Preliminary Outline Statement of Hume’s Teaching, as Expounded in Parts i, iii and iv of Book I of the Treatise

Abstract

HAVING now guarded against certain very usual misunderstandings of Hume’s teaching, I shall proceed to an outline statement of it, in the order, more or less, in which he has himself expounded it in the Treatise. I say ‘ more or less ’ in that order. The doctrine of belief so central in Book I is modelled so closely upon the doctrine of sympathy developed in Book II that this latter doctrine will have to be taken into account from the start.