PART II
INTRODUCTION TO PART II
An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals, two of Hume’s most important philosophical writings, circulated widely in colonial America and during the early years of the United States.1 As early as 1750 the Charleston Library Society had available for its members a first edition of Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding. Before 1760 first editions of An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals were offered for sale by Noel Garret, a New York bookseller, and copies were on the shelves of important social libraries like the New York Society Library and the Library Company of Philadelphia. From the 1760s both Enquiries became even more widely circulated when they were included in Hume’s collected works, the Essays and Treatises on Several Subjects, a book that was frequently imported in British editions. By the end of the eighteenth century, prominent Americans like Thomas Jefferson, John Randolph or Roanoke, and John Witherspoon are known to have read Hume’s philosophy; but it is safe to say that both of Hume’s philosophical Enquiries were generally available, in significant numbers and in various editions, to Hume’s American audience. Both Enquiries were also reprinted in early America when Thomas Ewell included them in his Philosophical Essays on Morals, Literature, and Politics, By David Hume, Esq. To which is added the answer to his objections to Christianity, By the Ingenious Divine Dr. Campbell. Also, An account of Mr. Hume’s Life, an original Essay, and a few Notes, 2 vols (Georgetown, D.C. and Philadelphia, 1817). Hume’s Enquiries were standard reading in America. The early circulation of Hume’s Treatise of Human Nature was a different story. As in Britain, the Treatise was not well known in America until the second quarter of the nineteenth century. Still, Hume’s Treatise was advertised for sale by Henry Knox in the Boston Gazette in 1771. The earliest recorded library to hold the Treatise was Harvard University Library whose catalogue of 1790 listed the book. Even after the Treatise saw its second British edition in 1817, it seems not to have attracted a significant readership in the United States. Only from 1825, with its inclusion in the Edinburgh edition of The Philosophical Works of David Hume, would the Treatise begin slowly to gain the currency it holds among scholars today. The circulation of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion in early America falls somewhere between that of the Treatise and the Enquiries. From 1785 the Dialogues was consistently available in American libraries and bookshops. It was read closely by Benjamin Vaughan and a handful of other Americans, but it was not generally well known to Hume’s early American audience.
Recorded American responses to Hume’s philosophical writings date from as early as 1755. In that year, the prominent colonial philosopher, Jonathan Edwards, wrote to the “Old Light” Scottish clergyman, John Erskine, to say that he had read “that book of Mr. David Hume’s, which you speak of. I am glad of an opportunity to read such corrupt books, especially when written by men of considerable genius; that I may have an idea of the notions that prevail in our nation.”2 Edwards, we see, considered Hume to be a writer of “corrupt books,” but he also thought that Hume’s works were well known and that they were having an impact. Edwards was not alone when he felt that way. Often the comments of those Americans who wrote against Hume’s philosophy shared a common point of departure when they lamented the American popularity and influence of Hume’s philosophical writings. They were especially concerned about Hume’s impact on students attending America’s colleges. Although they have left little evidence in print, American students, particularly at the end of the eighteenth century and the beginning of the nineteenth century, appear to have been eager readers of Hume’s philosophy. Timothy Dwight’s attack on Hume in his The Nature, and Danger, of Infidel Philosophy, exhibited in Two Discourses, addressed to the candidates for the Baccalaureate, in Yale College (New Haven, 1798) was grounded in Dwight’s perception of Hume’s unfortunate popularity among students at Yale.3 One of Hume’s anonymous attackers warned in a Philadelphia publication in 1805, Hume’s writings “are in the hands of almost all young persons.”4 Joseph Dennie expressed a similar sentiment about Harvard College when he wrote to his friend Roger Vose in 1790. Discussing Hume’s philosophy and his own preference for James Beattie, Dennie wrote in a letter not printed in this volume: “I am fully sensible, that by many of the students Hume is admired; of this number I perceive you were a part.”5 Edwards, Dwight, Dennie, and