A Treatise of Human Nature
Advertisement to Book III
Section summary
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.
I think it proper to inform the public, that tho’ this be a third volume of the Treatise of Human Nature, yet ’tis in some measure independent of the other two, and requires not that the reader shou’d enter into all the abstract reasonings contain’d in them. I am hopeful it may be understood by ordinary readers, with as little attention as is usually given to any books of reasoning. It must only be observ’d, that I continue to make use of the terms, impressions and ideas, in the same sense as formerly; and that by impressions I mean our stronger perceptions, such as our sensations, affections and sentiments; and by ideas the fainter perceptions, or the copies of these in the memory and imagination.