70 HUME i 



site conclusion, and perceive the necessity of carrying the 



war into the most secret recesses of the enemy*? 



The only method of freeing learning at once from these 

 abstruse questions, is to inquire seriously into the nature of 

 human understanding, and show, from an exact analysis of 

 its powers and capacity, that it is by no means fitted for 

 such remote and abstruse subjects. We must submit to 

 this fatigue, in order to live at ease ever after ; and must 

 cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to 

 destroy the false and adulterated." (IV. pp. 10, 11.) 



Near a century and a half has elapsed since 

 these brave words were shaped by David Hume's 

 pen; and the business of carrying the war into 

 the enemy's camp has gone on but slowly. Like 

 other campaigns it long languished for want of a 

 good base of operations. But since physical 

 science, in the course of the last fifty years, has 

 brought to the front an inexhaustible supply of 

 heavy artillery of a new pattern, warranted to 

 drive solid bolts of fact through the thickest 

 skulls, things are looking better; though hardly 

 more than the first faint flutterings of the dawn 

 of the happy day, when superstition and false 

 metaphysics shall be no more and reasonable folks 

 may " live at ease/' are as yet discernible by the 

 enfants perdus of the outposts. 



If, in thus conceiving the object and the limi- 

 tations of philosophy, Hume shows himself the 

 spiritual child and continuator of the work of 

 Locke, he appears no less plainly as the parent of 

 Kant and as the protagonist of that more modern 



