THE MYTH OF BRITISH EMPIRICISM*

DAVID FATE NORTON

It came to pass that the earth was without form, and void, and darknesscovered
the face of the earth. And the creator saw that the darkness was evil, and he spoke
out in the darkness, saying Let there be light and there was light, and he called
the light Renaissance. But still the creator was not pleased, for there remained
darkness, and hence he took from Renaissance a rib. with which to fashion greater
tight. But the strain of his power broke the rib, and there did grow up two false
lights, one Bacon, whose name meaneth Father of the British Empiricists, and
one Descartes, whose name meaneth Father of the Continental Rationalists.
And because the creator saw that these were false lights, and that they should
war with one another, he set them apart and divided them by a great gulf, and said
unto them, Thus shall you labor apart until there shall grow up out of the East,
yea, even out of Koenigsberg, a great philosopher who shall be neither of you and
yet like unto both of you, and he shall bring true light and unite you.
And thus it was that Bacon begat Hobbes, and Hobbes begat Locke, and Locke
begat Berkeley, and Berkeley begat Hume. And thus it was that Descartes begat
Spinoza, and Spinoza begat Leibniz, and Leibniz begat Wolff. And then it was
that there arose the great sage of Koenigsberg, the great ImmanueI, Immanuel
Kant, who, though neither empiricist nor rationalist, was like unto both. He it was
who combined the eye of the scientist with the mind of the mathematician. And
this too the creator saw, and he saw that it was good, and he sent goodly men and
scholars true to tell the story wherever men should henceforth gather to speak of
sages past.

We have nearly all of us heard the history of early modern philosophy

recounted along the lines of this parody, and what is more, a great many among
us continue to believe this account. Such a belief is not, for several reasons,
entirely surprising. Several generations of college students have found the real
philosophica world - as exemplified by the college catalogue - divided ever
so clearly and neatly into the thesis, antithesis, synthesis of Continenta
Rationalism, British Empi~cism, and German Idealism. In addition, the belief
that early modem philosophy deveioped along two very disparate lines
(empiricism and rationalism). set apart from one another by the English
channel, is venerable and well-attested. It was given a healthy foundation by
none other than Thomas Reid, Humes contemporary and countryman, who
seems to have been the first to suggest that Locke, Berkeley, and Hume
represent nothing more than the three stages by which Descartes Way of
Ideas reveals its inherent and destructive scepticism. Granted, Reid did
not isolate Descartes from Locke and Co., but he did compose the Locke begat
Berkeley, and Berkeley begat Hume part of the refrain, although admitting,
somewhat grudgingly, that the Locke to Berkeley to Hume combination had
been of service to philosophy.
In Reids opinion, Lockes claim that the mind is originally a mere tub&z msa
put rather a different complexion on the basic proposition in the Way of
*See Notes.

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David Fate Norton

Ideas, namely, the proposition that all knowledge is obtained through the
medium of ideas. According to Locke, it could no longer be supposed that
there were innate ideas, and without innate ideas, there was not only no built-in
knowledge of reality, but also, it seemed, no possibility of gaining such knowledge. To know nominal essences was the best that man could hope for.
Berkeley, then, according to Reid, uncovered the fact that Lockes theory
could produce no proof that a material world existed, though the good Bishops
theistic commitments prevented him from seeing a second problem inherent in
the empiricist theory, namely, that there could be no proof of spiritual substances either. Discovery of this final deficiency was left to flume. Indeed
according to Reid, Humes great service to philosophy lay in the fact that he
took up where Berkeley had left off, and quite unwittingly, exposed and
espoused an absurd and dangerous scepticism inherent in the claim that man
perceives and knows by means of ideas.
A hundred years later, when German philosophy had all but conquered the
intellectual world, T.H. Green set about showing both the legitimacy and
inevitability of this victory by editing the first (and only) complete edition of
Humes philosophical works. The cunning reason for this otherwise puzzling
step was simple: Green wanted to show that Hume had in fact brought a certain
mode of philosophy - empiricism - to its ultimate and fully negative conclusion, and thus to show that such remaining empiricists as John Stuart Mifl
were mere anachronism9. In this way Green added important verses to Reids
refrain, while at the same time dropping any suggestion that Locke, Berkeley,
or Hume had ever read or heard of any non-British philosopher. Locke, says
Green, had pretty well gathered up the results of the empirical phiIosophy
of his predecessors, Bacon and Hobbes, and so it is necessary to show only
Humes direct filiation with Locke. The filiation is a simple one: Hume
adopted Lockes (and to a lesser extent, Berkeleys) premises. From Locke, for
example, he took the claims that the mind is merely a blank and passive
observer and that the mind is to be understood only by means of a history of
consciousness, as a series of events, or successive states observed in the
individua1 himself. In addition, Humes idea of substance is said to be simply
Lockes shed of the notion that there is a real something which is the source
and support of the collection of ideas which we have; furthermore, in his
speculation on morals, no less than on knowledge, Hume follows precisely the
lines laid down by LockeD. At the same time, Hume is said to have made a full
acceptance
of Berkeleys doctrine of sense and to have written with
Berkeley steadily before his mind.
Green does not claim that these borrowings Lessen Humes contribution to
philosophy. On the contrary, having adopted these premises, Hume is said to
have cleared them, as only a disinterested philosopher could, of any inconsistencies due to popular belief, and to have carried them to their full and fully
sceptical conclusions. Empiricism, thus taken to its logical conclusion is found
to be embarrassingly untenable, but not because of any deficiencies in Humes
statement of the case. Hume spoke, says Green, engaging rather obviously in
myth-making, like every true philosopher . . . as the mouthpiece of a certain
system of thought determined for him by the stage at which he found the
dialectic movement that constitutes the progress of philosophy, and he did

