In this edition we have sought to avoid the inconveniences which are apt to attend commentaries on philosophical writers, by the plan of putting together, in the form of continuous introductions, such explanation and criticism as we had to offer, and confining the footnotes almost entirely to references, which have been carefully distinguished from Hume’s own notes. For the introductions to the first and second volumes Mr. Green alone is responsible. The introduction to the third is the work of Mr. Grose, who also has undertaken the revision of Hume’s text.

Throughout the introductions to Volumes I. and II., except where the contrary is stated, ‘Hume’ must be understood to mean Hume as represented by the ‘Treatise on Human Nature.’ In taking this as intrinsically the best representation of his philosophy, we may be thought to have overlooked the well-known advertisement which (in an edition posthumously published) he prefixed to the volume containing his ‘Inquiries concerning the Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals.’ In it, after stating that the volume, is mainly a reproduction of what he had previously published in the ‘Treatise,’ he expresses a hope that ‘some negligences in his former reasoning, and more in the expression,’ have been corrected, and desires ‘that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.’ Was not Hume himself then, it may be asked, the best judge of what was an adequate expression of his thoughts, and is there not an unbecoming assurance in disregarding such a voice from his tomb?

Our answer is that if we had been treating of Hume as a great literary character, or exhibiting the history of his individual mind, due account must have been taken of it. Such, however, has not been the object which, in the Introductions to Volumes I. and II., we have presented to ourselves, (See Introd. to Vol. I. § 4.) Our concern has been with him as the exponent of a philosophical system, and therefore specially with that statement of his system which alone purports to be complete, and which was written when philosophy was still his chief interest, without alloy from the disappointment of literary ambition. Anyone who will be at the pains to read the ‘Inquiries’ alongside of the original ‘Treatise’ will find that their only essential difference from it is in the way of omission. They consist in the main of excerpts from the ‘Treatise,’ re-written in a lighter style, and with the more difficult parts of it left out. It is not that the difficulties which logically arise out of Hume’s system are met, but that the passages which most obviously suggest them have disappeared without anything to take their place. Thus in the ‘Inquiry concerning the Human Understanding’ there is nothing whatever corresponding to Parts II. and IV. of the first Book of the ‘Treatise.’ The effect of this omission on a hasty reader is, no doubt, a feeling of great relief. Common-sense is no longer actively repelled by a doctrine which seems to undermine the real world, and can more easily put a construction on the account of the law of causation, which remains, compatible with the ‘objective validity’ of the law—such a construction as in fact forms the basis of Mr. Mill’s Logic. How inconsistent this construction is with the principles from which Hume started, and which he never gave up; how impossible it would be to anyone who had assimilated his system as a whole; how close is the organic connection between all the parts of this as he originally conceived it—we must trust to the following introductions to show. (See, in particular, Introd. to Vol. I. §§ 301 and 321.)

The only discussion in the ‘Inquiry concerning Human Understanding,’ to which nothing in his earlier publication corresponds, is that on Miracles. On the relation in which this stands to his general theory some remarks will be found in the Introduction to Vol. I. (§ 324, note). The chief variations, other than in the way of omission, between the later redaction of his ethical doctrine and the earlier, are noticed in the Introduction to Vol. II. (§§ 31, 43, and 46, and notes).

SUMMARY OF THE CONTENTS

of the

GENERAL INTRODUCTION TO VOL. I

1. How the history of philosophy should be studied.

2. Hume the last great English philosopher.

3. Kant his true successor.

4. Distinction between literary history and the history of philosophical systems.

5. Object of the present enquiry.

6. Locke’s problem and method.

7. His notion of the ‘thinking thing’.

8. This he will passively observe.

9. Is such observation possible?

10. Why it seems so.

11. Locke’s account of origin of ideas.

12. Its ambiguities (a) In regard to sensation.

13. (b) In regard to ideas of reflection.

14. What is the ‘tablet’ impressed?

15. Does the mind make impressions on itself?

16. Source of these difficulties. The ‘simple’ idea, as Locke describes it, is a complex idea of substance and relation.

17. How this contradiction is disguised.

18. Locke’s way of interchanging ‘idea’ and ‘quality’ and its effects.

19. Primary and secondary qualities of bodies.

20. ‘Simple idea’ represented as involving a theory of its own cause.

