A Treatise of Human Nature

Contents

1. Advertisement 1 min 3

   Hume’s note to the first two volumes (1739). His design is set out in the Introduction; these volumes cover only the understanding and the passions, which form a complete chain of reasoning. He publishes them to test the public’s taste, promising morals, politics and criticism if they succeed.

2. Introduction 13 min 6

   Philosophy is in disrepute: every question is disputed, and eloquence wins over reason. Hume proposes to march on the “capital” of the sciences, human nature itself, since even mathematics, natural philosophy and religion depend on human faculties, and logic, morals, criticism and politics depend on them still more. The science of man must rest on experience and observation, as Bacon and Newton taught for natural philosophy, and as recent English writers have begun to do for morals. It cannot reach ultimate principles, and it cannot make deliberate experiments, so it must gather its evidence from careful observation of ordinary life.

3. I.i Of Ideas, their Origin, Composition, Connexion, Abstraction, &c. 56 min 12

   Hume divides perceptions into lively impressions and fainter ideas, and argues that every simple idea is copied from a prior impression, conceding only the missing shade of blue. He distinguishes impressions of sensation from those of reflexion (the passions), and memory from imagination. Ideas are joined by three principles of association: resemblance, contiguity and cause and effect, a mental “attraction” whose causes are unknown. He lists seven philosophical relations, reduces substance to a collection of qualities, and defends Berkeley’s view that abstract ideas are particular ideas made general by custom attached to a word.

4. I.ii Of the Ideas of Space and Time 1 h 37 min 16

   Because the mind’s capacity is finite, our ideas of space and time resolve into indivisible minima, and Hume argues that real extension cannot be infinitely divisible either. The idea of space is coloured or tangible points in a certain order; time is the succession of perceptions. Geometry’s standards of equality and straightness come from appearances corrected by measurement, so its proofs of infinite divisibility are not exact. There is no idea of a vacuum or of time without change, only fictions arising from related ideas. Finally, the idea of existence adds nothing to the idea of an object, and we cannot conceive anything specifically different from our perceptions.

5. I.iii.1–10 Of Knowledge and Probability (Sects. I–X) 2 h 4 min 19

   Hume separates relations that yield certain knowledge from those that rest on experience, chief among them causation. Looking for the impression behind necessary connexion, he finds only contiguity, priority and constant conjunction. He argues that the maxim “whatever begins to exist must have a cause” is not certain by reason, and that inference from past to future cannot rest on reason, since the uniformity of nature can be neither demonstrated nor proved by probability. Inference rests on custom, and belief is a lively idea associated with a present impression. He tests the theory against resemblance, contiguity, education, religion, credulity, poetry and madness.

6. I.iii.11–16 Of Knowledge and Probability (Sects. XI–XVI) 2 h 8 min 33

   Hume completes his theory of probable reasoning and reaches his account of causation. Probability of chances and of causes is explained by the division and recombination of the mind’s customary impulse, illustrated with a die and with ships at sea. Section XIII catalogues “unphilosophical” probabilities, prejudice and general rules among them. Section XIV argues that the idea of necessary connexion is copied from the mind’s felt determination to pass from cause to effect, and gives two definitions of cause. Section XV offers eight rules for judging causes; Section XVI tests the theory on animals and calls reason itself an instinct.

7. I.iv.1–2 Of the Sceptical and Other Systems of Philosophy (Sects. I–II) 1 h 29 min 19

   Book I turns sceptical. Section I argues that all knowledge degenerates into probability, and that repeated corrections for our fallibility should extinguish belief; that belief survives shows it is a matter of feeling, not reasoning. Section II asks why we believe in bodies that continue to exist unperceived and independently of the mind. Hume rejects the senses and reason as sources and traces the belief to the imagination, working on the constancy and coherence of impressions. The philosophers’ “double existence” of perceptions and objects is a compromise between imagination and reflection; the only cure for such doubt is carelessness.

8. I.iv.3–7 Of the Sceptical and Other Systems of Philosophy (Sects. III–VII) 2 h 9 min 34

   Hume completes his survey of philosophical systems. The ancient doctrines of substance, form and occult quality are traced to fictions of the imagination. The modern distinction of primary and secondary qualities, he argues, leaves no coherent idea of body at all. Debates over whether the soul is material are declared unintelligible, though experience shows that motion causes thought. The self is “a bundle or collection of different perceptions”, its identity a fiction like that of ships, rivers and oaks. The Conclusion records sceptical despair, its cure by dinner and backgammon, and the curiosity about morals and government that leads Hume on to the passions.

