1On a personal and subjective level, David Hume was only too aware of differences between manners and habits in Britain and those in the European country most prominent in his travels and interests, France. Writing from Paris to the historian William Robertson, on 1 December 1763, he said of the course of his life, "I eat nothing but Ambrosia, drinking nothing but Nectar, breathe nothing but Incense, and tread on nothing but Flowers. Every Man I meet, and still more every Lady, wou'd think they were wanting in the most indispensible Duty, if they did not make to me a long & elaborate Harangue in my Praise." Hume goes on to tell the story of meeting one of the children, aged ten, of the Dauphin, who proceeded to tell him with what pleasure he had read Hume’s works. At first, he told Robertson, that he found this attention and praise "oppressive" but as he began to speak French again more easily he found himself forming and re-forming friendships, which were much more agreeable than "silly, distant Admiration." Indeed, he was so pleased with life in France in general and Paris in particular that he felt that he would make the place his home, for he felt "little Inclination to the factitious Barbarians of London": in Paris "Learning & the Learned" were on a completely different footing, and he clearly felt that the French valued culture, learning, and the life of the mind much more than the factitious, partisan English ever could.1 As I hope to show, it was not just France that seemed to Hume to have more to offer in the achievement of its arts and letters, but most of Europe, ancient and modem.

2Before we think that Hume was carried away by the fervency of the admiration that the French expressed for him and his writings once he had achieved fame and fortune, we should remind ourselves that this mid-life (Hume was now 52) enthusiasm for French manners and culture was no different from that he felt in 1734 (aged 23), when he was an unknown student in France. He wrote to Michael Ramsay (12 September 1734) that the "French have more real politeness & the English the better Method of expressing it." In order to exemplify what he means, Hume points to a difference between the way the English use the phrase "humble Servant, which likewise we ommit [sic] upon the least Intimacy," while the French phrase "the Honour of doing or saying such a thing," carries a quite different implication. I hasten to say that I am not sure exactly what Hume has in mind, except that for him the concept of honour was probably a grander and more ennobling passion than that of humility; but he seems also to think that there is something irresistibly comic in the expressed wish of the woman who did his washing that she hoped that she would have the honour of serving him while he stayed at Rheims. (I am not sure when that peculiarly English locution for closing a letter—"I have the honour to be your obedient servant"—came into usage, but Hume does use it himself, so far as I can tell, only when signing himself at the close of a letter addressed to someone with a title, or someone whom he doesn't know well.) So, Hume argues, with nations as with an individual man: "one Trifle frequently serves more to discover the Character than a whole Train of considerable Actions." Having confessed to an imperfect command of the French language at this time, Hume has undoubtedly made too much of too little, but my point is that Hume seems to have been actively seeking out differences between French culture and British culture, in manners, habits, and ideas. Moreover, his early interest in a contrast between "politeness" and "barbarity" is in its embryonic stage in the letter to Ramsay.

3A few years later, when he came to publish his Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals in 1751 he was a bit more cautious in his enthusiasm, merely noting a difference between England and France with respect to qualities that we find pleasing in other people. The companionable qualities that men exhibit when they pass their time in conversations and visits are to be distinguished from those found in domestic life or in a small circle of acquaintances. He notes that the question first asked about a stranger in France is this: "Is he polite? Has he wit?" while in England a man is praised for being a "good-natured, sensible fellow" (262). In this instance, Hume is careful not to express a preference for the French set of values over those of the English, but for someone so addicted as he was to the "two greatest and purest Pleasures of human Life, Study and Society"2 it seems clear that he would have preferred French values.

4Hume’s enthusiasm for politeness also manifests itself in his limited but basically approving preference for a monarchy to a republic (see the essay "Whether the British Government Inclines More to Absolute Monarchy, or to a Republic") and may indeed be one of the causes of that preference. Nevertheless he emphatically affirms that the arts and sciences flourish only under the blessing of a free government, whether monarchical or republican. But Hume is quite clearly more interested in the results of governmental forms than the forms of government, asserting (in "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences") that "nothing is more favourable to the rise of politeness and learning, than a number of neighbouring and independent States, connected together by commerce and policy."3 This coordination of politeness, learning, commerce, and policy would seem to make Hume a proto-European, a man of letters living the life of the mind, seeking the greatest possible integration of learning and the polite arts, and arguing that such an integration can take place only among those enjoying a free government which also pursues liberal trade and commercial policies.

