A Treatise of Human Nature
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Written by the author
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~240,000 words · 1,130 passages
Cite this work
- APADavid Hume. (n.d.). A Treatise of Human Nature. Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/david-hume/a-treatise-of-human-nature
- MLADavid Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature. Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/david-hume/a-treatise-of-human-nature.
- ChicagoDavid Hume. A Treatise of Human Nature. Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/david-hume/a-treatise-of-human-nature.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
Hume's first book and his most radical: ideas traced to impressions, the critique of causation, the denial of a substantial self, and the thesis that reason is the slave of the passions.
Context and history
He published it in 1739-40, barely past twenty, and almost nobody read it: he himself wrote that it 'fell dead-born from the press'. He rewrote its parts as the Enquiries, shorter and more agreeable, and in later life asked expressly that those, not the Treatise, be taken as his position. Posterity has ignored him, and the Treatise is the book he is read for.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
Nothing is more usual and more natural for those, who pretend to discover anything new to the world in philosophy and the sciences, than to insinuate the praises of their own systems, by decrying all those, which have been advanced before them. And indeed were they content with lamenting that ignorance, which we still lie under in the most important questions, that can come before the tribunal of human reason, there are few, who have an acquaintance with the sciences, that would not readily agree with them. It is easy for one of judgment and learning, to perceive the weak foundation even of those systems, which have obtained the greatest credit, and have carried their pretensions highest to accurate and profound reasoning. Principles taken upon trust, consequences lamely deduced from them, want of coherence in the parts, and of evidence in the whole, these are every where to be met with in the systems of the most eminent philosophers, and seem to have drawn disgrace upon philosophy itself. Nor is there required such profound knowledge to discover the present imperfect condition of the sciences, but even the rabble without doors may, judge from the noise and clamour, which they hear, that all goes not well within. There is nothing which is not the subject of debate, and in which men of learning are not of contrary opinions. The most trivial question escapes not our controversy, and in the most momentous we are not able to give any certain decision. Disputes are multiplied, as if every thing was uncertain; and these disputes are managed with the greatest warmth, as if every thing was certain. Amidst all this bustle it is not reason, which carries the prize, but eloquence; and no man needs ever despair of gaining proselytes to the most extravagant hypothesis, who has art enough to represent it in any favourable colours.…