others, were apprehensive about Hume’s philosophy circulating among young people in America because Hume’s primary message they understand to be an anti-religious one. Abigail Adams expressed this fear concisely in a letter to her husband John Adams in 1783: “I have a thousand fears for my dear Boys as they rise into Life, the most critical period of which is I conceive, at the university; there infidelity abounds, both in example and precepts, there they imbibe the speicious arguments of a Voltaire a Hume and Mandevill. If not from the fountain, they receive them at second hand. These are well calculated to intice a youth, not yet capable of investigating their principles, or answering their arguments. Thus is a youth puzzeld in Mazes and perplexed with error untill he is led to doubt, and from doubt to disbelief.”6 When American writers attacked Hume’s philosophy, they did so because Hume’s philosophy was being read. For many, the reception accorded Hume’s philosophical writings was certainly besmirched by Hume’s religious scepticism. Ezra Stiles provided unambiguous evidence of that unapproving disposition when he wrote in 1759 that Hume “directly opposes a supernatural Revelation — & strongly denies the Possibility of those Things which are the proper Evidences of Christianity: and I think treats the Subject with Caprice & Insolence.”7 In his Theory of Agency: Or, An Essay on the Nature, Source and Extent of Moral Freedom (Boston, 1771), John Perkins counted Hume among the infidel thinkers who had “made the most violent attacks upon all religion, both natural and revealed.”8 When James Dana argued in his An Examination of the late Reverend President Edwards’s ‘Enquiry on Freedom of the Will;’ More especially the Foundation Principle of his Book, with the Tendency and Consequences of the Reasoning therein contained (Boston, 1770) that Jonathan Edwards on the topic of cause and effect “agrees with Mr. Hume in words as well as sense,” he did not intend to strengthen the reputation or persuasiveness of Edwards’s book.9 It was Section X of An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, Hume’s essay “Of Miracles” (see EHU, pp. 83–99), which was largely responsible for Hume’s reputation as an “infidel” and it was that essay which aroused the most vehement responses from Hume’s American critics. American answers to “Of Miracles” followed various lines. In an essay of 1796 entitled “Remarks upon Hume’s Essay on Miracles; more especially upon the Arguments advanced in the first part of this Essay,” a writer for the Theological Magazine argued that Hume’s reasoning led to conclusions that were clearly “contrary to the plainest dictates of reason and common sense.”10 For Samuel Stanhope Smith, Hume’s position on miracles led to atheism, and along the way it would also “arrest all improvements in science.”11 William Ellery Channing, offered a similarly negative critique of Hume on miracles in his A Discourse on the Evidences of Revealed Religion (Boston, 1821), a book which was reviewed in The Unitarian Miscellany and Christian Monitor.12 Later in the nineteenth century, contributions to the debate on Hume’s “Of Miracles” by Archibald Alexander in Evidences of the Authenticity, Inspiration and Canonical Authority of the Holy Scriptures (1836), A. H. Lawrence in An Examination of Hume’s Argument on the Subject of Miracles (1845), and a review of Lawrence’s pamphlet in the North American Review show that Hume’s essay continued to be of interest.13 Many other examples could have been reprinted in this volume had there been space.14 Another favourite target for Hume’s nineteenth-century critics was Hume’s thought on cause and effect. In 1817 Edward Tyrrel Channing was critical of Hume on that subject in the pages of The North American Review, as was Samuel Gilman the following year.15 When American commentators rejected aspects of Hume’s philosophy they were often only following examples set by British authors. The selections reprinted below allude to, cite, or quote from, the works of William Adams (1706–89), Samuel Bailey (1791–1870), James Beattie (1735–1803), Thomas Brown (1778–1820), George Campbell (1719–96), Thomas Chalmers (1780–1847), John Douglas (1721–1807), George Horne (1730–92), John Leland (1691–1766), James Oswald (1703–93), William Paley (1743–1805), Richard Price (1723–91), Joseph Priestley (1733–1804), Thomas Reid (1710–96), Thomas Starkie (1782–1849), Dugald Stewart (1753–1828), and others. Hume’s philosophy was often rejected by Americans who preferred philosophy of the Scottish common sense tradition written by Beattie, Campbell, Oswald, Reid, and Stewart. A colonial bookseller, John Mein, tapped into that preference when, in a Boston Chronicle advertisement for Campbell’s