"Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

[TABLE NOT SHOWN]

[TABLE NOT SHOWN]

Copyright 1995, Christopher MacLachlan ([email protected]). See
end note for details on copyright and editing conventions.[1]

Editor's note: "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences"
appeared in 1742 in Volume two of Hume's Essays, Moral and Political.
The text file here is based on the 1875 Green and Grose edition.
Spelling and punctuation have been modernized.

---------------------------------------------------------------------

Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences

Nothing requires greater nicety, in our enquiries concerning
human affairs, than to distinguish exactly what is owing to
chance, and what proceeds from causes; nor is there any
subject, in which an author is more liable to deceive himself
by false subtilties and refinements. To say, that any event is
derived from chance, cuts short all farther enquiry concerning
it, and leaves the writer in the same state of ignorance with
the rest of mankind. But when the event is supposed to proceed
from certain and stable causes, he may then display his
ingenuity, in assigning these causes; and as a man of any
subtilty can never be at a loss in this particular, he has
thereby an opportunity of swelling his volumes, and
discovering his profound knowledge, in observing what escapes
the vulgar and ignorant.

The distinguishing between chance and causes must depend upon
every particular man's sagacity, in considering every
particular incident. But, if I were to assign any general rule
to help us in applying this distinction, it would be the
following, What depends upon a few persons is, in a great
measure, to be ascribed to chance, or secret and unknown
causes: What arises from a great number, may often be
accounted for by determinate and known causes.

Two natural reasons may. be assigned for this rule. First, If
you suppose a dye to have any biass, however small, to a
particular side, this biass, though, perhaps, it may not
appear in a few throws, will certainly prevail in a great
number, and will cast the balance entirely to that side. In
like manner, when any causes beget a particular inclination or
passion, at a certain time, and among a certain people; though
many individuals may escape the contagion, and be ruled by
passions peculiar to themselves; yet the multitude will
certainly be seized by the common affection, and be governed