Hume, with Helps to the study of Berkeley : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley.

  • Thomas Henry Huxley
Date:
1894
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Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Hume, with Helps to the study of Berkeley : essays / by Thomas H. Huxley. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    I life, that Hume addressed to some eminent London physician (probably, as Mr. Burton suggests, Dr. George Cheyne) a remarkable letter. Whether it was ever sent seems doubtful; but it shows that philosophers as well as poets have their Werterian crises, and it presents an interest- ing parallel to John Stuart Mill's record of the - corresponding period of his youth. The letter is too long to be given in full, but a few quotations may suffice to indicate its importance to those who desire to comprehend the man. You must know then that from my earliest infancy I found always a strong inclination to books and letters. As our college education in Scotland, extending little further than the languages, ends commonly when we are about fourteen or fifteen years of age, I was after that left to my own choice in my reading, and found it incline me almost equally to books of reasoning and philosophy, and to poetry and the polite authors. Every one who is acquainted either with the philosophers or critics, knows that there is nothing yet estab- lished in either of these two 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 entiroly 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 tho world, but that of a scholar and philosopher.
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