Disease of the Learned
Disease of the Learned
His precipitous abandoning of the law in the spring of 1729 gave David Hume a needed opportunity to exploit the ‘new Scene of Thought’ that had so suddenly and excitingly been opened up to his vision. The course of character improvement that Hume had been putting himself through on the basis of moral maxims from the ancient pagan philosophers he came to recognise, too late, as a contributory factor to the ruining of his health. Morbid introspection may become a variety of auto-intoxication and is curable only by extraordinary effort on the part of the diseased. Hume, apparently, made that effort and regained self-mastery. Unwilling to admit that he might be afflicted with the ‘vapors’ or lowness of spirits, a disease of the mind which he vainly imagined was restricted to the idle rich, Hume became worried over some scurvy spots that broke out on his fingers.
Keywords: law, David Hume, Scene of Thought, character, improvement, maxims, pagan, philosophers, health
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