cepticism rather than
Hume's: I told him so.

Hume, he said, was evidently playing with scepticism; for himself, he
had no heart to jest upon the subject. The Scotch sceptic acknowledged
that the metaphysical riddles of his "absolute scepticism" exercised,
and ought to exercise, no practical influence on himself or any man;
that the moment he quitted them, and entered into society, "they
appeared to him so frigid and unnatural" that he could not get himself
to interest himself about them any further; that a dinner with a
friend, or a game at backgammon, put them all to flight, and restored
him to the undoubting belief of all the maxims which his meditative
hours had stripped him of. It was natural, Harrington said; for such
scepticism was impossible. He added, however, that, had Hume been
honest, he would never have employed his subtilty in the one-sided way
he did; "for," said he, "if his principles be true, they tell just as
much against those who deny any religious dogmas as against those who
maintain them. Yet everywhere in relation to religion--take the question
of miracles, for example--he argues not as a sceptic at all, but as a
dogmatist, only on the negative side. If his doctrine of 'Ideas' and
of 'Causation' be true, he ought to have maintained that; for any thing
we know, miracles may have occurred a thousand times, and may as often
occur again. Hume," he said, "was amusing himself; but I am not: nor
can any one really feel--many pretend to do so without feeling at
all--the pressure of such doubts as envelop me, and be content to
amuse themselves with them."

I found it very difficult to attack him in the intrenchments he had
thrown up. I thought I would just try for a moment to act on the
Spiritualist's advice, and, throwing aside all "intellectual and
logical processes," all appeals to the "critical faculties," advance
"lightly equipped as Priestley himself," making my appeal to the
"spiritual faculty." I cannot say that the result was at all what
"spiritualism" promises. On the contrary, Harrington parried all such
appeals in a twinkling. He said he did not admit that he had any
"spiritual faculty" which acted in isolation from the intellect;
that religious faith must be founded on religious truth, and even
quasi-religious faith on quasi-religious truth. That the intellect
and the moral and spiritual faculties (if he had any) acted together,
since he felt that he was indivisible, and that the former man