I EARLY LIFE 9 



I was infinitely happy in this course of life for some months ; 

 till at last, about the beginning of September, 1729, all my 

 ardour 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 represen- 

 tation 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 pur- 

 pose 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 

 suspected that physical conditions were, at first, 

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

 a ravenous appetite set in and, in six weeks from 



