HUME. 23s: ourselves to the power of instinct and common opinion, was )ess earnest and less in harmony with the nature of the phi- losopher than his other advice, to take refuge from the strife of the various forms of superstition in the more quiet, though dimmer regions of — naturally, the skeptical — philosophy. Hume's originality and greatness in this field consist in his genetic view of the historical religions. They are for him errors, but natural ones, grounded in the nature of man, "sick men's dreams," whose origin and course he searches out with frightful cold-bloodedness, with the dispassionate interest of the dissector. In his moral philosophy * Hume shows himself the empiricist only, not the skeptic. The laws of human nature are capable of just as exact empirical investigation as those of external nature; observation and analysis promise even more brilliant success in this most important, and yet hitherto so badly neglected, branch of science than in physics. As knowledge and opinion have been found reducible to the associative play of idea^, and the store of ideas, again, to original impressions and shown derivable from these ; so man's voHtion and action present themselves as results of the mechanical working of the passions, which, in turn, point further back to more primitive principles. The ulti- mate motives of all action are pleasure and pain, to which we owe our ideas of good and evil. The direct passions^ desire and aversion, joy and sorrow, hope and fear, are the immediate effects of these original elements. From the direct arise in certain circumstances the indirect passionsi, pride and humility, love and hatred (together with respect and contempt) ; the first two, if the objects which excite feeling are immediately connected with ourselves, the latter, when pleasure and pain are aroused by the accomplish- ments or the defects of others. While love and hate are always conjoined with a readiness for action, with benevo- lence or anger, pride and humility are pure, self-centered, inactive emotions. All moral phenomena, will, moral judgment, conscience, virtue, are not simple and original data, but of a composite
- Cf. G. von Gizycki, Die Ethik David Humes, 1878.
