oes not exist;
and government is the most useful way of remedying the defects of our
situation. A theologian might say that Hume derives government from
original sin; to which he would have replied by denying the fall. His
whole attitude is simply an insistence that utility is the touchstone of
institutions, and he may claim to be the first thinker who attempted its
application to the whole field of political science. He knows that
opinion is the sovereign ruler of mankind, and that ideas of utility lie
at the base of the thoughts which get accepted. He does not, indeed,
deny that fear and consent enter into the attitude of men; he simply
asserts that these also are founded upon a judgment of utility in the
thing judged. We obey because otherwise "society could not subsist," and
society subsists for its utility. "Men," he says "could not live at all
in society, at least in a civilized society, without laws and
magistrates and judges, to prevent the encroachments of the strong upon
the weak, of the violent upon the just and equitable."

Utilitarianism is, of course, above all a method; and it is not unfair
to say of Hume that he did not get very far beyond insistence on that
point. He sees that the subjection of the many to the few is rooted in
human impulse; but he has no penetrating inquiry, such as that of Locke
or Hobbes, into the purpose of such subjection. So, too, it is the sense
of public interest which determines men's thoughts on government, on who
should rule, and what should be the system of property; but the ethical
substance of these questions he leaves undetermined. Politics, he
thinks, may one day be a science; though he considers the world still
too young for general truths therein. The maxims he suggests as of
permanent value, "that a hereditary prince, a nobility without vassals,
and a people voting by their representatives form the best monarchy,
autocracy and democracy"; that "free governments ... are the most
ruinous and oppressive to their provinces"; that republics are more
favorable to science, monarchies to art; that the death of a political
body is inevitable; would none of them, probably, be accepted by most
thinkers at the present time. And when he constructs an ideal
constitution, irrespective of time and place, which is to be regarded as
practical because it resembles that of Holland, it is obvious that the
historical method had not yet come fully into being.

Yet Hume is full of flashes o