The Pursuit of Certainty

1. A Man of Moderation

CHAPTER 1 A Man ofModeration Puritanism does not often breed defenders of pagan virtues. Yet it was partly because he grew up in a culture preoccupied with hell that David Hume came to speak so profoundly for the tolerant civilization, devoted to living gracefully here and now, that flourished in the great Whig houses of eighteenth-century England. He was born in Edinburgh, in 1711, the younger son of the Laird of Ninewells , a modest and picturesque estate near the village of Chirnside. After a few years at the University of Edinburgh and a faint-hearted attempt to study law, he settled on being a man of letters. At twenty-three, he left home to seclude himself in France for three years; and in the cloisters of the Jesuits' college in La Fleche where Descartes had been a student, he wrote most of his revolutionary Treatise on Human Nature. The book was barely noticed when it appeared. But the hopeful author, "being naturally of a sanguine and cheerful temper," soon consoled himself and retired to Nine-wells to prepare a volume of essays, which was published in 1742 and met with some small success. As his literary efforts did not, however, provide enough to supplement his slender patrimony, he was obliged to look for more immediate ways of increasing his income. For a year, he lived as a companion to the mad Marquis of Annandale. Then in 1747, he became secretary to General St. Clair, and attended him on some clumsy and ill-fated expeditions, as well as in his embassies to Vienna and Turin. Hume performed his duties carefully, observed with detached interest the warlike operations in which he participated, and enjoyed the sights on the way. It was amusing to be presented at court in Vienna, especially since he could not manage a bow, but he disapproved of Maria Theresa's efforts to establish a "Court of Chastity." Everything was most enlightening: "There are great advantages in travelling," he wrote in his 4 David Hume journal to his brother, "and nothing serves more to remove prejudices." He had not, for instance, expected to find Germany so "fine a Country, full of industrious honest People ... it gives a Man of Humanity Pleasure to see that so considerable a Part of Mankind as the Germans are in so tolerable a Condition ." He predicted (with the insight that led him to foresee a little later the disturbed state of America) that if Germany were united, "it would be the greatest Power that ever was in the World...."1 By the time his appointment with General St. Clair came to an end, he had become the David Hume familiar to us, no longer a rawboned, rustic Scotsman , disposed to be intense and a recluse, but a portly man of the world. He still spoke English with a broad Scottish accent, and French very badly, all in a thin, somewhat effeminate voice. His appearance was even more misleading, or so it seemed to one companion who has given us the most vivid picture of him: His face was broad and fat, his mouth wide, and without any other expression than that of imbecility. His eyes vacant and spiritless, and the corpulence of his whole person, was far better fitted to communicate the idea of a turtle-eating alderman than of a refined philosopher.... His wearing an uniform added greatly to his natural awkwardness, for he wore it like a grocer of the trained bands.2 But the portraits by his friend Allan Ramsay show more than the blandnessa half amused, half melancholy man, with a dreamy quizzical expression, a man who enjoyed watching mankind and did not mind being thought more simple than he was. He appears to be an accepting man, resigned to whatever fortune granted him. And it is not surprising to find him writing as he did to Henry Home when, at the end of St. Clair's campaign, it seemed that he would return home with no gain in resources: I shall stay a little time in London, to see if anything new will present itself. If not, I shall return cheerfully to books, leisure, and solitude in the country. An elegant table has not spoilt my relish for sobriety; nor gaiety for study, and frequent disappointments have taught me, that nothing need be despaired of, as well as that nothing can be depended on.3 1. Letters ofDavid Hume, ed. by J. Y. T. Greig (Oxford, 1932), vol...