Hume Studies

57 THE BURIAL AND RESURRECTION OF HUME'S ESSAY "OF MIRACLES" It was Hume's original intention to include his essay "Of Miracles," or at least some version of it, in the Treatise; but, as is well enough known, he did not. He had made up his mind not to some time before December, 1737. Thus, writing Henry Home, Dec. 2, 1737, he tells of the omission and at the same time gives an explanation for it. Writes Hume: "[I] accordingly inclose some Reasonings concerning Miracles, which I once thought of publishing with the rest, but which I am afraid will give too much offence, even as the world is disposed at present. " Later, in the same letter, he humorously comments: "I am at present castrating my work, that is, cutting off its nobler parts; that is, endeavouring it shall give as little offence as possible." With a pull at Henry Home's lively, amiable leg, he then adds, "This is a piece of cowardice, for which I blame myself, though 2 I believe none of my friends will blame me." To take Hume at his word, then, the essay "Of Miracles" was omitted from the Treatise for purely prudential reasons. "As the world is disposed at present" it is likely to give offense and so must be cut out: an explanation that, as far as I know, has not been taken exception to. Thus, Norman Kemp Smith, in his discussion of the essay in his introduction to the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, quotes the same passages from Hume's letter to Henry Home without query, quite as if they presented no difficulty. Clearly, though, they do present some difficulty. If a prudential fear of arousing religious prejudice and retaliation prevented, as seems indicated, the inclusion of the essay "Of Miracles" in the Treatise why did it not 4 also prevent its inclusion, nine years later, in the 58 Philosophical Essays concerning Human Understanding or, as subsequently titled, the Enquiry? Are we to suppose that in the intervening nine years, or eleven years counting from the date of Hume's letter to Henry Home, the world had become better "disposed"? We have good reason to think that, although religious toleration had broadened in the interval, it had not broadened quite that much. Moreover, we have good reason to think that Hume did not think it had or was all that concerned if it had not. As late as 1755, for instance, we find Hume, along with Lord Karnes (the former Henry Home), under bitter attack in the General Assembly as infidels; and writing to Henry Home in April 1748, Hume says, "The other work is the Philosophical Essays [Concerning Human Understanding] which you dissuaded me from printing. I won't justify the prudence of this step, any other way than by expressing my indifference about all the consequences that may follow."6 But while Hume presents no reason except the very questionable one of indifference to prudential consequences for resurrecting and including the essay "Of Miracles" in the Philosophical Essays or Enquiry, Norman Kemp Smith here does have an explanation of his own. In almost the same place in the same introduction we have previously quoted from, he says that Hume wanted to ensure the popularity of the Enquiry. "He was anxious," he says, "that it should appeal to a wide public, and not merely to students of technical philosophy; and for this reason he also decided to include certain other sections which, on the eve of publication, he had omitted from the Treatise. " He goes on to explain that the "nobler parts" of the Treatise that were cut off were "evidently theological in character; and of the kind in which the reading public would be likely to be most interested. These he now resolved to include in the Enquiry. " 59 This explanation of Norman Kemp Smith's in no way, of course, elucidates his previous quotations from Hume's letter to Henry Home, which speak of prudence and cowardice; nor does he seem to be at all aware of the irrelevancy and even incompatibility of the two. But be that as it may, one cannot entirely discount the claim...