Additional Notes. 445 



ideas, if Mr. Locke uniformly employs this phrase in the same 

 sense, is a war of words. If an idea be an object of thought 

 which intervenes between the mind and the thing perceived, 

 none can, or ever did, suppose that ideas are innate in this sense. 

 To assert that the mind has such innate ideas, would be to 

 represent it as thinking before it thinks, and acting before it 

 acts. — From these and other erroneous principles taught by 

 this great philosopher, it soon became apparent that doctrines 

 from which he would have shrunk with abhorrence must ne- 

 cessarily result; and the history of metaphysical science since 

 his time evinces how mischievous is en or, when supported 

 by the authority of such a mind as that whicii produced the 

 Essay on the Human Understanding. 



Hume. p. 9. 



David Hume, the celebrated metaphysician and historian, 

 was born in Edinburgh, in the year 1711. He was designed 

 for the law by his friends, but having no inclination iimself 

 to that profession, he applied to business, and in 1734 be- 

 came a clerk to a merchant at Bristol. Soon afterwards he 

 went to France, where he wrote his Treatise of Human Na- 

 ture, which was published at London in 1139. Between this 

 period and his death he travelled into Italy, Germany, and 

 again into France. His Moral Essays were published in 

 1 742 ; his Political Discourses, and his Inquiry concerning 

 the Principles of Morals, in 1752; his Natural History of 

 Religion in 1756 ; and his History of England was com- 

 pleted in 1761. He died in 1776. 



Ph ilosophy o/ Hume, p . 9 . 



Mr. Hume taught that all the perceptions of the human 

 mind resolve themselves into two classes, viz. impressions and 

 ideas; comprehending under the former all our sensations, 

 passions, and emotions; and under the latter the feint images 

 of these, when we remember or imagine them. Our ideas, 

 in the opinion of this philosopher, are all copied from our 

 impressions, the former differing from the latter only in being 

 weaker perceptions. " He adopted Locke's account of the 

 origin of our ideas, and from that principle inferred, that we 

 have no idea of substance, corporeal or spiritual; no idea of 



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