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333

philosophy a service by showing the principles he had adopted made philosophy impossible. Others (J.S. Mill, most notably), anachronistically and beyond
the reach of dialectical progress have persisted in philosophising on principles
which Hume showed to be inconsistent with philosophy. However, this should
never be permitted to obscure the fact that it was Hume who carried the torch
of progress. And, of course, when no English athlete had strength to carry it
further, it was transferred to Kant, the first of a more vigorous line which had
sprung up in Germany5.
In our own more sober century a less obviously transcendental version of
Greens account has dominated Anglo-American
views of the history of
philosophy. Certainly no hard-headed twentieth-century historian would care
to rely on vague references to dialectical movements or the cunning of
reason, and these fanciful metaphysical elements have been excised from our
view. In fact, it would now be said that Greens idealism had stood the past on
its head, for it is the empiricists, not their idealist successors, who put philosophy on the right track. Nevertheless, there has seemed to be little reason to
dispute what could be called the factual side of Greens account, and thus in
the past 60 or so years our favourite, perhaps one could say our standard,
historians of philosophy have taken for granted the claims that Rationalism and
Empiricism were disparate movements, that Locke is to be understood as
opposing the Rationalists, and that Berkeley and Hume can be satisfactorily
understood as developments of the Empiricism established by Locke. In what
is, it seems safe to speculate, the best-selling and most widely-read contemporary history of western philosophy, that by Bertrand Russell, we are told that
Locke may be regarded as the founder of empiricism, that his doctrine that all
our knowledge (with the possible exception of logic and mathematics) is
derived from experience . . . was . . . a bold innovation. In contrast, philosophy before Locke, and especially that of Descartes and his followers, Russell
suggests, doggedly overlooked and rejected experience in favor of a triumphant, rationalistic, and now thoroughly discredited subjectivism. And, of
course, we now emphasise what Green had only half-noticed: the empiricists
were British, their opponents ContinentuP. As another popular historian of
philosophy has put it, the empirical point of view was partly, perhaps, an
inheritance from Bacon, but it was partly a deliberate answer to the Continental Rationalists. Locke and the other British Empiricists wanted to produce a
practical common sense philosophy in contrast to the speculative theories
. . * in vogue on the continent.
Greens facts, we seem to agree, were
generally correct, but they were badly distorted by his interpretation. Read
them out again, and it will be seen that Locke and Hume are the true philosophical heroes - not only the sources of our tough-minded, contemporary
empiricism, but also spokesmen for a form of philosophical liberalism to which
we are all indebted#.
There is little or no justification for the continued acceptance of these
accounts. Careful and more comprehensive studies, not all of them exactly
recent, have revealed that there are fatal flaws in the very notion of British
Empiricism and that the standard account of its development falls well short of
being adequate. That is, if we suppose that the conceptual core of British
Empiricism is made up of doctrines found first in Locke, and then clarified, in

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David

Fate Norton

isolation from positive continental influences, by Berkeley and Hume, we shall

find that British Empiricism has precious little core indeed.
Locke is presumed to have said that the mind is a mere tab&a rasa, devoid of
innate ideas; that human knowledge is to be accounted for historically, as the
result of experiences inscribed upon this blank and passive mind; that we know
external objects phenomenalistically, through the medium of ideas in the mind
which are caused by external objects, the real essences of which we cannot
know; that experimental verification is to be preferred over rational analysis;
and that except for matters of logic and mathematics, all knowledge is probabilistic. I shall not quarrel with the claim that these are Lockes views. The
objections which must be lodged against the standard account of British
Empiricism are nonetheless clear: (1) The empirical aspects of Locke,
Berkeley, and Hume are neither original to Locke, nor simply the effect of
Bacon and Hobbes on Locke. The seminal figure of 17th- and 18th-century
empiricism was not British, but French. (2) Although it would be absurd to
suggest that Lockes writings had no effect on Berkeley and Hume, it is equally
absurd to suggest that their views are mere clarifications of his. Not only is
there clear evidence (of both an internal and external sort) that Berkeley and
Hume owe much to the Rationalists, but it is also clear that the views of
Berkeley and Hume diverge, in essential ways, from those of Locke, and that
they do so at least as often as they coincide. (3) These so-called empiricists are
in important ways less empirical and more a prioristic than a number of their
16th- and 17th-century predecessors, and Hume, far from being the complete
empiricist, explicitly draws attention to the fact that it is quite impossible to
take a purely empirical approach to any historical or philosophical issue. In the
balance of this paper I will try to give credence to these objections.
(1) The most likely candidate for the title, Founder of Modern Empiricism, is
Pierre Gassendi (1592-1655) who was born in Southern France. He distinguished himself as a student at Aix-en-Provence,
and became Professor of
Philosophy there when he was 25, one year after his ordination as a priest. In
1624 Gassendi published his Exercitationes Paradoxae Adversus Aristoteleos,
and over the next thirty years published, regularly and copiously, a number of
important works, including the fifth set of Objections to Descartes Meditations
in 1641, a much expanded attack on Descartes in 1644, and a Syntagma
Philosophiae
Epicuri in 1649. Three years after his death his Opera Omnia
appeared, and these included his previously unpublished Syntugma Phifosophicum.
Unfortunately for Gassendis later reputation, he wrote entirely in
Latin, and somewhat turgidly at that. However, in his own century, this was no
barrier to his popularity, and his reputation during the latter half of the 17th
century is said to have equalled that of Descartes and Hobbes. Professor Craig
Brush, who has recently given us the first significant English edition of
Gassendi, suggests that in his own day Gassendis influence was second to
none and that late 17th-century opponents of the Cartesians almost invariably
found themselves drawn to the Gassendist camp, while Antoine Adam has
argued that by 1700 the cultivated Frenchman was more likely to be a follower of
Gassendi than a Cartesian.
In general terms, one can describe Gassendis philosophy as an attempt to
find a middle position between the dogmatism of the Aristotelians and

