1819 March 10

Jug. Util.

Note continued

Verity

4

Price & Campbell

II. Campbell

4

What care they for human happiness? What care they for human misery? To ascertain whether by the act /[...?]/ in question more of the one or the other would be produced, would require calculation. But calculation is not only always a troublesome process but oftentimes /[...?] often/ a deceptious one: whereas their instrument—their moral sense—for now it is not a believing sense but a moral sense—is deceptious proof.

There we have a summary of Scotch philosophy, planted perhaps at the first by /some who in England/ some Englishman but transplanted, cultivated, and reared to a prodigiously greater extent in Scotland. There again from Scotland the seeds of it scattered over England: and in every field a proportion in this strain science expands /spreads/, real science is excluded by it. Mixt up /and compounded with a proportion/ with ingeniously discovered truth and real science, you have this mass of empty verbiage in David Hume: for having taken it from the Scotch Hutchison or the English Earl of Shaftesbury or no matter who else, he too has his moral sense. But since his days in Scotland, the whole field has been covered with this verbiage. Beattie, Reid, Oswald, Reid, /Campbel/ Dugal Stuart—by these men all questions in logic and morals have been and continue to be resolved by this or that sense, a species of currency of which the mint is in their own hands. What is the consequence? that by all they have written, in so far as [...?] is in another name—this is the instrument that has been employed by them, men are /thence/ farther from true science—from clear conceptions—from rational and useful conclusions—/if nothing at all had ever been written by any of them/ than if they had never written anything. And