to explain the occurrence of certain passions; even in the Treatise he had not used sympathy and the association of ideas as a means of reducing apparent altruism to self-love, after the manner of Gay. Throughout, Hume regards benevolence as psychologically simple and not compounded of simpler egoistic desires. In respect to this question Miss Shearer follows closely the analysis of Hume's use of association given by Professor McGilvary.[1]
I believe it is to be admitted that a good case is established for this view of the relation between the Treatise and the Inquiry. Certainly it is fundamentally important to mark the wide divergence between Hume's use of association and that of Gay and the other utilitarians of the eighteenth century; a failure to make this distinction has caused much confusion in the interpretation of Hume's ethics. At the same time it is easy to overestimate the importance of the question. That Hume did differ fundamentally from the other utilitarians of his time, at least in the Inquiry, has been fully recognized by careful critics. Moreover, a preference for the Inquiry as a statement of Hume's ethical theory, such as that expressed by Professor Albee, is quite consistent with the admission that Miss Shearer and Professor McGilvary have made out their case regarding the Treatise. No one, so far as I know, has ever held that Hume's ingenious theory of sympathy added anything to the clearness of his ethics. The peculiar interpretation of association which Hume used in his explanation of the passions was not only different from that of his contemporaries but was purely an episode in the history of the association theory.
The identification of the Treatise and Inquiry, however, is not the chief point for which Miss Shearer contends. This is rather the closer identification of Hume with the moral sense school. Whether she would go the length of denying that he is a utilitarian is not perfectly clear. She does hold that he retained the moral sense throughout his system as a means of bridging the gap between a mere recognition of utility and an approval of it. But it remains a question,—and the matter might well have been discussed by Miss Shearer,—whether the psychological simplicity of moral sentiments is a sufficient reason for excluding Hume from the utilitarians, though it is to be freely admitted that this distinguishes him from his contemporaries in the school. In fact, it is difficult to see on what ground one would deny Hume a place among utilitarians, unless on the supposition that a recognition of original altruism is inconsistent with the principle of utility, a position that seems to be taken by Mr. Selby-Bigge in the introduction to his edition of Hume's two Inquiries (p. xxvi). But the utilitarian school has universally been considered to include not only Hume's contemporaries but also moralists of the nineteenth century who had largely modified the psychology of Gay and Tucker, and this partly under the influence of Hume himself. There is no sufficient reason why the greatest happiness principle must be held only in conjunction with the view that all motives are developed from an original desire for the agent's pleasure. When Mr. Selby-Bigge says that Hume differs from the moral sense school
- ↑ This Review, Vol. XII, 1903, pp. 272 ff.; the title of this article is misquoted on p. 36.