The Myth of British Empiricism

335

Descartes,
and the Pyrrhonistic
scepticism of Sextus Empiricus,
Montaigne,
and others,
an attempt
which resulted
in the formulation
of a theory of
knowledge
suited to the limited, phenomenalistic
interests of the new natural
science, to which Gassendi
also made significant
minor contributions
in the
form of observations
and experiments.
(He is also said to be the first, by the
way, to publish a statement
of the principle of inertia as it was understood
in
later, Newtonian
dynamics.).
In his first work, the Exercitutiones, Gassendi not only elucidates the manifold errors of the Aristotelians,
but also goes on to attack all those who claim to
have indubitable
knowledge
about the real nature of things. Such knowledge,
he tries to show by a rehearsal of the standard
sceptical arguments,
is not
possible.
In this work, as Richard H. Popkin has put it, Gassendi insisted that
our knowledge
of the world comes only from sensory experience.
We are
unable to arrive at absolutely
true first principles and real or essential definitions,
since inductions
from experience
can never yield certain universal
propositions.
No matter how much evidence is gathered,
a negative instance
may still turn up in the future. However, in later works, and especially in the
posthumous
Syntugmaphilosophicum,
Gassendi attempts to mitigate this scepticism and arrive at a more constructive,
but nonetheless
non-dogmatic,
position.
Agreeing that some things seem too obvious to doubt-that
it is now
day, e.g. - he suggests that epistemological
debates are over what we can
know about matters that are presently concealed.
Without giving up his claim
that some things are simply beyond human ken, he suggests that we can
hypothetically
and tentatively
infer propositions
about some things that are
naturally
concealed,
and that these inferences
can be tested experimentally,
either by use of new instruments,
or by comparing
predicted
with actual
consequences.
Thus anatomists,
he reminds us, had long inferred from certain
signs that there are tiny holes in the human skin; now, he says, the existence of
such holes, the pores, has been confirmed by microscopic observation.
Gassendi
did not claim that analysis of such signs or appearances,
no matter
how systematic
or careful, would lead us to knowledge
of the real nature of
objects or the world, but he did think that we could from our experience arrive
at generalisations
of sufficient force and value to explain or control appearances. It seems then, that he not only formulated
most of the central tenets of
early modern
empiricism
but that he also, to cite Popkin again, separated
science and metaphysics
and formulated
a model for explaining
the phenomenal world [which] had a great and lasting impact on the development
of
modern scientific theory.
. . [and] is closer to twentieth-century
conceptions
of
the scientific
outlook
than that of almost any other seventeenth-century
thinker.
Leaving aside the more far-reaching
of these claims, it is clear that
many of the most valued aspects of British Empiricism
must be credited to a
French Catholic
priest who never set foot in Britain,
and whose decisive
opposition
to Cartesian
dogmatism has been conveniently,
but unfortunately,
overlooked.
(2) Secondly,
I have said that Berkeley and Hume both owe a good deal to
the rationalists,
and that the essentials of their philosophy diverge significantly
from Lockes and from each others. It is perfectly compatible with thisclaim to
point out that, as a matter of fact, Lockes attack on innate ideas was probably

