from the succession of ideas in our minds, it follows that the duration of any b i t e spirit must be estimated by the number of ideas or actions succeeding each other in that same spirit or mind. Hence it is a plain consequence that the soul always thinks. . . ." George Davie has called to my attention that Principles $ 112 suggests an analysis which apparently eluded Hume. There Berkeley maintains that motion is of necessity relative: "So that to conceive motion, there must be at least conceived two bodies, whereof the distance or position in regard to each other is varied. Hence if there was one only body in being, it could not possibly be moved." Hume worries the problem of the duration of a single object, ignoring Berkeley's reciprocity requirement. One thing cannot move except in relation to another thing. Berkeley also holds to an analogue of this thesis, i.e. the "reciprocity" between spirit and ideas and the consequent requirement that there be an identical spirit if successive ideas are to be perceived. (2) Spirit-as-cause or agent is rooted in both the Cartesian and the Aristotelian-scholastic traditions. Berkeley's own formulation of this causal account is complicated by our difficulty in understanding how spirits can do anything, given the contrast between a human spirit and the divine spirit. If ("real") ideas depend for their existence on God's will rather than ours, then even in "moving our leg" our several perceived ideas do not appear to depend in any causal fashion upon Although Berkeley's talk about spirit as cause has sometimes been held to fall under Hume's anticausal strictures, Berkeley does not take causal connections to be necessary ones. (3) The thesis that spirits are not known by idea is a central ingredient in Berkeley's doctrine of notions. There are clear statements in the Philosophical Commentaries, the Principles, and the Three Dialogues where Berkeley maintained (a) that spirits can be known and talk about them is meaningful, and (b) that they cannot be known by (passive) ideas. Some of the relevant passages (e.g. 23Cf. Anita Dunleavy Fritz, "Berkeley's Self-Its Journal of the History of Ideas, 15 (1954), 554-72.
Origin in Malebranche,"
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Principles $ $ 2, 27) have been cited. At Principles $ 142 Berkeley writes: "Spirits and ideas are things wholly different . . . to expect that by any multiplication or enlargement of our faculties, we may be enabled to know a spirit as we do a triangle, seems as absurd as if we should hope to see a sound."24 In the second edition (1734), Berkeley added a brief discussion of notions. But one point is clear: ~ e r k e l e ymaintained that spirits, although knowable,-could not be known by idea. Given the traditional claim that Hume is challenging Berkeley on substance or mind, it is strange that on the technical issue of notions, Hume has nothing to say,25 although at the opening of Treatise I, Pt. IV, $ v, he does ask what substance-philosophers "mean by substance and inhesion." He then comments: "I desire those philosophers, who pretend that we have an idea of the substance of our minds, to point out the impression that produces it, and tell distinctly after what manner that impression operates, and from what object it is deriv'd." It is not obvious that Hume has an opponent in this dispute. He clearly does not have Berkeley in mind. His argument rests on the assumption that all putative knowledge claims must somehow be reducible to impressions, although as we have seen in connection with extension, it is an assumption Hume is at times inclined to ignore in favor of "manner of perception," "secret springs," etc. There simply is no suggestion that Hume is aware of Berkeley's thesis that we cannot have an idea of a spirit. Leibniz, in his commentary in the New Essays on Locke's similar antisubstance sentiments (Essay 11, xxiii), says, "In distinguishing two things in substance, the attributes or predicates, and the common subject of these predicates, it is no wonder that we can conceive nothing particular in this subject. It must be so, indeed, since we have already- separated from it all the attributes in which we could conceive any detail. Thus to demand something more . . . is to demand the impossible. . . ."26 Hume would probably not have been 24 Similar discussions are to be found in the third of the Three Dialogues, Works 11, 23 1 f. 25 The doctrine of notions was hardly a secret. Hume's contemporary, Thomas Reid, writes: "The whole of Bishop Berkeley's system depends upon the distinction between notions and ideas . . ." (Essays on the Intellectual Powers, 11, xi, in The Works o f Thomas Reid, ed. Sir William Hamilton, with an Introduction by H. M. Bracken [Hildesheim, 19671, I, 289a). 26 Leibniz, New Essays Concerning Human Understanding, trans. A. G . Langley, 3rd ed. (La Salle, Ill., 1949), p. 226.