21. Phrases in which this is implied.

22. Feeling and felt thing confused.

23. The simple idea as ‘ectype’ other than mere sensation.

24. It involves a judgment in which mind and thing are distinguished.

25. And is equivalent to what he afterwards calls ‘knowledge of identity’. Only as such can it be named.

26. The same implied in calling it an idea of an object.

27. made for, not by, us, and therefore according to Locke really existent.

28. What did he mean by this?

30. Existence as the mere presence of a feeling.

31. Existence as reality.

32. By confusion of these two meanings, reality and its conditions are represented as given in simple feeling.

33. Yet reality involves complex ideas which are made by the mind.

34. Such are substance and relation which must be found in every object of knowledge.

35. Abstract idea of substance and complex ideas of particular sorts of substance.

36. The abstract idea according to Locke at once precedes and follows the complex.

37. Reference of ideas to nature or God, the same as reference to substance.

38. But it is explicitly to substance that Locke makes them refer themselves.

39. In the process by which we are supposed to arrive at complex ideas of substances the beginning is the same as the end.

40. Doctrine of abstraction inconsistent with doctrine of complex ideas.

41. The confusion covered by use of ‘particulars’.

42. Locke’s account of abstract general ideas.

43. ‘Things not general.’

44. Generality an invention of the mind.

45. The result is, that the feeling of each moment is alone real.

46. How Locke avoids this result.

47. The ‘particular’ was to him the individual qualified by general relations.

48. This is the real thing from which abstraction is supposed to start.

49. Yet, according to the doctrine of relation, a creation of thought.

50. Summary of the above contradictions.

51. They cannot be overcome without violence to Locke’s fundamental principles.

52. As real existence, the simple idea carries with it ‘invented’ relation of cause.

53. Correlativity of cause and substance.

54. How do we know that ideas correspond to reality of things? Locke’s answer.

55. It assumes that simple ideas are consciously referred to things that cause them.

56. Lively ideas real, because they must be effects of things.

57. Present sensation gives knowledge of existence.

58. Reasons why its testimony must be trusted.

59. How does this account fit Locke’s definition of knowledge?

60. Locke’s account of the testimony of sense renders his question as to its veracity superfluous.

61. Confirmations of the testimony turn upon the distinction between ‘impression’ and ‘idea’.

62. They depend on language which pre-supposes the ascription of sensation to an outward cause.

63. This ascription means the clothing of sensation with invented relations.

64. What is meant by restricting the testimony of sense to present existence?

65. Such restriction, if maintained, would render the testimony unmeaning.

66. But it is not maintained: the testimony is to operation of permanent identical things.

67. Locke’s treatment of relations of cause and identity.

68. That from which he derives idea of cause pre-supposes it.

69. Rationale of this ‘petitio principii’.

70. Relation of cause has to be put into sensitive experience in order to be got from it.

71. Origin of the idea of identity according to Locke.

72. Relation of identity not to be distinguished from idea of it.

73. This ‘invented’ relation forms the ‘very being of things’.

74. Locke fails to distinguish between identity and mere unity.

75. Feelings are the real, and do not admit of identity. How then can identity be real?

76. Yet it is from reality that the idea of it is derived.

77. Transition to Locke’s doctrine of essence.

78. This repeats the inconsistency found in his doctrine of substance.

79. Plan to be followed.

80. What Locke understood by essence.

81. Only to nominal essences that general propositions relate, i.e. only to abstract ideas having no real existence.

82. An abstract idea may be a simple one.

83. How then is science of nature possible?

84. No ‘uniformities of phenomena’ can be known.

85. Locke not aware of the full effect of his own doctrine …

86. … which is to make the real an abstract residuum of consciousness.

87. Ground of distinction between actual sensation and ideas in the mind is itself a thing of the mind.

88. Two meanings of real essence.

89. According to one, it is a collection of ideas as qualities of a thing:

90. … about real essence in this sense there may be general knowledge.