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David Fate Norton

not directed toward Descartes at all, but toward a group of English divines who
did hold the kind of innate idea theory which Locke attacks. And though one
may not wish to go so far as Reid and his fellow Scats, and suggest that Locke
was in fact merely another Cartesian, there is no gain saying the claim that
Lockes Way of Ideas is a modification of a theory central to Descartes.
However, to come to the main contention, both Berkeley and Hume appear
to be indebted to Malebranche, whose writings were readily available in
English at the beginning of the eighteenth century. Curiously. atthough
Berkeleys own contempora~es often saw him as a disciple of ~alebranche.
the relationship between the two philosophers - who seem to have met and
discussed philosophical issues - was only studied in detail some 40 years ago
when A.A. Lute prepared his volume, Berkeley and Malebranche. Given our
present historical biases, it may seem strange to think that a philosopher like
Malebranche, who posits a domain of pure mathematical essences, could have
had such an appeal for Berkeley. But the evidence seems ove~helming,
especially in view of Berkeieys notes in his (since 1944) properly reconstructed
Philosophicai Commentaries14, and when more is known of Malebranche, the
influence is not strange at all. He was an early writer on scientific optics; he was
also, as was Descartes, an opponent of the abstractionist account of concept
formation; and he seems to have first suggested the distinction between
feelings, which are dependent on the perceiver, and Ideas, which have independent existence. Berkeleys first major work was, of course, the 77reor-y of
Vision (1709); in all his writings, but especially in the introduction to the
Principles (1710), he attacks the view that we can form abstract ideas by some
sort of generalising process; and though he is sometimes ambiguous about the
status of ideas, seeming to suggest that they are both dependent entities and
proper objects of knowledge, there is in Berkeley at least a partial analogue to
the feeiings and Zdeas of Malebranche, namely, the distinction between minddependent entities and the real knowledge which is obtained via notions.
In more general terms, Malebranche was a Cartesian, but instead of following Descartes, who grounded the objectivity of our knowledge in innate ideas.
Malebranche argued for an eternal domain of Ideas. Rather than having to
multiply the sets of innate ideas by the number of persons, Malebranche
posited a single set, common to all. Hence, he spoke of seeing all things in
God. What one actually sees in God is the essence of the material world - a
narrowly mathematical domain. Thus, even more sharply than Descartes,
Matebranche separated the essence of things from their existence, and argued
that while we can know various essential truths about matter (e.g. geometrical
truths) we must appeal to Holy Scripture to establish that there is in fact a
material world. Hence, we can properly be said to know the essence of the
material world, but not its existence. Conversely, we can know that we are
existent thinkers, but we have no access to the essence of mind. In general
terms again, Berkeley mirrors Malebranche. There can be no proof of the
existence of the muter&l world for we are acquainted only with ideas and our
own minds; and ideas persist even though humanly unperceived, because they
are in the mind of God. In short, both philosophers want to retain a common
sense perspective on the existence of objects - to say that objects are continuous and real - but neither thinks that such a perspective is even marginally

The Myth of British Empiricism

337

dependent
upon the existence of material substance. Malebranche
tells us that
God could have given us exactly the same experiences
without a material
creation - the Ideas are in Gods mind eternally,
and, as we know from our
dreams, we could have all the experiences
we now have even if material things
did not exist. Berkeley, for his part, points out that the Book of Genesis makes
no reference
to the creation of material substances.
On the nature of the self, Berkeley is closer to Malebranche
than to Locke,
but nearer
to Descartes
than either of the others.
In the Philosophical
Commentaries,
the Principles, and the Dialogues Berkeley clearly maintains
that it is perfectly intelligible
to speak of a substantial
self or spirit, and that
there is such a self. Thus, with Descartes,
but against Locke, Berkeley holds
that the mind is always active. Similarly, he tells us that he chose to use the term
idea because a necessary relation to the mind is understood
to be implied by
that term.
Such a necessary relation is good Descartes,
but bad Locke.
Locke. it may be recalled, cannot rule out the possibility that matter may think
(and hence that an idea could be related to matter only) except on the grounds
that he has not experienced
such a phenomenon,
which leaves open, of course,
the possibility
that he may yet do so.
In addition,
it was not Berkeley, but two continental
philosophers,
who first
attacked
the distinction
between primary and secondary qualities. The first
articulation
of this attack seems to have come from one of the leading critics of
Cartesianism.
Simon Foucher (16441696).
The Cartesians
generally clair :d
that ideas of material
things did represent
these things. Sensations resuhng
from experience
of the same things did not represent
them. Foucher was
unconvinced,
and asked why it was that sensations, which are modifications
of
the mind, could not be as representative
of things as ideas, which are also
modifications
of the mind. Or, conversely,
if sensations
cannot represent
things, how can ideas do so? Pierre Bayle then popularised
this objection by
including
it in his famous and influential
Dictionnaire. The new philosophy,
says Bayle, tells us that Heat, smells, colors, and the like [secondary qualities],
are not in the objects of our senses. They are [said to be merely] modifications
of the soul [or mind].
. ., and from this it follows that bodies are not all as they
appear to me. Of course, the new philosophers.
he continues,
wanted to
exempt extension
and motion from this sceptical conclusion,
but, unfortunately for them, they could not do so. For if the objects of our senses appear
colored, hot, cold, odiferous,
and yet they are not so, why can they not appear
extended and shaped, in rest and in motion, though they are not so?Berkeley,
we know from his notebooks,
borrowed
this objection
from Foucher and
Bayle. and furthermore,
borrowed it without particular thought to Locke, but
with an eye to overturning
the materialist
concept of extensionX. All things
considered,
then, one can understand
why a scholar should have recently
written as follows:
it is not at all clear that Berkeley was in fact interpreting or attacking Locke on
.
substance or on the latters view of primary and secondary qualities. . . . Berkeley
does not. either in the Principles or in the Three Dialogues, refer to Locke in
connection
with substance. reality or material substance. Nor does he quote from,
advert to. paraphrase.
mention or even - I believe - allude to Lockes Essay
when discussing these subjects in his two famous workslY.