answer to Hume, he puffed: “This masterly writer in this excellent work hath fully refuted the reasoning and objections of Mr. Hume and other Freethinkers, who have attempted to undermine the foundations both of natural and revealed Religion.”16 Thomas Ewell’s decision to append Campbell’s answer to the first American edition of Hume’s philosophy is emblematic of the guarded acceptance of Hume’s philosophical writings in America. Still, while Americans like Benjamin Rush said that he could not think of Beattie “without fancying that I see Mr. Hume prostrate at his feet,” and although he praised Beattie as the “David who slew that giant of infidelity,”17 Hume’s philosophy was very much alive in America, where it would continue to elicit responses from American writers. Some of these were notably noncommittal,18 but others were utterly rejecting of Hume’s philosophy.19 That was certainly the case with Frederick Beasley. Beasley’s A Search of Truth in the Science of the Human Mind (1822) was the longest and most virulent attack on Hume published in early America. Entire chapters are given to “Mr. Hume on Cause and Effect,” “Upon Miracles,” and “Mr. Hume’s Principles,” but other chapters in Beasley’s long books are peppered with criticisms of various sorts.20 For Beasley, Hume’s British critics had been far too lenient in their treatment of the “arch sceptic.” “We would not raise the Tomahawk against a literary adversary, or kindle around him the fires of the stake; but, according to all the laws of the most civilized warfare, we must be allowed to resort to the use of those weapons the best suited to the nature of the contest, and the most likely to produce a favourable issue. Atheism is a monster not to be tamed or subdued by gentleness and coaxing.” Other Americans, however, defended Hume’s philosophical thought. A reviewer of James Ogilvie’s Philosophical Essays in The Analectic Magazine argued that Ogilvie and most of Hume’s other critics had misinterpreted Hume’s scepticism which was really of a “merely speculative” variety and not intended to affect the way one lived one’s life.21 For Ezra Stiles Ely, in Conversations on the Science of the Human Mind (1819), Hume’s premise that “all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature; and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another,” provides a starting point for philosophical inquiry.22 Hume’s philosophy was clearly not ignored in early America. Hume’s impact can be traced in a steady stream of debate. It is also clear that Hume’s philosophy was more often the subject of censure than it was of praise; but even these critical appraisals show Americans to be familiar with the details of Hume’s philosophical writings. Critical appraisals of Hume’s philosophy in early America did not preclude friendlier American receptions for his Essays Moral, Political and Literary, or his History.
1Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding was first published in 1748 with the title Philosophical essays concerning Human Understanding. An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals was first published in 1751. For the early publication details of these works see T.E. Jessop, A Bibliography of David Hume and of Scottish Philosophy from Francis Hutcheson to Lord Balfour (1938; reprinted New York, 1983). It is worth noting that both Enquries were essentially collections of essays, and eighteenth-century American readers often read them in that way. For an effort to represent some of that in tables and figures, see volume 2 of Mark G. Spencer, “The Reception of David Hume's Political Thought in Eighteenth-Century America,” 2 vols (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Western Ontario, 2001). For modern editions of Hume’s Enquiries, see An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (Oxford, 2000), edited by Tom L. Beauchamp [hereafter EHU] and An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals (Oxford, 1998), edited by Tom L. Beauchamp [hereafter EPM]. For Hume’s Treatise, also discussed below, see A Treatise of Human Nature (Oxford, 2000), edited by David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton [hereafter THN].
2Quoted in Sereno Edwards Dwight, The Life of President Edwards (New York, 1830), p. 550. It is uncertain to which of Hume’s books Edwards here referred; but the context suggests that it was Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding.
3Reprinted below.
4“The Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel,’’ The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 1 (April 1805), pp. 182–6, reprinted below.
5“Letters from Joseph Dennie to Roger Vose,” Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, vol. 6 (1890), p. 124, not reprinted below.
