i EARLY LIFE 9 



in the world, but that of a scholar and philosopher. I was 

 infinitely happy in this course of life for some months ; till 

 at last, about the beginning of September, 1729, all my ar- 

 dour seemed in a moment to be extinguished, and I could 

 no longer raise my mind to that pitch, which formerly gave 

 me such excessive pleasure." 



This " decline of soul " Hume attributes, in 

 part, to his being smitten with the beautiful repre- 

 sentation of virtue in the works of Cicero, Seneca, 

 and Plutarch, and being thereby led to discipline 

 his temper and his will along with his reason and 

 understanding. 



"I was continually fortifying myself with reflections 

 against death, and poverty, and shame, and pain, and all 

 the other calamities of life.'* 



And he adds very characteristically: 



" These no doubt are exceeding useful when joined with 

 an active life, because the occasion being presented along 

 with the reflection, works it into the soul, and makes it take 

 a deep impression ; but, in solitude, they serve to little other 

 purpose than to waste the spirits, the force of the mind 

 meeting no resistance, but wasting itself in the air, like our 

 arm when it misses its aim." 



Along with all this mental perturbation, symp- 

 toms of scurvy, a disease now almost unknown 

 among landsmen, but which, in the days of winter 

 salt meat, before root crops flourished in the 

 Lothians, greatly plagued our forefathers, made 

 their appearance. And, indeed, it may be sus- 

 pected that physical conditions were, at first, at 

 the bottom of the whole business; for, in 1731, 



