682 DAVIDHUME
argument from design, which he had left out of the earlier work, and he omitted
many of his psychological speculations. This book enjoyed some success, though
its antireligious nature may have contributed to Hume’s rejected applications for
two different chairs of philosophy. In 1751, he also recast Book III of the earlier
Treatise, under the title Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals.
Hume was appointed Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh in
- In this post, he wrote a multivolume history of England. He also managed
to infuriate the library curators with his selections, and in 1757 he was forced to
resign when he refused to remove books the curators considered obscene. In the
same year, he published Four Dissertations, including “The Natural History
of Religion,” “Of the Passions” (a truncated version of Book II of the Treatise),
“Of Tragedy,” and “Of the Standard of Taste.” By now, Hume’s works had
become well known on the Continent, and when he returned to France in 1763 as
part of the British ambassador’s staff, he was lionized by French intellectual soci-
ety. Hume was a favorite at French soirées: Sociable and witty, he was called “le
bon David” by his French friends.
When Hume returned to England in 1766, he found that his works had finally
brought him the literary fame at home that he had so long desired. In 1767, he
took another government post, but two years later he resigned and retired to
Edinburgh. There he spent his last years quietly, until his death, probably from
cancer, in 1776. His Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, written in the
1750s, was published posthumously in 1779.
Hume’s philosophy, as developed in the Enquiry, begins with a rejection of the
“abstruse speculations” and “superstitions” of contemporary thought. With
Locke, Hume agrees that there are no such things as innate ideas; all knowledge
comes through sensory experience. Yet as he worked out the implications of these
convictions, he came to conclusions quite different from those of his predecessor.
According to Hume, all the perceptions of the mind may be divided into
“impressions” and “ideas.” Using an empirical distinction, Hume believes impres-
sions to be “more lively” than ideas. These impressions and ideas are then divided
into simple and complex, impressions of sensation and impressions of reflection,
and so on. The source of impressions cannot be known empirically, so Hume does
not address this question. Simple ideas, on the other hand, must come from impres-
sions. In fact, for an idea to have any meaning whatever, it must be derived from an
impression or from a combination of impressions. If I have the idea of a gold moun-
tain, for instance, it is because I have previously had impressions that gave rise to
the ideas of “gold” and “mountain” that I am now associating. Using this empirical
criterion of meaning, it becomes clear that ideas such as “substance,” “God,” or
even “the self” are without a clear meaning. So according to Hume, Locke’s idea of
an eternal world of “substances” and Berkeley’s idea of an all-perceiving God are
without meaning.
Hume then considers the association between ideas and argues that there are
“only three principles of connexion among ideas, namely,Resemblance,Contiguity
in time or place, and Causeor Effect.” These associations of ideas are really nothing
more than habit or “custom” and so do not necessarily reflect the “real world.” Take
causality, for example. One could imagine Pavlov’s dogs hearing the bell, getting
