Since in his article MUSIC OF THE GODS, Linz took the name of Hume in vain, and since I promised him to post a defense of Hume, here goes the following.

What's so bad about David Hume? Why would Ayn Rand write, "If it were possible for an animal to describe the content of his consciousness, the result would be a transcript of Hume's philosophy." (1961: 30) Her analysis of Hume is given in the paragraph immediately preceding the above sentence. The full paragraph reads as follows:
When Hume declared that he saw objects moving about, but never saw such as thing as 'causality'--it was the voice of Attila that men were hearing. It was Attila's soul that spoke when Hume declared that he experienced a flow of fleeting states in¬side his skull, such as sensations, feeling or memories, but had never caught the experience of such a thing as consciousness or self. When Hume declared that the apparent existence of an object did not guarantee that it would not vanish spontaneously next moment, and the sunrise of today did not prove that the sun would rise tomorrow; when he declared that philosophical speculation was a game, like chess or hunting, of no significance whatever to the practical course of human existence, since rea¬son proved that existence was unintelligible and only the ig¬no¬rant maintained the illusion of knowledge--all of this accompa¬nied by vehement opposition to the mysticism of the Witch Doctor and by protestations of loyalty to reason and sci¬ence--what men were hearing was the manifesto of a philosophical movement that can be designated only as Attila-ism. (1961: 29-30)
This paper will examine some of Hume's ideas from two branches of philosophy, viz., epistemology (specifically logic) and poli¬tics. In addition to defending Hume, it will show that some of his posi¬tions in the two disciplines just mentioned are positions congenial to Objectivism.
But before entering on these tasks, let us examine the para¬graph quoted above. There are some very interesting implications in what she says. Take the first sentence, "When Hume declared that he saw objects moving about, but never saw such a thing as causality--it was the voice of Attila etc." (Emphasis mine.) This seems to imply that one can see causality! If you claim you can't see causality, then you are talking as an "Attila". Yet it is a curious fact that Objectivism itself has held two contradictory positions on whether or not one can see causality: one pro, one con. In 1966, in a series of lectures given by the Nathaniel Branden Institute on the topic of Modern philosophy, Peikoff told his listeners, in criticism of Hume, that in order to get causality, one had to move to the conceptual level of conscious¬ness. That causality wasn't available on the perceptual level at all. That is was silly to think one could "see" it. And it is this position that seems to be Rand's in the passage quoted above. In the succeeding paragraph she writes, "Hume's conclusions would be the con¬clusions of a consciousness limited to the perceptual level of awareness, passively reacting to the experience of immediate concretes, with no capacity to form abstractions, to integrate perceptions into concepts, waiting in vain for the appearance of an object labeled 'causality' (except that such a consciousness would not be able to draw conclusions)." (1961: 30)
More recently however, in a tape lecture series entitled Objectivism The State of the Art, Peikoff, after giving a number of examples of a baby learning about causality by pushing things from the top of a high chair, claims that causality can be got on the perceptual level, any baby knows that, and Hume just didn't know where to look. Silly Hume.
Now the point here is not which position is the correct one, but simply to note that: (1) these positions cannot both be right since they contradict each other, and (2) in the 1966 position (as well as 1961), which requires ascent to the conceptual level in order to get causality, we have a position akin to Hume's in so far as they both claim that one could never see such a thing as causality.
Let us assume that Rand’s (1961) is the canonical position. After all, these are her own carefully crafted words. But what is that position? Should we take that position to be that one cannot "see" causality and that in order to get to causality one must ascend to the conceptual level? The two paragraphs in question can certainly be read that way, but there are other possible readings as well. Part of the problem is the concept "see". Recall the sentence. "When Hume declared that he saw objects moving about, but never saw such a thing as 'causality' . . .” Is Rand upset because he declared this; or is she concerned because Hume is making an illicit assumption, i.e., that causality should be, like the objects he sees moving about, perceptually given, or is she claiming that he really did see causality but lied about not seeing it--perhaps this is his Attila-ism. She tells us what the essential characteristics of Attila are: "the man who rules by brute force, acts on the range of the moment, is concerned with nothing but the physical reality immediately before him, respects nothing but man's muscles, and regards a fist, a club or a gun as the only answer to any problem. . . ." (1961: None of these apply to Hume the man, but may apply to his philosophy. Of the characteristics listed, the clause about "concerned with nothing but the physical reality immediately before him" may be taken to apply to Hume's philosophy, perhaps in the sense that he is sometimes seen as the father of positivism.
