Page images
PDF
EPUB

bles that of Holland. He does not remark that even the form of a ship must depend upon the material, and that the material with which he has to deal is living and changing; nor that the constitution of Holland was developed under a special set of historical, geographical, and physiological conditions. With the help of such aphorisms as these, that the lower sort of people are good judges of their own neighbours, but incapable of electing the highest officials; and that all free governments must consist of a senate and a people to supply respectively honesty and wisdom; he puts together a constitution as absolutely as Harrington, his favourite authority, or as his successor Sieyès; and though appealing to experience, really contemplates that metaphysical man who exists under no conditions of space or time.

57. Hume is indeed full of acute remarks, or he would not be Hume. The weakness of his Essays is characteristic of his time; and it would be well if popular writers of the present day had emancipated themselves from the delusions which perplexed his unsurpassed keenness of vision. Perhaps the most instructive example of his method is the interesting Essay on 'National Characters.'' The tacit assumptions which pervade his method are there most distinctly exhibited. Character, he says, may be determined either by 'moral causes,' such as the form of government, the wealth and poverty of a nation, and its position towards its neighbours; or by physical causes,' by which he understands the insensible influence of the climate. This classification tacitly omits the stage of development of a race; and, in spite of acute incidental remarks upon the difference between ancient and modern, or savage and civilised modes of thought, it is plain that he takes the statical view of history, and thus unconsciously ignores all theories of evolution. Another point is more remarkable. Hume was by twenty-two years the junior of Montesquieu. The younger man sought the acquaintance of the old philosopher, and procured a publication at Edinburgh of an English edition of the 'Esprit des Lois' in 1750.5 Montesquieu's speculations upon the influence of climate, though not

1 Hume's Works, iii.
2 Ib. p. 487.

p. 490.

Ib. p. 244, &c.
Ib. p. 244.

* Burton's 'Life of Hume,' i. 304.

IV. THE 'WALPOLE ERA

[ocr errors]

183

SX

entirely novel, produced a great impression, and clearly aimed at the discovery of a scientific basis for political enquiry. It is curious to find that Hume's essay (published in 1742, or six years before the 'Esprit des Lois') is specially directed against the theory of climatic influence. His reasons are significant. A single government, he says, has spread a single national character over the vast territories of China, whilst separate governments produced the greatest variety of character within the narrow limits of Greece. In a preceding essay he has noticed the obvious connection between the physical geography of Greece and its division into small governments as favourable to the rise of arts and sciences. He considers it, again, to be an argument against the influence of climate, that similarity of manners may be produced by a simple contiguity. It appears, therefore, that his argument against 'physical causes' implies a very limited view of their mode of action. He contemplates only such direct and tangible influences as the supposed influence of damp weather in promoting drink, or of hot weather in exciting the amatory passions. The more remote physiological effects of climate, soil, and physical conditions generally are beyond his contemplation. But the omission of another element of the question is more significant. National character cannot, he says, be a product of physical causes, because it is often limited by an invisible political frontier; because a particular set of men, like the Jews, maintain their character by association; because accidents,' such as differences in language and religion, keep two races apart, like the Greeks and Turks; or because the same national character follows the colonies of a people round the globe. These phenomena would all be now accepted as striking proofs of the influence of race. Nothing is more characteristic than the complete failure to recognise this as a factor in the problem, even when his logic seems to cast it in his face. Hume observes, in a note, that even the merits of horses seem to depend less on the climate than on the 'different breeds and the skill and manner of rearing them.' Here is the very force required to explain his observations, and he is unable to notice it. Indeed, he explicitly asserts that whilst horses transmit their qualities, a

1 Hume's Works, iii. p. 247, note.

'coxcomb may beget a philosopher,'' and, therefore, denies the influence of race. In fact, he has tacitly assumed that all men are of one 'breed.' They are but the abstract manthe metaphysical entity, alike in all times, places, and conditions. The 'breed' being a constant quantity, all differences must arise from 'the manner of rearing,' or, in other words, on form of government. He points out that the character of a given people varies from age to age, and that the English character is strikingly heterogeneous, even in the same country. From his point of view, as excluding any reference to successive stages of development, the first consideration is a decisive proof that differences in character arise from change of government; and, as he excludes reference to variety of breed, the second consideration justifies the inverted conclusion that the character arises from the mixed form of government.