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David Fate Norton

This will be a propitious point at which to turn to David Hume, the third man
in the Empiricist
trilogy, for there is also serious doubt about Humes debt to
Berkeley.
In fact, some 15 years ago it was asked if there was any reason to
think that Hume had, contra the standard account, so much as read Berkeley.
At that time there was no decisive external evidence in favour of the claim that
he had, and the internal evidence of a direct influence is scanty indeed: Hume
mentions
Berkeley fewer than a half-dozen times in all his published works; a
Berkelian
doctrine is used to establish Humes marginally intelligible views on
space and time, and the one Berkelian position which Hume does repeat, that
regarding
abstract ideas, is couched not in Berkeleys terms, but in those of
Chambers Cyclopedia *O.Subsequently,
the publication
of one of Humes early
letters has made it seem likely that he had in fact read Berkeley, but the letter
itself is highly significant in the present context. Writing to his friend Michael
Ramsay
in August,
1737, when the manuscript
of the Treatise Concerning
Human Nature was only just completed,
Hume says:
I shall submit all my Performances to your Examination, & to make you enter
them the more easily, I desire you, if you have Leizure, to read once over le
Recherche
de la Verite of Pere Malebranche,
the Principles of Human Knowledge
by Dr. Berkeley, some of the more metaphysical
Articles of Bailes Dictionary;
such as those
. . on Zeno & Spinoza. Des-Cartes Meditations would also be
useful . . . & make you easily comprehend
the metaphysical
Parts of my
Reasoning.
. .21

In other words, Hume did read Berkeley, but, in addition -and

this comes as
no surprise to those who understand
Humes analysis of causation, his ideas on
space and time, and his objections to the primary-secondary
quality distinction
- he had also read and been influenced by both Malebranche
and Bayle, and
perhaps even by Descartes.
Nor are Malebranche
and Bayle the only non-empiricists
who seem to have
influenced
Hume. Shaftesbury,
who was himself indebted to the Cambridge
Platonists,
and Hutcheson,
who explicitly set out to defend Shaftesbury.
are
two others, and the extent of Humes debt to these philosophers,
especially to
Hutcheson,
is beginning to be seen)). Norman Kemp Smith has, in fact, offered a
revolutionary
re-assessment
of Hume, claiming that he is to be understood
as
utihsing Hutchesons
moral sense realism as the basis of a metaphysical
realism
of a common sense sort - or, in other words, that Hume explicitly set out to
show that our beliefs in necessary connection,
substance and personal identity
are natural, necessary, and quite beyond doubt, and that he intended to show
that the very kind of scepticism now so often attributed
to Hume himself is
quite absurd and untenable:.
If this is not enough of a revolution,
another
scholar has gone so far as to suggest that Humes theory of mental activity is
essentially
Kantian - or, not to get the cart before the horse, that Kants
philosophy
is not so much a reaction to Humes as a Germanic expression of the
same general opinion2J.
It seems unlikely that one would want to go so far as to describe Hume as
either another Scottish Common Sense philosopher
or a proto-Kantianzs.
But
at the same time, it is clear that the empiricism-to-its-sceptical-conclusion
interpretation
of Hume will not serve. For one thing, he does clearly echo

The Myth of British

Empiricism

339

Hutchesons view that we are endowed with active minds, that we have a set of
faculties, instincts and propensities which determine how the elements of
moral and non-moral experience will be organised, and which provide us with a
set of natural beliefs which serve to organise and direct our behaviour.
Hutcheson, of course, was a clergyman, and inclined - indeed, much too
inclined, Hume said in his correspondence
with Hutcheson himself - to
attribute these propensities and beliefs to the work of a benevolent Designer.
But though Hume himself eschewed reliance on what he called final causes
there can be no doubt but that he accepted and defended a modified and
non-religious version of Hutchesons psychology, which is itself significantly
different from Lockes, and like to Malebranchesz6.
Perhaps the surest way to show the inadequacy of the standard account.
which was British Empiricism coming to a logical conclusion in Humes pervasive scepticism, is to note briefly some of the things that Hume (contrary to
even quite recent repetitions of the myth) did not deny.
(i) Hume did not deny the existence of anything behind impressions27. On
the contrary, from the opening paragraph of the Treatise, Hume assumes that
there is an external world, and though he clearly and explicitly states that how it
affects us through the senses is not his concern, but that of the anatomist, he
makes no effort to overturn this assumption*. His own interest is in the
subsidiary elements of our mental processes, and their connections or interrelationships. As he himself puts it. it is vain to ask, Whether there be body or
not? That is a point, which we must take for granted in all our reasonings2s.
(ii) Hume did not deny that there is any real connection between cause and
effectO. Humes analysis of causality is empirical insofar as he tries to explain
why we believe in necessary connection even though we experience only
continuity, succession; and constant conjunction. But he is not, nor need he be
to be consistent, a negative dogmatist who claims that that which is not
experienced does not exist. Elasticity, gravity, cohesion of parts, communication of motion by impulse; these (he says) are probably the ultimate causes
and principles which we shall ever discover in nature for, so far as we can see,
as to the causes of these general causes, we should in vain attempt their
discovery . . . These ultimate springs and principles are totally shut up from
human curiosity and enquiry31. In short, some causes are experienced, but
there may indeed be others that at least for the present are beyond human
reach.
(iii) Hume did not deny that there is a unified self, nor did he unequivocally
deny that we can have an impression of the self. Much has been made of
Humes remarks in Of Personal Identity (Treatise, I, IV, VI), but even
assuming that Hume there does deny that we have an impression or direct
experience of the self, it does not appear, on careful reading, that he isclaiming
that each of us is in fact only a bundle of perceptions. Throughout Book I of
the Treatise. Hume is concerned with the elements of our mental processes, and
how such elements arise and combine. This concern does not, as we have seen,
require him to deny the existence of other aspects of reality even if we fail to
have direct experience of these aspects. It should be added also that Hume was
the first to suggest (in the Appendix to the Treatise) that the Book I account of
personal identity is inadequate. Likewise, the conclusions of Books II and III