6Abigail Adams to John Adams, 11 November 1783, The Adams Papers (Cambridge, 1993), series II, vol. 5, p. 268, not reprinted below.
7Quoted in Isaac Woodbridge Riley, American Philosophy: The Early Schools (New York, 1907), p. 214.
8See p. 20, not reprinted below.
9Reprinted below.
10Reprinted below. Other responses to Hume’s “Of Miracles,” were printed in America when British periodicals were given American reprintings. For instance, the essay “Reply to Mr. Hume’s Argument Against Miracles,” saw an American imprint in the Christian Observer and Advocate, vol. 1 (May 1802), pp. 292–5.
11See Samuel Stanhope Smith, A Comprehensive View of the Leading and Most Important Principles of Natural and Revealed Religion (New-Brunswick, 1815). See also an essay by “S.” (attributed below to S. S. Smith), entitled “The Celebrated Objection of Mr. Hume to the Miracles of the Gospel,” in The Assembly’s Missionary Magazine; or Evangelical Intelligencer, vol. 1 (April 1805), pp. 182–6. Both items are reprinted below.
12Reprinted below.
13These three items are reprinted below.
14Not reprinted below are discussions in Uzal Ogden, Antidote to Deism: The Deist Unmasked; or, An Ample Refutation of All the Objections of Thomas Paine, Against the Christian Religion (Newark, 1795); “For the Port Folio. ‘A Dissertation on the External Evidences of the Truth of the Christian Religion; [Concluded],” Portfolio, vol. 5 (1805), pp. 348–54; ‘Denial of miracles’ by David Hume (The American Tract Society: New York, n.d.); Gulian Crommelin Verplanck, Essay on the Nature and Uses of the Various Evidences of Revealed Religion (New York, 1824).
15Both items reprinted below. Not reprinted below are selections from Frederick Beasley, A Review of the Philosophy of the Human Mind, by Thomas Brown (Philadelphia, 1825); Debate on the Evidences of Christianity; Containing an Examination of the “Social System,” and of the Systems of Scepticism of Ancient and Modern Times, Held in the City of Cincinnati, Ohio, from the 13th to the 21st of April, 1829, Between Robert Owen, of New Lanark, Scotland, and Alexander Campbell of Bethany, Virginia, Reported by Charles H. Sims, Stenographer (Bethany, 1829); Nathanael Emmons, Sermons on Some of the First Principles and Doctrines of True Religion (1800; reprinted Boston, 1815); James Fishback, The Philosophy of the Human Mind, in Respect to Religion; or, A Demonstration, from the Necessity of Things, That Religion Entered the World by Revelation(Lexington, 1813); Samuel Miller, A Brief Retrospect of the Eighteenth Century (New York, 1803); Leicester Ambrose Sawyer, Elements of Mental Philosophy; containing A Critical Exposition of the Principal Phenomena and Powers of the Human Mind (New York, 1846); and George Tucker, An Essay on Cause and Effect; Being an Examination of Hume’s Doctrine, That we Can Perceive No Necessary Connection Between Them (Philadelphia, 1850).
16The Boston Chronicle, vol. 2, no. 97 (1 June 1796), p. 176.
17Benjamin Rush to James Kidd, 13 May 1794, Letters of Benjamin Rush (Princeton, 1951), vol. 2, p. 748, not reprinted below.
18Ralph Waldo Emerson, for instance. On Emerson’s reading of Hume see Earl Burk Braly, “The Reputation of David Hume in America,” (Ph.D. dissertation, The University of Texas, 1955), pp. 219–25. Braly references many of the works reprinted in this volume, and his discussion of the reception of Hume’s philosophy in America is useful.
19For instance, Asa Mahan, Abstract of a Course of Lectures on Mental and Moral Philosophy (Oberlin, 1840), pp. 242–3, not reprinted below.
20Reprinted below.
21Reprinted below. See also selections from Joseph Buchanan, The Philosophy of Human Nature (Richmond, 1812) and Richard Hildreth, Theory of Morals: An Inquiry Concerning the Law of Moral Distinctions and the Variations and Contradictions of Ethical Codes (Boston, 1844), not reprinted below.