91. But such real essence a creature of thought.

92. Hence another view of real essence as unknown qualities of unknown body.

93. How Locke mixes up these two meanings in ambiguity about body.

94. Body as ‘parcel of matter’ without essence.

95. In this sense body is the mere individuum.

96. Body as qualified by circumstances of time and place.

97. Such body Locke held to be subject of ‘primary qualities’: but are these compatible with particularity in time?

98. How Locke avoids this question.

99. Body and its qualities supposed to be outside consciousness.

100. How can primary qualities be outside consciousness, and yet knowable?

101. Locke answers that they copy themselves in ideas—Berkeley’s rejoinder. Locke gets out of the difficulty by his doctrine of solidity.

102. In which he equivocates between body as unknown opposite of mind and body as a ‘nominal essence’.

103. Rationale of these contradictions.

104. What knowledge can feeling, even as referred to a ‘solid’ body, convey?

105. Only the knowledge that something is, not what it is.

106. How it is that the real essence of things, according to Locke, perishes with them, yet is immutable.

107. Only about qualities of matter, as distinct from matter itself, that Locke feels any difficulty.

108. These, as knowable, must be our ideas, and therefore not a ‘real essence’.

109. Are the ‘primary qualities’ then, a ‘nominal essence’?

110. According to Locke’s account they are relations, and thus inventions of the mind.

111. Body is the complex in which they are found. Do we derive the idea of body from primary qualities, or the primary qualities from idea of body?

112. Mathematical ideas, though ideas of ‘primary qualities of body,’ have ‘barely an ideal existence’.

113. Summary view of Locke’s difficulties in regard to the real.

114. Why they do not trouble him more.

115. They re-appear in his doctrine of propositions.

116. The knowledge expressed by a proposition, though certain, may not be real …

117. … when the knowledge concerns substances. In this case general truth must be merely verbal. Mathematical truths, since they concern not substances, may be both general and real.

118. Significance of this doctrine.

119. Fatal to the notion that mathematical truths, though general, are got from experience:

120. … and to received views of natural science: but Locke not so clear about this.

121. Ambiguity as to real essence causes like ambiguity as to science of nature. Particular experiment cannot afford general knowledge.

122. What knowledge it can afford, according to Locke.

123. Not the knowledge which is now supposed to be got by induction. Yet more than Locke was entitled to suppose it could give.

124. With Locke mathematical truths, though ideal, true also of nature.

125. Two lines of thought in Locke, between which a follower would have to choose.

126. Transition to doctrine of God and the soul.

127. Thinking substance—source of the same ideas as outer substance.

128. Of which substance is perception the effect?

129. That which is the source of substantiation cannot be itself a substance.

130. To get rid of the inner source of ideas in favour of the outer would be false to Locke.

131. The mind, which Locke opposes to matter, perpetually shifting.

132. Two ways out of such difficulties. ‘Matter’ and ‘mind’ have the same source in self-consciousness.

133. Difficulties in the way of ascribing reality to substance as matter, re-appear in regard to substance as mind.

134. We think not always, yet thought constitutes the self.

135. Locke neither disguises these contradictions, nor attempts to overcome them.

136. Is the idea of God possible to a consciousness given in time?

137. Locke’s account of this idea.

138. ‘Infinity,’ according to Locke’s account of it, only applicable to God, if God has parts.

139. Can it be applied to him ‘figuratively’ in virtue of the indefinite number of His acts?

140. An act, finite in its nature, remains so, however often repeated.

141. God only infinite in a sense in which time is not infinite, and which Locke could not recognize

142. —the same sense in which the self is infinite.

143. How do I know my own real existence?—Locke’s answer.

144. It cannot be known consistently with Locke’s doctrine of real existence.

145. But he ignores this in treating of the self.

146. Sense in which the self is truly real.

147. Locke’s proof of the real existence of God. There must have been something from eternity to cause what now is.

148. How ‘eternity’ must be understood if this argument is to be valid:

149. … and how ‘cause’.

