Chapter II: 1734-1739. æt. 23-27 (3)

"Thus, like the hermite, we think the sun shines nowhere but in our cell, and all the world to be darkness but ourselves. We judge truth to be circumscribed by the confines of our belief, and the doctrines we were brought up in; and, with as ill manners as those of _China_, repute all the rest of the world _monoculous_. So that, what some astrologers say of our _fortunes_ and the passages of our lives, may, by the allowance of a metaphor, be said of our _opinions_--that they are written in our _stars_, being to the most as fatal as those involuntary occurrences, and as little in their power as the _placits_ of _destiny_. We are bound to our country's _opinions_ as to its _laws_; and an accustomed assent is tantamount to an infallible conclusion. He that offers to dissent shall be an _outlaw_ in reputation; and the fears of guilty Cain shall be fulfilled on him--whoever meets him _shall slay him_."--pp. 95-96.

"We look with superstitious reverence upon the accounts of preterlapsed ages, and with a supercilious severity on the more deserving products of our own--a vanity which hath possessed all times as well as ours; and the _golden age_ was never present. . . . We reverence gray-headed doctrines, though feeble, decrepit, and within a step of dust: and on this account maintain opinions which have nothing but our _charity_ to uphold them."--p. 102.

[86:1] "Had I done but half as much as he [Hume] in labouring to subvert principles which ought ever to be held sacred, I know not whether the friends of truth would have granted me any indulgence, I am sure they ought not. Let me be treated with the lenity due to a good citizen no longer than I act as becomes one."--Beattie's Essay on the Nature and Immutability of Truth, &c. p. 20.

On this Priestley says, "Certainly the obvious construction of this passage is, that Mr. Hume ought not to be treated with the indulgence and lenity due to a good citizen, but ought to be punished as a bad one. And what is this but what a Bonner and a Gardiner might have put into the preamble of an order for his execution. . . I for my part am truly pleased with such publications as those of Mr. Hume, and I do not think it requires any great sagacity or strength of mind, to see that such writings must be of great service to religion, natural and revealed. They have actually occasioned the subject to be more thoroughly canvassed, and consequently to be better understood than ever it was before, and thus _vice cotis funguntur_."[86:A]

[86:A] Examination of Dr. Reid's Inquiry, &c. Dr. Beattie's
Essay, &c. and Dr. Oswald's Appeal, &c. 1774, pp. 191-193.

[88:1] Critik der reinen Vernunft, (Methodenlehre,) 7th ed. p. 571.

[89:1] Preliminary Dissertation to the _Encyclopædia Britannica_, 210.

[95:1] A scientific friend observes, that this is the germ of the theory of oxidation.

[98:1] I have been favoured by Mr. Chambers with an old copy of this letter, in which it is titled as a letter to Gilbert Stuart. The original is among the MSS. R.S.E. where there is a note in Baron Hume's handwriting, with a supposition that it was addressed to Dr. Traill.

[101:1] B. i. part iv. sect. 7.

[104:1] B. i. part iv. sect. 7.

[104:2] B. ii. part i. sect. 10.