Note 74 — ADDITIONAL NOTES AND ILLUSTRATIONS TO CHAPTER II.

The following quotation is from the Treatise "composed before twenty-five":—"Nor does this reasoning only prove, that morality consists not in any relations, that are the objects of science; but if examined, will prove with equal certainty, that it consists not in any matter of fact, which can be discovered by the understanding. This is the second part of our argument; and if it can be made evident, we may conclude, that morality is not an object of reason. But can there be any difficulty in proving, that vice and virtue are not matters of fact, whose existence we can infer by reason?... So that when you pronounce any action or character to be vicious, you mean nothing, but that from the constitution of your nature you have a feeling or sentiment of blame from the contemplation of it. Vice and virtue, therefore, may be compared to sounds, colours, heat and cold, which, according to modern philosophy, are not qualities in objects, but perceptions in the mind: and this discovery in morals, like that other in physics, is to be regarded as a considerable advancement of the speculative sciences; though, like that too, it has little or no influence on practice." Treatise, Book III., part 1, Vol. II., 170, 1.

This 3rd Book of the Treatise was not printed till Hume was in his 30th year; and he felt some hesitation respecting the latter paragraph. "Is not this," he asks Hutcheson, "laid a little too strong? I desire your opinion of it, though I cannot entirely promise to conform myself to it. I wish from my heart I could avoid concluding, that since morality, according to your opinion, as well as mine, is determined merely by sentiment, it regards only human nature and human life.... If morality were determined by reason, that is the same to all rational beings; but nothing but experience can assure us that the sentiments are the same. What experience have we with regard to superior beings? How can we ascribe to them any sentiments at all? They have implanted those sentiments in us for the conduct of life like our bodily sensations, which they possess not themselves." (Burton, I. 119.) The paragraph was, however, published; and helped by consequence to foster in its author's mind that Utilitarian theory of morals respecting which many late writers have been only Hume's copyists. In this very Treatise he did in fact apply that theory to the most important of Social questions (see same Bk., Pt. II. Sec. 12, more especially p. 299), and was thus led into lax conclusions respecting those bonds between Man and Woman which underlie the other foundations of Society. Hume shares this blame with his disciples; for leading Utilitarians are apt to shew by their own domestic relations that the principle, when applied, results in maxims lower than our present English tone of thought upon this subject.

But let us suppose that Hume had lived to analyze Rousseau's Confessions. Would he not have urged with the force of truth, that to animalize a Man is to destroy his Manhood, to weaken his judgment and impair his Moral sense? Would he not have argued from Rousseau the depraved boy, to Rousseau the shop-man and footman, and pointed out that in such cases Truth, Honesty, and Gratitude become mere names and shadows?—No one could have replied that Hume was wrong in fact and experience, but some might have said that all which lowers the supremacy of the Moral sense lowers the Manhood of Man. As Hume admitted the fact of a Moral sense, he might possibly have felt the cogency of this argument.