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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
- Sprache: Englisch
David Hume: The Collected Works presents a comprehensive anthology of the philosophical writings of one of the most pivotal figures of the Scottish Enlightenment. This meticulously curated collection includes seminal texts such as *A Treatise of Human Nature* and *An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding*, showcasing Hume's distinctive empiricist approach and his skepticism towards metaphysical speculations. Through clear, accessible prose enriched by a masterful command of language, Hume invites readers into profound explorations of human psychology, morality, and epistemology, contextually situated within the intellectual currents of 18th-century thought. David Hume (1711-1776), a Scottish philosopher, historian, and essayist, is celebrated for his pioneering contributions to modern philosophy, particularly in the realm of empiricism and naturalism. Influenced by the Enlightenment's rational spirit, Hume's works reflect a deep inquiry into the nature of knowledge and belief, often questioning the very foundations of causality and the self. His background in law and history, combined with a keen interest in human nature, profoundly shaped his philosophical legacy. This collection is an essential resource for both scholars and enthusiasts of philosophy, offering insights into Hume's critical examination of human intuition and belief systems. It invites readers to engage with timeless questions about the nature of existence, reason, and the limits of human understanding, making it a vital addition to any philosophical library. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A comprehensive Introduction outlines these selected works' unifying features, themes, or stylistic evolutions. - The Author Biography highlights personal milestones and literary influences that shape the entire body of writing. - A Historical Context section situates the works in their broader era—social currents, cultural trends, and key events that underpin their creation. - A concise Synopsis (Selection) offers an accessible overview of the included texts, helping readers navigate plotlines and main ideas without revealing critical twists. - A unified Analysis examines recurring motifs and stylistic hallmarks across the collection, tying the stories together while spotlighting the different work's strengths. - Reflection questions inspire deeper contemplation of the author's overarching message, inviting readers to draw connections among different texts and relate them to modern contexts. - Lastly, our hand‐picked Memorable Quotes distill pivotal lines and turning points, serving as touchstones for the collection's central themes.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023
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David Hume: The Collected Works
Table of Contents
Introduction
This collection brings together three of David Hume’s central philosophical works: A Treatise of Human Nature, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Its purpose is to present, in one place, the core articulation and subsequent refinement of Hume’s project to explain human thought, action, and morality by attending to experience. Prepared as a unified reading journey rather than a historical archive, the volume allows readers to see how a single philosophical vision unfolds across different forms and audiences. It foregrounds Hume’s enduring questions about what we can know, why we believe, and how we judge right and wrong.
These texts are works of philosophical prose. The Treatise is a systematic, book-length work that advances a comprehensive account of mind, passions, and morals. The two Enquiries are more compact re-presentations aimed at a wider readership: they retain rigorous argument while adopting an essayistic tone, organized into sections with targeted discussions. No fiction, drama, or verse appears here; instead, readers encounter analysis, argument, examples, and explanatory notes characteristic of eighteenth-century moral philosophy. Taken together, the genres represented—treatise and enquiry—allow comparison between an ambitious system and later, carefully focused expositions that highlight what Hume considered the most accessible and durable parts of his thought.
A Treatise of Human Nature, first published in the late 1730s, lays out Hume’s ambitious attempt to establish a systematic study of human nature. It examines the operations of understanding, the dynamics of the passions, and the bases of moral judgment within one connected framework. The Treatise proceeds analytically, developing principles meant to explain belief, reasoning, and practical motivation. It exhibits a youthful boldness, covering a broad terrain with intricate argumentation and extended analysis. Readers will notice Hume’s commitment to deriving philosophical insight from observation of mental life and social practice, and his effort to replace speculative metaphysics with careful attention to experience.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding revisits and streamlines the epistemological and metaphysical discussions of the Treatise for a broader public. It refines debates about ideas, belief, causation, probability, and the limits of human reason, emphasizing how habits of thought arise from experience. Its structure, arranged in self-contained sections, invites focused engagement with specific issues while maintaining a coherent overall perspective. The prose is tighter and more accessible than in the Treatise, but the philosophical ambition remains. The Enquiry’s measured skepticism does not seek to paralyze inquiry; rather, it proposes a disciplined modesty about what can be established and a renewed confidence in everyday reasoning.
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals offers a recast of Hume’s moral philosophy, concentrating on the sources and standards of moral evaluation. It emphasizes the role of sentiment in moral life, explores the social virtues, and attends to the usefulness and agreeableness of traits as grounds for approval. The work balances descriptive accounts of moral psychology with normative reflection, while avoiding speculative foundations that outstrip experience. Its style favors illustrative examples and clear distinctions over grand system-building. In doing so, it presents moral philosophy as continuous with common life, charitable to ordinary sentiments, and alert to the practical aims of ethical reflection.
Across the three works, unifying themes emerge. Hume is a thoroughgoing empiricist, urging that our ideas and standards arise from experience and human nature rather than from innate structures or necessary metaphysical truths. He advances a cautious skepticism that tests claims to knowledge without rejecting the practices of everyday life. He treats reasoning, emotion, and morality as interconnected: belief guides action, sentiment colors judgment, and social interaction shapes standards. Throughout, he resists the urge to explain beyond what observation warrants, modeling a philosophy that is naturalistic, historically sensitive, and modest in its pretensions yet profound in its consequences for theory and practice.