150. The world which is to prove an eternal God must be itself eternal.

151. But will the God, whose existence is so proven, be a thinking being?

152. Yes, according to the true notion of the relation between thought and matter.

153. Locke’s antinomies—Hume takes one side of them as true.

154. Hume’s scepticism fatal to his own premises. This derived from Berkeley.

155. Berkeley’s religious interest in making Locke consistent.

156. What is meant by relation of mind and matter?

157. Confusions involved in Locke’s materialism.

158. Two ways of dealing with it. Berkeley chooses the most obvious.

159. His account of the relation between visible and tangible extension. We do not see bodies without the mind …

160. … nor yet feel them. The ‘esse’ of body is the ‘percipi’.

170. What then becomes of distinction between reality and fancy?

171. The real = ideas that God causes.

172. Is it then a succession of feelings?

173. Berkeley goes wrong from confusion between thought and feeling.

174. Which, if idea = feeling, does away with space and body.

175. He does not even retain them as ‘abstract ideas’.

176. On the same principle all permanent relations should disappear.

177. By making colour = relations of coloured points, Berkeley represents relation as seen.

178. Still he admits that space is constituted by a succession of feelings.

179. If so, it is not space at all; but Berkeley thinks it is only not ‘pure’ space. Space and pure space stand or fall together.

180. Berkeley disposes of space for fear of limiting God.

181. How he deals with possibility of general knowledge.

182. His theory of universals …

183. … of value, as implying that universality of ideas lies in relation.

184. But he fancies that each idea has a positive nature apart from relation.

185. Traces of progress in his idealism.

186. His way of dealing with physical truths.

187. If they imply permanent relations, his theory properly excludes them. He supposes a divine decree that one feeling shall follow another.

188. Locke had explained reality by relation of ideas to outward body. Liveliness in the idea evidence of this relation.

189. Berkeley retains this notion, only substituting ‘God’ for ‘body’.

190. Not regarding the world as a system of intelligible relations, he could not regard God as the subject of it.

191. His view of the soul as ‘naturally immortal’.

192. Endless succession of feelings is not immortality in true sense. Berkeley’s doctrine of matter fatal to a true spiritualism:

193. … as well as to a true Theism. His inference to God from necessity of a power to produce ideas;

194. … a necessity which Hume does not see. A different turn should have been given to his idealism, if it was to serve his purpose.

195. Hume’s mission. His account of impressions and ideas. Ideas are fainter impressions.

196. ‘Ideas’ that cannot be so represented must be explained as mere words.

197. Hume, taken strictly, leaves no distinction between impressions of reflection and of sensation.

198. Locke’s theory of sensation disappears. Physiology won’t answer the question that Locke asked.

199. Those who think it will don’t understand the question.

200. Hume’s psychology will not answer it either.

201. It only seems to do so by assuming the ‘fiction’ it has to account for; by assuming that impression represents a real world.

202. So the ‘Positivist’ juggles with ‘phenomena’.

203. Essential difference, however, between Hume and the ‘Positivist’.

204. He adopts Berkeley’s doctrine of ideas, but without Berkeley’s saving suppositions,

205. … in regard to ‘spirit’,

206. … in regard to relations. His account of these.

207. It corresponds to Locke’s account of the sorts of agreement between ideas.

208. Could Hume consistently admit idea of relation at all?

210. Only in regard to identity and causation that he sees any difficulty. These he treats as fictions resulting from ‘natural relations’ of ideas: i.e. from resemblance and contiguity.

212. Is resemblance then an impression?

213. Distinction between resembling feelings and idea of resemblance.

214. Substances = collections of ideas.

215. How can ideas ‘in flux’ be collected?

216. Are there general ideas? Berkeley said, ‘yes and no’.

217. Hume ‘no’ simply. How he accounts for the appearance of there being such.

219. His account implies that ‘ideas’ are conceptions, not feelings.

220. He virtually yields the point in regard to the predicate of propositions.

221. As to the subject, he equivocates between singleness of feeling and individuality of conception.

222. Result is a theory which admits predication, but only as singular.

223. All propositions restricted in same way as Locke’s propositions about real existence.

224. The question, how the singular proposition is possible, the vital one.

225. Not relations of resemblance only, but those of quantity also, treated by Hume as feelings.

226. He draws the line between certainty and probability at the same point as Locke; but is more definite as to probability,

227. … and does not admit opposition of mathematical to physical certainty—here following Berkeley.