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appeased by Leibniz' comment, but Humean-type arguments have a long history within the development of nominalist thought. 1 mention Leibniz because he offers a rejoinder to the attack on substance and also because in reading Berkeley's Principles, he wrote in the margin of his copy: "Much of this is correct and agrees with my sense. . . . True substances are Monads, or perceivers. . . ."27 My overall point is that when one looks at Hume's discussions in the Treatise on personal identity, on the identity of continuants, on inhesion, on spirits as perceivers of succession, on the knowability of spirits, on spirits as causes, etc.-in brief, that cluster of issues related to spirits and mental substances-the differences with Berkeley are profound. I find no evidence that Hume was developing, continuing, drawing paradoxes from, or exploring the skepticism said to be inherent in Berkeley's arguments. In reference to extension/ minima, necessary connections, and spirits Hume appears to start from non-Berkeleian premisses and to draw non-Berkeleian conclusions. There are no indications in those places where one would expect to find them that Hume took cognizance of the relevant Berkeleian points. The issue is worth consideration because even in the Hume bicentennial year some philosophers continued to speak of Locke-Berkeley-Hume as if they were a "team." I have shown that there are good reasons why that traditional perspective has been of virtually no help in interpreting Hume.
I1 Recent studies appear to bear out Popkin's suggestion that the influences upon Hume are much more complex than the traditional view suggests. Nowhere is this more obvious than in the attention Books I1 and I11 of the Treatise have been receiving. Thus PA11 Ardal has been urging us to take seriously those parts of the Treatise which Hume obviously took seriously. And the study of Bayle's in27 Willy Kabitz, "Leibniz und Berkeley," Sitzungsberichte der Preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften (Philosophisch-Historische Klasse, 1932), pp. 623-36. Given Berkeley's clear texts and the remarks by Reid and Leibniz, Hume's claims are puzzling: "The Author [of the Treatise] has not anywhere that I remember denied the Immateriality of the Soul in the common Sense of the Word. He only says, That that Question did not admit of any distinct Meaning; because we had no distinct Idea of Substance. This Opinion may be found everywhere in Mr. Lock, as well as in Bishop Berkley." See [David Hume], A Letter from a Gentleman to his Friend in Edinburgh, ed. Ernest C. Mossner and John V. Price (Edinburgh, 1967).
23 8
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fluence has received new impetus from Jean-Paul Pittion's brilliant work on Hume's M e r n ~ r a n d aIn . ~ ~his paper at the McGill University Hume Bicentennial Congress, Pittion provided a matrix to impose on the Memoranda whereby we could locate the sources of the entries in Sections I and 11. The matrix is a particular set of periodicals. Pittion contends that Hume used several identifiable pieces of periodical literature as his guide to the reading of Bayle. As a glance at Bayle's Rbsponse aux questions d'un provincial, Continuation des pense'es diverses, etc., reveals, some sort of guide is necessary. Kemp Smith had already traced some elements in Hume's Dialogues concerning natural religion to Bayle's C o n t i n ~ a i i o nHe .~~ also discovered the source of Hume's discussion of Spinoza in Bayle's Dictionary article Spino~a.~O But the Memoranda, published by Mossner in 1948, have defied d e ~ i p h e r i n g .Mossner once said, ~~ "What treasures are to be found in Bayle, but what an effort to dig them up! Proper source for a twenty-one-year-old burning with intellectual curiosity, Bayle is definitely to be avoided by the middleaged who have little spare time on their hands."32 Pittion has demonstrated that, like Mossner, even the young Hume was probably overwhelmed by Bayle, and found in early eighteenth-century periodicals a guide to those Baylean topics which most interested him. It is clear that Bayle's independent effects on Berkeley and Hume are only now beginning to be sorted out. But there is, in process of development, a wholly new way of looking at Berkeley and Hume and the Scottish Enlightenment. Berkeley was always taken seriously in Scotland. The first extended criticism was by Andrew Baxter in 1733. George Turnbull, Thomas Reid's teacher, lectured on Berkeley in the 1720s. Members of the Rankenian Club seem also to have studied Berkeley and to have carried on a correspondence with him.33When Berkeley set sail for Rhode Island he was accompanied by John Smibert of the Rankenians. The new way of looking at Berkeley and Hume and the Scottish ~ n l i ~ h t e n m e n tnot, however, an extension of traditional historical Forthcoming in the Journal o f the History o f Philosophy.
Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp Smith,
2nd ed. (London, 1947), cf. Appendix B. 30 See his Philosophy o f David Hume, Appendix to Ch. xxiii. 31 In the Journal o f the History o f Ideas, 9 (1948), 492-518. 32 Ernest C. Mossner, Life o f David Hume (Austin, Texas, 1954), pp. 78-79. 33 Cf. G . E. Davie, "Berkeley's Impact on Scottish Philosophers," Philosophy, 40 (1965), 222-34. See also Mossner, Life o f David Hume, pp. 48-49. 28 29
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data collecting, although that remains essential to the larger enterprise. What is new is counting aspects of the social and political history of the period as philosophically relevant. The sort of thing I have in mind is well illustrated in George Davie's superb essay, "The Social Significance of Scottish P h i l ~ s o p h y . "The ~ ~ net effect of this approach is to place philosophers at "cultural center-stage." Philosophical theories of human nature, for example, take on crucial importance in reference to the development of economic policy, educational theory, racism, etc. Davie's McGill Hume Bicentennial paper, "Berkeley, Hume and the Central Problem of Classical Scottish Philosophy," is rich, provocative, and complex. A brief sketch of his account is in order because it appears ;o run counter to what I have been saying about Berkeley and Hume. I say "appears" because Davie is not trying to reestablish the old connections. He is (and has been) arguing for a new way of looking at the entire Scottish Enlightenment-and the roles of Berkeley and Hutcheson in creating the intellectual conditions which gave rise to it. With respect to Berkeley, Davie shifts from the traditional emphasis on the Principles and epistemological issues to the vast sweep of Alciphron. Davie locates what he calls the "creative element in this Irish ,,Enlightenmenty' not only in the systems Berkeley and Hutcheson built to answer the freethinkers, but also in the "very sharp and stimulating tension" between their philosophies. He finds their systems to have been constructed from "Mandeville's economism, Shaftesbury's aestheticism and the empiricist radical reductivism. . ." It is in the tension between Hutcheson and Berkeley, generated by this concern over freethinkers, that the new kind of philosophy associated with the Scottish school develops. These phi10,sophers seek to "connect the treatment of the problem of the perception of body with the problem of the perception of society, and both with the problem of ethics. . . .''3%e concludes that these tensions between Berkeley and Hutcheson continued to stimulate Scottish philosophers for generations. I cannot even begin to do justice to the richness of Davie's thesis. But I do think that it puts the whole question of Hume's relation to
.
3 4 Published as the Dow Lecture for Dundee University, 1973. See also his Democratic Intellect, 2nd ed. (Edinburgh, 1964). 35 Forthcoming in McGill Hume Studies, ed. David Fate Norton, Nicholas Capaldi, and Wade Robison (San Diego: Austin Hill Press, 1978).
