Hume | Page 3

sciences, and that they contain little more than
endless disputes, even in the most fundamental articles. Upon
examination of these, I found a certain boldness of temper growing on
me, which was not inclined to submit to any authority in these subjects,
but led me to seek out some new medium, by which truth might be
established. After much study and reflection on this, at last, when I was
about eighteen years of age, there seemed to be opened up to me a new
scene of thought, which transported me beyond measure, and made me,
with an ardour natural to young men, throw up every other pleasure or

business to apply entirely to it. The law, which was the business I
designed to follow, appeared nauseous to me, and I could think of no
other way of pushing my fortune in the world, but that of a scholar and
philosopher. 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 representations 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 purpose 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, symptoms 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 being tall, lean, and raw-boned, Hume says he became
sturdy and robust, with a ruddy complexion and a cheerful
countenance--eating, sleeping, and feeling well, except that the capacity
for intense mental application seemed to be gone. He, therefore,
determined to seek out a more active life; and, though he could not and
would not "quit his pretensions to learning, but with his last breath," he

resolved "to lay them aside for some time, in order the more effectually
to resume them."
The careers open to a poor Scottish gentleman in those days were very
few; and, as Hume's option lay between a travelling tutorship and a
stool in a merchant's office, he chose the latter.
"And having got recommendation to a considerable trader in Bristol, I
am just now hastening thither, with a resolution to forget myself, and
everything that is past, to engage myself, as far as is possible, in that
course of life, and to toss about the world from one pole to the other,
till I leave this distemper behind me."[3]
But it was all of no use--Nature would have her way--and in the middle
of 1736, David Hume, aged twenty-three, without a profession or any
assured means of earning a guinea; and having doubtless, by his
apparent vacillation, but real tenacity of purpose, once more earned the
title of "wake-minded" at home; betook himself to a foreign country.
"I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my studies in a
country retreat: and there I laid that plan of life which I have steadily
and successfully pursued. I resolved to make a very rigid frugality
supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my
independency, and to regard every object as contemptible except the
improvement of my talents in literature."[4]
Hume passed through Paris on his way to Rheims, where he resided for
some time; though the greater part of his three years' stay was spent at
La Flêche, in frequent intercourse with the Jesuits of the famous
college in which Descartes was educated. Here he composed his first
work, the Treatise of Human Nature; though it would appear from the
following passage in the letter to Cheyne, that he had been
accumulating materials to that end for some years before he left
Scotland.
"I found that the moral philosophy transmitted to us by antiquity
laboured under