[ocr errors]

58. I have said enough to illustrate the natural tendency of the method. Hume having abandoned the old theological and metaphysical synthesis, has reduced the race to a mere chaos of unconnected individuals. He cannot recognise, even when they are brought before him, the great forces which bind men together; a nation is not a living organism, but a temporary combination in various conformations of colourless units. National character results from forms of government; forms of government are the work of chance, though chance, as no one knows better, is but a name for undiscovered causes. History, therefore, is, rigidly speaking, an inscrutable enigma. The Essay upon the Rise and Progress of Arts and Sciences' opens with some able remarks on the influence of chance, or 'secret and unknown causes,' upon human affairs, and shows that general results generally depend upon determinate and known causes.' He attaches great importance to the influence of individuals. Freedom causes the rise of arts and sciences, and freedom was, perhaps, favoured by the division into small states due to the physical configuration of certain countries; but, after all, we must often trace the character of a people to the rise of some Brutus, at the early period when their imaginations were still plastic, and forms of government unfixed. Even the great movements of thought present them2 Ib. p. 248.

Hume's Works, iii. p. 258.

selves to him as 'accidents.' Religious wars are simple follies, for a controversy about an article of faith, which is utterly absurd and unintelligible, is not a difference in sentiment, but in a few phrases and expressions which one party accepts of without understanding, and the other refuses in the same. manner.' 'Parties from principle, especially abstract speculative principle, are known only to modern times, and are, perhaps, the most extraordinary and unaccountable phenomenon that has yet appeared in human affairs.' When such principles involve a 'contrariety of action,' 2 the case is explicable, but he cannot see why men of different religions should not pass each other like travellers going in opposite directions on the same high road. Religious wars, therefore, all depend on the frivolous' principle that people are shocked by a difference of sentiment.

59. It is no wonder if history presented itself as a mere undecipherable maze to the eighteenth-century thinkers, of whom Hume is the most complete representative. Ignoring utterly the great forces which move men's souls, unconscious of the differences due to race, climate, or gradual revolution, they saw nothing but a meaningless collection of facts, through which ran no connecting principle. The translation of this heretical scepticism into politics is a cynical conservatism; and Hume, though elaborately candid in his Essays, evidently inclines to the side of authority as the most favourable to that stagnation which is the natural ideal of a sceptic. He anticipates, indeed, some modern writers, in insisting upon the advantages of competition amongst rising states, and points to China as an illustration of the check imposed upon progress by excessive authority. A discontented sceptic worships competition, as a contented sceptic worships calm. But, to Hume, the time for struggling seemed to have elapsed. All elements of disturbance were a mere annoyance to the adult world. We should be above playing with toys, religious and otherwise, which amused our childhood. In his Utopia, the church is a department of the state, and the clergy rigidly bound under secular authority, for they represented a belief in something, and consequently a possibility of fanaticism. We may guess from various indications in his Essays that his 1 Hume's Works, iii. p. 130. 2 Ib. p. 130. • Ib. p. 183.

ostensible preference for the British Constitution was already tempered by a decided hankering after an enlightened despotism on the French model. His nearest approach to a definite theory is that popular governments suit the infancy and despotisms the age of a civilised state. 'Absolute monarchy,' he says, 'is the easiest death, the true euthanasia of the British Constitution.'1

V. THE FRENCH INFLUENCE.

60. The first half of the eighteenth century had thus produced no English book upon the theory of politics capable of communicating any great impulse to speculation, or of directly affecting the dominant ideas of the time. The English people, waxing fat under a succession of good harvests and the rapid development of commercial enterprise, worried themselves very little about the game played by their governing classes. A growl at some tax upon drink, or at a pacific policy which hurt their national pride, or seemed to endanger their trade, was their only sign of life. Nothing could be further from. the mind of the aristocracy than any real attempt to awaken a sleeping democracy. The jargon about standing armies and annual parliaments was the most transparent of artifices. And meanwhile, philosophers, growing ever more sceptical, were pretty clear that where nothing could be known it was better to make no change. By degrees a new spirit was to awake, but the speculative impulse was not to come from England. About the middle of the century appeared two books, which marked a new era. Montesquieu's 'Esprit des Lois' was published in 1748, and Rousseau's 'Contrat Social' in 1762. Far asunder in all else as the poles, they have this much in common, that both are written in French and both show strong marks of English influence. Nothing would be easier than to put together a theory showing why the best books upon English politics must necessarily be written by foreigners. The complex organisation of the English political system can, it may be suggested, be most easily studied from without. To a Frenchman, accustomed to the simplicity of a centralised government, this cumbrous 'Hume's Works, iii. 126.

« PreviousContinue »