366 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



the idea that he was a dangerous sceptic, an infidel, a bold, bad man 

 and what not. The simple truth happens to be that Himie found him- 

 self confronted by certain definite questions which had grown under 

 the hands of his predecessors. In his case, the power of the man 

 coincided with the power of the moment; and he still occupies his 

 lonely pedestal as the single thinker of the first-class produced by the 

 Anglo-Saxon race, because he settled the account of an age once for 

 all. Had this been comprehended sooner, the nineteenth century 

 would have been saved a wealth of waste paper and some lost temper. 

 Eeduced to its simplest elements, Hume's central problem is by no 

 means hard to grasp, particularly if the Descartes-ISTewton scheme be 

 recalled. Granted that separation of individuals, whether of men, of 

 material bodies or of thought and extension, constitutes the funda- 

 mental fact in the universe; granted, too, that knowledge flows into 

 consciousness through the senses, then what value can be attached 

 legitimately to human experience ? Hume, as one must always remem- 

 ber, possessed the wit not to rest satisfied with the dogmas that ap- 

 peased his forefathers after the intellect. He wanted to know what 

 precise inferences could be extracted from their cherished opinions, and 

 he suspected that their satisfaction had not been won fairly. Accord- 

 ingly, he showed, and the proof holds good beyond peradventure, that, 

 on this traditional basis, human knowledge can be viewed only as a huge 

 delusion. Objects, self and deity; matter, mind and cause; science 

 and philosophy engulf themselves. Another alternative is imprac- 

 ticable, if the presuppositions, common to the mathematico-physical 

 sciences, to the Cartesian metaphysics and to the British psychology, 

 be admitted. It was no part of Hume's task to examine this founda- 

 tion. He accepted it without change as it came to him and proved, 

 in the most thoroughgoing fashion, that universal nescience was its sole 

 logical end. Dualism, self-contained bodies, sensationalism, 'an agent 

 acting constantly according to certain laws' — in short, the entire para- 

 phernalia held conjointly by the science and philosophy of the seven- 

 teenth and eighteenth centuries, he hoisted with its own petard and 

 blew to shivers irretrievably. For, admit his premises and the con- 

 clusion follows resistlessly. Now, the view of the universe prevalent 

 from Descartes to Paley, from Galileo to Laplace, depended on Hume's 

 premises and upon nothing else ! So ended the first lesson, like its 

 kind, not to be taken to heart for many a long day. 



If the real implications of Hume's argument remained hidden from 

 science, thanks to the continued predominance of the 'Newtonian 

 philosophy,' and from the men who spoke Hume's tongue, thanks to 

 contemporary political and theological causes, the same cannot be said 

 of Kant. His philosophy took Europe by storm and has continued 

 to infiuence scientific men perhaps more than any other body of philo- 