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Berkeley in a new light-one which I find eminently plausible-and which I hope will be expanded upon in the future. Indeed, it seems to me clearly to be the most promising route for Hume scholars to pursue. For present purposes, my point is quite simple: Davie is offering us a very different way of looking at Berkeley's relation to Scottish philosophy, a way which does not undercut the view of Bayle, Berkeley, and Hume which I have been presenting. There is however still another area within which Bayle-BerkeleyHume can be discussed. Bayle offered a wide range of skeptical arguments which, as we have seen, affected Berkeley and Hume. Bayle was also a storehouse of Cartesian and Malebranchian arguments. This side of Bayle found a sympathetic response in Berkeley but not in Hume. Similarly, Bayle's interest in history affected Hume but not Berkeley. I have no new explanation for the propensity of the skeptic to write history. One would think that the skeptical dialectic would be thoroughly effective in undermining historical research. Yet Bayle was a zealous and critical historian. Bayle wrote at the end of the era of Providential history, when the human drama was no longer automatically seen as the unfolding of God's plan in history. Bayle was totally familiar with the arguments engendered by the Reformation as to which church was the true church, which book was the Bible, and how correctly to interpret the Scriptures. He also knew well the literature being produced in which biblical texts, translations, etc., were being subjected to critical examination. And he knew that it was possible so to subject Catholic or Calvinist religious issues to skeptical assault that a total "historical Pyrrhonism" would result. Nevertheless, Bayle wrote history. He may have had doubts about mathematics, science, and metaphysics, but he thought there was much to be learned in studying human events and their patterns. Given Bayle's philosophical influence on Hume, given that Bayle and Hume devoted a large part of their literary output to history, a brief comparison of them as historians is in order. There are similarities, but more often there are differences. In his "Dissertation Concerning the Project," his proposal for a historical and critical dictionary (1692), Bayle comments at some length concerning history and the historian's task. He raises these issues because the Dictionary was originally conceived as a set of corrections in matters of fact to the Dictionary of Moreri. He writes:
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It may, perhaps, be observed, that those things, which seem the most abstracted and fruitless in the Mathematics, are productive, at least, of the following advantage, that they lead us to the discovery of truths which cannot be doubted of; whereas, historical enquiries, and researches into the actions of men, leave us always in the dark, and ever furnish occasions for fresh contests. But how imprudent it is to touch this string! I assert that historical truths may be carried on to a more undoubted degree of certainty, than what geometrical truths are brought to, provided we consider these two kinds of truth according to the species of certainty which is peculiar to them..
..
Bayle contends that there is much to be said for keeping track of historical falsehoods. At the very least it may encourage people "to judge more cautiously of their neighbour, and to escape the snares, which satyr and flattery spread everywhere to catch unwary readers. .. ." We should search, in vain, for these moral advantages in the most refined parts of Algebra. Besides, with submission to the Mathematicians, they cannot so easily attain to the requisite certainty, as Historians can arrive at the certainty necessary for their purpose. No good objection can ever be raised against the following certain fact, that Caesar beat Pompey; and on what principles soever two persons may proceed in disputing, they will scarce find any thing more immovable than the following proposition, Caesar and Pompey have existed, and were not merely a modification of the minds of those who wrote their lives. But as to the object of the Mathematics, it would not only be a very difficult task to prove that it exists out of our minds, but it may also be very easily shewn that it can be no more than an idea of the human mind. . . Thus it is more certain metaphysically, that Cicero has existed out of the understanding of any other man, than it is certain that the object of the Mathematics exists out of our understanding.3"
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Bayle of course also appreciated that certitude about matters of fact could be difficult to come by. In the Dictionary, article Zuerius, rem. P, Bayle discusses the formal charge that Jurieu had, before 1,200 people, preached the doctrine that one ought to hate one's neighbors-particularly when they were, like the Socinians, heretics. Bayle introduces two considerations: " I f it were false, that a Minister preached before twelve hundred persons the heresy of the hatred of one's neighbour, n o man would have dared to charge him with it 36Bayle's Dictionary, ed. and trans. John Peter Bernard, Thomas Birch, and John Lockman, 10 vols. (London, 1734-41), X, 386-87.
