111
“DAVID HUME AND HIS MOTHER,” The Episcopal Watchman, vol. 7, no. 19 (14 September 1833), p. 76.
Anonymous
The Episcopal Watchman was a weekly, published in Hartford, Connecticut, from 1827 to 1833. The anecdote reprinted below, related to Hume’s mother, is identified as coming from “Silliman’s Travels in England.” Benjamin Silliman’s (1779–1864) A Journal of Travels in England, Holland, and Scotland, in the years 1805–1806 was first published in New York in 1810. The best book on Silliman is Michael Chandos Brown’s Benjamin Silliman: A Life in the Young Republic (Princeton, 1989); for a shorter account, see Mark G. Spencer, “Silliman, Benjamin” in EAE, vol. 2, pp. 963–6. Silliman’s Travels was noticed by contemporaries — including those in Britain, where the Quarterly Review, in 1816, drew attention to this same anecdote in its review. In fact, the concluding lines of the Episcopal Watchman’s essay (“A story like this requires no comment. Thus it is that false philosophy restores the sting to death, and gives again the victory to the grave!”) are the Quarterly’s (see July 1816, vol. 15, p. 562). For a critical remark on Silliman’s anecdote, see selection #117.
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DAVID HUME AND HIS MOTHER.
Hume, the historian, received a religious education from his mother, and early in life, was the subject of strong and hopeful religious impressions; but as he approached manhood, they were effaced and confirmed infidelity succeeded. Maternal partiality, however, alarmed at first, came at length to look with less and less pain upon this declension, and filial love and reference seem to have been absorbed in the pride of philosophical skepticism; for Hume now applied himself with unwearied, and, unhappily, with successful efforts, to sap the foundation of his mother’s faith. Having succeeded in this dreadful work, he went abroad into foreign countries; and as he was returning, an express met him in London, with a letter from his mother, informing him that she was in a deep decline, and could not long survive; she said she found herself without any support in her distress; that he had taken away that source of comfort upon which, in all cases of affliction, she used to rely, and that she now found her mind sinking into despair: she did not doubt that her son would afford her some substitution for her religion; and she conjured him to hasten to her, or at least to send her a letter, containing such consolation as philosophy can afford to a dying mortal. Hume was overwhelmed with anguish on receiving this letter, and hastened to Scotland, travelling day and night; but before he arrived his mother expired.
No permanent impression seems, however, to have been made on his mind by this most trying event; and whatever remorse he might have felt at the moment, he soon relapsed into his wonted obduracy of heart. — Silliman’s Travels in England. A story like this requires no comment. Thus it is that false philosophy restores the sting to death, and gives again the victory to the grave!