David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, ed. by J. Y. T. Greig, vol. 1 No. 73 (Oxford: Oxford University, 1932), 158.
[1] David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 95.
[1] David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 164.
Antony Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief: A Study of His First Inquiry (Bristol: Thoemmes, 1997),
In a letter to his friend, Gilbert Elliot, in 1751, Hume notes regarding the relationship between the Treatise and the Enquiry that “[b]y shortening and simplifying the questions [in the Enquiry] I really render them much more complete.”[1]
Hume writes, “It is universally allowed, that nothing exists without a cause of its existence, and that chance, when strictly examined, is a mere negative word, and means not any real power, which has any where, a being in nature.”[2]
Hume writes, “If we reason à priori, any thing may appear able to produce any thing. The falling of a pebble may, for ought we know, extinguish the sun; or the wish of a man controul the planets in their orbits. It is only experience, which teaches us the nature and bounds of cause and effect, and enables us to infer the existence of one object from that of another.”[3]
[1] David Hume, The Letters of David Hume, ed. by J. Y. T. Greig, vol. 1 No. 73 (Oxford: Oxford University, 1932), 158.
[2] David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 95.
[3] David Hume, Enquiry concerning Human Understanding, in Enquiries concerning Human Understanding and concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. by L. A. Selby-Bigge, 3rd ed revised by P. H. Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 164.