5Indeed, in the same essay, which was first published in 1742, Hume remarks that "EUROPE is at present a copy at large, of what GREECE was formerly, a pattern in miniature" (Essays 121), so that one may easily infer that he is thinking of Europe as an integrated community of interests, commerce, and learning. If, unlike Greece, the various European States were not obviously united by a common language, it is doubtless worth recalling the old cliché that every civilized person in Europe spoke French in the eighteenth century, and other scholars were known to converse and correspond in Latin in the seventeenth century. However, what is not clear from this essay, or, for that matter, Hume’s observations elsewhere, is whether or not he considers Britain to have anything in common with the States of continental Europe, or to be an integral part of a European community. Although he was fiercely proud of the achievements of his native country—I mean here, of course, Scotland as distinct from England or Britain—he defines English or Scottish manners and civilization differently from the collective unity that he can impose on continental Europe.

6The historian to whom Hume was writing, William Robertson, had perhaps inadvertently assigned a reason to this disjunct between continental Europe and England, namely England’s loss of its French territories in the fîfteenth century. When France was able, according to Robertson, to annex territories in France hitherto possessed by England, its political hegemony in continental Europe was almost assured. The English, having lost these possessions, except for the "narrow precincts of Calais," no longer had ready access to Europe.4 Yet Robertson shared with Hume a belief in the power of commerce and trade to promote civilized manners and to diminish conflict, because commerce, as Robertson asserts, will "wear off those prejudices which maintain distinction and animosity between nations. It softens and polishes the manners of men. It unites them, by one of the strongest of all ties, the desire of supplying their mutual wants." Robertson cites Edward III of England as an example, for, among other things, "alluring Flemish artisans" to England’s shores, where they helped with the establishment of the woolen trade and turned the native genius of the English towards the arts of commerce (Charles V 1: 81). Wise governments, Robertson implies, clearly see the advantages of bringing non-natives with special skills to their dominions in order to create growth and prosperity. David Hume was somewhat more sceptical and did not entirely share Robertson's pan-European interpretation of these events, or his feelings about the resuit of incorporating European citizens or subjects into English culture. He notes that the Flemings were the first peoples in northern Europe to cultivate arts and manufactures and to become wealthy. Edward III secured the assistance of the Flemings by cultivating and flattering James d'Arteville, the Flemish leader, described by Hume as a "seditious and criminal tradesman." The results, of course, are well-known, with Edward’s assuming the title of the King of France, an action which led to "that great animosity, which the English nation have ever since borne to the French."5 (It seems curious that it should be the fault of the French that the English should bear animosity towards them, but perhaps that is part of the English genius for European harmonization). Thus, what Robertson seems to have perceived as something indicative of England’s European orientation and integration, Hume sees as the cause of England’s isolation from what was to become easily the most powerful country in continental Europe. England took itself out of Europe culturally and economically by taking itself into Europe too much militarily and geographically.

7In addition to these accidents of his history, Hume is, as I have already indicated, ever alert to differences in attitudes and values between Europe and Britain. He draws analogies between past and present and finds corollaries between one nation in antiquity and a modem one. In a section called "A Dialogue" at the end of the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, he reverts again to this device, noting that a man of merit in Athenian society might be viewed with "horror and execration" in Hume’s own age, despite the fact that the Athenians were civilized and intelligent. The French, too, are civilized and intelligent, and yet a man whom they esteemed meritorious would be regarded with contempt, ridicule, even hatred by the Athenians. What Hume finds really extraordinary in these comparison is that the French consider themselves to be more like the Athenians than any other nation in Europe, while the English "flatter themselves that they resemble the Romans."6 Hume is, as usual, both amused by these self-flattering comparisons and at the same time bemused by the impossibility of finding unshakeable moral grounds for preferring one set of values above another.

