change so rapidly we do not register that the film is made up of single pictures. In
reality the pictures are not connected. The film is a collection of instants.”
“I think I give in.”
“Does that mean you give up the idea of having an unalterable ego?”
“I guess it does.”
“A moment ago you believed the opposite. I should add that Hume’s analysis of
the human mind and his rejection of the unalterable ego was put forward almost 2,500
years earlier on the other side of the world.”
“Who by?”
“By Buddha. It’s almost uncanny how similarly the two formulate their ideas.
Buddha saw life as an unbroken succession of mental and physical processes which
keep people in a continual state of change. The infant is not the same as the adult; I
am not the same today as I was yesterday. There is nothing of which I can say ‘this is
mine,’ said Buddha, and nothing of which I can say ‘this is me.’ There is thus no T or
unalterable ego.”
“Yes, that was typically Hume.”
“In continuation of the idea of an unalterable ego, many rationalists had taken it
for granted that man had an eternal soul.”
“Is that a false perception too?”
“According to Hume and Buddha, yes. Do you know what Buddha said to his
followers just before he died?”
“No, how could I?”
“ ‘Decay is inherent in all compound things. Work out your own salvation with
diligence.’ Hume could have said the same thing. Or Democritus, for that matter. We
know at all events that Hume rejected any attempt to prove the immortality of the soul
or the existence of God. That does not mean that he ruled out either one, but to prove
religious faith by human reason was rationalistic claptrap, he thought. Hume was not
a Christian, neither was he a confirmed atheist. He was what we call an agnostic.”
“What’s that?”
“An agnostic is someone who holds that the existence of God or a god can
neither be proved nor disproved. When Hume was dying a friend asked him if he
believed in life after death. He is said to have answered:
“It is also possible that a knob of coal placed upon the fire will not burn.”
“I see.”
“The answer was typical of his unconditional open-mindedness. He only
accepted what he had perceived through his senses. He held all other possibilities
open. He rejected neither faith in Christianity nor faith in miracles. But both were
matters of faith and not of knowledge or reason. You might say that with Hume’s
philosophy, the final link between faith and knowledge was broken.”
“You say he didn’t deny that miracles can happen?”
“That didn’t mean that he believed in them, more the opposite. He made a point
of the fact that people seemed to have a powerful need of what we today would call
‘supernatural’ happenings. The thing is that all the miracles you hear of have always
happened in some far distant place or a long, long time ago. Actually, Hume only
rejected miracles because he had never experienced any. But he had not experienced
that they couldn’t happen either.”
“You’ll have to explain that.”
“According to Hume, a miracle is against the laws of nature. But it is
meaningless to allege that we have experienced the laws of nature. We experience that
a stone falls to the ground when we let go of it, and if it didn’t fall—well, then we