She tells us more about Attila in the paragraph immediately preceding the one quoted at the beginning of this chapter. He is "the type of man who longs to live on the perceptual level of consciousness, without the 'interference' of any concepts, to act on the whim and range of the moment, without the 'hampering restriction' of principles or theories, without the necessity of integrating one experience with another or one moment with the next . . . " (29) Her argument goes like this--Hume longs to restrict everything to the perceptual level, causality in not on that level, therefore, Hume rejects causality. That this is Rand's conclusion can be gleaned from Peikoff who makes the following parenthetical remark, "And here again the worst offenders philosophically are not the primitives who implicitly count on causality yet never discover it, but the modern sophisticates, such as David Hume, who count on it while explicitly rejecting it." (1991:15) Unfortunately, Peikoff gives no reference in Hume's work to back up his statement.
While we have Peikoff's text before us, it may be instructive to consider his context. In the paragraph just quoted, Peikoff is commenting on what "an enormous intellectual achievement" the "explicit identification of causality (by the Greeks)" was. He contrasts this with the pre-scientific view that the world is either a "realm of miracles or of chance." If Hume rejects causality, then we should expect him to endorse either the miracle or the chance view of existence. But anyone even vaguely familiar with Hume's work knows his position on miracles--he explicitly rejects them. (See Enquiry, ch. x, §§ 98-101) As for chance, Hume's denies it also. "What the vulgar call chance is nothing but a secret and conceal'd cause." (Treatise, I, III, XII, 130) As a matter of irony, it is not Hume who admits the existence of chance, but Rand’s favorite philosopher Aristotle. "Aristotle, . . . affirms the existence of chance or real contingency in the happenings of nature." (GBWW 2, 162)
But the last paragraph leaves us with the result that Rand's conclusion is false. Hume does not reject causality. So we could do a modus tollens here. If Hume is an Attila, then he rejects causality, but he does not reject causality, therefore he is no Attila. Or in more pedestrian prose: Hume longs to restrict everything to the perceptual level, causality in not on that level, therefore, Hume rejects causality. But since we now know the conclusion to be false, it is we who must reject the premise. As much as one would hate to give up the image of Hume as a rapacious Hun, perhaps it’s the "Attila" caricature that has to go.
Before we leave the subject of causality, it should be pointed out that Peikoff is guilty of a logical howler in his exposition of the Objectivist view of causality. Specifically, Peikoff misuses Mill's method of difference. He writes on p. 16 of OPAR "Speaking literally, it is not the motion of the billiard ball that produces effects; it is the billiard ball, the entity, which does so by a certain means. [What means?] If one doubts this, one need merely substitute an egg or soap bubble with the same velocity for the billiard ball; the effects will be quite different." The problem with this analysis is that one could prove, pari passu, that it was the velocity that caused the effect, not the billiard ball. Paraphrasing Peikoff, "If one doubts this, one need merely substitute zero (or a very small) velocity for the original velocity and the effect will be quite different." What these two arguments show is that both the entity and a velocity greater than a given velocity are necessary conditions for the motion of the second billiard ball. Hence neither the entity itself nor a given velocity itself is a sufficient condition for the motion of the second billiard ball.
Let us now return to Rand. Consider sentence two from the quoted passage given above, the sentence that begins "It was Attila's soul." Here Rand seems to have in mind one of the most famous and oft-quoted passages in the philosophical literature.