Stylistically, Hume combines analytic precision with an engaging, conversational clarity. He favors well-structured arguments, carefully staged contrasts, and strategically chosen examples drawn from ordinary life, law, history, and science. Irony and understatement often temper bold claims, and the prose exhibits a civility that invites readers into debate rather than dictating conclusions. The difference in tone between the comprehensive Treatise and the concise Enquiries reveals a deliberate shift toward accessibility without sacrificing depth. Even when confronting difficult questions, Hume’s writing remains lucid, economical, and attentive to the reader’s pace, making his work unusually approachable among the classics of early modern philosophy.
The significance of these works is difficult to overstate. They set terms for enduring debates about causation, induction, personal identity, freedom and necessity, the foundations of morals, and the relations between reason and sentiment. Their methods influenced later philosophy and the emerging sciences of mind and society, encouraging attention to psychological processes, social conventions, and empirical explanation. By challenging speculative systems while retaining confidence in common experience and practical inquiry, Hume helped shape a modern philosophical temperament. These texts continue to serve as touchstones for epistemology and ethics, and their questions remain active in contemporary discussions across disciplines.
The method running through the collection is resolutely observational. Rather than deducing doctrines from first principles, Hume builds explanations from how minds actually operate, how people form beliefs, and how communities coordinate expectations and values. He treats philosophical problems as amenable to the same patience and care found in successful inquiry elsewhere, using analysis, comparison, and cautious generalization. This approach yields results both unsettling and liberating: unsettling, because it curtails pretensions of certainty; liberating, because it anchors philosophy in human capacities and practices. The works ask readers to examine their own habits of thought as data for philosophical understanding.
The collection also reflects the intellectual climate of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment. It engages with earlier empiricist thought and with debates about science, religion, and the authority of tradition, while redirecting attention from objects to the operations of the mind that apprehends them. Hume’s constructive skepticism situates him among reformers of philosophy who sought clarity, limits, and usefulness over grand speculation. At the same time, his attention to taste, sociability, and convention connects philosophy to literature, politics, and everyday norms. The resulting picture of human nature is at once restrained and humane, capturing the aspirations and tensions of an age committed to reasoned inquiry.
Readers may approach the collection in multiple ways. The Enquiries can serve as concise gateways, introducing central lines of thought with exemplary clarity. The Treatise then reveals the wider architecture, supplying fuller arguments and a richer sense of Hume’s ambitions. Others may prefer to start with the Treatise’s comprehensive scope and then observe how Hume later refines and reframes key points. In either order, cross-reading illuminates continuities and shifts in emphasis. Noticing how central ideas are recast for different audiences sharpens one’s understanding of the aims, strengths, and limits of the overall project, and clarifies what Hume regarded as most enduring.
Gathered here, these works display a cohesive vision of philosophy attentive to human nature, disciplined by experience, and oriented to practical life. They confront perennial questions about belief, evidence, responsibility, and virtue with candor and balance. By presenting the Treatise alongside the Enquiries, the collection invites readers to trace the maturation of arguments and the refinement of style that together define Hume’s legacy. What emerges is not a closed system but a sustained invitation to inquiry: an encouragement to test our convictions against experience, to examine the springs of judgment and action, and to cultivate a measured, humane outlook in thought and conduct.
Author Biography
David Hume (1711–1776) was a Scottish philosopher, essayist, and historian, central to the Scottish Enlightenment. He is widely regarded as a master of modern empiricism and a leading voice of philosophical skepticism and naturalism. His major writings include A Treatise of Human Nature, the two Enquiries, numerous essays on politics and economy, and the multivolume History of England. Hume sought to ground knowledge of mind, morals, and society in observation and experience rather than metaphysics. Celebrated for lucid prose and cool irony, he reshaped debates about causation, morality, religion, and historical explanation, leaving a lasting imprint on philosophy and the human sciences.
Born in Edinburgh in the early eighteenth century, Hume studied at the University of Edinburgh in his youth and pursued wide reading beyond the formal curriculum. Though expected to follow a practical career, he turned decisively to philosophy and letters. After a period of intense private study, he spent time on the Continent, where he devoted himself to writing. The intellectual life of the Scottish Enlightenment—its clubs, periodicals, and sociability—nurtured his interests. He admired the clarity of classical prose and the experimental achievements of the new science, and he engaged closely with the empiricist tradition after Locke and with skeptical challenges.
His first great work, A Treatise of Human Nature (1739–1740), attempted a comprehensive “science of man.” It analyzed impressions and ideas, traced associative principles such as resemblance, contiguity, and cause and effect, developed a famous account of causation and the problem of induction, and proposed a “bundle” view of personal identity. The third book advanced a moral theory grounded in sentiment and utility. On publication the Treatise attracted little notice, prompting Hume’s later remark that it “fell dead-born from the press.” He responded by recasting key parts in a clearer style and by publishing essays aimed at a wider readership.
He consolidated his philosophy in An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748) and An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). The first refined his analysis of ideas, causation, and testimony, including a famous critique of miracles; the second presented a mature account of virtue emphasizing sympathy and the usefulness of social practices. The Natural History of Religion (1757) examined the origins of religious belief. Essays, Moral and Political, and Political Discourses (1752) extended his range to economic and constitutional topics and were well received. His religious skepticism drew controversy and narrowed academic prospects, yet it also focused public debate about toleration, natural religion, and the limits of reason in matters of faith.
