Fortified by these credentials, he ventured again into philosophy. He shortened the Treatise by
leaving out the best parts and most of the reasons for his conclusions; the result was the Inquiry
into Human Understanding, for a long time much better known than the Treatise. It was this book
that awakened Kant from his "dogmatic slumbers"; he does not appear to have known the
Treatise.
He wrote also Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, which he kept unpublished during his
lifetime. By his direction, they were published posthumously in 1779. His Essay on Miracles,
which became famous, maintains that there can never be adequate historical evidence for such
events.
His History of England, published in 1755 and following years, devoted itself to proving the
superiority of Tories to Whigs and of Scotchmen to Englishmen; he did not consider history
worthy of philosophic detachment. He visited Paris in 1763, and was made much of by the
philosophes. Unfortunately, he formed a friendship with Rousseau, and had a famous quarrel with
him. Hume behaved with admirable forbearance, but Rousseau, who suffered from persecution
mania, insisted upon a violent breach.
Hume has described his own character in a self-obituary, or "funeral oration," as he calls it: "I was
a man of mild dispositions, of command of temper, of an open, social and cheerful humour,
capable of attachment, but little susceptible of enmity, and of great moderation in all my passions.
Even my love of literary fame, my ruling passion, never soured my temper, notwithstanding my
frequent disappointments." All this is borne out by everything that is known of him.
Hume Treatise of Human Nature is divided into three books, dealing respectively with the
understanding, the passions, and morals. What is important and novel in his doctrines is in the
first book, to which I shall confine myself.
He begins with the distinction between "impressions" and "ideas." These are two kinds of
perceptions, of which impressions are those that have more force and violence. "By ideas I mean
the faint images of these in thinking and reasoning." Ideas, at least when simple, are like
impressions, but fainter. "Every simple idea has a simple impression, which resembles it; and
every simple impression a correspondent idea." "All our simple ideas in their first appearance are
derived from simple impressions, which are correspondent to them, and which they