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With all humility, I submit the following as a possible solution of the enigma. The one solitary ground on which Hume denies the argumentative and ratiocinative character of what he nevertheless terms arguments and reasonings, is the impossibility of producing the chains of argument or reasoning of which they are composed.
It was a mere act of borrowing, and borrowing was never accounted a crime; borrowing not money even, only a name, and for so short a time. No harm; it could do no one in the world any harm. While these reasonings went on in his mind, his heart dropped down again into its right place; his pulse ceased to beat like the pistons of a steam-engine; he came gradually to himself. After all, what was it?
Belief, therefore, since it causes an idea to imitate the effects of the impressions, must make it resemble them in these qualities, and is nothing but A MORE VIVID AND INTENSE CONCEPTION OF ANY IDEA. This, then, may both serve as an additional argument for the present system, and may give us a notion after what manner our reasonings from causation are able to operate on the will and passions.
His reasonings seem to result in the conclusion that we can make no intelligible statement about things so cut off from our experience as noumena are supposed to be; and one would imagine that he would have felt impelled to go on to the frank declaration that we have no reason to believe in noumena at all, and had better throw away altogether so meaningless and useless a notion.
A fourth is full of "excuses and reasonings." "Old Jos. Richison has forty, and is determined to keep them." Another man has fifty, and "means to keep them." Robert Ward "wants to release his slaves, but his wife and daughters hold back." Another "owns it is wrong, but says he will not part with his negroes, no, not while he lives."
Now, whatever may be the danger of that mode of reasoning, I think that the statement, properly understood, corresponds to a simple logical canon too often neglected in historical and political reasonings.
The general notion is, that laughter is childish, and unworthy the gravity of adult life. Grown men, we say, have more to do than to laugh; and the wiser sort of them leave such an unseemly contortion of the muscles to babes and blockheads. We have a suspicion that there is something wrong here that the world is mistaken not only in its reasonings, but its facts.
Their very argument was that truth and piety would prosper best in a system of Church-government which trusted all to the vigilance of the members of every particular congregation over each other, their reasonings among themselves, their practice of mutual admonition, and, in last resort, their power of excommunicating the unworthy.
The vast mass of the reasonings that interest men are expressed in the language that we all use and not in special symbols. But language is a very imperfect instrument, and all sorts of misunderstandings are possible to those who express their thoughts in it. Few men know exactly how much is implied in what they are saying.
'How, said he with a sneer, 'are sages such epicures? 'Do you think, Sir, replied the wise man, reaching over the table to help himself, 'do you think, Sir, that the Creator made the good things of this world only for fools?" "How the Dean will pish and pull his wig when he reads your illustration," said Bolingbroke, laughing. "We shall never agree in our reasonings on that part of philosophy.
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