James Mackintosh some odd volumes of St Thomas Aquinas, partly, perhaps, from
having heard that Sir James (then Mr) Mackintosh, had, in his lectures, passed a
high encomium on this canonized philosopher, but chiefly from the facts, that
the volumes had belonged to Mr Hume, and had here and there marginal marks
and notes of reference in his own hand-writing. Among these volumes was that
which contains the Parva Naturalia, in the old Latin version, swathed and
swaddled in the commentary afore mentioned." When a person has spent much
time in the perusal of works so unlikely to be productive, as those of Aquinas,
the discovery of any little coincidence, or of any idea that may attract attention,
is a fortunate incident, of which the discoverer cannot avoid informing the world,
that it may see what he has been doing, and the coincidence in question is such
as might have excused an allusion to the subject, as a curiosity. But it was certainly a piece of (no doubt heedless) disingenuousness on the part of Mr Coleridge, to make so broad and conclusive a statement, without accompanying it with a comparison. "We have read," says a periodical paper alluding to this subject, "the whole commentary of St Thomas Aquinas, and we challenge Mr Coleridge to produce from it a single illustration, or expression of any kind, to be found in Hume's essay. The whole scope and end of Hume's essay is not only different from that of St Thomas Aquinas, but there is not in the commentary of the 'angelic doctor ' one idea which in any way resembles, or can be made to resemble, the beautiful illustration of the prince of sceptics."[1] The theory of Hume on the subject as corrected in his Inquiry, is thus expressed: "To me, there appear to be only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely, resemblance, contiguity, in time or place, and cause or effect. That these principles serve to connect ideas, will not, I believe, be much doubted. A picture naturally leads our thoughts to the original. The mention of one apartment in a building naturally introduces an inquiry or discourse concerning the others; and if we think of a wound, we can scarcely forbear reflecting on the pain which follows it."[2] From a comparison of this, with what Mr Coleridge must have presumed to be the corresponding passage in Aquinas,[3] it will be perceived that a natural wish to make the most of his reading had prompted him to propound the discovery. Had no other person besides Aquinas endeavoured to point out the regulating principles of association, and had Hume with such a passage before him pretended to have been the first to have discovered them, there might have been grounds for the accusation; but the methods of connexion discovered by philosophers in different ages, have been numerous, and almost always correct, as secondary principles. It was the object of Hume to gather these into a thread, and going back to principles as limited and ultimate as he could reach, to state as nearly as possible, not all the methods by which ideas were associated, but to set bounds to the abstract principles under which these methods might be classed. Aquinas, on the other hand, by no means sets bounds to the principles of association; he gives three methods of association, and in the matter of number resembles Hume; but had he given twenty methods,' he might have more nearly embraced what Hume has embraced within his three principles. The method of association by resemblance is the
- ↑ Blackwood's Magazine, v. iii. 656.
- ↑ Works, iv. p. 25.
- ↑ The passage is as follows: "similiter etiam quandoque reminiscitur aliquis incipiens ab aliqua re, cujus memoratur a qua procedit ad aliam triplici ratione. Quandoque quidem ratione similitudinis, sicut quando aliquis memoratur de Socrate, et per hoc occurrit ei Plato, qui est similis ei in sapientia: quandoque vero ratione contrarietalis, sicut si aliquis memoretur Hectoris, et per hoc occurrit ei Achilles. Quandoque vero ratione propinquitatis cujuscunque, sicut cum aliquis memor est patris, et per hoc occurrit ei filius. Et eadem ratio est de quacunque alia propinquitate vel societatis, vel loci, vel temporis, et propter hoc fit reminiscentia, quia motus horum se invicem consequuntur."
