Oct

7

My favorite Hume story is the one about his slipping and falling in a muddy lane and finding himself needing help to get up (he loved food and had acquired the shape and relative instability of a penguin on land by the time he was middle-aged). He was, by then, a recognizably famous man in Edinburgh.

A passer-by saw him sprawled in the mud and, as a good Christian, offered to help Hume get upright but only on condition that the philosopher renounce forever his attempt to prove that miracles could not happen. Hume gratefully accepted the offer and went home to dry off.

When a friend hear about the incident, he allegedly chastised Hume for having abandoned his principles. Hume replied that he had done no such thing. Miracles were entirely matters of faith; they could not, by their very nature, be proved or disproved and so he was happy to renounce an effort that would have been utterly fruitless.


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