“An Irishman cannot have wit”: Hume and the prejudice of national characters

The secrets of “Characters”

“In France and Italy no Body ever drinks pure Wine, except in the greatest Heats of Summer”, declares Hume in Of National Characters. Did he read it or drink it? The essay is published at the end of November 1748, when Hume is coming back from Turin. Agreeably to his own recommendations (“we should not comprehend every Individual under the same Character”) in 1753 he pours some water into his words: “few drink pure Wine.” ¹

We still don’t know much about this essay. It is unclear if it was composed before the letter of 1748 written on his travels; here, after observing that the inhabitants of the not so wild Stiria are ugly and scarcely human and those of the wilder Carinthia beautiful and human, Hume concludes: “they are both Germans subject to the House of Austria; so that it wou’d puzzle a Naturalist or Politician to find the Reason of so great and remarkable a Difference.” ² According the essay, where Hume discovers “every-where” signs of “Sympathy or Contagion of Manners”, a very extensive established government “spreads a national Character over the whole Empire, and communicates to every Part a Similitude of Manners” and “the same national Character commonly follows the Authority of the Government to a precise Limit or Boundary.” ³

It is unclear if the essay was composed before the Esprit des lois, where Montesquieu asserts that in the hot climates “l’âme est souverainement émue par tout ce qui a du rapport à l’union des deux sexes,”⁴ while in the cold “les liqueurs fortes […] y peuvent être convenables” and “le climat semble forcer à une certaine ivrognerie de nation.” ⁵ In the essay the “only” weighty observation concerning “the Difference of Men in different Climates” is the “Vulgar” one: “People in the northern Regions have a greater Inclination to strong Liquors, and those in the southern to Love and Women.” Yet, if not false (as it probably is), the fact “may be accounted for by moral Causes;” and, if true and accountable from physical causes (as it probably is not), it only means that “the Climate may affect the grosser and more bodily Organs.” ⁶

It is not completely clear why the essay, which replaces the supposedly politically offensive Of the Protestant Succession, includes a long religiously offensive footnote on the character of priests, which even today is deemed “out of all proportion to the needs of an essay on ‘national characters’;” ⁷ nor why in 1753 Hume adds a racially offensive footnote on the natural inferiority of negroes, which contradicts Montesquieu’s view (the inferiority is caused by the excessive heat), accounting for the inferiority without “Recourse to physical Causes” as far as regards the nations living between the tropics, and appealing to their original natural inferiority as far as regards the negroes.⁸

Briefly, as Hume’s official Biographer puts it, “something of a mystery arises concerning the time of composition of the essay Of national Characters.” ⁹

Yet, we do know a few things. Hume arrives in Turin about the 15^th of May and leaves on the 29^th of November. On the 31^st of October 1748 someone brings a copy of the Esprit from Genève to Turin and offers it to the Secretary of State of Foreign Affairs.¹⁰ In April 1749 Hume writes to Montesquieu allowing that he had read the Esprit “l’automne passé en Italie;” ¹¹ but in his long letter he never refers to the constant relation between laws and climate, as he does instead in the 1751 moral Enquiry.¹² Reading between the lines of his reply of May 1749, Montesquieu seems to be saying: I know that you knew. He acknowledges Hume’s letter as full of “réflexions si judicieuses,” but he “aime mieux” to mention that “belle dissertation” where Hume ascribes “une beaucoup plus grande influence aux causes morales qu’aux causes physiques.” And Montesquieu makes a gently ironic remark: “Il m’a paru—autant que je suis capable d’en juger...