It is hardly to convict this worthy Scot of misstatement, to point out that his pleasing picture of good will toward all men omits to record his two hatreds; hatreds as whole-hearted and constant as one could wish. One was for those he called “priests;” the other was reserved for Englishmen. “O! how I long to see America and the East Indies revolted, totally and finally--the revenue reduced to half--public credit fully discredited by bankruptcy--the third of London in ruins, and the rascally mob subdued! I think I am not too old to despair of being witness to all these things.” This, to his friend Sir Gilbert Elliot in 1768. It is curious to note that Hume lived just long enough to have heard of the signing of the _Declaration of Independence_. * * * * * If, then, something of the nonchalance with which Hume throws off comfortable tradition is due to his personal character, much may be gathered respecting his motives for so treating common opinion from a study of his philosophical ancestry. For Hume is the _fine fleur_ of a growth flourishing in the England of the 17th and 18th centuries, which in contrast to the Rationalism of the Continent, is usually called Empiricism. We find anticipations of an empirical philosophy in Bacon and Hobbes; but perhaps we should regard John Locke as the real founder of the school. Rationalism, as we saw in connection with Descartes and Spinoza, was inspired by the example of the mathematicians to hope that all science might be, as their science seemed to be, deduced from axioms called self-evident. These axioms appeared to be something more than the mere summing up of experiences. Between the undependable predictions of a weather prophet, who has frequently observed that a “twinge of rheumatism means coming storm,” and the confidence of the geometer that if two angles of a triangle measure 120° the other will be found to measure 60°, there seemed to the rationalist not merely a difference in degree of certainty, but a difference in kind of evidence. The former knowledge, unsatisfactory as it was, could only come after experience; the latter, beautiful in its precision, would seem to be at the command of a thoughtful man before experience. Hence, for the rationalist, experience fell to the level of a mere _suggestor_ of truth, an awakener of thought; reason alone could _demonstrate_ the suggestion.