228. His criticisms of the doctrine of primary qualities.

229. It will not do to oppose bodies to our feeling when only feeling can give idea of body.

230. Locke’s shuffle of ‘body,’ ‘solidity,’ and ‘touch,’ fairly exposed.

231. True rationale of Locke’s doctrine.

232. With Hume ‘body’ logically disappears. What then?

233. Can space survive body? Hume derives idea of it from sight and feeling. Significance with him of such derivation.

234. It means, in effect, that colour and space are the same, and that feeling may be extended.

235. The parts of space are parts of a perception.

236. Yet the parts of space are co-existent not successive.

237. Hume cannot make space a ‘perception’ without being false to his own account of perception;

238. … as appears if we put ‘feeling’ for ‘perception’ in the passages in question.

239. To make sense of them, we must take perception to mean perceived thing,

240. … which it can only mean as the result of certain ‘fictions’.

241. If felt thing is no more than feeling, how can it have qualities?

242. The thing will have ceased before the quality begins to be.

243. Hume equivocates by putting ‘coloured points’ for colour.

245. Can a ‘disposition of coloured points’ be an impression?

246. The points must be themselves impressions, and therefore not co-existent.

247. A ‘compound impression’ excluded by Hume’s doctrine of time.

248. The fact that colours mix, not to the purpose.

249. How Hume avoids appearance of identifying space with colour, and accounts for the abstraction of space.

250. In so doing, he implies that space is a relation, and a relation which is not a possible impression.

251. No logical alternative between identifying space with colour, and admitting an idea not copied from an impression.

252. In his account of the idea as abstract, Hume really introduces distinction between feeling and conception;

253. … yet avoids appearance of doing so, by treating ‘consideration’ of the relations of a felt thing as if it were itself the feeling.

254. Summary of contradictions in his account of extension.

255. He gives no account of quantity as such.

256. His account of the relation between Time and Number.

257. What does it come to?

258. Unites alone really exist: number a ‘fictitious denomination’. Yet ‘unites’ and ‘number’ are correlative; and the supposed fiction unaccountable.

259. Idea of time even more unaccountable on Hume’s principles.

260. His ostensible explanation of it.

261. It turns upon equivocation between feeling and conception of relations between felt things.

262. He fails to assign any impression or compound of impressions from which idea of time is copied.

263. How can he adjust the exact sciences to his theory of space and time?

264. In order to seem to do so, he must get rid of ‘Infinite Divisibility’.

265. Quantity made up of impressions, and there must be a least possible impression.

266. Yet it is admitted that there is an idea of number not made up of impressions. A finite division into impressions no more possible than an infinite one.

267. In Hume’s instances it is not really a feeling, but a conceived thing, that appears as finitely divisible.

268. Upon true notion of quantity infinite divisibility follows of course.

269. What are the ultimate elements of extension? If not extended, what are they?

270. Colours or coloured points? What is the difference?

271. True way of dealing with the question.

272. ‘If the point were divisible, it would be no termination of a line.’ Answer to this.

273. What becomes of the exactness of mathematics according to Hume?

274. The universal propositions of geometry either untrue or unmeaning.

275. Distinction between Hume’s doctrine and that of the hypothetical nature of mathematics.

276. The admission that no relations of quantity are data of sense removes difficulty as to general propositions about them.

277. Hume does virtually admit this in regard to numbers.

278. With Hume idea of vacuum impossible, but logically not more so than that of space.

279. How it is that we talk as if we had idea of vacuum according to Hume.

280. His explanation implies that we have an idea virtually the same.

281. By a like device that he is able to explain the appearance of our having such ideas as Causation and Identity.

283. Knowledge of relation in way of Identity and Causation excluded by Locke’s definition of knowledge.

284. Inference a transition from an object perceived or remembered to one that is not so.

285. Relation of cause and effect the same as this transition.

286. Yet seems other than this. How this appearance is to be explained.

287. Inference, resting on supposition of necessary connection, to be explained before that connection.

288. Account of the inference given by Locke and Clarke rejected.

289. Three points to be explained in the inference according to Hume.

290. a. The original impression from which the transition is made b. The transition to inferred idea

291. c. The qualities of this idea.