For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hated, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception. (Treatise 252)
Is Hume's target "consciousness or self" as Rand claims? Is he trying to deny that we are conscious? The short answer is "no." Let us ask What does Hume say he is doing in this section? The quoted passage comes from section VI, part IV, Book 1 of the Treatise. The section is entitled "Of personal identity." It follows section V, "Of the immateriality of the soul" and can be read as a continuation of Hume's attack on the scholastic, Cartesian "substance" interpretation of the soul. He writes, "To pronounce, then, the final decision upon the whole; the question concerning the substance of the soul is absolutely unintelligible:" (250) If you think you have a soul, i.e., a substance both "simple and continu'd" then Hume confesses he cannot reason with you, and that you just may be differently constituted than he. Hume thinks that you do not have lodged somewhere inside you a simple, continued immaterial substance, completely different from the body. A ghost in a machine. But surely Rand agrees with this. It is this kind of soul that is behind the more radical, and from Rand's point of view, more objectionable forms of the soul/body dichotomy.
This is not to say Rand would agree with Hume's so called "bundle" [unless "bundle" is akin to "cluster"-- see the Branden quotation below] theory of human identity. Rather the point is that Rand is hanging Hume for the wrong "offense." Rand is hanging Hume for attacking a position she herself has attacked! She agrees with Hume and would certainly endorse the position that we are not possessed by a simple, continued, immaterial soul.
Here we must avoid misunderstanding the argument. It is not that Rand and Hume get to this conclusion, the non-existence of the Cartesian-Christian soul, by the same method. If it is true that Hume denies the existence of the soul on radically empirical grounds, it is just as true that Rand doesn't use Hume's method. She has her own reasons for her anti-soul position.
For all their fuss about Hume, some Objectivists sometimes sound pretty much like him. Consider the following by Branden:
Consider the fact that normally man experiences himself as a process--in that consciousness itself is a process, an activity, and the contents of man's mind are a shifting flow of perceptions, thoughts and emotions. His own mind is not an unmoving entity which man can contemplate objectively--i.e., contemplate as a direct object of awareness--as he contemplates objects in the external world. He has, of course, a sense of himself, of his own identity, but it is experienced more as a feeling than a thought--a feeling which is very diffuse, which is interwoven with all his other feelings, and which is very hard, in not impossible, is isolate and consider by itself. His 'self-concept' is not a single concept, but a cluster [Hume's bundle] of images and abstract perspectives on his various (real or imagined) traits and characteristics, the sum total of which can never be held in focal awareness at any one time; that sum is experienced but is not perceived as such.

Is this Attila's soul speaking? Or is it Rand's, one time, intellectual heir?
HUME'S APPENDIX AND ADVERTISEMENT: Before we leave the discussion of the soul/self/consciousness, it may be instructive to look at part of the Appendix to the Treatise and his Advertisement before the Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding. Take the Appendix first. On 633 he explicitly refers to "the section concerning personal identity," (p. 252, which contains the "soul" quotation given above) and tells us that he finds himself "involv'd in such a labyrinth, that, I must confess, I neither know how to correct my former opinions, nor how to render them consistent." What is the problem that Hume's finds insuperable? He tells us that it is the tension between (1) the fact that "I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception" with (2) "the principles, that unite our successive perception in our thought or consciousness." (252 & 636) He then confesses, "this difficulty is too hard for my understanding."