8It is clear, I hope, from the few remarks that I have so far made that Hume's attitudes towards Europe, in comparison or contrast with his feelings about England, are emphatically ambivalent in most instances. He enjoys the superiority of French politeness, which he associates with a refined taste in arts and literature and perhaps secondarily with good manners. He is interested enough in the culture of Germany of assert that "DRESDEN, not HAMBURGH, is the centre of politeness in Germany" (Essays 90). What puzzles him is that France, without having "ever enjoyed any established liberty," as he remarks in the essay "Of Civil Liberty" (Essays 91), nevertheless attained a superiority in the arts and sciences that no other nation has equalled; what is more, the French had, for the most part, perfected that art of living, the "art of society and conversation" (91; note the similar attitude in the Dialogues, already quoted). In contrast, England, while flourishing commercially, does not enjoy any great achievements in literature or the other polite arts. The freedom enjoyed by the British subject permits him to achieve great things in commerce and trade, principally because, as Hume says at the conclusion of his History of England, "we, in this island, have ever since enjoyed, if not the best System of government, at least the most entire System of liberty, that ever was known amongst mankind" (History 8: 531; chapter LXXI). Hume thus seems genuinely puzzled that barbarians enjoy such liberty, which enables them to flourish economically, while the polite, refined, and civilized Europeans, exemplified by the French, attain eminence in the arts and sciences. Hume’s ambivalence, his puzzlement, however, extends occasionally into forgetfulness at best or self-contradiction at worst. Writing about a military spirit and the martial arts among ancient and contemporary Europeans, he asserts that the Romans were the only "uncivilized people" ever to possess military discipline, while the contemporary Italians are the only "civilized people" among modem Europeans who completely lack it. Were we to ascribe this to their luxury, politeness, or application of the arts, we would be wrong as we need but to "consider the FRENCH and ENGLISH, whose bravery is as uncontestable, as their love for the arts, and their assiduity in commerce" ("Of Refinement in the Arts" [Essays 275]). Since Hume had, at least in his correspondence, had some doubts about the Englishman's love of the arts, one might feel that he is being slightly ironic here.

9Hume's scepticism about the nature and extent of civil liberty in Europe forms and informs his attitude towards, and his valorization of, learning in Europe and in England. One of his most positive utterances, enunciated as a general principle, on the matter occurs in the essay on "The Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences" (1742). Commenting on the reason why one nation is "more polite and learned" than neighbouring States at some particular time in history, he asserts, "it is impossible for the arts and sciences to arise, at first, among any people unless that people enjoy the blessing of a free government" (Essays 115). Hume is undoubtedly not the first to enunciate that idea so positively, but it does seem an idea commensurate not only with the Age of Enlightenment but also the Age of Revolution. Oliver Goldsmith, in his Enquiry into the Preset State of Polite Learning (1759), had noted that the arts and sciences matured slowly and that they needed a permanent and settled government in order to develop; moreover, he said, "it was also requisite for this end that it should be free."7 Hume's insistence that liberty is a pre-requisite to developing the life of the mind is an article of faith for him, but to what extent it was a matter of practical experience is unclear, if not ambiguous.

10Although Hume thinks of England as part of Europe, he does so only in geographical, not geo-political terms, and even then in rather generalized terms. He obviously relishes the contrasts that he draws between patterns of behaviour and promulgations of values in continental Europe and Britain, but he almost never attempts to think that the two disparate entities can be unified or even coordinated. In the essay "Of National Characters," he attributes many of the supposed differences between European peoples to happenstances, to attitudes based on hearsay, and to ignorance, saying that, for example, that he does not think that "men owe any thing of their temper or genius to the air, food, or climate" (Essays 200). People in various nations change their values, their feelings, their attitudes over the centuries, and in one area, that of religion, Hume would clearly seem to prefer the religious atmosphere of protestant Britain to that of Catholic Europe: ancient Britons were abjectly superstitious, "inflamed with the most furious enthusiasm" in the seventeenth century but now are "settled into the most cool indifference with regard to religious matters, that is to be found in any nation of the world" (Essays 206). I might just add a biographical and bibliographical aside here, in that the sentence I have just paraphrased and quoted was added in 1753 to an essay first published in 1748. In 1757, with the dedication of his Four Dissertations to his kinsman, John Home, Hume found himself embroiled in a religious controversy and fiercely attacked, and his ejection from the Church of Scotland was considered. Yet he did not revise that sentence in any of the remaining editions of his Essays and Treatises during his lifetime.

