are to be explained only by the varying degrees in which the principles are blended in different persons. Thus the concepts with which Hume deals are ambition, self-love, gratitude, and similar generalizations which are not actually existent personal qualities at all, and which may, of course, be regarded as essentially the same in all persons and at all times.
There is, undoubtedly, a certain amount of truth in this view, and, as we have said, Hume's problem in The Natural History of Religion is not strictly historical. For the anthropological problem of the work such a conceptualized view of human nature was perhaps justified, though it is certainly much more abstract than modern anthropological methods. There is abundant evidence, however, that Hume applied the same conception to historical explanation.
"It is universally acknowledged, that there is a great uniformity among the actions of men, in all nations and ages, and that human nature remains still the same, in its principles and operations. The same motives always produce the same actions: The same events follow from the same causes. Ambition, avarice, self-love, vanity, friendship, generosity, public spirit; these passions, mixed in various degrees, and distributed through society, have been, from the beginning of the world, and still are, the source of all the actions and enterprizes, which have ever been observed among mankind. Would you know the sentiments, inclinations, and course of life of the Greeks and Romans? Study well the temper and actions of the French and English: You cannot be much mistaken in transferring to the former most of the observations, which you have made with regard to the latter. Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by shewing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials, from which we may form our observations, and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behaviour."[1]
The remedy for this "abstractness lay in the development of
- ↑ An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, § VIII, pt. i, Vol. IV, p. 68.
