Hume on Miracles, and: Hume on Natural Religion (review)

Hume Studies Volume XXIV, Number 1, April 1998, pp. 195-200 STANLEY TWEYMAN, ed. Hume on Miracles. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996. Pp. xii+168. ISBN 1 85506 444 8. $72.00 (cloth). ISBN 1 85506 443 X. £14.95 (paper). STANLEY TWEYMAN, ed. Hume on Natural Religion. Bristol: Thoemmes Press, 1996. Pp. xiv+334. ISBN 1 85506 451 0. $72.00 (cloth). ISBN 1 85506 450 2. £14.95 (paper). Stanley Tweyman's two recent anthologies, Hume on Miracles and Hume on Natural Religion, are part of a series by Thoemmes Press of early reactions to classic philosophical, political and economic works. Tweyman's volumes —as well as others in this series—aim to make rare critical texts available at an affordable price. Scholars should applaud this goal in view of the time and expense typically involved in tracking down the originals in rare book rooms or on microfilm. We judge anthologies of this sort based on three factors : (1) the choice of the selections, (2) the helpfulness of the editorial comments, and, most importantly, (3) the accuracy of the text. While there are limitations to Tweyman's volumes in each of these categories, if students and scholars are aware of them, his volumes may be very useful. As to choice of selections, most of the items appear to be based on T. E. Jessop's A Bibliography of David Hume (1938). Although Jessop's bibliography does contain many important early responses to Hume, his list is not exhaustive. For example, Jessop does not list Philip Skelton's Ophiomaches or Deism Revealed (1749), which is the earliest critique of Hume's "Of Miracles" uncovered to date. There are also additional reviews of Hume's religious publications in the Critical Review, London Review, and English Review, which Jessop also does not list. Accordingly, Tweyman's anthologies reflect the limitations of Jessop's bibliography. In the volume on miracles, Tweyman has included not only the early responses listed in Jessop but also a reprint of Hume's "Of Miracles" from the first Enquiry. Although a minor problem, the inclusion of this text is puzzling since, unlike most of the items in the two anthologies, Hume's "Of Miracles" is widely available. Further, this choice is inconsistent with Tweyman's apparent decision to exclude Hume's writings on natural religion from the other volume. Most importantly, in a note in the introduction Tweyman states that he would have included other early 196 Book Reviews responses "had space permitted." Excluding "Of Miracles" would have allowed for at least one additional item. As to the helpfulness of his editorial comments, Tweyman only provides four pages of introduction to each of the volumes, and includes no editorial annotations. His comments in the miracles volume principally state that Hume's essay was influential. His comments in the volume on natural religion principally emphasize that Hume was a mitigated skeptic—as defined in Section XII of the first Enquiry—and that Cleanthes at the close of the Dialogues represents Hume as a mitigated skeptic. Emphasizing the Cleanthes thesis in a volume like this is puzzling, since the early responses almost unanimously argue that Philo is Hume's mouthpiece throughout the Dialogues. Thus, if we adopt Tweyman's Cleanthes thesis, then we must see the perspective of the early responses as ill-founded. The reverse view, though, is more reasonable, namely that the early respondents had a better grasp of eigtheenth-century concealed writing techniques and, accordingly, many twentieth-century interpretations of the Dialogues are ill-founded.1 In addition to the limitations of Tweyman's editorial comments, there are problems with his editorial input on bibliographical matters. First, he does not provide complete bibliographical references to his selected items and, thus, users must rely on a secondary bibliographical source for this information. Second, the headings of the selections from review journals do not reveal the names of the journals from which the selections appear. Instead this information is listed in the table of contents. Third, there is confusion as to the copy texts from which Tweyman derived the first three items in the volume on natural religion. In the table of contents, Tweyman notes that these items are...