Hume's reason survives its own sceptical argument
I have no right to think at all.
Hume had already explored the prospect of reason undermining itself in A Treatise of Human Nature (Books I–II first published 1739). In I.iv.1 he imagines successive checks on the reliability of judgment, each introducing a further possibility of error until confidence disappears. Yet he immediately denies that anyone constantly lives in that condition: natural belief keeps people judging, thinking and reasoning. The section thus separates the logical pressure of sceptical reflection from its practical power.
This comparison clarifies the force and limit of Chesterton's conclusion. His sceptic loses the right to think: the issue is justification. Hume agrees that reasoning cannot simply supply an independent guarantee of all its own operations, but denies that this stops their exercise. Chesterton treats a radical loss of warrant as a peril requiring protection; Hume presents our natural constitution as already preventing sustained paralysis. Their overlap is the problem of reason examining its own credentials, not an agreed remedy or evidence of direct influence.
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