11One of Hume’s most interesting remarks in the essay "Of National Characters" is about the national character of the English, whose government is a mixture of monarchy, aristocracy, and democracy, with all kinds of religious sects represented and with every man having the freedom to "display the manners peculiar to him." As a resuit the English are distinctive among all the peoples of the universe as having "the least national character; unless this very singularity may pass for such" (Essays 207). Hume cannot have been unaware of the various popular and often derogatory perceptions that Europeans had of Englishmen on the Grand Tour, and I am inclined to suspect that this is an ironic dig by a Scotsman at English blandness and phlegm. The more one examines the various isolated and scattered comments on and assessments of Europe in Hume’s writings the more one feels that the most noticeable feature about Europe is this ambivalence: on the one hand, he often implies, or even openly asserts, that Europe is not an entity or even a group of States possessing the desire or self-interest to pursue integration of any kind at any stage. On the other hand, he thinks of Europe as being a kind of ancient Greece writ large. The ambivalence also manifests itself in his total commitment to European culture and learning, but is accompanied by comments such as this one about Isaac Newton: "In Newton this island may boast of having produced the greatest and rarest genius that ever arose for the ornament and instruction of the species" (History 6: 542).8

12Hume seems to me to be more thoroughly steeped in European learning and history, both ancient and contemporary, than any other philosopher in the eighteenth century and probably more than any historian except Gibbon; indeed, since one might as well be hanged for a flock of goats as one sheep, I would go so far to say that Hume, in his writings, reveals a greater familiarity with and knowledge of classical and contemporary European arts and science than any other man or woman of letters in the eighteenth century. He recalls in My Own Life that he was absorbed in literature at a very early age, that it was the "ruling Passion" of his life; and while his family thought that he should be educated for the law, he was devouring Cicero and Virgil, when they thought he was devoting himself to legal authors, Voet and Vinnius. Indeed, so great was Hume’s passion for classical learning that when he arrived in Mantua on 11 May 1748, he "kist the Earth, that produc'd Virgil."9 Yet the very next day in Cremona, he began his journal note, "Alas, poor Italy!," proceeded to quote Virgil's Eclogue I ["Impius haec tam culta novalia miles habebit; Barbarus hassegetes?"— Some godless veteran will own this fallow tilth, these cornfields a barbarian], and, slighly misquoting lines from Joseph Addison’s "A Letter from Italy" (1703), noted that "The poor Inhabitant Starves in the midst of Nature’s Plenty curst: And in the loaded Vineyard dyes forthirst," concluding that "The Taxes are here exorbitant beyond all Bounds" (Letters 1: 132).10 I should like to take this opportunity to suggest to every government in the European community that the conjunction of low taxes and high culture is preferable to high taxes and no culture, which is often the way those of us living in the off-shore island known as Great Britain perceive governmental ordering of the arts, letters, and sciences.

13Although Hume's enthusiasm for ancient European culture, particularly for the Greek and Latin classics, is every where in evidence in his writings, he was often as enthusiastic, perhaps too much so, for modern European culture, especially that in France. The State of the English theatre in the eighteenth century he regarded as barbaric and uncivilized, but rather rashly expected his kinsman, John Home, to "vindicate the English stage from the reproach of barbarism," (Letters 1: 204), as he wrote to Joseph Spence on 15 October 1754. More notoriously, he urged Home later that year, "For God's sake, read Shakespeare, but get Racine and Sophocles by heart. It is reserved to you, and you alone, to redeem our stage from the reproach of barbarism" (Letters 1: 215). Hume was not alone in his enthusiasm for Racine and Sophocles: one finds the same attitude in Addison, and Hume's friend Adam Smith had asserted in one of his lectures on rhetoric that Racine was "universally acknowledged" to be the second greatest writer of tragedies, the first being for the French perhaps Corneille and for the English Sophocles."11

