Science of Politics
It is disconcerting then to find that on other questions Hume takes a stand, even lays down general rules, as if for all men and all times. But he is speaking with the authority of prudence, not science, as a man who has learned wisdom more than truth. And his notion of prudence implied that any attempt to settle political questions scientifically was chimerical and dangerous. The adimportant but subtle difference between the rules of a prudent man and the laws of a social scientist never concerned Hume,1 because the possibility of social science in the twentieth-century sense was not an issue in his day. He was thinking of other opponents.
He was arguing against three sorts of people: those, like Clarke or Hobbes, who tried to deduce rules for human conduct from what Hume regarded as metaphysical absurdities; those, like Berkeley, who denied a natural order because they affirmed man’s direct dependence on God (the appearance of gravitation in some instances did not justify, Berkeley said, concluding it was universal, because God might act sometimes in one way, and sometimes in another, “just as He sees convenient”); those, like Bolingbroke, who, in order to undo Walpole, argued that a government should stand or fall on the merits of the governors. Against the first, Hume was anxious to show that views about politics and morals must be drawn from what men are ready like, not from imaginary pictures of human nature; against the second, he wished to establish the existence of a natural order that is safe from divine interference; the last he wished to persuade that violent abuse of a minister is both unnecessary and dangerous because the nature of a government depends mainly on constitutional arrangements and laws which should not be lightly challenged. He argued, therefore, for experimental knowledge, that is, for experience against “hypotheses” in the sense of metaphysical or a priori principles. And he tried to show that experience revealed the persistence of certain regularities that did not conform to the abstract principles preferred by philosophers, and could not be destroyed by either human or divine will.
Yet when he spoke of an experimental science of man, Hume did not mean it strictly. In fact, he sharply distinguished between the “experimental” and the “scientific” methods, and regarded them as opposed to one another. In speaking of the correct method in morals, he says,
we can only expect success, by following the experimental method, and deducing general maxims from a comparison of particular instances. The other scientific method, where a general abstract principle is first established, and is afterwards branched out into a variety of inferences and conclusions, may be more perfect in itself, but suits less the imperfection of human nature, and is a common source of illusion and mistake in this as well as in other subjects.1
He was not proposing to “explain” the causes of human phenomena, but only to gather correct observations of human nature and arrange them in some orderly fashion. Even in the Treatise, he intended not to explain why men thought as they did, but only to describe what occurred when they thought. For despite his admiration for Newton, and his adaptation of Newton’s method for his psychology, Hume had a simpler and more consistent view of science.
Newton held that science was incomplete as long as it remained purely descriptive; science had to discover causes, which could, Newton suggested, be seen in phenomena. And he sometimes spoke about gravity as if it were a force implied by the phenomena observed, thus justifying those disciples who persisted in treating gravitation as an explanatory principle. Newton, of course, had no wish to deny, as Hume did, a human capacity for understanding the nature of things. This led him at other times to insist that the theory of gravitation was purely descriptive, so as to avoid any dangerous suggestion that God was unnecessary. But Hume was anxious to restrict science to description, for the opposite reason, because he wished to deny any link to God, which would be implied in a human power to discover causes in the strict sense. Science to Hume meant an orderly body of knowledge disclosing that things in fact behave in certain ways; why they do so must remain an eternal mystery because knowledge of causes, in the sense of seeing the inner nature from which effects flow, is beyond man. Nor was Hume any readier to accept scientific explanation in the later sense of a hypothesis or “leap” beyond experience. He was content to forego explanation altogether and to stay with experience. He would confine himself to observing the appearance of effects in different circumstances:
For to me it seems evident, that the essence of the mind being equally unknown to us with that of external bodies, it must be equally impossible to form any notion of its powers and qualities otherwise than from careful and exact experiments, and the observation of those particular effects, which result from its different circumstances and situations. And tho’ we must endeavour to render all our principles as universal as possible, by tracing up our experiments to the utmost, and explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest causes, ’tis still certain we cannot go beyond experience; and any hypothesis, that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature, ought at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimerical.1
In the Treatise, where Hume was arguing against the philosophers and theologians, he defended generalizations about human affairs in order to deny free will. He did this, however, not because he wished to advocate determinism, but because the belief in free will was part of the prevailing theological dogma that separated man from the natural world. To say that man had free will was, Hume thought, tantamount to declaring that human behaviour was uncaused, and that every common sense notion about human behaviour was unfounded. It implied that there was no regularity in human life, and knowledge about it had to be independent of experience. Against those who removed man from nature in this way, Hume pointed out that “It is at least possible” that “the contrariety of events may not proceed from any contingency in the cause, but from the secret operation of contrary causes.”2 Moreover, he reminded them, politics, war, commerce, indeed everything in human life, depended on the belief in a certain regularity. The prince who imposed taxes expected his subjects to pay; the general who commanded an army counted on a certain courage; the master who ordered his dinner assumed his servants would obey. Anyone who lived in the ordinary way, whatever he said, believed in some regular conjunction of cause and effect in human affairs, as in all others.1
In the essays, Hume’s defence of general rules arose out of his concern with immediate political issues. Even under the tide “That Politics may be Reduced to a Science,” he was arguing against Bolingbroke. The essay opens with a pointed reference to the criticisms that were being made of Walpole: “It is a question with several whether there be any essential difference between one form of government and another? and whether every form may not become good or bad, according as it is wed or id administered?” If it were true that all governments were alike, he continues, and that the differences arise only from “the conduct and character of the governors,” all political disputes could end. It would follow that a bad minister must at once be replaced by a better one. But in fact that is not the case, as even the critics of the government had confessed in accusing it of subverting an excellent constitution. If the constitution were ready excellent, Hume pointed out, it would provide a remedy against mal-administration. The state of affairs could not then be as bad as it was painted. If a minister proved to be as destructive as his critics alleged, then the constitution needed revising, and its subversion was quite desirable.
Hume agreed with Bolingbroke that the British constitution was admirable, but this meant, he pointed out, that it provided some check even on the worst rulers. Those who abused the government so violently ran the risk of undermining a good constitution. And so he concluded the essay “That Politics may be Reduced to a Science” with a plea for moderation:
Let us therefore try, if it be possible from the foregoing doctrine, to draw a lesson of moderation with regard to the parties into which our country is at present divided. … Those who either attack or defend a minister in such a government as ours, where the utmost liberty is allowed, always carry matters to an extreme, and exaggerate his merit or demerit with regard to the public. … Would men be moderate and consistent their claims might be admitted; at least might be examined. … I would only persuade men not to contend, as if they