22Reprinted below.
12
An Examination of the late Reverend President Edwards’s “Enquiry on Freedom of the Will;” More especially the Foundation Principle of his Book, with the Tendency and Consequences of the Reasoning therein contained (Boston, 1770); selection from pp. vi, 69–71, 126; “Appendix,” pp. 131–6, 139.
James Dana
James Dana (1735–1812) was a graduate of Harvard University and a Congregational clergyman. He was also one of New England’s conservative “Old Lights” who argued against the positions of the “New Divinity.” In 1768 Dana had been awarded the degree of D.D. by the University of Edinburgh. In the selections from An Examination of the Late President Edwards’s ‘Enquiry on Freedom of the Will’, reprinted below, Dana aimed to blacken the reputation of Edwards’s thought by showing him to be a Humean on the topic of causation. In his “Appendix,” Dana traced, point-by-point, the “coincidences” between Edwards and Hume. Especially evident in these selections is Dana’s familiarity with Section VIII, “Of Liberty and Necessity,” of Hume’s An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding (see EHU, pp. 62–78). In 1773 Dana published a continuation of the Examination and would also write against the practices of the slave trade, amongst other things. On Dana see Joseph Haroutunain, Piety versus Moralism, the Passing of the New England Theology (1932; reprinted New York, 1970), pp. 229–36; Harris Elwood Starr, “James Dana,” DAB, vol. 3, pp. 54–5.
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Lord Kaims and Mr. Hume affirm, ‘that man hath, in no case, a power of self-determination; but is, in all his actions, determined by a moral necessity’ — which necessity they hold to be as real as any other. The only difference is, that Lord Kaims, while he allows that GOD has implanted in man’s nature an invincible feeling of liberty, maintains, that this feeling is fallacious: And Mr. Hume denies the subsistence of any such relation as we signify by the words cause and effect. But whether liberty, as maintained by Mr. Edwards, be not altogether hypothetic, may appear from the following pages. And as to his notion of cause and of effect, whenever he uses the former word for any antecedent, or the occasion of an event or thing, and the latter for the consequence of another thing (as he tells us he sometimes doth, p. 58. 59.) he so far agrees with Mr. Hume in words as well as sense.
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TO this scheme, Mr. Hume supposeth it will be objected in the following form. ‘Human actions, therefore, either can have no moral turpitude at all, as proceeding from so good a cause, or if they have any turpitude, they involve our Creator in the same guilt, while he is acknowledged to be their ultimate cause and author. Wherever a continued chain of necessary causes is fixed, that being, either finite or infinite, who produces the first, is likewise the author of all the rest, and must both bear the blame, and acquire the praise, which belong to them. Our clearest and most unalterable ideas of morality establish this rule upon unquestionable reasons, when we examine the consequences of any human action; and these reasons must still have greater force, when applied to the volitions and intentions of a being infinitely wise and powerful. Ignorance or impotence may be pleaded for so limited a creature as man; but those imperfections have no place in our Creator. He foresaw, he ordained, he intended all those actions of men, which we so rashly pronounce criminal. And we must conclude, therefore, either that they are not criminal, or that the Deity, not man, is accountable for them. But as either of these positions is absurd and impious, it follows that the doctrine from which they are deduced cannot possibly be true, as being liable to all the same objections. An absurd consequence, if necessary, proves the original doctrine to be absurd, in the same manner that criminal actions render criminal the original cause, if the connection between them be necessary and inevitable.’*
THIS objection, which Mr. Hume states to himself, may be made with the same propriety to the general scheme of our author. From Mr. Hume’s answer, it is sufficiently manifest what his principles were. He tells us, ‘It is not possible to explain distinctly, how the Deity can be the immediate cause of all the actions of men, without being the author of sin and moral turpitude. These are mysteries, which meer natural and unassisted reason is very unfit to handle; and whatever system it embraces it must find itself involved in inextricable difficulties, and even contradictions, at every step which it takes with regard to such subjects.’*
MR. Hume acknowledgeth, that upon his scheme, the Deity is the mediate, original cause of all the actions of men; and virtually admits the consequence; (that he is therefore the author of sin and moral turpitude) by observing, that it is not possible distinctly to explain, how he can be the one, and not the other. Now let it be shewn, that Mr. Edwards’s scheme is not liable to the foregoing objection, or admitting the objection, let the consequence be shewn not to follow, and it will afford no small satisfaction to many, who are greatly embarrassed with Mr. Edwards’s scheme of necessary connection. Whoever examines part ii. sect. 3d, 4th, 9th, 12th, and 13th. Part iii. sect. 3d, 4th, and 6th. Part iv. sect. 9th and 10th, and the conclusion of his discourse, must, we are persuaded, see the objection, as above stated, to be just — . And if the consequence also be fairly drawn, doth it not prove the doctrine against which the objection lies to be false and absurd? absolutely irreconcilable with the moral character of GOD?