14What Hume means by barbarism on the stage is the kind of scene in Nicholas Rowe's Ambitious Stepmother (1700), in which one of the characters, an old man, dashes his brains out against a pillar (Essays 224); equally, he finds the disparities of time and place that occur in English plays to be less attractive aesthetically than those which impose that sort of factitious unity on the development of the plot. Hume's attitude might be usefully contrasted with that of Oliver Goldsmith. In his Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe, Goldsmith took a view at odds with Hume's: "why should a Frenchman be disgusted at our bloody stage? there is nothing hideous in the representation to one of us, whatever there might be to him" (Works 1: 297). Hume's enthusiasm for the drama is, of course, well-documented, but, unlike Goldsmith, he seemed to have in mind "universal" rules for the writing of drama. His friendship with John Home derived not just from their relationship as kinsmen, but also from Hume’s genuine admiration for what John Home was writing. I might just mention here that John Home reciprocated by admiring Hume's work, so much so that he virtually plagiarized Hume with a work he published in 1802, The History of the Rebellion in the Year 1745. Although he was writing about the Jacobite rebellion in 1745, he mentions the "Glorious Revolution" of 1688, saying that "to the Revolution it is owing, that the people of this island have ever since enjoyed the most perfect System of liberty that ever was known amongst mankind." This recalls, of course, Hume's conclusion to his History of England, "And it may justly be affirmed, without an danger of exaggeration, that we, in this island, have ever since [the Revolution] enjoyed, if not the best System of government, at least the most entire System of liberty, that ever was known amongst mankind."

15Hume's ambivalent attitude towards continental Europe derives chiefly, I think, from his scepticism about the extent of civil liberty in Europe, even when its absence is accompanied by learning and culture. In the History of England, he asserted that the beginning of the seventeenth century in Europe bore witness to a revival of letters and learning; indeed he calls it an "insensible revolution." As always, Hume reveals his attitudes in the images that he chooses when talking about the revival of learning. Learning had been "cultivated" by those in sedentary professions, but now began to "spread" and "extend" itself, and as a result of "this universal fermentation, the ideas of men enlarged themselves on all sides"; in England the love of freedom became "regulated by more enlarged views"; and the general System of politics in Europe became more "enlarged and comprehensive" (History 5: 18; chapter LXV). "Emargement" seems to be the hand-maiden to "enlightenment" as it takes place in Europe. I hasten to say that I am not quite sure how a fermentation enlarges itself, but in a country with such a long and glorious tradition of fermentation, I am sure that somebody will have an answer. Perhaps, however, something of Hume's ambivalence towards Europe's tentative flirtation with love of freedom and civil liberty as compared with England's somewhat more passionate affair comes out in that slightly confused image. Even so, he could be sceptical about the pernicious effects of liberty. Writing to Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot in 1768, he referred to the disorders in Britain, with his countrymen "roar[ing] Liberty, tho' they have apparently more Liberty than any people in the World; a great deal more than they deserve; and perhaps more than any men ought to have" (Letters 2: 180). Elsewhere, he has little doubt about what happens to a nation or to its people when their liberty is lost. Classical scholars had all noted that the arts and sciences flourished in free nations. Some people, like the Persians and the Egyptians, acquired a degree of opulence and luxury but made only the most minimal gestures towards freedom. Their luxury and easy life Hume contrasts with that of the Greeks, with "the greatest simplicity of life and manners" amidst fairly widespread poverty. And when the Greeks lost their liberty, "they increased mightily in riches," but at the same time saw their arts decline, never to recover anything like the magnificence and eloquence they had formerly enjoyed. Learning found a new home in Rome (Essays 89). This is, of course, at odds with what Hume seems to feel on other occasions about the links between prosperity and learning.