When he came to recast Book 1 of the Treatise as the First Enquiry, he simply excluded the section on personal identity. In fact, in the Advertisement to the Enquiry he disowns the whole work and tells his readers he desires "that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiment and principles." Addressing several writers "who have honoured the Author's Philosophy with answers" he notes that they have "taken care to direct all their batteries against that juvenile work, which the Author never acknowledged, and have affected to triumph in any advantages, which, they imagined, they had obtained over it: A practice very contrary to all rules of candour and fair-dealing, and a strong instance of those polemical artifices, which a bigotted zeal thinks itself authorized to employ." (GBWW Vol. 35, 450)
How are we to interpret this? Should we take it literally? Should we give up any criticism of Hume's early work because that is what he is telling us to do? That is what Rand recommends in (1982: 19) when she writes "Take it literally. . . .Take it straight, for what it does say and mean." But if we follow her advice and take him literally, what does this do to Rand's critique of Hume, especially the personal identity passages from the Treatise? Rather than accuse her of "bigotted zeal,” perhaps it is time for us to move on. What follows is an exposition of Hume's positive contributions to logic and politics; contributions congenial, it will be argued, to Objectivism.
HUME'S CONTRIBUTION TO LOGIC (I have previously posted this on SOLO but since repetition is the mother of learning etc.)
Consult most logic texts and in the chapter devoted to Induction you will usually find a section dealing with Mill's methods. But J. S. Mill did not discover these methods. H. W. B. Joseph lists three men prior to Mill who did spade work on induction, and Mill credited two of these as his predecessors, viz., Herschell and Whewell. But who was the first? Mill doesn't mention him, but Joseph does. He is none other than David Hume. (Joseph 395)
Book I, Part III, Section XV of Hume's Treatise is entitled "Rules by which to judge of causes and effects." (Surely a strange section for a man who supposedly rejected causality.) The first sentence reads "According to the precedent doctrine, there are no objects, which by THE MERE SURVEY, WITHOUT CONSULTING EXPERIENCE, we can determine to be the cause of any other; and no objects, which we can certainly determine in the same manner not to be the causes." (Emphasis mine.) By "mere survey" we cannot say anything about cause and effect. From a "mere survey" and restricted to a "mere survey" we are stuck with the not very helpful doctrine that "Any thing may produce any thing." (173) Hume, as do we, found this situation intolerable. We need to know what objects cause what effects if we are going to re-make the world in our own image and likeness. Had Hume been the kind of skeptic some think him to be, he might have said "Tough luck" at this point in the argument. But he does not. He writes, "Since therefore 'tis possible for all objects to become causes or effects to each other, it may be proper to fix some general rules, by which we may know when they really are so." [This reading assume that the first clause refers to the "mere survey" mode and the second to be the results of the "consulting experience" mode.] Hume then proceeds to give eight rules for inductive generalizations.
To see how congenial Hume, in his logic, is to Objectivism, let's do a side-by-side comparison of him and an Objectivist logician. For this purpose, let us examine The Art of Reasoning, a logic text written by an Objectivist scholar, David Kelley. Kelley's treatment of the methods of induction is fairly standard and any other author could have been chosen.
I will give Kelley’s formulation first and then Hume. All of Hume’s formulations are from the Treatise
AGREEMENT:
“a method of identifying a cause of an effect by isolating a factor common to a variety of cases in which the effect occurs. (517)
“where several objects produce the same effect, it must be by means of some quality, which we discover to be common amongst them.” (Treatise: 174)
DIFFERENCE:
“a method of identifying a cause of an effect by isolating a factor in whose presence the effect occurs and in whose absence the effect does not occur, all other factors remaining constant.” (517)
“The difference in effects of two resembling objects must proceed from that particular, in which they differ.” (Treatise: 174)
CONCOMITANT VARIATIONS:
“a method of identifying a cause of an effect by isolating a factor whose variations are correlated with variations in the effect, all other factors remaining constant.” (517)
“When any object encreases or diminishes with the encrease or diminution of its cause, 'tis to be regarded as a compounded effect, driv'd from the union of several different effects, which arise from the several different parts of the cause.” (Treatise: 174)
If the second formulations represent a transcript of an animal's consciousness, then that would be some animal to own. If this is the voice of Attila, then perhaps we should rename him, Attila the logician.
