gives us ideas and that it is we who deceive ourselves by attributing them
to any other origin than to Him; nor was he checked, like Malebranche, by
the authority of Scripture, which in Genesis portrays God creating
matter. He saw there, no doubt, only a symbolical sense, a simple way of
speaking according to the comprehension of the multitude.

DAVID HUME.--David Hume, a Scotsman, better known, at least in his
own times, as the historian of England than as a philosopher, nevertheless
well merits consideration in the latter category. David Hume believes in
nothing, and, in consequence, it may be said that he is not a philosopher;
he has no philosophic system. He has no philosophic system, it is true; but
he is a critic of philosophy, and therefore he philosophizes. Matter has no
existence; as we know nothing about it, we should not say it exists. But we
ourselves, we exist. All that we can know about that is that in us there is
a succession of ideas, of representations; but _we_, but _I_,
what is that? Of that we know nothing. We are present at a series of
pictures, and we may call their totality the _ego_; but we do not
grasp ourselves as a thing of unity, as an individual. We are the
spectators of an inward dramatic piece behind which we can see no
author. There is no more reason to believe in _oneself_ than in the
external world.

INNATE IDEAS.--As for innate ideas, they are simply general ideas,
which are general delusions. We believe, for instance, that every effect
has a cause, or, to express it more correctly, that everything has a cause.
What do we know about it? What do we see? That one thing follows another,
succeeds to another. What tells us that the latter proceeds from the
former, that the thing B must necessarily come, owing to the thing A
existing? We believe it because every time the thing A has been, the thing
B has come. Well, let us say that every time A has been (thus far) B has