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WE do not deny but Mr. Edwards was ‘worthy of the name of a Philosopher (p. 401) But we appeal to the publick, whether some of the most famed Philosophers in the English nation, for many years back, and at this day, have not philosophised themselves into scepticism? One of first distinction in particular (whose essays on some moral subjects are so nearly akin to Mr. Edwards on necessity, that a reader might think the latter copied from the former) appears plainly to be a disbeliever in natural religion, not less than revealed.†
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The APPENDIX. Exhibiting a specimen of coincidence between the principles of Mr. Edwards’s book, and those of antient and modern Fatalists.
SOME of the most distinguished maintainers of universal necessity, in the last and present century, were Hobbs, Spinoza, Collins, Leibnitz, the authors of Cato’s letters, Hume, among the Atheists and Deists; and Lord Kaims and Mr. Edwards among the advocates for revelation. Our author’s agreement with these on the article of necessity may more distinctly appear from the following extracts. We shall place the similar passages over against each other in different columns, that the reader may have a readier view of the coincidence
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HUME. The conjunction between motives and voluntary actions is as regular and uniform as that between the cause and effect in any part of nature (Essays, vol. iii. p. 137)
EDWARDS. The acts of the will and material things have a like necessary dependance on a cause without. Moral necessity may be as absolute as natural. Volition is as passive with respect to the antecedent cause, as the motions of the body to the volitions which determine them. (P. 183, 184 — also p. 30, 40, 48, 58, 62, 65, &c.)
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HUME. Vol. iii. p. 149, 150. Actions not proceeding from a permanent, fixed cause (that is, from necessity) are neither virtuous nor vicious.
EDWARDS. SIN and virtue come to pass by a necessity consisting in a sure, established connection of causes and effects. (P. 309). Moral habits are owing to the nature of things. (P. 31) The good or bad state of the moral world depends on the improvement they make of their natural agency. (P. 162)
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HUME. Liberty a power of acting or not acting according to the determination of the will — that is, if we chuse to remain at rest, we may; if we chuse to move, we may. Now this hypothetical liberty (as Mr. Hume justly stiles it) belongs (as he adds) to every body who is not a prisoner and in chains. (Vol. iii. p. 145)
EDWARDS. LIBERTY is a power, opportunity, or advantage that any one has, to do as he pleases — or power and opportunity to pursue and execute his choice — without taking into the meaning of the word any thing of the cause or original of that choice. Two things are opposed to liberty, namely, constraint and restraint (P. 38, 39, 40, 300, et passim)
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UPON the whole: One of the famous objections of the fatalists of old to the liberty of human actions, and which is urged for necessity by modern infidels, was, that every action results from a precedent motive or reason, which reason or motive is out of our power. (Jackson’s answer to Cato, p. 100.) We need not produce any passage from Mr. Edwards to shew the coincidence. His whole scheme is founded on this principle.
*Essays by David Hume, Esq; vol. iii. pp. 151, 152, 153.
*Ibid. p. 156.
†Hume’s essay, Vol. III. Sect. 7, 8, 9, 10, 11. &c.