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three days after." But on the other hand, "If it were true that a Minister preached that heresy before twelve hundred persons, he would not have dared to deny it publicly three days after."37 After an extremely lengthy account of the episode, Bayle concludes: "If when things were still fresh, some one or other had taken the pains to clear them up, as I have done this, we should not be obliged to admit on so many occasions an historical Pyrrh~nism."~~ David Fate Norton takes Hume's historical work to be an extension of his skepticism and argues that history and philosophy are "inextricably connected in all of Hume's and that Hume sought to extend the new skeptical science from an account of human nature to the history in which human nature has been involved, with the philosophy illuminating the history and vice versa. Unfortunately, so far as a "science of history" was concerned, "one needed to know facts about the past to find out 'the springs and principles' of the human mind; but one had, at the same time, to decide what these springs and principles were in order to reach a decision, and even then only a strictly personal decision, as to what the facts were."40 Similarly, Duncan Forbes writes, "the Treatise of Human Nature was designed to be a contribution to an empirical science of man, and history was an essential part, a laboratory of such a science."41 When one reflects on Bayle's own view that a study of human emotions is essential to a study of history, one sees that, in a larger sense, Hume may be operating within Bayle's historiographical categories. Bayle had even offered psychological reasons when he sought to explain human conduct in religious contexts. In addition, something like a moral sense doctrine is already to be found in Bayle. Parenthetically, it should be recalled that Bayle's influence is evident in the writings of two generally accepted Hume sources, Mandeville and S h a f t e s b ~ r y .(Mandeville ~~ may actually have been 37 Ibid., X, 296. 38 Ibid., p. 302. 39 "History and
Philosophy in Hume's Thought," in David Hume: Philosophical Historian, ed. David Fate Norton and Richard H. Popkin (Indianapolis, Ind., 1965), p. xxxiii. 40 Ibid., pp. xlviii-xlix. 41 Hume, Hisroy o f Great Britain: The Reigns o f James I and Charles I, ed. Duncan Forbes (Harmondsworth, Eng., 1970), p. 9. 42 The definitive study of Bayle is Elisabeth Labrousse, Pierre Bayle, 2 vols. (The Hague, 1963-64). Cf. I, 177n and 249n. See also David Fate Norton, "Shaftesbury
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Bayle's student; Shaftesbury was an intimate friend.) In any case there is in both Bayle and Hume that so-called naturalism which has been an accepted part of Bayle's Pyrrhonism and a source of perplexity in Hume. There are also fundamental differences. There is the theme of the priority accorded historical fact over mathematics. Bayle takes this very seriously. In his article Manicheans, rem. D, he writes, "There is nothing more foolish than to argue against the facts. The axiom, 'From the act to the potency is a valid inference', is as clear as that two plus two equals four."43 In Paulicians, rem. E, he also writes, "it is no more evident that four and four makes eight than it is evident that if a thing has happened, it is possible. 'From the act to the potency is a valid inference' is one of the clearest and most incontestable axioms of all metaphy~ics."~~ Despite the historical Pyrrhonism one finds on occasion in Bayle, despite the evident delight he takes in juxtaposing conflicting reports, he seems often to have as much faith in fact as in metaphysics. Hume, on the other hand, does not rely on the metaphysical axiom: it has happened, therefore it is possible. He appeals to: what is separable in the imagination is separable in reality. In many passages in Book I of the Treatise, Hume is prepared to challenge the very foundations of matters of fact. I must emphasize that, with rare exceptions, when he deals with matters of historical fact, Hume does not write "critical history." He comes close to it in "Of Miracles" and "Of the Populousness of Ancient Nations," but he does not set historian against historian as does Bayle. Both Bayle and Hume are to support various metaphysical principles, even as they are ultimately inclined, for different reasons, to be skeptical about them. But Hume's appeal to the axiom that what is separable by the imagination is separable in reality and his distinction between matters of fact and relations of ideas, indicate that Hume, unlike Bayle, is prepared to grant epidemic priority to logic over fact. However, at Treatise I, Pt. IV, § i, Hume advances a "scepticism with regard to reason" to undermine logic and Two Scepticisms," Filosofia (Supplemento a1 fascicolo IV, 1968), 713-24, and J. C . A. Gaskin, "Hume, Atheism, and the 'Interested Obligation' of Morality," forthcoming in McGill Hume Studies (1978). 43 Popkin, Bayle-Selections, p. 152. 44 Ibid., p. 168.
