68 HUME I 



in its determinations, is the best check upon the 

 tendency to dogmatism, Hume continues : 



"Another species of mitigated scepticism, which may be of 

 advantage to mankind, and which may be the natural result of 

 the PYRRHONIAN doubts and scruples, is the limitation of our 

 inquiries to such subjects as are best adapted to the narrow 

 capacity of human understanding. The imagination of man 

 is naturally sublime, delighted with whatever is remote and 

 extraordinary, and running, without control, into the most 

 distant parts of space and time in order to avoid the objects 

 which custom has rendered too familiar to it. A correct 

 judgment observes a contrary method, and, avoiding all dis- 

 tant and high inquiries, confines itself to common life, and to 

 such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience ; 

 leaving the more sublime topics to the embellishment of poets 

 and orators, or to the arts of priests and politicians. To 

 bring us to so salutary a determination, nothing can be more 

 serviceable than to be once thoroughly convinced of the force 

 of the PYRRHONIAN doubt, and of the impossibility that any- 

 thing but the strong power of natural instinct could free us 

 from it. Those who have a propensity to philosophy will 

 still continue their researches ; because they reflect, that, be- 

 sides the immediate pleasure attending such an occupation, 

 philosophical decisions are nothing but the reflections of com- 

 mon life, methodised and corrected. But they will never be 

 tempted to go beyond common life, so long as they consider 

 the imperfection of those faculties which they employ, their 

 narrow reach and their inaccurate operations. While we cannot 

 give a satisfactory reason why we believe, after a thousand 

 experiments, that a stone will fall or fire burn ; can we ever satisfy 

 ourselves concerning any determination which we may form 

 with regard to the origin of worlds and the situation of nature 

 from and to eternity ? " (IV. pp. 18990.) 



But further, it is the business of criticism not 

 only to keep watch over the vagaries of phil- 