HUME'S CONTRIBUTION TO POLITICS
In a three cassette analysis of the political philosophy of John Locke, Dr. Harry Binswanger practically canonizes the great Englishman for providing the intellectual foundations for capitalism in general and the United States in particular. The qualifying adverb "practically" is necessary, Binswanger claims, because, try as he might, he has to confess that Locke was really serious about believing in God! It is the religious element in Locke that prohibits Binswanger from issuing a more effusive and unguarded praise.
F. A. Hayek, on the other hand, credits David Hume, with the fullest statement of capitalist's doctrines. He writes, "And it is in Hume and not, as is commonly believed, in Locke, that we find the fullest statement of these doctrines." (Hayek, 340) Earlier on the same page Hayek writes "Hume gives us probably the only comprehensive statement of the legal and political philosophy which later became known as liberalism." Fortunately we do not have to settle this dispute, if in fact there is a real dispute going on here. Rather the concern here is giving Hume some credit for stating the case for capitalism.
The "fullest statement" of that case can be found in Hume's Treatise on Human Nature, a book whose title would seem to indicate, contrary to popular wisdom about Hume, that Man has a nature! The work is divided into three "books" and most of what Hume has to say about capitalism occurs in book III. Now it is no secret that the first book of the Treatise has claimed most commentators’ attention. "Hume is chiefly famous for his epistemological analyses and for his examination of causality and of the notions of the self and of personal identity; in other words, for the contents of the first book of the Treatise" writes Copleston. (122) The two paragraphs that Rand herself devotes to Hume in (1961) refer only to epistemological doctrines.
Not having the word "capitalism" or "liberalism" as part of his vocabulary, Hume talks about justice and property. Book III, Part II, Section II is entitled "On the Origin of Justice and Property." Hayek calls this section Hume's "most significant contribution to the field." (345) Although there is much in Book III to which Rand might disagree, there are several of Hume's positions that are highly congenial with Objectivism.
Hume begins the section with a detailed listing of the many "wants and necessities" with which nature has burdened man coupled with the slender means he has for satisfying them. But man can remedy this situation by joining a capitalist society. (The reasons for calling the society "capitalist" may seem question begging, but will become clear as we proceed.) Alone man suffers three inconveniences, viz., lack of power, ability and security. By joining a free market society he solves all three problems. "By the con¬junction of forces, our power is augmented: By the partition of em¬ployment [Hume's phrase for "the division of labor"] our ability encreases: And by mutual succour we are less expos'd to fortune and accidents." (485) This list of remedies delimits the type of society Hume has in mind. It must be a society where the division of labor, the absolutism of property rights (§ III) and mutual trade to mutual advantage (§ IV) can occur. Before leaving § II, however, let's look at one of Hume’s most proto-Objectivists notions, a notion that asymptotically approaches the concept of Objectivity itself.
Recall what "objectivity" means for Objectivism. It is a marriage of the "out-there" with the "in-here". It is a relational concept. Capitalism is not intrinsically right, nor is its rightness based on anyone's subjective whim. Given what man is and what reality is, Capitalism is the proper system for man. Capitalism is the social system that remedies the inconveniences that "proceed from the concurrence of certain qualities of the human mind with the situation of external objects. The qualities of the mind are selfishness and limited generosity: the situation of external objects is their easy change, join'd to their scarcity." (494) While Hayek exclaims about Hume's invention of the term scarcity, as well he might, for our purposes it is how close Hume comes to the notion of Objectivity that is more worthy of exclamation. Rand frequently said that if we were different, or if reality were different, a different social system would be in order. If men were ants or bees, for example, capitalism would hardly be the system conducive to their survival. It is the objectively (not intrinsically or subjectively) right system for man. Hume is saying exactly that. In fact, he does so explicitly a few lines beneath those quoted above.