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by the non-Baylean technique of raising the problem of our ever being able to know a logical truth because of the probabilities that we shall make errors in applying (and in checking) logical princip l e ~ . ~That ' skepticism is, in turn, countered by the appeal to nature-an appeal which continues to puzzle commentators. One is saved by nature according to the Pyrrhonians, Bayle, and Hume. Bayle admittedly grounds religious belief in divine grace but he talks often of the natural and psychological foundations for all forms of belief. With respect to metaphysics, Bayle's sympathies were with Descartes and Malebranche. Moreover, when Bayle offers a "scepticism with regard to reason" it bears no resemblance to Hume's. Bayle uses theological principles. He is often to be found setting philosophical axioms against theological ones, although at bottom he holds a most un-Humean thesis: "The bark of Jesus Christ is not made for sailing on this stormy sea [of philosophical disputations], but for taking shelter from this tempest in the haven of f aith."46 I believe that their choices of different metaphysical axioms is behind some of the differences Bayle and Hume display in reference to history. By that I mean that Bayle shows an interest in the historical details which, with rare exceptions, is lacking in Hume and that Hume's philosophical dissatisfaction with the domain of matters of fact taints his history. In other words, his choice of a different metaphysical axiom from Bayle's reflects different attitudes toward facts. Both Bayle and Hume are anxious to tell us what we should learn about human nature from the historical narrative, but Hume's interest in the lessons is single-minded, whereas Bayle gives us layers of interpretations on top of an already complex and fascinating set of matters of fact. I began by discussing a philosophical topic on which Hume may seem to be derivative from Berkeley and I showed that Bayle was the likely (and independent) source for both Berkeley and Hume. In pressing the case for Hume's independence from Berkeley on narrowly philosophical topics, I mentioned the contrary evidence supplied by George Davie. His thesis is that two Irish philosophers, Berkeley and Hutcheson, provided the framework in which Scottish 45 Cf. Richard H. Popkin, "David Hume: His Pyrrhonism and His Critique of Pyrrhonism," in Hume, ed. V. C. Chappell (New York, 1966). 46 From Bayle's Third Clarification, in Popkin, Bayle-Selectioizs, p. 423.
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philosophy developed-with the central problems those of the foundations for individual and social moral awareness within the context of increased commercial activity. Finally, I sketched a comparison between Bayle and Hume as historians, always bearing in mind that roughly half of Hume's literary work was historical. I hope I have rendered implausible the traditional Locke-BerkeleyHume I have no new secret source whose influence will explain or clarify all of the difficulties we find in Hume. Just as the American bicentennial has prompted Americans to rethink sources, so the net effect of the Hume bicentennial meetings has been to underscore the complexity of Hume's thought. We shall have to study the new discoveries-e.g., Robert Connon's remarkable work on the Treatise and the " A b s t r a ~ t , "Jean-Paul ~~ Pittion's disclosures about Bayle and the Memoranda, and George Davie's thesis about Hutcheson, Berkeley, and the Scottish Enlightenment. An entire layer of long-forgotten sources including Malebranche, Mandeville, Shaftesbury, Ramsay, Turnbull, and others must be reexamined. We are in a good position to begin the third century of Hume studies.
McGill University 4 7 In denying the traditional Berkeley-Hume tie I do not propose to minimize the direct Locke-Hume connections. Hume's indebtedness to Locke with respect to doctrines of substance, memory, and identity is clear. 48 Cf. Robert W. Connon, "Some MS Corrections by Hume in the Third Volume of his Treatise o f H u m a n Nature," Long R o o m [Trinity College, Dublin], 11 (1975), 14-22, and "Some Hume MS Alterations on a Copy of the Abstract," Journal o f the History o f Philosophy, 14 (1976), 353-56. And "The Naturalism of Hume Revisited," forthcoming in McGill H u m e Studies (1978).