In the early 1750s Hume became librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, gaining access to extensive resources that aided his historical research. He went on to publish The History of England in multiple volumes between the mid-1750s and early 1760s, a best-selling narrative that shaped public discussion for decades. The work’s elegant style and sometimes provocative judgments brought both acclaim and criticism. Beyond authorship, Hume also undertook public service: he served in diplomatic circles in Paris in the mid-1760s and later as a government under-secretary in London. His sociable wit and clear prose made him welcome in Enlightenment salons.
Across genres, Hume advanced a program of mitigated skepticism and naturalism. He held that all knowledge of matters of fact rests on custom-formed expectations rather than demonstrative proof, and he treated the mind’s operations as natural phenomena open to empirical study. In morals, he emphasized sentiment, sympathy, and the stabilizing role of conventions such as justice. His Political Discourses offered influential analyses of trade, money, luxury, and public credit that later economists took seriously. Stylistically, he prized clarity and brevity, helping to establish the modern philosophical essay. His work circulated widely in Britain and on the Continent and was quickly translated.
Hume spent his final years largely in Edinburgh, enjoying the reputation of a celebrated man of letters. He composed a brief autobiography, My Own Life, and arranged for the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion to appear after his death. He died in the mid-1770s after a short illness, facing it with equanimity noted by contemporaries. His impact deepened in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, influencing Immanuel Kant, utilitarian ethics, logical empiricism, and contemporary cognitive science. While The History of England is less central than it once was, his philosophical writings remain foundational, studied for their bold skepticism, methodological rigor, and humane outlook.
Historical Context
David Hume’s philosophical career unfolded within the Scottish Enlightenment, a constellation of thinkers clustered around Edinburgh and Glasgow between the 1730s and 1770s. Institutions such as the University of Edinburgh and the University of Glasgow, along with clubs and printing houses on the High Street and in the Canongate, fostered a culture of inquiry that prized clarity, experiment, and civility. The Union of 1707 integrated Scotland into a British political and commercial sphere, enabling easier movement of ideas, books, and people to London and the Continent. In that environment, Hume’s mature writings sought a comprehensive account of human understanding and morals suited to a modern, commercial society.
Across Britain and Europe, the legacy of Francis Bacon, Isaac Newton, and John Locke shaped the self-image of an age that styled itself experimental and empirical. Newton’s Principia and Opticks encouraged the aspiration to find laws of motion in nature; Locke’s Essay concerning human understanding refocused attention on experience and the operations of the mind. In France, the reception of René Descartes and Pierre Bayle sustained parallel debates about certainty and skepticism. Hume positioned his work at the intersection of these currents, aiming to transpose the Newtonian method to the study of the passions, belief, and morality, while engaging with the limits suggested by skeptical reflection.
Born in 1711 at Ninewells, near Chirnside in Berwickshire, Hume received an early education in Edinburgh and briefly considered a career in law. In 1734 he left Scotland for France, residing chiefly at La Flèche in Anjou, a town notable for its Jesuit college where Descartes had studied. There he immersed himself in intensive reflection and produced the core materials for his first major publication. Returning via Paris and London, he published A Treatise of Human Nature in three parts (1739–1740). Although the Treatise introduced his central themes, its chilly reception convinced him to rework the substance and style of his philosophy for a wider public.
The British book trade in the 1740s, centered in London but linked to Edinburgh printers, provided Hume new avenues for circulation. He issued an Abstract of the Treatise in 1740, then pursued topical Essays, Moral and Political (1741–1742). He subsequently recast parts of the Treatise into two shorter, more accessible volumes: the first appeared in 1748 as Philosophical Essays concerning human understanding, later retitled An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding; the second followed in 1751 as An Enquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. Andrew Millar and other London booksellers helped place these works within a broader market increasingly hungry for polite letters and general philosophy.
Religious controversy framed the reception of Hume’s writings in both Scotland and England. The Presbyterian Kirk’s vigilance against heterodoxy was sharpened by post-Reformation institutions and by conflicts between Evangelicals and Moderates within the Church of Scotland. Sections on miracles and natural religion provoked replies from divines such as George Campbell of Aberdeen, whose Dissertation on Miracles (1762) targeted Hume’s arguments. Efforts to censure Hume emerged in the mid-1750s before the General Assembly. Earlier, in 1744–1745, clerical opposition contributed to his failure to secure the Edinburgh chair of moral philosophy. These pressures shaped the tone, timing, and sometimes the anonymity of his philosophical publications.
The political world that surrounded Hume’s career was defined by the post-1688 constitutional settlement, Whig ascendancy, and the integration of Scotland into Britain after 1707. The Jacobite risings of 1715 and 1745 left a lasting imprint on Scottish society, law, and memory. During the War of the Austrian Succession and its aftermath, Hume served as secretary to General James St Clair, accompanying him on military and diplomatic missions between 1746 and 1748. That experience introduced Hume to the practical business of statecraft and to European courts, further connecting his philosophical reflections on belief, testimony, and human motives to the contingencies of political life.
Moral philosophy in the British Isles, especially in Scotland, was marked by debates over moral sense theory and the foundation of virtue. Anthony Ashley Cooper, third Earl of Shaftesbury, and Francis Hutcheson at Glasgow promoted accounts of benevolence and moral perception. Hume conversed with these ideas while developing a distinctive role for sympathy, convention, and utility in explaining moral life. Lord Kames (Henry Home), William Robertson, and Adam Smith formed part of the same intellectual milieu, linking jurisprudence, rhetoric, and political economy to moral inquiry. Smith’s lectures at Glasgow in the 1750s and his Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759) resonated with themes that also animate Hume’s treatments.
