Hume's General Rules - Serjeantson

Serjeantson-20
cannot be avoided, so Leibniz described ‘the proverbs which are current in every
nation’ as being ‘usually nothing but maxims accepted by the whole populace.’ 65
Although he could hardly have known the Nouveaux essais, then, Hume’s account of
general rules is closer to Leibniz than Locke. Whilst rejecting outright their
Aristotelian content and metaphysical import, Hume retained the philosophical sense
that general rules were a valuable and indeed necessary form of reason.
Having seen how the form and context of Hume’s general rules ultimately
derives from traditions of logic and school-philosophy more generally, we are now in
a position to return to the longstanding question of their natural philosophical--and,
more specifically, experimental--inspiration. For philosophers as diverse as Locke and
Arnauld, it was natural philosophy that had done most to damage the Aristotelian
reliance on maxims and rules. As Arnauld and Nicole had pointed out in their
Logique, the experiments of the new natural philosophy had provided exceptions to
rules which had hitherto been thought indubitable--such as the rule that water always
finds its own level. 66 As we have seen, this had led Locke to a suspicion of all general
principles when faced with the necessary particularity of human knowledge. Not all
natural philosophers shared this suspicion, however. As we have also seen, Newton
retained his regulae philosophandi in the Principia, even citing the hoary maxim that
‘Nature does nothing in vain’ (Natura agit nihil frustra) in the gloss to his first rule. 67
The author whose conception of ‘general rules’ perhaps came closest to that of
Hume, however, was the Irish metaphysician George Berkeley (1685-1753). Hume
was well acquainted with Berkeley’s writings, whom he refers to at the beginning of
the Treatise of Human Nature as ‘a great philosopher’, and whose Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge (1710; second edition 1734) he
65 Leibniz, Nouveaux essais, pp. 416, 421. Translations from Leibniz, New Essays, p. 416, 421.
66 Arnauld and Nicole, La Logique, p. 317 (4.6). See further Milton, 'Induction before Hume', p. 59.
67 Newton, Principia, vol. 2, p. 550.