[I]f every man had a tender regard for another, or if nature supplied abundantly all our wants and desires, [capitalism] could no longer have place; nor would there be any occasion for those distinctions and limits of property and possession, which at present are in use among mankind. Encrease to a sufficient degree the benevolence of men, or the bounty of nature and you render [capitalism] useless, . . . (494-5)

This is not to say that Hume has isolated the right factors here, (Objectivists might have different and even better ones in mind--certainly Rand would emphasize man's rational nature and the primacy of existence, to name but two necessary conditions for capitalism) but rather that he recognizes that capitalism is due neither to reality in itself nor to man in himself, but to a "concurrence of certain qualities of the human mind with the situations of external objects." (494)
The important thing to notice in all this is how it militates against the standard interpretation of Hume as a subjectivist. No one has ever accused Hume of being an intrinsicist, but now we can see that perhaps he was not a subjectivist, at least not in his politics. Anyway, this "Objectivist” reading can be garnered from his concept of “concurrence.” Perhaps it could be argued that this is indeed a very tenuous kind of objectivity and that much that is essential to the Objectivist notion is missing. But the above is an argument for a minimal metaphysical claim. For Hume, value, property etc. are not to be found in the category of substance or of attribute, but in the category of relation. In that sense, both Hume and Rand agree on the categorization of value, property etc.
Now that Hume has revealed the existential conditions necessary for capitalism, he goes into more detail. He thinks there are "three fundamental laws" of capitalist society, viz., "that of stability of possession, of its transference by consent, and of the performance of promises." He states that on these laws "the peace and security of human society entirely depend; nor is there any possibility of establishing a good correspondence among men, where these are neglected." (526) Hume seems to be saying that peace and security require private property. Let us take a closer look at Hume's three laws and his arguments for them.
He begins by adopting the tripartite Aristotelian division of goods into goods of the body, goods of the soul and external goods. (487, see NE, 1098b12-15) He then notes that the first two are relatively safe from thieves, but the third class of goods presents special problems for those living in society. These problems are due to the following two facts about external goods, viz., they "may be transferr'd without suffering any loss or alteration; while at the same time, there is not a sufficient quantity of them to supply every one's desires and necessities." (487-88)
Hume's point is fairly straightforward. Consider first the fact about external goods. If stealing a BMW resulted in the car's immediate disintegration, or altered it into a thousand volt wire bringing instant death upon the thief, it doesn't take much intellectual acumen to figure out how much of a disincentive this would be to most crooks. But this is not what happens. The BMW just doesn't care who drives it, the rightful owner or some low-life sleaze. How to solve this problem? "This can be done after no other manner, than by a convention enter'd into by all the members of the society to bestow stability on the possession of those external goods, and leave every one in the peaceable enjoyment of what he may acquire by his fortune and industry." (489) The law will deal with those who persist in their thieving behavior.
We now have Hume's first law before us. A necessary condition for the peaceable living together of humans is the "stability of possessions." In other words, the society must recognize a right to property. But this law is not without it inconveniences. Often we have things we don't want and want things we don't have. To allow everyone to simply seize by violence what he wants would destroy society. It would turn society over to the real Attilas. Hume has a remedy and he thinks it an obvious one. "[P]ossession and property shou'd always be stable, except when the proprietor consents to bestow them on some other person." (514) In Objectivist terms, the right to private property includes the right to its use and disposal. An owner may dispose of property by transferring it to others. All that is required is the consent of the rightful owner.
There are, of course, many different inducements for one to bestow one's property on another, but the capitalist incentive, known as "trade,” is my main concern here. I'll bestow my fish on you if you'll bestow your apple on me. But this solution, without further laws, engenders its own difficulties. The obvious one is that it would restrict all trade to barter. But, as Hume points outs,
the commerce of mankind is not confin'd to the barter of commodities, but may extend to services and sanctions, which we may exchange to our mutual interest and advantage. Your corn is ripe today; mine will be so to-morrow. 'Tis profitable for us both, that I shou'd labour with you to-day, and that you shou'd aid me to-morrow. (520) (NB. Hume's usage of the concept of "mutual interest and advantage.")
