The character of David Hume as a man has been vari ously estimated. About his agreeable qualities there could be no difference of opinion ; and those who abhorred his principles allowed that he possessed as much worth as was compatible with infidelity. The chief difference, therefore, depends on the amount of that degree of praise. One tells us that he was a pattern of good humour, be nignity, and self-command ; and as near to perfection as the lot of humanity will admit. Such is the character assigned him by his friend Dr Smith. Another writer says, we may find fault with the measure of his faith, but we cannot deny him the credit of good works. To this Bi shop Horne replies, that the promotion of religion is the best of works ; and a conduct the reverse of this the worst and most infamous. As for religious principles, and every quality that is strictly implied in them, Mr flume's cha racter must be given up : and if such terms as virtue, mo rality, and goodness, are to be so restricted, he cannot be allowed the credit of them. But if we take such words in the sense in which they have been used by the world at large, .and by men who scarcely entertain any religious knowledge or sentiment, we must acknowledge Mr Hume to have been honourably distinguished from the great mass of mankind, whether infidel or religious. Some have re marked, that, by his own confession, his ruling passion was the love of fame, and that this is at best a selfish principle. The validity of this reflection involves a question concerning the comparative propriety of preferring the ends of self-love or the good of others in adjusting the mo tives of human conduct. We seldom object to a man's cha racter because he has a ruling passion, although it should not be the most dignified in its nature. With regard to selfish ends, even a man who enters on holy orders is al lowed to be possessed of real worth, though his chief mo tive is the procuring of a living, provided he is attentive to his professional duties : and sonic of our gravest and best moralists represent the cultivation of a fund of inter nal happiness as the first duty of a man, and a far more co pious source of benignant conduct than could be formed by cultivating social feelings as the first and leading object of attention, and making personal happiness a subordinate consideration. With the amplest allowance for differences of opinion, and taking benevolence in the most accommo dating acceptation which licentiousness itself could desire, possessing also the fullest conviction of Mr Ilume's per sonal sincerity, we cannot consider the general strain of his philosophical writings as indications of a pure benigni ty, even though we should proceed on the hypothesis of the truth of his speculative views. They had an evident tendency to make many persons unhappy hard struggles are required from an admiring reader to surmount this ten dency,—struggles for which the author furnishes but feeble assistance. Though he entertained no belief in the most consoling doctrines which had been cherished among man kind, benignity would not have led him to begin with over turning therm but rather with showing that happiness might be enjoyed independently of them, and thus he might have been considered as contributing to the creation of habits of feeling which were more to be relied on for their perma nence, and as labouring to prepare the mind more com pletely for the comfortable exercise of a curiosity free from control. Yet by persons whose reading on these subjects
is extensive, the works of Mr Hume may be read with ad vantage. The German philosophers, whose conclusions are the most liberal and pious, look up to Hume as an author, who materially contributed to guide intellectual re search, though his system stood in need of some ulterior steps to bring us to the truth; and they speak with great con tempt of the data on which the British writers endeavour ed to subvert his doctrines. We find such observations as these emanating from the school of Kant, which, though chargeable with obscurity, is not destitute of acuteness.
The censure which we have expressed is most of all ap plicable to two tracts published after his death, one On the Immortality of the Soul, and the other On Suicide. The former is little more than a compression of doctrines which he had advanced, or to which he had at least pointed in his other works, but expressed in more dogmatic language. His tract On Suicide contains an argument which he had not formerly touched upon ; and it must be admitted to have a most pernicious tendency. We read without unpleasant emotions the sentiments which the Romans entertained on this subject, because they cultivated a species of manliness, mistaken indeed, but plausible, and apparently consistent. Mr Hume, on the contrary, encourages that temper which leads to suicide, not by cultivating a heroic contempt of death, but Ey laying the mind open to the most wretched discontent. He maintains, that thok whose happiness is marred by the gloom of superstition have the most urgent motives to rid themselves of life, yet are cruelly prevented by the dread which their . belief of future punishment in spires. This remark, inculcated with all the zeal of appa rent sincerity, tends to generate the utmost degree of mo ral confusion ; and the motive which could have prompted any writer to commit such a sentiment to paper cannot well be assigned, except by referring it to the perverseness which is so incident to the human mind. lithe supersti tious are deceived in the dread which they entertain of suicide, they must also be deceived in entertaining a be lief in those gloomy opinions which render their lives miser able ; and a philosopher, wishing to emancipate them from their errors, can have no reason for recommending suicide, since he relieves them from the evils which generated a weariness of life. The only tendency that such a sentiment can have is, by superadding a new doubt to their former perplexities, either to produce a still more wretched life, or give rise to an act of suicide, committed in a tumult of horror, and degraded by cowardice. Whoever the person was that published this posthumous piece, he could not have any motive that could bear examination. .