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David Fate Norton

of the Treatise, which are concerned with the passions and with morals, clearly
rest upon the assumption
of a unified and enduring
self, while frequent
reference
is there made to our impressions of our selves3*.
(iv j Hume does not deny the value of metaphysics.
It is not metaphysics per
se, but false and falsely based metaphysics which he suggests we bum. Hume is
certainly
of the opinion that metaphysics
at its best is often ineffectual
and
subject to the control of seemingly unavoidable
natural beliefs, and that at its
worst, which is all too often, metaphysics
is rash, precipitate,
dogmatical and
containing
nothing but sophistry and illusion and fit only to be committed to
the flames%. Nevertheless,
he also insisted that we must cultivate true metaphysics with some care, in order to destroy the false and adulterate
. . .
Accurate
and just reasoning is the only catholic remedy, fitted for all persons
and all dispositions;
and is alone able to subvert that abstruse philosophy and
metaphysical
jargon, which [has]. . . the air of science and wisdom:S4.
(3) My third claim was that these so-called empiricists are in important ways
less empirical than a number of their 16th- and 17th-century
predecessors.
There is a vast and very significant
difference
between the empiricism
of
Bacon,
which proceeds
on the base of pure and uncritical
collection
and
induction,
or that of Renaissance
and 17th-century
writers who compiled
centuries or syntagma on a wide variety of topics, and that of Hume. In fact,
once we are able to free ourselves
of the dominating
myth of British
Empiricism,
it is not difficult to see that Hume, at least, not only draws our
attention
to the fact that it is impossible to take a purely empirical approach to
any historical or philosophical
issue, but that he also manifests some decidedly
a prioristic tendencies.
Hume clearly, I grant, set out to give the world, along the lines of Gassendis
constructive
scepticism,
a science of man, an observationally based science of
man. Reflection
and meditation
are not adequate,
he says, and We must
therefore glean up our experiments
in this science from a cautious observation
of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world
of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we
. . Where experiments
may hope to establish on them a science. . .35. Hume realised, however, that
he would require a means of determining
which statements
about human life
are veridical -he
realised that a pure and unselective empiricism would be of
very little value. Even a phenomenalistic
science needs a criterion of truth, a
means of separating
genuine phenomena
from merely apparent phenomena.
Providing such a criterion, Hume realised from the outset of his work, would be
no simple matter, and as he continued
his philosophical
and historical efforts,
he seems to have come to the conclusion
that providing the needed criterion
was an impossible task. Observation,
to be of value, he saw, must be cautious,
but such cautious
observation,
he also concluded,
is faced with the almost
certain knowledge
that custom and education,
ones personal experience,
play
an over-riding,
but logically
indefensible
part in the formation
of our
empirical
judgements.
A very real element of personal bias, he concludes,
determines
not only what we will accept as a fact, but where we will look for
facts. Does a man of sense, he says, run after every silly tale of witches or
hobgoblins
or fairies, and canvass particularly
the evidence?The
question may
be rhetorical.
but Hume made certain he was not misunderstood:
I never knew

The Myth of British Empiricism

341

anyone. he goes on, that examined and deliberated about nonsense who did
not believe it before the end of his inquiries%.
Recent work has also revealed how aptly and unfortunately Hume illustrates
the kind of bias of which he spoke, and which undermines the very notion of
empiricism. Hume quite directly tells us, for example, that no amount of
positive evidence could ever establish the credibility of a miracle. Why?
Because it is always more likely that the purported miracle is only a fake, the
result of fraud and credulous ignorance, or, in more general terms, because LZ
priori considerations outweigh the putative evidence or appearances. It is not a
question of evidence, but of prior belief:. And Hume provides other illustrations of his own critique of empiricism when he is unable to believe anything
which redounds to the credit of the Irish or Black?. It is more likely, he
suggests, that Cromwell and his lieutenants were honorable and humane, than
that any Irishman should behave in a civilised fashion. And when he hears,
contrary to his white supremacist view, that no Black ever discovered any
symptoms of ingenuity, when he hears, contrary to this view, that there is in
Jamaica a Black man of intelligence and accomplishment, he is able - one
could be kind and say compelled - to dismiss this alleged fact with the callous
remark that tis likely he is admired for very slender accomplishments, like a
parrot, who speaks a few words plainly3Y. A strange, but not, if Humes
analysis is correct, unusual empiricism.
To conclude: I do not insist that there are no philosophical differences
between, say, Leibniz and Hume, or that these differences are without significance. Leibniz was clearly, for example, a superior mathematician, and he does
seem in his metaphysical writings to posit a greater role for reason than for
observation, and thus, in the best of all possible worlds, it might be acceptable
to call Leibniz a Continental Rationalist and Hume a British Empiricist. This is
not, however, that Utopian world, for we have a century or more of encrusted
myth to break down. Contrary to that myth, we know that the British did not
discover empiricism, that Locke, Berkeley and Hume borrowed significantly
from continental philosophers, and that much of what Berkeley and Hume did
was done without a copy of Lockes Essay (or, in Humes case, Berkeleys
Principles) open before them. We also know that Hume was an early critic i.e. conscious and explicit critic - of empiricism, and that he himself was by no
means the heroic empiricist-of-the-world
that some picture. We would be
well-advised, then -providing
our registrars or recorders will allow us to do so
to drop entirely the empiricism-British
Empiricism, rationalismContinental
Rationalism tags. For, though it be impossible to be totally
unbiased, we could in this way rid ourselves of one of our cruder philosophical
myths.
David Fate Norton
McGill University, Mon~euL

*A slightly different version of this paper was presented to the American Society for
Eighteenth-Century
Studies. I wish to thank Dr. David Brunner and Professor Harry M.
Bracken for valuable assistance in preparing it.