But what is to stop you from refusing to help your neighbor harvest his corn tomorrow after he helps you harvest yours today? Your short-range self-interest seems to dictate that you renege. Unless we find a way to make it in your long-range interest to reciprocate we will be restricted to the level of barter where the only trades that are made are the concrete perceptual kind. (Note, pace Rand, Hume’s anti-perceptual approach here. He sees capitalism as both long-range and conceptual.) We must find a remedy for those exchanges that involve a lapse of time. The remedy is "the keeping of promises." The keeping of promises is in the long-range rational self-interest of producers.
While on the subject of short vs. long-range interest, it would no doubt be profitable to close this examination by casting a brief glance at how these interests play a part in Hume's notion of government. In the essay "Of the First Principles of Government" Hume tells us that often man is "seduced from his great and important, but distant, interests, by the allurement of present, though often very frivolous, temptations." (Aiken 311) Government is especially concerned when men ignore the long-range benefit of justice and try to obtain property by the short-range means of "fraud and violence." Nor may the government try to reduce the disparity of property and money between its citizens by redistribution schemes. All of this derives from Hume's antipathy towards egalitarianism.
Hume is an avowed enemy of egalitarianism. The following is from Part II of Section III (Of Justice) from Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. He attributes the very idea of egalitarianism to religious "fanatics" and equates them with "common robbers." He mentions the levellers as a species of these religious fanatics and calls all such ideas both "impracti¬cable" and "pernicious to human society."
Why impracticable” No sooner would possessions be rendered equal than "different degrees of art, care and industry will immediately break that equality."
Why pernicious? In order to maintain the equality, the government would have to check the virtues of "art, care and industry." But this, Hume claims, would "reduce society to the most extreme indigence; and instead of preventing want and beggary in a few, render it unavoidable to the whole community." Once those wealth-creating virtues are against the law, wealth will not be produced. Hence universal poverty will reign.
There are additional untoward consequences to a program of enforced equality. "The most rigorous inquisition too is requisite to watch every inequality on its first appearance; and the most severe jurisdiction, to punish and redress it." The vigilance (against art, care and industry) by the government would eventually lead to "tyranny and be exerted with great partialities." (Aiken: 194)
Hume's approach here is very instructive. He would ask those who attack the inequality of wealth to look at the means that produce the inequality, then ask themselves if they really want a society in which "art, care and industry" are, if not completely absent, then against the law and driven underground. To those who only look at appearances, equality of possessions may sound like a marvelous ideal and the best source of laws for the governance of men. But Hume regards this as a floating abstraction. It floats apart and above two necessary moorings to reality, viz., the nature of man and the nature of man's existential condition. From this examination and refutation of egalitarianism Hume concludes that "in order to establish laws for the regulation of property, we must be acquainted with the nature and situation of man, must reject appearances which may be false though specious, and must search for those rules which are on the whole most useful and beneficial." (Aiken: 194)
How does Hume know this? What is his epistemological warrant? He thinks common sense is enough to ground his attack on egalitarianism. For in the next paragraph he asks a series of rhetorical questions whose answers are so obvious and so devastating to the equalitarian that they deserve full quotation.
Who sees not, for instance, that whatever is produced or im¬proved by a man's art or industry ought, forever, to be se¬cured to him, in order to give encouragement to such useful habits and accomplishments? That the property ought also to descend to children and relations for the same useful purpose? That is may be alienated by consent in order to beget that commerce and intercourse which is so beneficial to human society? And that contracts and promises ought carefully to be fulfilled in order to secure mutual trust and confidence by which the general interest of mankind is so much promoted?
This should suffice to make clear the reasons for Hume's anti-egalitarianism. For his contributions to epistemology and politics Hume deserves our careful study, thoughtful consideration and humble thanks. In fact, one could say, paraphrasing the "About the Author" from Atlas Shrugged that "his discovery of the rules of induction and his defense of the free market are so great an achievement that his errors are irrelevant by comparison."

This article is a chapter from my book Ayn Rand, Objectivists and the History of Philosophy published by University Press of America.

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Fred