Hume’s project to frame a science of man emulated the methodological ideal of Newton without presupposing metaphysical certainty. Association of ideas, custom, and the imagination served as explanatory tools for understanding belief in matters of fact, the stability of identity, and the authority of rules. Such instruments owed much to Locke’s analysis of ideas and to the experimental ethos of the Royal Society, which favored observation over speculative systems. Edinburgh’s culture of conversation and criticism, fostered in taverns, drawing rooms, and learned societies, provided an informal laboratory where hypotheses about causation, probability, and moral approbation could be tested against common life.
Hume’s later travels intensified his cosmopolitan outlook. After early years in France at La Flèche, he returned to the Continent in the 1760s, serving as secretary to Lord Hertford, the British ambassador in Paris from 1763 to 1765, and later as chargé d’affaires. There he met figures associated with the Encyclopédie, including d’Alembert and Diderot, visited the salons of Madame Geoffrin and others, and briefly befriended Jean-Jacques Rousseau in 1766. These encounters embedded his views on politeness, sociability, and the arts within a European network of exchange. Translations of portions of his writings into French and German helped consolidate his reputation abroad.
Commercial and financial expansion reshaped Britain and Scotland during Hume’s lifetime. Glasgow’s tobacco lords, Edinburgh’s bankers, and London’s credit markets embodied a system of global trade linking the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds. The aftermath of the South Sea and Mississippi bubbles sharpened interest in monetary theory, public credit, and the balance of trade. Hume’s essays on commerce and money, published in the early 1750s and often associated with the Enquiries’ emphasis on human practices, belonged to that larger conversation. His reflections anticipated later developments in political economy, including Adam Smith’s Wealth of Nations (1776), and connected moral sentiments to the norms of a commercial society.
European and colonial wars structured the mid-century public sphere. The Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle (1748) ended the War of the Austrian Succession, and the Seven Years’ War (1756–1763) redrew imperial boundaries. Diplomatic service took Hume to Turin and Vienna as part of the British mission in 1748, and then to Paris in the 1760s. These experiences of negotiation, ceremonial encounter, and multilingual exchange reinforced the centrality of testimony, probability, and trust in practical affairs. They also nuanced his assessments of national character and manners, as seen in his essays, by situating moral and cognitive habits within differing institutional and historical settings across Europe.
Access to archives transformed Hume’s sense of historical explanation. As librarian to the Advocates Library in Edinburgh from 1752 to 1757, he gained unprecedented resources for his multi-volume History of England, published between 1754 and 1762. The History secured his financial independence and public renown in Britain. Its narrative ambition offered a wide canvas for reflecting on religion, party conflict, commerce, and the passions. The same historical awareness inflected his philosophical outlook, encouraging attention to the genesis of rules, the authority of convention, and the slow emergence of norms. Historical method and philosophical analysis thus remained mutually reinforcing throughout his career.
Clubs and societies anchored the Scottish Enlightenment’s sociability. The Select Society, founded in Edinburgh in 1754, and later the Poker Club, gathered lawyers, ministers, artists, and professors such as Adam Smith, William Robertson, Hugh Blair, and Allan Ramsay. Debates over eloquence, taste, and improvement sharpened the rhetorical polish of philosophical prose and supplied audiences capable of weighing arguments without ecclesiastical mediation. Printers like Alexander Kincaid, and booksellers who bridged Edinburgh and London, sustained a market for essays and enquiries. Against this backdrop, Hume’s preference for precise language, measured skepticism, and engagement with polite readers shaped the final form of his mature philosophical statements.
The imperial and Atlantic dimensions of eighteenth-century Britain raised questions about human diversity, slavery, and commerce that reverberated in polite society and print. Scottish participation in colonial ventures, from the Caribbean to North America, fed home economies and sparked debate about national character and manners. Hume’s remarks on race, inserted into an essay on national character in the 1750s and later revised, display tensions of an age that combined universalist aspirations with exclusionary prejudices. These entanglements framed the social setting in which discussions of sympathy, justice, and utility unfolded, revealing how metropolitan moral theory intersected with the uneven realities of empire and trade.
Hume’s public reputation shifted markedly over time. In the 1740s his earliest philosophical ambitions met indifference; by the 1750s and 1760s he was known across Europe, though often more as a historian than as a philosopher. Clerical critics such as William Warburton, James Beattie, and John Leland attacked his skepticism, while philosophes in Paris offered him salons and an audience. His exchange with Rousseau in 1766 ended acrimoniously, yet it signaled the breadth of his continental connections. Translations, reviews, and encyclopedic entries diffused his arguments, ensuring that his treatments of experience, belief, and morals entered classrooms and salons from Edinburgh to Berlin.
In his final decade Hume divided his time between London and Edinburgh. He served briefly as Under-Secretary of State in London in 1767–1768 before retiring to Scotland. He built a new house in Edinburgh’s emerging New Town in the early 1770s, reflecting the city’s urban transformation. He died on 25 August 1776, attended by friends including Adam Smith, who described his composure in the Letter to William Strahan. Hume had arranged for posthumous publication of Dialogues concerning Natural Religion in 1779, a measure of his continuing caution in a still-contentious religious climate and a coda to his life-long engagement with probabilistic reasoning.
