In the most mechanical system, then, there is, so long as classification of its parts in terms of purpose is possible, a distinction between good and bad, with enough freedom to make this distinction meaningful. But such a philosophy may still seem hard. Even to have the chances against one, is not this a gloomy situation? Is there, then, no supreme end to accomplish which all men’s chances are equal, so that at each moment of life the road to perfection is equally open to all, and equally wide for all? We know how many and how beautiful the dreams of such a world-view, recorded in man’s long history. To judge their rationality is for a deeper insight than mine. But be they real or be they dreams, there is yet one voice from the past whose sanity comes home to us. It is that of our old philosopher of Koenigsberg, which keeps repeating at this moment the sentence, “There is nothing good but a good will.” With this saying of Kant’s I should even hope to breathe inspiration into the souls that cry, “De profundis!” My last word to them would be: Trouble yourselves with nothing but to make the best of the chances that are left to you. There is nothing good but a good will. * * * * * I would willingly take it as evidence that the instinct of the artist and the reflection of the philosopher are not unsympathetic, that when Bourget’s Disciple is at last brought out of his ordeal, it is not to be comforted with the longed-for assurance that all is necessitated in the soul; but rather to find for himself the way to redemption by making the best--the tragic best--of the chances that are left him. IV DAVID HUME 1711-1776 The characters that have occupied us on two previous occasions, different as they are, have yet this in common; that their most passionate interest was centred in God, and their theory of what man is and ought to be depended upon the likeness in which God in the end appeared to them. I have felt that our illustrations of modern thought would be incomplete, were I not to include in the series an example of an attempt to work out the duty and destiny of man without waiting for an insight into the mystery of God. It is the more advisable that we examine one such character, that this way of thinking is neither newly invented, nor yet grown out of fashion. We recall that Lucretius, the enthusiastic disciple of Epicurus, claimed for his master the glory of having lifted from the world the terror of the gods, of having left man free to study his own nature and to work out his own happiness. And I find on my shelves a recent work that bears the title “Morals without the Sanctions of Religion,” one of many that might be cited whose purpose is to study the good of man without making it dependent on God. It is, then, as an expression of a common enough idea, but as an uncommonly good expression of this idea, that I have settled upon David Hume for our third illustration of modern thought.