292. It results that necessary connection is an impression of reflection, i.e., a propensity to the transition described.

293. The transition not to anything beyond sense.

294. Nor determined by any objective relation.

295. Definitions of cause: a. As a ‘philosophical’ relation.

296. Is Hume entitled to retain ‘philosophical’ relations as distinct from ‘natural’?

297. Examination of Hume’s language about them.

298. Philosophical relation consists in a comparison, but no comparison between cause and effect.

299. The comparison is between present and past experience of succession of objects.

300. Observation of succession already goes beyond sense.

301. As also does the ‘observation concerning identity,’ which the comparison involves.

302. Identity of objects an unavoidable crux for Hume. His account of it.

303. Properly with him it is a fiction, in the sense that we have no such idea. Yet he implies that we have such idea, in saying that we mistake something else for it.

304. Succession of like feelings mistaken for an identical object: but the feelings, as described, are already such objects.

305. Fiction of identity thus implied as source of the propensity which is to account for it.

306. With Hume continued existence of perceptions a fiction different from their identity. Can perceptions exist when not perceived?

307. Existence of objects, distinct from perceptions, a further fiction still.

308. Are these several ‘fictions’ really different from each other?

309. Are they not all involved in the simplest perception?

310. Yet they are not possible ideas, because copied from no impressions.

311. Comparison of present experience with past, which yields relation of cause and effect, pre-supposes judgment of identity;

312. … without which there could be no recognition of an object as one observed before.

313. Hume makes conceptions of identity and cause each come before the other. Their true correlativity.

314. Hume quite right in saying that we do not go more beyond sense in reasoning than in perception.

315. How his doctrine might have been developed. Its actual outcome.

316. No philosophical relation admissible with Hume that is not derived from a natural one.

317. Examination of his account of cause and effect as ‘natural relation’.

318. Double meaning of natural relation. How Hume turns it to account.

319. If an effect is merely a constantly observed sequence, how can an event be an effect the first time it is observed? Hume evades this question;

320. Still, he is a long way off the Inductive Logic, which supposes an objective sequence.

321. Can the principle of uniformity of nature be derived from sequence of feelings?

322. With Hume the only uniformity is in expectation, as determined by habit; but strength of such expectation must vary indefinitely.

323. It could not serve the same purpose as the conception of uniformity of nature.

324. Hume changes the meaning of this expectation by his account of the ‘remembrance’ which determines it. Bearing of his doctrine of necessary connexion upon his argument against miracles. This remembrance, as he describes it, supposes conception of a system of nature.

326. This explains his occasional inconsistent ascription of an objective character to causation.

327. Reality of remembered ‘system’ transferred to ‘system of judgment’.

328. Reality of the former ‘system’ other than vivacity of impressions.

329. It is constituted by relations, which are not impressions at all; and in this lies explanation of the inference from it to ‘system of judgment’.

330. Not seeing this, Hume has to explain inference to latter system as something forced upon us by habit.

331. But if so, ‘system of judgment’ must consist of feelings constantly experienced;

332. … which only differ from remembered feelings inasmuch as their liveliness has faded. But how can it have faded, if they have been constantly repeated?

333. Inference then can give no new knowledge.

334. Nor does this merely mean that it cannot constitute new phenomena, while it can prove relations, previously unknown, between phenomena. Such a distinction inadmissible with Hume.

335. His distinction of probability of causes from that of chances might seem to imply conception of nature, as determining inference.

336. But this distinction he only professes to adopt in order to explain it away.

337. Laws of nature are unqualified habits of expectation.

338. Experience, according to his account of it, cannot be a parent of knowledge.

339. His attitude towards doctrine of thinking substance.

340. As to Immateriality of the Soul, he plays off Locke and Berkeley against each other, and proves Berkeley a Spinozist.

341. Causality of spirit treated in the same way.

342. Disposes of ‘personal’ identity by showing contradictions in Locke’s account of it.

343. Yet can only account for it as a ‘fiction’ by supposing ideas which with him are impossible.

344. In origin this ‘fiction’ the same as that of ‘Body’.

345. Possibility of such fictitious ideas implies refutation of Hume’s doctrine.