Against the shifting background of union, war, commerce, and ecclesiastical controversy, Hume sought a durable, secular account of human understanding and morals. Composed in Scotland, France, London, and Paris between 1739 and 1751, and revised in light of experience and audience, his works allied the empirical spirit of the age with an acute sense of human limitation. He fused analytic precision with historical sensitivity, drawing on clubs, libraries, embassies, and marketplaces. The resulting synthesis helped redefine philosophy as an investigation of ordinary belief and social practice, placing the study of human nature at the center of eighteenth-century intellectual life.
Synopsis (Selection)
A Treatise of Human Nature
Hume attempts a science of man grounded in experience, distinguishing impressions from ideas and explaining belief, causation, and personal identity as products of habit and sentiment. He extends this psychology to morals and society, arguing that reason serves the passions and that virtues like justice arise from conventions sustained by utility and sympathy.
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
A streamlined statement of Hume's epistemology, contending that all ideas derive from impressions and that causal inference rests on custom rather than demonstrative reason. It develops the problem of induction, advocates mitigated skepticism, defends a compatibilist account of free will, and argues that testimonial evidence for miracles is never sufficient.
An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
An empirical account of ethics that grounds moral distinctions in sentiment, emphasizing the roles of sympathy, utility, and agreeableness in our approval of character traits. Hume distinguishes natural from artificial virtues and explains justice and political allegiance as conventions valued for their social usefulness.
David Hume: The Collected Works
A Treatise of Human Nature
Introduction
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. The victory is not gained by the men at arms, who manage the pike and the sword; but by the trumpeters, drummers, and musicians of the army.
From hence in my opinion arises that common prejudice against metaphysical reasonings of all kinds, even amongst those, who profess themselves scholars, and have a just value for every other part of literature. By metaphysical reasonings, they do not understand those on any particular branch of science, but every kind of argument, which is any way abstruse, and requires some attention to be comprehended. We have so often lost our labour in such researches, that we commonly reject them without hesitation, and resolve, if we must for ever be a prey to errors and delusions, that they shall at least be natural and entertaining. And indeed nothing but the most determined scepticism, along with a great degree of indolence, can justify this aversion to metaphysics. For if truth be at all within the reach of human capacity, it is certain it must lie very deep and abstruse: and to hope we shall arrive at it without pains, while the greatest geniuses have failed with the utmost pains, must certainly be esteemed sufficiently vain and presumptuous. I pretend to no such advantage in the philosophy I am going to unfold, and would esteem it a strong presumption against it, were it so very easy and obvious.
It is evident, that all the sciences have a relation, greater or less, to human nature: and that however wide any of them may seem to run from it, they still return back by one passage or another. Even. Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, are in some measure dependent on the science of MAN; since the lie under the cognizance of men, and are judged of by their powers and faculties. It is impossible to tell what changes and improvements we might make in these sciences were we thoroughly acquainted with the extent and force of human understanding, and could explain the nature of the ideas we employ, and of the operations we perform in our reasonings. And these improvements are the more to be hoped for in natural religion, as it is not content with instructing us in the nature of superior powers, but carries its views farther, to their disposition towards us, and our duties towards them; and consequently we ourselves are not only the beings, that reason, but also one of the objects, concerning which we reason.
If therefore the sciences of Mathematics, Natural Philosophy, and Natural Religion, have such a dependence on the knowledge of man, what may be expected in the other sciences, whose connexion with human nature is more close and intimate? The sole end of logic is to explain the principles and operations of our reasoning faculty, and the nature of our ideas: morals and criticism regard our tastes and sentiments: and politics consider men as united in society, and dependent on each other. In these four sciences of Logic, Morals, Criticism, and Politics, is comprehended almost everything, which it can any way import us to be acquainted with, or which can tend either to the improvement or ornament of the human mind.
Here then is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches, to leave the tedious lingering method, which we have hitherto followed, and instead of taking now and then a castle or village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital or center of these sciences, to human nature itself; which being once masters of, we may every where else hope for an easy victory. From this station we may extend our conquests over all those sciences, which more intimately concern human life, and may afterwards proceed at leisure to discover more fully those, which are the objects of pore curiosity. There is no question of importance, whose decision is not comprised in the science of man; and there is none, which can be decided with any certainty, before we become acquainted with that science. In pretending, therefore, to explain the principles of human nature, we in effect propose a compleat system of the sciences, built on a foundation almost entirely new, and the only one upon which they can stand with any security.
And as the science of man is the-only solid foundation for the other sciences, so the only solid foundation we can give to this science itself must be laid on experience and observation. It is no astonishing reflection to consider, that the application of experimental philosophy to moral subjects should come after that to natural at the distance of above a whole century; since we find in fact, that there was about the same interval betwixt the origins of these sciences; and that reckoning from THALES to SOCRATES, the space of time is nearly equal to that betwixt, my Lord Bacon and some late philosophers in England, who have begun to put the science of man on a new footing, and have engaged the attention, and excited the curiosity of the public. So true it is, that however other nations may rival us in poetry, and excel us in some other agreeable arts, the improvements in reason and philosophy can only be owing to a land of toleration and of liberty.
