# A Treatise of Human Nature

**Author:** David Hume
**Tags:** Knowledge, Theory of
**Price:** Free
**Formats:** DOCX, EPUB, FB2, PDF, TXT
**Downloads:** 28
**Added:** 10.07.2026
**URL:** https://samolit.com/books/95907

## Description

A Treatise of Human Nature is David Hume's ambitious attempt, written while still in his twenties, to found a complete science of the mind on the model of Newtonian natural philosophy. Divided into three books devoted to understanding, the passions, and morals, it traces how sensory impressions give rise to ideas, memory, and imagination, and how these in turn shape belief, causation, and personal identity. Hume argues that reason alone cannot justify our confidence in cause and effect or in the existence of an external world, tracing such convictions instead to habit, custom, and the associative workings of the mind. He extends this empiricist and skeptical method to human emotion, examining pride, humility, love, and hatred, and finally to ethics, contending that moral distinctions arise from sentiment rather than rational demonstration. Provocative, systematic, and unsettling to many of its first readers, the work has since come to be regarded as a landmark of Enlightenment thought, anticipating later developments in psychology and cognitive science. It remains essential reading for anyone interested in the origins of modern empiricism, the limits of human reason, and the nature of belief, identity, and moral judgment.