A Treatise on Human Nature, Vol. 1 of 2 (Classic Reprint)

Edinburgh on the 26th A pril, 1711. His family, he tells us, wished to make him a lawyer, but he found an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning. His fortune not being considered sufficient to allow him to devote himself to such unremunerative pur suits, he tried going into business. Three months of that experiment were enough for him, and in 1734 he went over to France, and, as he says, laid that plan of life which I have steadily and successfully followed. 1resolved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency of fortune, to maintain unimpared my independency, and to regard every object as contemptible, except the improvement of my talents in literature. The Treatise was wT itten in the three years that Hume spent in France, and completed before he was twenty-six. It was published in London in 1738, but, in the words of its author, fell dead-born from the press, without reaching such distinction as even to excite a murmur among the zealots. Undiscouraged by this failure, in 1742 he published the first part of his Essays which met with much greater success. In 1748 he recast the first part of the Treatise, convinced that its unfavourable reception was due rather to its manner than its matter, and published it under the title of An Inquiry Concerning Human Under standing. The second part was similarly recast and published in 1752 as An Inquiry Con cerning the Principles of Morals. Hume says of this that it was in his opinion incomparably the best of his works. But it came unnoticed and unobserved into the world. Meanwhile, however, his Essays were increasing in popu larity, and the second part of them, called Political Dis courses, were successful at once. In 1752 he was appointed librarian of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh, where he spent most of his remaining years. He now turned his attentio
(Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.)