Old-Fashioned Ethics and Common-Sense Metaphysics (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: 3 CHAPTER III. DAVID HUME AS A METAPHYSICIAN. But the mischief lieth here; that when men of less leisure see them who are supposed to have spent their whole time in the pursuit of knowledge professing an entire ignorance of all things, or advancing such notions as are repugnant to plain and commonly received principles, they will be tempted to entertain suspicions concerning the most important troths which they had hitherto held sacred and unquestionable.?Berkeley's ffylas and Philonous. In no department of science Is it possible for an enquirer to advance considerably beyond all his predecessors without serving as a light by whose aid his successors may advance somewhat beyond him. This is the only apology that I feel disposed to offer for the freedom with which I am about to criticize one who, having been, by judges so competent as Adam Smith and Professor Huxley, pronounced to be ' by far the greatest philosopher' and' acutest thinker' of his own age, would, doubtless, be at least on a level with the greatest philosophers of the present age if he were living now. The veriest cripple that can manage to sit on horseback may contrive to crawl some few steps beyond the utmost point to which his steed has borne him, and, ii those steps be uphill, may, by looking back on the course he has come, perceive where the animal has deviated from the right road. Yet he does not on that account suppose that his own locomotive power is in any respect to be compared to his horse's; neither need an annotator on Hume, when pointing to holes in his author's metaphysical coat, be supposed not to be perfectly aware that it is the strength, not of his own eyes, but of the spectacles furnished to him by his author, that enables him to perceive them. The concentrated essence of Hume's meta...