9. II.i Of Pride and Humility 2 h 3 min 24

   Book II opens with the passions, dividing impressions of reflection into calm and violent, direct and indirect. Pride and humility take the self as their object but need a separate cause: something pleasant or painful that is related to us. Hume’s “double relation” of impressions and ideas explains how virtue, beauty, wit, country, family, property, riches and power excite them, subject to limits of closeness, rarity, visibility, constancy and general rules. Sympathy, the communication of others’ passions by turning an idea into an impression, explains our love of fame. Animals show pride too, confirming the theory.

10. II.ii Of Love and Hatred 2 h 43 min 27

    Hume extends the theory of pride and humility to love and hatred, whose object is another person. Eight “experiments” test the double relation of impressions and ideas and explain why passions pass more easily from others to ourselves, and from greater to lesser persons. He then accounts for the love of relations and acquaintance, our esteem for the rich and powerful (traced to sympathy), benevolence and anger, pity, and malice and envy (traced to comparison). The Part closes with mixtures such as respect and contempt, the love between the sexes, and the love and hatred of animals.

11. II.iii Of the Will and Direct Passions 2 h 7 min 23

    Part III turns to the will and the direct passions. Hume argues that human actions are as regularly conjoined with motives as physical events are with their causes, so liberty of indifference is mere chance and necessity underpins responsibility. Reason alone cannot move the will or oppose passion: it is “the slave of the passions”, and calm passions are mistaken for reason. He then examines what makes passions violent or calm (conversion, custom, imagination, distance in space and time), explains hope and fear as mixtures of joy and grief, and ends with curiosity, the love of truth.

12. Advertisement to Book III 1 min 1

    A one-paragraph notice to Book III, published separately in 1740. Hume tells readers that this third volume is largely independent of the first two and should be intelligible to ordinary readers without their abstract reasonings. He asks only that they remember his terms: impressions are stronger perceptions (sensations, affections, sentiments), ideas their fainter copies.

13. III.i Of Virtue and Vice in General 46 min 15

    Hume asks whether we tell virtue from vice by ideas (reason) or by impressions (feeling). Reason alone cannot move us to act, but moral judgments do, so morality is not derived from reason. Neither demonstrable relations nor matters of fact contain vice: the same relations hold between trees and animals, and in a murder we find only motives until we consult our own feeling of disapproval. He notes how moralists slip from “is” to “ought”. Moral distinctions come from a particular pleasure or uneasiness felt on viewing a character in general. “Natural” has three senses, none of which marks the boundary of virtue.

14. III.ii.1–6 Of Justice and Injustice (Sects. I–VI) 1 h 57 min 28

    Justice is an artificial virtue: no natural motive leads us to respect property, so the motive must come from convention. Human neediness, limited generosity and the scarcity and transferability of goods make society both necessary and unstable; a convention to respect possessions, like rowers’ coordination, establishes justice and property together. Self-interest founds justice; sympathy with public interest makes us approve it. Hume then explains the rules that assign property (present possession, occupation, prescription, accession, succession), transfer by consent, and promises, which arise from interested exchange. He ends by arguing from the vulgar definition of justice, its lack of degrees and its inflexibility that justice is artificial.

15. III.ii.7–12 Of Justice and Injustice (Sects. VII–XII) 1 h 31 min 17

    Men prefer near goods to remote ones and so break the rules of justice; government cures this by giving a few rulers an immediate interest in enforcing them. Allegiance may begin in promise, but soon has its own basis in interest, so the Whig original contract is mistaken; yet resistance to grievous tyranny remains lawful. Legitimate authority rests on long possession, present possession, conquest, succession and positive law, applied to the Revolution of 1688. The laws of nations bind princes with less force than private justice binds individuals, and female chastity and modesty are artificial virtues grounded in men’s need for certainty of paternity.

16. III.iii Of the Other Virtues and Vices 1 h 49 min 23

    Hume completes his moral system with the natural virtues, those approved without any convention. Moral approval is the pleasure of surveying a character, and it arises from sympathy with the good a quality does or the pleasure it gives: useful or agreeable to others or to its possessor. Because sympathy varies with distance, we correct it by adopting a general point of view. He applies the scheme to greatness of mind and pride, to goodness and benevolence, to natural abilities (which he will not separate from virtues), and to advantages of body and fortune, and ends by calling himself an anatomist of the mind rather than a painter of virtue.

17. Appendix 39 min 10

    Published with Book III in 1740, the Appendix revisits Book I. Hume argues at length that belief is not an added idea but a distinctive feeling or manner of conceiving an idea, and supplies passages to be inserted in Volume I on memory, belief, poetry, and our supposed feeling of power in the will. He then confesses that his account of personal identity has led him into a labyrinth he cannot escape, corrects two minor errors, lists two misprints, and adds notes on resemblance, equality, and the vacuum, ending with a plea for modest scepticism.