"Allow me to tell you, that I never asserted so absurd a proposition as _that any thing might arise without a cause_. I only maintained that our certainty of the falsehood of that proposition proceeded neither from intuition nor demonstration, but from another source. _That Cæsar existed_, that there is such an island as Sicily,--for these propositions, I affirm, we have no demonstration nor intuitive proof,--would you infer that I deny their _truth_, or even their certainty? There are many different kinds of certainty; and some of them as satisfactory to the mind, though perhaps not so regular as the demonstrative kind.
"Where a man of sense mistakes my meaning, I own I am angry; but it is only with myself, for having expressed my meaning so ill, as to have given occasion to the mistake.
"That you may see I would no way scruple of owning my mistakes in argument, I shall acknowledge (what is infinitely more material) a very great mistake in conduct, viz. my publishing at all the 'Treatise of Human Nature,' a book which pretended to innovate in all the sublimest paths of philosophy, and which I composed before I was five-and-twenty; above all, the positive air which prevails in that book, and which may be imputed to the ardour of youth, so much displeases me, that I have not patience to review it. But what success the same doctrines, better illustrated and expressed, may meet with, _adhuc sub judice lis est_. The arguments have been laid before the world, and by some philosophical minds have been attended to. I am willing to be instructed by the public; though human life is so short, that I despair of ever seeing the decision. I wish I had always confined myself to the more easy parts of erudition; but you will excuse me from submitting to a proverbial decision, let it even be in Greek."[98:1]
The reader, who passes from the first book of the Treatise, on "the Understanding," to the second, on "the Passions," will, in many instances, feel like one who is awakened from a dream, or as if, after penetrating in solitude and darkness into the unseen world of thought, he had come forth to the cheerful company of mankind, and were holding converse with a shrewd and penetrating observer of the passing world. As Hume was never totally insensible to the elements of social enjoyment, but had indeed an ample sympathy with the joys and sorrows of his fellow men, he appears occasionally, in the midst of his most subtle speculations, to experience a desire to burst from the dark prison of solitude, into which he had voluntarily immured himself, and bask in the sunshine of the world. "Man," he says, in his Treatise, "is the creature of the universe who has the most ardent desire of society, and is fitted for it by the most advantages. We can form no wish which has not a reference to society. A perfect solitude is, perhaps, the greatest punishment we can suffer. Every pleasure languishes when enjoyed apart from company, and every pain becomes more cruel and intolerable." In a remarkable passage, in which, after having long proceeded in enthusiasm with his solitary labours, he seems to have stopped for a moment, and recalling within himself the feelings and sympathies of an ordinary man, to have reflected on the scope and tendency of the system in which he was involving himself, he thus expresses himself, regarding its gloomy tendency, and the effect it has in destroying, in the mind of its fabricator, those stays of satisfactory belief in which it is so comfortable for the wearied intellect to find a resting-place:--