HKB
This is but an idle digression, so I return to the Dialogue.
With regard to the composition in general, I have nothing to observe, as it appears to me to be conducted with the greatest propriety, and the artifice in the beginning occasions, I think, a very agreeable surprise. I don't know, if, in the account of the modern manners, you [had] an eye to Bruyere's introduction to his translation of Theophrastes.[324:1] If you had not, as he has a thought handled pretty much in that manner, perhaps looking into it might furnish some farther hints to embellish that part of your work.[324:2]
HUME to GILBERT ELLIOT of Minto.
"Ninewells, 19th February, 1751.
"DEAR SIR,--Your notion of correcting subtlety of sentiment, is certainly very just with regard to morals, which depend upon sentiment; and in politics and natural philosophy, whatever conclusion is contrary to certain matters of fact, must certainly be wrong, and there must some error lie somewhere in the argument, whether we be able to show it or not. But in metaphysics or theology, I cannot see how either of these plain and obvious standards of truth can have place. Nothing there can correct bad reasoning but good reasoning, and sophistry must be opposed by syllogisms. About seventy or eighty years ago, I observe, a principle like that which you advance prevailed very much in France among some philosophers and beaux esprits. The occasion of it was this: The famous Mons. Nicole of the Port Royal, in his Perpétuité de la Foi,[325:1] pushed the Protestants very hard upon the impossibility of the people's reaching a conviction of their religion by the way of private judgment; which required so many disquisitions, reasonings, researches, eruditions, impartiality, and penetration, as not one in a hundred even among men of education, is capable of. Mons. Claude and the Protestants answered him, not by solving his difficulties, (which seems impossible,) but by retorting them, (which is very easy.) They showed that to reach the way of authority which the Catholics insist on, as long a train of acute reasoning, and as great erudition, was requisite, as would be sufficient for a Protestant. We must first prove all the truths of natural religion, the foundation of morals, the divine authority of the Scripture, the deference which it commands to the church, the tradition of the church, &c. The comparison of these controversial writings begot an idea in some, that it was neither by reasoning nor authority we learn our religion, but by sentiment: and certainly this were a very convenient way, and what a philosopher would be very well pleased to comply with, if he could distinguish sentiment from education. But to all appearance the sentiment of Stockholm, Geneva, Rome ancient and modern, Athens and Memphis, have the same characters; and no sensible man can implicitly assent to any of them, but from the general principle, that as the truth in these subjects is beyond human capacity, and that as for one's own ease he must adopt some tenets, there is most satisfaction and convenience in holding to the Catholicism we have been first taught. Now this I have nothing to say against. I have only to observe, that such a conduct is founded on the most universal and determined scepticism, joined to a little indolence; for more curiosity and research gives a direct opposite turn from the same principles.