An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and Selections from A Treatise of Human Nature: With Hume's Autobiography and a Letter from Adam Smith

Cover
Open Court Publishing Company, 1907 - 267 Seiten

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Inhalt

I
1
II
14
III
21
IV
23
V
40
VI
57
VIII
61
IX
82
XII
139
XIII
158
XIV
185
XV
190
XVI
197
XVII
202
XVIII
227
XIX
229

X
109
XI
114
XX
232
XXI
245

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Beliebte Passagen

Seite 120 - A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature ; and as a firm and unalterable experience has established these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from experience can possibly be imagined.
Seite 176 - When we run over libraries, persuaded of these principles, what havoc must we make ? If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number ? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames: for it can contain nothing but sophistry and illusion.
Seite 77 - This connexion, therefore, which we feel in the mind, this customary transition of the imagination from one object to its usual attendant, is the sentiment or impression from which we form the idea of power or necessary connexion.
Seite 246 - For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe anything but the perception.
Seite 24 - That the sun will not rise tomorrow is no less intelligible a proposition, and implies no more contradiction than the affirmation, that it will rise. We should in vain, therefore, attempt to demonstrate its falsehood. Were it demonstratively false, it would imply a contradiction, and could never be distinctly conceived by the mind.
Seite 23 - ALL the objects of human reason or enquiry may naturally be divided into two kinds, to wit. Relations of Ideas, and Matters of Fact. Of the first kind are the sciences of Geometry, Algebra, and Arithmetic; and in short, every affirmation which is either intuitively or demonstratively certain.
Seite 79 - The appearance of a cause always conveys the mind, by a customary transition, to the idea of the effect. Of this also we have experience. We may, therefore, suitably to this experience, form another definition of cause and call it an object followed by another, and whose appearance always conveys the thought to that other.
Seite 122 - ... the fact, which he relates, should really have happened. I weigh the one miracle against the other; and according to the superiority which I discover, I pronounce my decision, and always reject the greater miracle. If the falsehood of his testimony would be more miraculous than the event which he relates; then, and not till then, can he pretend to command my belief or opinion.
Seite 119 - The Indian prince, who refused to believe the first relations concerning the effects of frost, reasoned justly; and it naturally required very strong testimony to engage his assent to facts, that arose from a state of nature, with which he was unacquainted, and which bore so little analogy to those events, of which he had had constant and uniform experience. Though they were not contrary to his experience, they were not conformable to it.
Seite 45 - Custom, then, is the great guide of human life. It is that principle alone which renders our experience useful to us, and makes us expect for the future a similar train of events with those which have appeared in the past.

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