Quiz: An Enquiry concerning Human Understanding

All 30 questions. A perfect score earns the gold medal; 80% earns silver.

1. 1. According to Hume, what does a wise man do?

   Proportions his belief to the evidence Suspends all judgment about matters of fact Believes nothing he has not seen Defers to the learned in doubtful cases
2. 2. What does Hume call “the great guide of human life”?

   Custom Reason Revelation Sympathy
3. 3. From what impression does Hume finally derive the idea of necessary connexion?

   The sight of one billiard ball striking another The idea of God’s volition The feeling of effort when we move our limbs The mind’s customary transition from one object to its usual attendant
4. 4. Which animal does Hume describe leaving the more tiring part of the chase to younger animals?

   A horse used to the field An old greyhound A dog that knows its name A bird hatching its eggs
5. 5. What example does the narrator use to argue that we may reason back from a cause to further effects?

   A painting by Zeuxis The print of one human foot on the sea-shore A ship built by many hands over a long course of years A watch found lying on a heath by a traveller
6. 6. According to Hume, what distinguishes belief from fiction?

   A more vivid, steady and forcible conception An act of the will choosing to assent to it A demonstration of the fact believed An extra idea added to the conception believed
7. 7. Which of these is not one of Hume’s three principles of association?

   Cause or effect Contiguity in time or place Resemblance Contrast
8. 8. How does Hume explain our ability to think of a golden mountain?

   By joining ideas of gold and of a mountain By an innate idea of mountains, present from birth By reasoning a priori about possible objects By a faculty of invention that creates new simple ideas
9. 9. What image does Hume use for the service abstract philosophy does to the polite arts?

   A pilot who steers a merchant ship An anatomist whose knowledge helps a painter A gardener who prunes a young tree into shape A miner who digs the ore for a goldsmith’s work
10. 10. Whose reputation does Hume predict will outlast Locke’s?

    Malebranche’s Aristotle’s Addison’s Newton’s
11. 11. Whose authority, according to a Roman proverb, could not make an incredible story believable?

    Cato’s Caesar’s Seneca’s Cicero’s
12. 12. In Section XI, whom does Hume’s friend impersonate in his speech?

    Epicurus, addressing the Athenians Cicero, speaking before the Roman Senate Lucian addressing the Paphlagonians Socrates, defending himself at his trial
13. 13. What could Adam, with perfect reason but no experience, not have inferred?

    That three times five is half of thirty That water would suffocate him That fire looks bright That he existed
14. 14. How does Hume explain stronger belief in the outcome favoured by more sides of a die?

    Reason demonstrates the outcome in advance Custom has nothing to do with it The mind meets that outcome more often in running over the possibilities Each throw is caused by divine providence
15. 15. What example shows that inference from experience does not depend on abstruse reasoning?

    A geometer proving Euclid’s theorems A judge weighing testimony A merchant calculating profits A child who avoids candles after being burned
16. 16. How does Hume define the liberty that everyone allows?

    A power of acting or not acting, according to the will Freedom from all causes, internal and external Indifference of the will between equal motives The right of subjects to resist an unjust magistrate by force
17. 17. What does Hume claim about the long dispute over liberty and necessity?

    It lies wholly beyond human capacity, like the origin of worlds The defenders of liberty have won it decisively It has turned merely on words; all have always held both doctrines It can be settled only by revelation
18. 18. Why, according to Hume, can no argument from experience prove that the future will resemble the past?

    Because experience is often mistaken and the senses deceive us Because the future is hidden even from the wisest observers Because all such arguments already assume that resemblance Because only mathematics can treat of future time with certainty
19. 19. What should be done, according to Hume, with a volume containing neither abstract reasoning about quantity or number nor experimental reasoning about matter of fact?

    Translate it into plain language Read it as poetry Keep it for the use of divines Commit it to the flames
20. 20. What example does Hume use against the Stoic consolation that every ill is good for the whole?

    A city destroyed by earthquake A merchant whose richly laden ship has sunk A man racked by the pains of the gout A soldier wounded in battle
21. 21. Whose argument against the real presence does Hume take as the model for his argument about miracles?

    Cardinal de Retz’s Bishop Berkeley’s Lord Bacon’s Dr. Tillotson’s
22. 22. What does Hume’s prisoner show?

    Liberty consists only in the absence of chains and walls Natural and moral evidence form one chain of inference Gaolers are less predictable than the walls they guard Punishment never deters crime
23. 23. What does Hume call the minimal task of mapping the distinct powers of the mind?

    Mental geography Natural history of the soul The microscope of the mind Moral anatomy
24. 24. Which emperor, according to Tacitus, cured a blind man in Alexandria?

    Augustus Titus Vespasian Marcus Aurelius
25. 25. What does Hume admit as a possible exception to the rule that ideas copy impressions?

    The idea of God Someone imagining a shade of blue they have never seen A blind man forming the idea of colour Ideas formed in dreams
26. 26. To learn the sentiments and course of life of the Greeks and Romans, what does Hume advise?

    Compare them with travellers’ accounts of America Read only their poets Examine their laws of property Study the temper and actions of the French and English
27. 27. Which question does Hume use to show we are not conscious of the will’s power over the body?

    Why pain follows a wound Why we cannot recall a forgotten name, however strongly we will to remember it Why the will moves the tongue and fingers but not the heart or liver Why animals have no will
28. 28. Where did the false prophet Alexander begin his impostures, according to Lucian?

    Athens Rome Paphlagonia Alexandria
29. 29. Into what two kinds does Hume divide all objects of human reason?

    Relations of ideas and matters of fact Proofs from experience and probabilities from chance Impressions and the fainter ideas copied from them Ideas of sensation and ideas of reflection
30. 30. What does Hume say he would conclude if all historians reported that Queen Elizabeth rose from the dead?

    That a genuine miracle had occurred That the historians had copied a single false source That the question could not be decided That her death had been pretended