David Hume: Prophet of the Counter-Revolution

1. History as a Weapon of Counter-Revolution

Prophet_051-100.indd 79 3/2/12 10:28 PM II The Revolution and the Role ofHistory l HISTORY AS A WEAPON OF COUNTER- REVOLUTION We have examined at the beginning of chapter I the prevailing eighteenth-century view of history. Some further general considerations on the subject are necessary at this point, however, since it is especially at the time of the Revolution in France that history's traditional role as the scientifically validating factor of all political speculation is seriously questioned. Of course, with the conservatives, this traditional view of history 's function still largely prevails, and, in fact, becomes, if anything , more intense. History shows us the stable facts of human nature. It represents, in a hard physical sense, the unchanging "nature of things." It has a certain Newtonian order to its predictably cyclical patterns of unfolding. True enough, events in one century may differ from events in another: that is because of particular variations which characterize each nation and each century. One does not, therefore, become a helpless prisoner of the "science" of history; it does not repeat itselfexactly. But history's essential aspect is its constant sim79 Prophet_051-100.indd 80 3/2/12 10:28 PM REVOLUTION AND THE ROLE OF HISTORY ilarity from century to century. Since the human heart and the human passions do not change, the present and the future must resemble the past. If this were not true then history would have no purpose; the past is not studied for its own sake. History has its "lessons" to teach. It is the science, admittedly imperfect, admittedly based on analogy, of human social behaviour. One must be just as empirically minded, just as anti-a priori in dealing with this science as with any other. 'Vhen one speaks of a "revolution" in man's form of government, for example, one must understand what can possibly be meant by such a term. A total change in the forms of man's social organization is a distinct physical impossibility . It is as impossible as miracles are in the universe of Newton. Neither human nature nor the law of gravity can be repealed. History is thus the ordered apprehension of the moral nature of things. It condemns in advance any over-optimistic attempts to achieve ideal or drastically rational political change. It tells us that what has never yet been witnessed in man's behaviour in the past can hardly be expected to appear in the present or future. J.-H. Meister in 1790 sums up the view very clearly and with a certain irony not uncommon at this time in the writings of those who felt the reassuring weight of the centuries behind them as they attacked the impertinent a priorists: It may be that a great moral transformation has recently occurred in the world and that a marvellous revolution has suddenly turned all order and principles upside down. Before that memorable moment occurred, however, if we managed to have any confidence at all in the more obvious teachings of history and the experiences of the human heart, would we not have acknowledged without hesitation that what influences most powerfully the will ofman is the force of things and circumstances; that this supreme power is counterbalanced only by the force of the passions, and that only for a short time; that the passions in turn have more force than habits, and habits more than prejudices, and prejudices more than life's ordinary interests, and these everyday interests more than the simple notions ofjustice and fitness; that, in short, of all the motives that determine our actions and our behaviour, the weakest of all is reason , no matter how splendidly logical it might be? Now if the occult influence ofsome supernatural power had not So Prophet_051-100.indd 81 3/2/12 10:28 PM WEAPON OF COUNTER-REVOLUTION magically transformed all of these relationships, could we really have imagined that the more or less haphazardly traced boundaries ofa metaphysical notion are all that is needed to contain the volatile fluctuations of the human will and passions? ... Would we still be allowed to doubt that only a form of government that has never existed anywhere is incontestably the most perfect and most admirable? ... I have the greatest respect for pamphlet-philosophy revolutions, especially when they are backed by a coalition as terrifYing as that formed by the rabble mob and the army...