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mathematics are magnitudes, those of experience are facts; the mathematics judge solely by analysis, experience solely by synthesis. Hence there is demonstrative certainty in mathematics, whereas experience merely attains probability or moral certainty; for in the one case conclusions are drawn by reason, in the latter they are the result of faith in habitual association.

5. CUSTOM AS A POLITICAL POINT OF VIEW.

From the reasons stated above, Hume was necessarily a sceptic in philosophy; for a knowledge based merely upon custom can only have temporary, and cannot arrive at absolutely valid truth. But, with Hume, custom is not merely the ground upon which our empirical knowledge is to be explained, but also the "guide of human life." So far as life is ruled by custom, it comes within the scope of Hume's point of view. In philosophy principles govern; in life, custom. Our whole life is, as Göthe's Egmont says, the

sweet habit of existence." Even the natural movements of the body must become habitual by repeated practice, in order to be involuntary and

According to him, the judgments of mathematical science and experience are both synthetical, but the former judges according to intuition, the latter according to logical conception.— Author's note.

free from effort. Thus healthy eating and drinking, walking and standing, under the guidance of natural instincts, become habitual functions by repeated practice; thus also is it with reading and writing, under the guidance of education. We must first accustom ourselves simply to live; then we must accustom ourselves to live in a particular manner. Our life and our cultivation are results of our habits; and these are the results of oftrepeated experience. Custom alone produces our morals; and these produce the common public life of man, and its constitution. An alteration of constitution is an alteration of morals and customs. But customs arise gradually, and therefore must be gradually altered. If custom is slowly progressive, so likewise must be the disuse of custom. Here nothing arises suddenly by a mere resolution of the will, a decree, an arbitrary agreement. Human customs and morals in their slow, gradual metamorphosis, these are the historical processes of cultivation. He who does not understand the nature of customs and of morals habitually acquired, he who does not take into account this power in human life, is incapable of understanding history, much more of making it. He does not understand mankind, much less will he be able to govern it. Every sudden "enlightenment," every sudden revolution in a state,

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is thoroughly repugnant to history. A faith and a state cannot be demolished, any more than they can be produced, by a single blow. We are made acquainted with the anti-historical view of the Anglo-Gallic" enlightenment." Among all the philosophers of this" enlightenment,” David Hume is the only one whose views approximate to the nature of historical life, the only one whose thought is not repugnant to history, because he understood that human life is governed, not by principles and theories, but by customs. The same principle which made him a sceptic in philosophy, made him an historian fitted to judge of men and states, a circumspect politician. He thought historically, because he depreciated the value of philosophical principles. In him the philosophical sceptic and the political historian constitute one person. If we would have a palpable instance of the difference, in this respect, between the great sceptic and the Anglo-Gallic "enlightenment," we need only compare the historical works of a Hume with those of a Voltaire.

But the consonance of the views of Hume with history is most plainly apparent with respect to one particular point, in treating of which the other philosophers of his age had established a dogma repugnant to history. Nothing shows how

far the so-called "enlightenment" was removed from all historical experience, so much as the theory of a contract, by which an explanation of the state had been attempted. The state and the institutions of public life have an historical origin; but such a contract as is taught by a Hobbes, a Locke, a Spinoza, or a Rousseau, has never existed in the reality, where they look for it. Every one can see that the contract, to be valid, presupposes a human community, or at least a form of existence similar to a state. Hume is the most open adversary of the contract theory, although he also would explain the state on natural grounds. He attacks the social contract theory, as propounded by Rousseau and Locke.* sees that such a theory is opposed to all historical experience and possibility, and is, in fact, no more than a creation of the philosophical brain. Before men could have been united by an express contract, they must have been already united by necessity. It was a result of necessity, without any contract, that one commanded and the rest obeyed. "Each exercise of authority in the chieftain," says Hume, "must have been particular, and called forth by the present exigencies of the case. The sensible utility resulting from

He

* Compare "Hume's und Rousseau's Abhandlungen über den Urvertrag," by G. Mertal. (Leipzig, 1797.)

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his interposition, made those exertions become daily more frequent; and this frequency gradually produced an habitual, and, if you please to call it so, an arbitrary and therefore precarious acquiescence in the people.' In the place of a contract, Hume puts custom. He gives precisely the same explanation of the state as of knowledge, basing the former upon habitual obedience, as he has based the latter upon habitual experience. Custom attaches men to the form of state to which they have become accustomed, and secures its duration against any violent attack. The continuation of Wallenstein's speech is uttered in the very spirit of Hume:

"Woe to the impious hand that dares to touch
The dear old stock his fathers have bequeath'd!
There is a sanctifying power in years;
What age has render'd grey, appears divine.
Be in possession, then the right's thine own,
And will be honor'd by the multitude."

A principle repugnant to history led to consequences equally repugnant. If the state was the product of a mere arbitrary act of the human will, an arbitrary will would have a right to annihilate it at a single blow. The contract theory led to a revolutionary theory. If it was once established that the state had arisen from a tabula

* Essay, "Of the Original Contract."-J. O.