Hume With Helps To The Study Of Berkeley

Author : Thomas Huxley
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : 335 pages
Book Rating : 4.6/5 (7 download)

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Download or read book Hume: with Helps to the Study of Berkeley written by Thomas Huxley and published by . This book was released on 2020-01-18 with total page 335 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In two essays upon the life and work of Descartes, which will be found in the first volume of this collection, I have given some reasons for my conviction that he, if anyone, has a claim to the title of father of modern philosophy. By this I mean that his general scheme of things, his conceptions of the scientific method and of the conditions and limits of certainty, are far more essential and characteristically modern than those of any of his immediate predecessors and successors. Indeed, the adepts in some branches of science had not fully mastered the import of his ideas so late as the beginning of this century. The conditions of this remarkable position in the world of thought are to be found, as usual, primarily, in motherwit, secondarily, in circumstance. Trained by the best educators of the seventeenth century, the Jesuits; naturally endowed with a dialectic grasp and subtlety, which even they could hardly improve; and with a passion for getting at the truth, which even they could hardly impair, Descartes possessed, in addition, a rare mastery of the art of literary expression. If the "Discours de la Methode" had no other merits, it would be worth study for the sake of the luminous simplicity and sincerity of its style. A mathematician of the very first rank, Descartes knew all that was to be known of mechanical and optical science in his day; he was a skilled and zealous practical anatomist; he was one of the first to recognize the prodigious importance of the discovery of his contemporary Harvey; and he penetrated more deeply into the physiology of the nervous system than any specialist in that science, for a century, or more, after his time. To this encyclopedic and yet first-hand acquaintance with the nature of things, he added an acquaintance with the nature of men (which is a much more valuable chapter of experience to philosophers than is commonly imagined), gathered in the opening campaigns of the Thirty Years' War, in wide travels, and amidst that brilliant French society in which Pascal was his worthy peer. Even a "Traite" des Passions," to be worth anything, must be based upon observation and experiment; and, in this subject, facilities for laboratory practice of the most varied and extensive character were offered by the Paris of Mazarin and the Duchesses; the Paris, in which Descartes' great friend and ally, Father Mersenne, reckoned atheists by the thousand; and, in which, political life touched the lowest depths of degradation, amidst the chaotic personal intrigues of the Fronde.