16One of the pleasures as well as one of the frustrations of reading Hume does lie in this ambivalence about his feelings and attitudes towards everything from epistemology to religion, or from society to self. At the end of Section VI ("Of Qualities Useful to Ourselves" in the Essay Concerning the Principles of Morals, Hume reflects on one of the differences between the countries of continental Europe and England: there, distinction derives from hereditary riches and from titles bestowed by the sovereign; in England, he argues that present "opulence and plenty" count for more than birth and inherited riches. One thus finds in European respect for birth that "unactive, spiritless minds remain in haughty indolence" and think about nothing but their illustrious ancestors, while in those countries, presumably including England, where "riches are the chief idol, corruption, venality, rapine prevail: arts, manufactures, commerce, agriculture flourish" (248-49). One thus wonders why the barbarians in London, ruled as they are by corrupt practices, do not yet have the same established flourishing of the arts that one finds, and found, in Europe.

17In outlining some few of Hume’s comments and observations on Europe and European manners, morals, and mores, one can only hint at Hume's absolute fascination with national characteristics and national differences, as well as his sense of perplexity about how one might integrate so many disparities into one common culture. Not that Hume wants to do so: he seems genuinely to relish the differences between, for instance, French wit and politeness, and English sensibility and good nature. Moreover, he regarded his time in Paris as "the happiest period" of his life, while he found at the same time (May 1768) that "the chains, which attach me to this country, multiply upon me" (Letters 1: 177).

18Ultimately, then, are we to conclude that Hume preferred the liberty that he so frequently praised England for to the polite learning, culture, and respect for the life of the mind that he enjoyed in Europe? That seems much too facile, and I think Hume would himself dispute that suggestion. Indeed, in the essay, "Of Refinement in the Arts," he makes the opposite point, saying that the "liberties of ENGLAND, so far from decaying since the improvements in the arts, have never flourished so much as during that period" (Essays 278), even though he feels that corruption has crept into the arts and sciences in recent years. In any case it occurs more among elected politicians than the electors, so the corruption cannot be ascribed to those who elected them. Thus, even when he is arguing for the progress, development, and inspissation of the arts and sciences in a culture where liberty flourishes, he has doubts about the leadership that is likely to come from parliaments and politicians, who, in fact, seem to distrust the arts and sciences.

19For Hume, then, both commerce and the sciences and "polite arts" flourish best under a free government; yet his criticism of the State of the arts and sciences in England is unfavourably contrasted to what he can find in continental Europe or in classical civilization. From observations like these, one might expect that the republics of Europe would thus have the highest attainment in the polite arts. No: "The republics in EUROPE are at present noted for want of politeness." Of course, Hume is here alluding in part to manners and habits, and asserts that even the English can be censured for the same faults despite "their learning and genius" (Essays 127: "Of the Rise and Progress of the Arts and Sciences").

20Hume would be the first to agree that passions and prejudices often overtake and subdue reason and experience. It seems to be part of his belief System that those qualities of and in life that he most values — society and learning — can prosper only in a country enjoying the fullest civil liberty. Why, then, does England not surpass Europe in its attainments in the arts and sciences? Hume seems to have no answer to this paradox. In his last few years, he chose to live in Edinburgh, rather than France or England, and he refers in many of his letters contemptuously to the English "mob" and the total mismanagement of the affairs of the country by the government, often siding with a European view of hostilities and differences between England and various continental nations. Even so, Europeans do not seem to recognize the blessings of their culture, their learning, their diversity. The French, "a greater and more illustrious People" than the English, are, as he wrote to his publisher and member of Parliament, William Strahan in 1771, being "totally annihilated in the midst of Europe; and we, instead of regarding this Event as a great Calamity, are such Fools as to rejoice at it" (Letters 2: 242). Yet it was not the English who were doing the annihilating, but Europeans. While the Europeans, and particularly the French, were thus more civilized than the English, more devoted to learning and polite society, they seemed incapable of managing their affairs without disastrous inroads on their civil liberties. So, David Hume remained what he had been all his life, a sceptic, and very much a sceptical Scotsman, sceptical of English learning and culture and sceptical of European civil liberty.