Sublime

in genetic racial distinction and fixed hierarchy. “I am apt to suspect the negroes and in general all the other species of men (for there are four or five different kinds) to be naturally inferior to the whites,” Enlightenment philosopher David Hume wrote in 1753. “There never was a civilized nation of any other complexion than white….Such a unifo

No deception need be feared in relationships with them, and an honest person can expect their needs to be met through reciprocation and trade.

people generally confuse determinism with fatalism.

But the passion comes from the beliefs not the facts. Facts always have to be interpreted, especially if they are the consequence of complicated human interventions stretching over many years.

Hume realised that it was good for society if people were nice to each other, so he thought that rational calculation, rather than moral instruction, lay behind social cohesion.

Society is founded not on the ideals but on the nature of man, and the constitution of man rewrites the constitutions of states.

You can’t make a dog happy by forcibly wagging its tail. And you can’t change people’s minds by utterly refuting their arguments. Hume diagnosed the problem long ago: And as reasoning is not the source, whence either disputant derives his tenets; it is in vain to expect, that any logic, which speaks not to the affections, will ever engage him to em

In some respects, the doctrine of Timon was very similar to that of Hume. He maintained that something which had never been observed—atoms, for instance—could not be validly inferred; but when two phenomena had been…

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