Nor ought we to think, that this latter improvement in the science of man will do less honour to our native country than the former in natural philosophy, but ought rather to esteem it a greater glory, upon account of the greater importance of that science, as well as the necessity it lay under of such a reformation. For to me it seems evident, that the essence of the mind being equally unknown to us with that of external bodies, it must be equally impossible to form any notion of its powers and qualities otherwise than from careful and exact experiments, and the observation of those particular effects, which result from its different circumstances and situations. And though we must endeavour to render all our principles as universal as possible, by tracing up our experiments to the utmost, and explaining all effects from the simplest and fewest causes, it is still certain we cannot go beyond experience; and any hypothesis, that pretends to discover the ultimate original qualities of human nature, ought at first to be rejected as presumptuous and chimerical.
I do not think a philosopher, who would apply himself so earnestly to the explaining the ultimate principles of the soul, would show himself a great master in that very science of human nature, which he pretends to explain, or very knowing in what is naturally satisfactory to the mind of man. For nothing is more certain, than that despair has almost the same effect upon us with enjoyment, and that we are no sooner acquainted with the impossibility of satisfying any desire, than the desire itself vanishes. When we see, that we have arrived at the utmost extent of human reason, we sit down contented, though we be perfectly satisfied in the main of our ignorance, and perceive that we can give no reason for our most general and most refined principles, beside our experience of their reality; which is the reason of the mere vulgar, and what it required no study at first to have discovered for the most particular and most extraordinary phaenomenon. And as this impossibility of making any farther progress is enough to satisfy the reader, so the writer may derive a more delicate satisfaction from the free confession of his ignorance, and from his prudence in avoiding that error, into which so many have fallen, of imposing their conjectures and hypotheses on the world for the most certain principles. When this mutual contentment and satisfaction can be obtained betwixt the master and scholar, I know not what more we can require of our philosophy.
But if this impossibility of explaining ultimate principles should be esteemed a defect in the science of man, I will venture to affirm, that it is a defect common to it with all the sciences, and all the arts, in which we can employ ourselves, whether they be such as are cultivated in the schools of the philosophers, or practised in the shops of the meanest artizans. None of them can go beyond experience, or establish any principles which are not founded on that authority. Moral philosophy has, indeed, this peculiar disadvantage, which is not found in natural, that in collecting its experiments, it cannot make them purposely, with premeditation, and after such a manner as to satisfy itself concerning every particular difficulty which may be. When I am at a loss to know the effects of one body upon another in any situation, I need only put them in that situation, and observe what results from it. But should I endeavour to clear up after the same manner any doubt in moral philosophy, by placing myself in the same case with that which I consider, it is evident this reflection and premeditation would so disturb the operation of my natural principles, as must render it impossible to form any just conclusion from the phenomenon. We must therefore glean up our experiments in this science from a cautious observation of human life, and take them as they appear in the common course of the world, by men's behaviour in company, in affairs, and in their pleasures. Where experiments of this kind are judiciously collected and compared, we may hope to establish on them a science which will not be inferior in certainty, and will be much superior in utility to any other of human comprehension.
BOOK I. OF THE UNDERSTANDING
Part I. Of Ideas, Their Origin, Composition, Connexion, Abstraction, Etc.
Section I. Of The Origin Of Our Ideas
All the perceptions of the human mind resolve themselves into two distinct kinds, which I shall call IMPRESSIONS and IDEAS. The difference betwixt these consists in the degrees of force and liveliness, with which they strike upon the mind, and make their way into our thought or consciousness. Those perceptions, which enter with most force and violence, we may name impressions: and under this name I comprehend all our sensations, passions and emotions, as they make their first appearance in the soul. By ideas I mean the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning; such as, for instance, are all the perceptions excited by the present discourse, excepting only those which arise from the sight and touch, and excepting the immediate pleasure or uneasiness it may occasion. I believe it will not be very necessary to employ many words in explaining this distinction. Every one of himself will readily perceive the difference betwixt feeling and thinking. The common degrees of these are easily distinguished; though it is not impossible but in particular instances they may very nearly approach to each other. Thus in sleep, in a fever, in madness, or in any very violent emotions of soul, our ideas may approach to our impressions, As on the other hand it sometimes happens, that our impressions are so faint and low, that we cannot distinguish them from our ideas. But notwithstanding this near resemblance in a few instances, they are in general so very different, that no-one can make a scruple to rank them under distinct heads, and assign to each a peculiar name to mark the difference1.
There is another division of our perceptions, which it will be convenient to observe, and which extends itself both to our impressions and ideas. This division is into SIMPLE and COMPLEX. Simple perceptions or impressions and ideas are such as admit of no distinction nor separation. The complex are the contrary to these, and may be distinguished into parts. Though a particular colour, taste, and smell, are qualities all united together in this apple, it is easy to perceive they are not the same, but are at least distinguishable from each other.
Having by these divisions given an order and arrangement to our objects, we may now apply ourselves to consider with the more accuracy their qualities and relations. The first circumstance, that strikes my eye, is the great resemblance betwixt our impressions and ideas in every other particular, except their degree of force and vivacity. The one seem to be in a manner the reflexion of the other; so that all the perceptions of the mind are double, and appear both as impressions and ideas. When I shut my eyes and think of my chamber, the ideas I form are exact representations of the impressions I felt; nor is there any circumstance of the one, which is not to be found in the other. In running over my other perceptions, I find still the same resemblance and representation. Ideas and impressions appear always to correspond to each other. This circumstance seems to me remarkable, and engages my attention for a moment.
