Hume (English Men of Letters Series)

Hume seems to have had but two hearty dislikes: the one to the English nation, and the other to all the professors of dogmatic theology. The one aversion he vented only privatel...

David Hume was born, in Edinburgh on the 26th of April (O.S.), 1711. His parents were then residing in the parish of the Tron church, apparently on a visit to the Scottish capit...

Descartes taught that an absolute difference of kind separates matter, as that which possesses extension, from spirit, as that which thinks. They not only have no character in c...

In 1744, Hume's friends had endeavoured to procure his nomination to the Chair of "Ethics and pneumatic philosophy"[8] in the University of Edinburgh. About this matter he write...

"In the same year [1752] was published at London my _Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals_; which in my own opinion (who ought not to judge on that subject) is of all my...

Admitting that the sensations, the feelings of pleasure and pain, and those of relation, are the primary irresolvable states of consciousness, two further lines of investigation...

Though we may accept Hume's conclusion that speechless animals think, believe, and reason; yet, it must be borne in mind, that there is an important difference between the signi...

"Of all the immediate effects of pain and pleasure there is none more remarkable than the _will_; and though, properly speaking, it be not comprehended among the passions, yet a...

If, as has been set forth in the preceding chapter, all mental states are effects of physical causes, it follows that what are called mental faculties and operations are, proper...

Kant has said that the business of philosophy is to answer three questions: What can I know? What ought I to do? and For what may I hope? But it is pretty plain that these three...

In the language of common life, the "mind" is spoken of as an entity, independent of the body, though resident in and closely connected with it, and endowed with numerous "facul...

In the course of the preceding chapters, attention has been more than once called to the fact, that the elements of consciousness and the operations of the mental faculties, und...

If our beliefs of expectation are based on our beliefs of memory, and anticipation is only inverted recollection, it necessarily follows that every belief of expectation implies...

As the volume and the page of the volume are given in my references, it will be easy, by the help of this table, to learn where to look for any passage cited, in differently arr...