228 THEORY OF KNOWLEDGE. is that of a semi-skeptic or probabilist, in so far as they go beyond the establishment of facts to the proof of connections under law and to inferences concerning the future. Habit is for him a safe guide for life, although it does not go beyond probabilities; absolute knowledge is unattainable for us, but not indispensable. Toward metaphysics, as an alleged science of the suprasensible, he takes up an entirely nega. tive attitude. If an argument from experience is to be assured of merely that degree of probability which is sufficient for belief, it must not only have a well-established fact (an impression or memory-image) for its starting point, but, together with its conclusion, it must keep within the limits of possible experience. The limits of possible experience are also the limits of the knowable ; inferences to the con- tinued existence of the soul after death and to the being of God are vain sophistry and illusion. According to the famous conclusion of the Essay, all volumes which contain anything other than "abstract reasonings concerning quantity or number" or "experimental reasonings concerning matter of fact and existence" deserve to be committed to the flames. In view of this limitation of knowledge to that which is capable of exact measurement and that which is present in experience, as well of the principle that the ele- ments added by thought are to be sharply distinguished from the positively given (the immediate facts of percep- tion), we must agree with those who call Hume the father of modern positivism.* As a philosopher of religion Hume is the finisher and destroyer of deism. Of the three principles of the deists — religion, its origin and its truth are objects of scientific investigation ; religion has its origin in the reason and the consciousness of duty ; natural religion is the oldest, the posi- tive religions are degenerate or revived forms of natural religion — he accepts the first, while rejecting the other two. Religion may correspond to reason or contradict it, but not proceed from it. Religion has its basis in human nature, yet not in its rational but its sensuous side ; not in the specu- lative desire for knowledge, but in practical needs ; not in the
- So Volkelt, Erfahrung und Denken, 1886, p. 105.