David Fate Norton

342

NOTES
1.

2.

J.
4.
5.
6.

7.

8.

9,

IO.

Xl.

12.
13.

For an account of what is called the Reid-Beattie Interpretation of Hume, see

Norman Kemp Smith, 7%~F~~l~o~~~ ~~~~v~~ &me (London: Macrnii~~~ & Co..
Mtf,
pp. 3-8. Reids own extensive account of the history of early modern
philosophy is found in both his Inquiry into the Human Mind on the Principles of
Common Sense (1764) and his Essays on the Intellectual Powers of Man (1785). See
The Works of Thomas Reid, ed. Sir. Wm. Hamilton (2 vofs.; 7th ed.; Edinburgh:
Macfachian & Stewart, 1872), I. 99-103; 262-310.
Thomas HfI Green, Introduction, David Hume: The Ph~~osop~i~~~Works, ed.
T.H. Green and Thomas Hodge Grose (4 vofs.; Reprint of the new edition.
London, 18&6; Darmstadt: Scientia Verfag Aafen, 1964), Sections 1-5. Greens
Introduction is now available as Thomas Hill Greens Hume and Locke, ed. R.M.
Lemos (New York: Thomas Y. Croweff Co., 1968). Subsequent references are to
this edition.
Ikd., pp_ 3,&l&,
177,302.
Ibid., p. 174.
Ibid., pp. F-5.
Bertrand Russell, A History ofwestern PhiIosophy (New York: Simon & Schuster,
1945), pp. 605, 609. See also pp. 491-92, 564, and throughout Bk. III, Chaps.
XII-XVII.
W.T. Jones, A History of Western Philosophy (New York: Harcourt, Brace &
World, 1952), p. 702. Russeft, op. cir., sketches the differences between Continental and British philosophers on pp. 6K!-44.
Russell remarks. p. 605, that Lockes influence on the philosophy of politics was so
great and so lasting that he must be treated as the founder of philosophical
liberalism as much as of empiricism in theory of knowledge.
Craig B. Brush, fntroduction, The Seiefted Works of Pierre Gtisendi, ed. and
trans.. C.B. Brush (New York: Johnson Reprint Corporation. 1972). pp. x-xi.
Adams remark is cited by Brush, p. xi.
Richard H. Popkin, Gassendi, Pierre, The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul
Edwards (8 vols.; New York: The Macmillan Co. &The Free Press, Inc.. 1%7), III,
269-73.
Further items of interest with regard toGassendi and empiricism in Britain in&de:
Bernard Rochot, Gassendi et fe Syntagma Philosoph~cum~ Revue de synthtse.
XLVIf (1950). 67-79; Richard I. Aaron, John Locke (3rd. ed.; Oxford: The
Cfarendon Press, 1971) esp. pp. 31-35, where Gassendis probable influence on
Locke, via Francois Bemier, is mentioned. The reader of Gassendis Syntugma
Philosophicum will be surprised at the measure of Lockes debt to Gassendi, says
Aaron, p. 34. Relatively recent work on Locke can be easify surveyed through the
work of Roland Hall and Roger Woodhouse, Forty Years of Work on John Locke
(1929-1969): A Bibi~ography and Addenda to Forty Years of Work on John
Locke, Philosophical Quarterly, 20, No. W) and No. Xf , pp. 2SR68 and 394-96
(July and October, 1970). In addition, Professor Hall has, since 1970, edited and
published the Locke Newsletter, a valuable clearinghouse of Locke studies.
See John W. Yofton.John Locke and the Way 0fIdeu.s (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1956) esp. pp. 26-58.
A.A. tuce, Berkeley and M~~e~r~~he: A Srudy in tire Origins of BerkeieyS
Thought (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1934). tuce writes that the extent of
Berkeleys debt to Malebranches Recherche de la Verite came to me as an unanticipated discovery, and that the book he has written subsequent to this discovery
represents an attempt to show that Berkeley, when he was preparing to write his
early books, made a thorough study of the Recherche, that the Berkefian phito-

The Myth of British Empiricism

sophy

14.

15.

16.

17.

18.
19.

20.

21.

22.

23.
24.
25.

26.

27.

