Hume, with Helps to the study of Berkeley;
Type: article
Abstract: political life touched the lowest depths of degra- dation, amidst the chaotic personal intrigues of the Fronde.Thus endowed, thus nurtured, thus tempered in the fires of experience, it is intelli- gible enough that a resolute, clear-headed man, haunted from his youth up, as he tells us, with an extreme desire to learn how to distinguish truth from falsehood, in order to see his way clearly and walk surely through life,* should have early come to the conclusion, that the first thing to be done was to cast aside, at any rate temporarily, the crutches of traditional, or other, authority; and stand upright on his own feet, trusting to no support but that of the solid ground of fact.It was in 1619, while meditating in solitary winter quarters, that Descartes (being about the same age as Hume when he wrote the " Treatise on O ^WM^IWB^g^Ĥ uman Nature ") made that famous resolution, to " take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such/' the great practical effect of which is the sanctification of doubt; the recognition that the profession of belief in propositions, of the truth of which there is no sufficient evidence, is immoral; the discrowning of authority as such; the repudia- tion of the confusion, beloved of sophists of all sorts, between free assent and mere piously gagged dissent; and the admission of the obligation to reconsider even one's axioms on due demand.These, if I mistake not, are the notes of the * Discours de la Methode. 1 Partie.viii PREFACE modern, as contrasted with the ancient spirit.It is true that the isolated greatness of Socrates was founded on intellectual and moral character- istics of the same order.He also persisted in demanding that no man should "take anything for truth without a clear knowledge that it is such," and so constantly and systematically shocked authority and shook traditional security, that the fact of his being allowed to live for seventy years, if one comes to think of it, is evidence of the patient and tolerant disposition of his Athenianĉ ompatriots, which should obliterate the memory of the final hemlock.That which it may he well for us not to forget is, that the first-recorded ju- dicial murder of a scientific thinker was compassed and effected, not by a despot, nor by priests, but was brought about by eloquent demagogues, o whom, of all men, thorough searchings of the intel- lect are most dangerous and therefore most hateful.The first agnostic, the man who, so far as the records of history go, was the first to see that clear knowledge of what one does not know is just as important as knowing what one does know, had no true disciples; and the greatest of those who listened to him, if he preserved the fame of his master for all time, did his best to counteract the impulse towards intellectual clear- ness which Socrates gave.The Platonic i^iilo- sophy is probably the' grandest example of the i unscientific use of the imagination extant; and it PREFACE would be hard to estimate the amount of detri- ment to clear thinking effected, directly and in- directly, by the theory of ideas, on the one hand, and by the unfortunate doctrine of the baseness of matter, on the other.Ancient thought, so far as it is positive, fails on account of its neglect to criticise its assumptions; so far as it is negative, it fails, because it forgets that proof of the inconsistencies of the terms in which we symbolise things has nothing to do with the cogency of the logic of facts.The negations of Pyrrhonism are as shallow, as the assumptions of Platonism are ejnpty.Modern thought has by no means escaped from * perversions of the same order.But, thanks to the sharp discipline of physical science, it is more and more freeing itself from them.In face of the incessant verification of deductive reasoning by experiment, Pyrrhonism has become ridiculous; in face of the ignominious fate which always befalls those who attempt to get at the secrets of nature, or the rules of conduct, by the high a priori road, Platonism and im odern progeny show themselves to be, at best, splendid follies.The development of exact natural knowledge in all its vast range, from physics to history and criticism, is the consequence of the working out, in this province, of the resolution to " take nothing for truth without clear knowledge that it is such; "to consider all beliefs open to criticism; to regardx PREFACE the value of authority as neither greater nor less, than as much as it can prove itself to be worth.The modern spirit is not the spirit " which always denies," delighting only in destruction; still less is it that which builds castles in the air rather than not construct; it is that spirit which works and will work "without haste and without rest,"gathering harvest after harvest of truth into its barns and devouring error with unquenchable fire.În the reform of philosophy, since Descartes, I think that the greatest and the most fruitful re- sults of the activity of the modern spirit it may be, the only great and lasting results are those first presented in the works of Berkeley and of Hume.The one carried out to its logical result the Cartesian principle, that absolute certainty at- taches only to the knowledge of facts of conscious- ness; the other, extended the Cartesian criticism to the whole range of propositions commonly * taken for truth; " proved that, in a multitude of important instances, so far from possessing " clear [knowledge"that they may be so taken, we have none at all; and that our duty therefore is to remain silent; or to express, at most, suspended judgment.
Author: Huxley, Thomas Henry,
1825-1895.
Language: English
Subfield: General Social Sciences
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2500315769