Upon a more accurate survey I find I have been carried away too far by the first appearance, and that I must make use of the distinction of perceptions into simple and complex, to limit this general decision, that all our ideas and impressions are resembling. I observe, that many of our complex ideas never had impressions, that corresponded to them, and that many of our complex impressions never are exactly copied in ideas. I can imagine to myself such a city as the New Jerusalem, whose pavement is gold and walls are rubies, though I never saw any such. I have seen Paris; but shall I affirm I can form such an idea of that city, as will perfectly represent all its streets and houses in their real and just proportions?
I perceive, therefore, that though there is in general a great, resemblance betwixt our complex impressions and ideas, yet the rule is not universally true, that they are exact copies of each other. We may next consider how the case stands with our simple, perceptions. After the most accurate examination, of which I am capable, I venture to affirm, that the rule here holds without any exception, and that every simple idea has a simple impression, which resembles it, and every simple impression a correspondent idea. That idea of red, which we form in the dark, and that impression which strikes our eyes in sun-shine, differ only in degree, not in nature. That the case is the same with all our simple impressions and ideas, it is impossible to prove by a particular enumeration of them. Every one may satisfy himself in this point by running over as many as he pleases. But if any one should deny this universal resemblance, I know no way of convincing him, but by desiring him to shew a simple impression, that has not a correspondent idea, or a simple idea, that has not a correspondent impression. If he does not answer this challenge, as it is certain he cannot, we may from his silence and our own observation establish our conclusion.
Thus we find, that all simple ideas and impressions resemble each other; and as the complex are formed from them, we may affirm in general, that these two species of perception are exactly correspondent. Having discovered this relation, which requires no farther examination, I am curious to find some other of their qualities. Let us consider how they stand with regard to their existence, and which of the impressions and ideas are causes, and which effects.
The full examination of this question is the subject of the present treatise; and therefore we shall here content ourselves with establishing one general proposition, THAT ALL OUR SIMPLE IDEAS IN THEIR FIRST APPEARANCE ARE DERIVED FROM SIMPLE IMPRESSIONS, WHICH ARE CORRESPONDENT TO THEM, AND WHICH THEY EXACTLY REPRESENT.
In seeking for phenomena to prove this proposition, I find only those of two kinds; but in each kind the phenomena are obvious, numerous, and conclusive. I first make myself certain, by a new, review, of what I have already asserted, that every simple impression is attended with a correspondent idea, and every simple idea with a correspondent impression. From this constant conjunction of resembling perceptions I immediately conclude, that there is a great connexion betwixt our correspondent impressions and ideas, and that the existence of the one has a considerable influence upon that of the other. Such a constant conjunction, in such an infinite number of instances, can never arise from chance; but clearly proves a dependence of the impressions on the ideas, or of the ideas on the impressions. That I may know on which side this dependence lies, I consider the order of their first appearance; and find by constant experience, that the simple impressions always take the precedence of their correspondent ideas, but never appear in the contrary order. To give a child an idea of scarlet or orange, of sweet or bitter, I present the objects, or in other words, convey to him these impressions; but proceed not so absurdly, as to endeavour to produce the impressions by exciting the ideas. Our ideas upon their appearance produce not their correspondent impressions, nor do we perceive any colour, or feel any sensation merely upon thinking of them. On the other hand we find, that any impression either of the mind or body is constantly followed by an idea, which resembles it, and is only different in the degrees of force and liveliness, The constant conjunction of our resembling perceptions, is a convincing proof, that the one are the causes of the other; and this priority of the impressions is an equal proof, that our impressions are the causes of our ideas, not our ideas of our impressions.
To confirm this I consider Another plain and convincing phaenomenon; which is, that, where-ever by any accident the faculties, which give rise to any impressions, are obstructed in their operations, as when one is born blind or deaf; not only the impressions are lost, but also their correspondent ideas; so that there never appear in the mind the least traces of either of them. Nor is this only true, where the organs of sensation are entirely destroyed, but likewise where they have never been put in action to produce a particular impression. We cannot form to ourselves a just idea of the taste of a pine apple, without having actually tasted it.
There is however one contradictory phaenomenon, which may prove, that it is not absolutely impossible for ideas to go before their correspondent impressions. I believe it will readily be allowed that the several distinct ideas of colours, which enter by the eyes, or those of sounds, which are conveyed by the hearing, are really different from each other, though at the same time resembling. Now if this be true of different colours, it must be no less so of the different shades of the same colour, that each of them produces a distinct idea, independent of the rest. For if this should be denied, it is possible, by the continual gradation of shades, to run a colour insensibly into what is most remote from it; and if you will not allow any of the means to be different, you cannot without absurdity deny the extremes to be the same. Suppose therefore a person to have enjoyed his sight for thirty years, and to have become perfectly well acquainted with colours of all kinds, excepting one particular shade of blue, for instance, which it never has been his fortune to meet with. Let all the different shades of that colour, except that single one, be placed before him, descending gradually from the deepest to the lightest; it is plain, that he will perceive a blank, where that shade is wanting, said will be sensible, that there is a greater distance in that place betwixt the contiguous colours, than in any other. Now I ask, whether it is possible for him, from his own imagination, to supply this deficiency, and raise up to himself the idea of that particular shade, though it had never been conveyed to him by his senses? I believe there are few but will be of opinion that he can; and this may serve as a proof, that the simple ideas are not always derived from the correspondent impressions; though the instance is so particular and singular, that it is scarce worth our observing, and does not merit that for it alone we should alter our general maxim.