343

still bears the specific imprint of that study, and, in particular,

that
Malebranches
conception
of seeing all things in God is at the back of the Berkelian
idea. (p. v) For the reaction of Berkeleys contemporaries
to his philosophy,
see
Harry M. Bracken,
The Early Reception of Berkeleys Immaterialism (2nd. ed.,
rev. ; The Hague: Martinus Nijhoff, 1%5).
George Berkeley, Philosophical Commentaries, ed. A.A. Lute (London: Thomas
Nelson and Sons, Ltd., 1944). Lute reordered
Berkeleys entries in what has
generally been called Berkeleys Commonplace
Book, and was thus able to trace
Berkeleys
philosophical
development
in the years when his views were most
significantly
formed.
George Berkeley,
The Works of George Berkeley, ed. A.A. Lute and T.E. Jessop
(9 vols. ; London: Thomas Nelson and Sons, Ltd.. 1948-57), II, 235-36. Vol. I of
this edition contains the Philosophical Commentaries.
On Foucher,
see Richard
A. Watson,
Foucher,
Simon, Encyclopedia
of
Philosophy,
III, 21-3-14; The Downfall of Cartesianism, 1673-1712 (The Hague:
Martinus Nijhoff, 1966), pp. 39-70, 123--15; and Introduction,
Simon Foucher,
Critique de la recherche de la v&it.4 (New York: Johnson Reprint Co., 1970).
Pierre Bayle. Pyrrhon, Dictionnaire Historique et Critique (1697;2nd. ed., 1704); a
convenient
modern selection is the Historical and Critical Dictionary, ed. and trans.
Richard H. Popkin, with the assistance of Craig Brush (Indianapolis and New York:
The Bobbs-Merrill
Company, Inc., 1965).
Berkeley, Philosophical Commentaries, passim, pp. 71 ff.
David Berman, On Missing the Wrong Target, a Criticism of some Chapters in
Jonathan
Bennetts
Locke, Berkeley, Hume: Central Themes, Hermathena 113
55-56, (1972).
R.H. Popkin,
Did Hume Ever Read Berkeley?.
Journal of Philosophy, 56,
535-45 (1959). Popkins article was written in response to one of the same title by
Philip P. Wiener, Journal of Philosophy, 56,532-35 (1959), and must be counted as
central in the reassessment
of the history of 18th-century British philosophy.
Dawida Humes a nieznany listy w
This letter may be found in T. Kozanecki,
Archiwum
Historii filozofii i MySri
zbiorach
Muzeum
Czartorykych-Polska,
Spolecznej,
9. 12741 (1963). See also R.H. Popkin,
So, Hume Did Read
Berkeley,
Journal of Philosophy, 61.773-78 (1964).
The similarity of Humes view of skepticism to that of Shaftesbury is discussed in
D.F. Norton,
Shaftesbury
and Two Skepticisms,
Filosofia, 19 (Supplement0
al
fascicolo, 4. 1968), 713-24.
Norman Kemp Smith, op. cit., pp. 2-7.
Robert Paul Wolff, Humes Theory of Mental Activity. The Philosophical Review,
69.289-310
(1960).
A more balanced view than those of Smith and Wolff, in my opinion, is that of
Charles W. Hendel, as found in his Supplement,
On Atomism: A Critique of
Humes First Principles and Method in Studies in the Philosophy of David Hume,
(2nd. ed. : Indianapolis
and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill
Co., 1962) pp. 379480.
My criticisms of Smiths efforts to make Hume another Scottish Common Sense
philosopher
were given in Humes Defense of Rational Metaphysics, a paper read
at the American Philosophical
Association,
Pacific Division, March, 1973.
For Humes criticism of Hutcheson on final causes see The Lettersof David Hume,
ed. J.Y.T. Greig (2 ~01s: Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1932), I, 33. In my
opinion. a fully adequate account of Humes dependence
on Hutcheson is not yet
available.
D.W. Hamlyn
makes this claim in his article Empiricism,
Encyclopedia
of
Philosophy,
II. 502.

344
28.
29.
30.
3 1.

32.
33.
34.
35.
36.

37.

38.

39.

David Fate Norton

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (Oxford: The
Clarendon
Press, 1888, reprinted,
1960). pp. 8,275-76.
Ibid., p. 187.
Hamlyn, op. cit., p. 503.
David Hume, Enquiries concerning the Human Understanding and concerning the
Principfes ofMorals, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge (2nd ed.; Oxford: The Clarendon Press,
1902, reprinted l%l), p. 30. A useful discussion of Humes views on this topic is that
of Donald W. Livingston, Hume on Ultimate Causation, American Philosophicat
Quarterly, 8, 63-70 (January, 1971).
See especially Bk. II, I, II-IV; Bk. III, I, II.
Hume, Enquiries, p. 165.
Ibid., pp. 12-13.
Hume, Treatise, p. xxiii.
The Letters of David Hume, op. cit., p. 350. For a more detailed discussion of Hume
and the problem of weighing evidence, see History and Philosophy
in Humes
Thought,
in David Hume: Philosophical Historian, ed. D.F. Norton and R.H.
Popkin (Indianapolis
and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill
Co., 1965), pp. xxxii-I.
James Noxon, Humes Philosophical Development (Oxford: The Clarendon Press,
1973) provides additional information on the sources and development
of some of
Humes central views.
See Of Miracles in Humes Enquiries, op. cit., pp. 109-131. On p. 127 Hume says:
Upon the whole, then, it appears that no testimony for any kind of miracle has ever
amounted
to a probability,
much less to a proof; and that, even supposing it
amounted
to a proof, it would be opposed by another proof; derived from the very
and therefore we may
nature of the fact, which it would endeavour to establish .
establishit as a maxim, that no human testimony can have such force as to prove a
miracle. . . .
Discussions
of Humes racism can be found in R.H. Popkin, The Philosophical
Basis of Eighteenth-Century
Racism, Studies in Eighteenth-Century Culture, Vol. 3:
Racism in the Eighteenth Centuty, ed. Harold E. Pagliano (Cleveland & London:
The Press of Case Western Reserve University,
1973) 245-62; and Harry M.
Bracken, Essence, Accident, and Race, Hermathena, 114 (1973).
Hume, Of National Characters,
The Philosophical Works, op. cit., III, 252n.