the idea that he was a dangerous sceptic, an infidel, a bold, bad man and what not. The simple truth happens to be that Hume found himself confronted by certain definite questions which had grown under the hands of his predecessors. In his case, the power of the man coincided with the power of the moment; and he still occupies his lonely pedestal as the single thinker of the first-class produced by the Anglo-Saxon race, because he settled the account of an age once for all. Had this been comprehended sooner, the nineteenth century would have been saved a wealth of waste paper and some lost temper. Reduced to its simplest elements, Hume's central problem is by no means hard to grasp, particularly if the Descartes-Newton scheme be recalled. Granted that separation of individuals, whether of men, of material bodies or of thought and extension, constitutes the fundamental fact in the universe; granted, too, that knowledge flows into consciousness through the senses, then what value can be attached legitimately to human experience? Hume, as one must always remember, possessed the wit not to rest satisfied with the dogmas that appeased his forefathers after the intellect. He wanted to know what precise inferences could be extracted from their cherished opinions, and he suspected that their satisfaction had not been won fairly. Accordingly, he showed, and the proof holds good beyond peradventure, that, on this traditional basis, human knowledge can be viewed only as a huge delusion. Objects, self and deity; matter, mind and cause; science and philosophy engulf themselves. Another alternative is impracticable, if the presuppositions, common to the mathematico-physical sciences, to the Cartesian metaphysics and to the British psychology, be admitted. It was no part of Hume's task to examine this foundation. He accepted it without change as it came to him and proved, in the most thoroughgoing fashion, that universal nescience was its sole logical end. Dualism, self-contained bodies, sensationalism, 'an agent acting constantly according to certain laws'—in short, the entire paraphernalia held conjointly by the science and philosophy of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, he hoisted with its own petard and blew to shivers irretrievably. For, admit his premises and the conclusion follows resistlessly. Now, the view of the universe prevalent from Descartes to Paley, from Galileo to Laplace, depended on Hume's premises and upon nothing else! So ended the first lesson, like its kind, not to be taken to heart for many a long day.
If the real implications of Hume's argument remained hidden from science, thanks to the continued predominance of the 'Newtonian philosophy,' and from the men who spoke Hume's tongue, thanks to contemporary political and theological causes, the same cannot be said of Kant. His philosophy took Europe by storm and has continued to influence scientific men perhaps more than any other body of philo-