But besides this exception, it may not be amiss to remark on this head, that the principle of the priority of impressions to ideas must be understood with another limitation, viz., that as our ideas are images of our impressions, so we can form secondary ideas, which are images of the primary; as appears from this very reasoning concerning them. This is not, properly speaking, an exception to the rule so much as an explanation of it. Ideas produce the images of themselves in new ideas; but as the first ideas are supposed to be derived from impressions, it still remains true, that all our simple ideas proceed either mediately or immediately, from their correspondent impressions.
This then is the first principle I establish in the science of human nature; nor ought we to despise it because of the simplicity of its appearance. For it is remarkable, that the present question concerning the precedency of our impressions or ideas, is the same with what has made so much noise in other terms, when it has been disputed whether there be any INNATE IDEAS, or whether all ideas be derived from sensation and reflexion. We may observe, that in order to prove the ideas of extension and colour not to be innate, philosophers do nothing but shew that they are conveyed by our senses. To prove the ideas of passion and desire not to be innate, they observe that we have a preceding experience of these emotions in ourselves. Now if we carefully examine these arguments, we shall find that they prove nothing but that ideas are preceded by other more lively perceptions, from which the are derived, and which they represent. I hope this clear stating of the question will remove all disputes concerning it, and win render this principle of more use in our reasonings, than it seems hitherto to have been.
1. I here make use of these terms, impression and idea, in a sense different from what is usual, and I hope this liberty will be allowed me. Perhaps I rather restore the word, idea, to its original sense, from which Mr LOCKE had perverted it, in making it stand for all our perceptions. By the terms of impression I would not be understood to express the manner, in which our lively perceptions are produced in the soul, but merely the perceptions themselves; for which there is no particular name either in the English or any other language, that I know of.
Section II. Division Of The Subject
Since it appears, that our simple impressions are prior to their correspondent ideas, and that the exceptions are very rare, method seems to require we should examine our impressions, before we consider our ideas. Impressions way be divided into two kinds, those Of SENSATION and those of REFLEXION. The first kind arises in the soul originally, from unknown causes. The second is derived in a great measure from our ideas, and that in the following order. An impression first strikes upon the senses, and makes us perceive heat or cold, thirst or hunger, pleasure or pain of some kind or other. Of this impression there is a copy taken by the mind, which remains after the impression ceases; and this we call an idea. This idea of pleasure or pain, when it returns upon the soul, produces the new impressions of desire and aversion, hope and fear, which may properly be called impressions of reflexion, because derived from it. These again are copied by the memory and imagination, and become ideas; which perhaps in their turn give rise to other impressions and ideas. So that the impressions of reflexion are only antecedent to their correspondent ideas; but posterior to those of sensation, and derived from them. The examination of our sensations belongs more to anatomists and natural philosophers than to moral; and therefore shall not at present be entered upon. And as the impressions of reflexion, viz. passions, desires, and emotions, which principally deserve our attention, arise mostly from ideas, it will be necessary to reverse that method, which at first sight seems most natural; and in order to explain the nature and principles of the human mind, give a particular account of ideas, before we proceed to impressions. For this reason I have here chosen to begin with ideas.
Section III. Of The Ideas Of The Memory And Imagination
We find by experience, that when any impression has been present with the mind, it again makes its appearance there as an idea; and this it may do after two different ways: either when in its new appearance it retains a considerable degree of its first vivacity, and is somewhat intermediate betwixt an impression and an idea: or when it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect idea. The faculty, by which we repeat our impressions in the first manner, is called the MEMORY, and the other the IMAGINATION. It is evident at first sight, that the ideas of the memory are much more lively and strong than those of the imagination, and that the former faculty paints its objects in more distinct colours, than any which are employed by the latter. When we remember any past event, the idea of it flows in upon the mind in a forcible manner; whereas in the imagination the perception is faint and languid, and cannot without difficulty be preserved by the mind steddy and uniform for any considerable time. Here then is a sensible difference betwixt one species of ideas and another. But of this more fully hereafter.
There is another difference betwixt these two kinds of ideas, which is no less evident, namely that though neither the ideas, of the memory nor imagination, neither the lively nor faint ideas can make their appearance in the mind, unless their correspondent impressions have gone before to prepare the way for them, yet the imagination is not restrained to the same order and form with the original impressions; while the memory is in a manner tied down in that respect, without any power of variation.
It is evident, that the memory preserves the original form, in which its objects were presented, and that where-ever we depart from it in recollecting any thing, it proceeds from some defect or imperfection in that faculty. An historian may, perhaps, for the more convenient Carrying on of his narration, relate an event before another, to which it was in fact posterior; but then he takes notice of this disorder, if he be exact; and by that means replaces the idea in its due position. It is the same case in our recollection of those places and persons, with which we were formerly acquainted. The chief exercise of the memory is not to preserve the simple ideas, but their order and position. In short, this principle is supported by such a number of common and vulgar phaenomena, that we may spare ourselves the trouble of insisting on it any farther.
The same evidence follows us in our second principle, OF THE LIBERTY OF THE IMAGINATION TO TRANSPOSE AND CHANGE ITS IDEAS. The fables we meet with in poems and romances put this entirely out of the question. Nature there is totally confounded, and nothing mentioned but winged horses, fiery dragons, and monstrous giants. Nor will this liberty of the fancy appear strange, when we consider, that all our ideas are copyed from our impressions, and that there are not any two impressions which are perfectly inseparable. Not to mention, that this is an evident consequence of the division of ideas into simple and complex. Where-ever the imagination perceives a difference among ideas, it can easily produce a separation.
