"Ideas may be compared to the extension and solidity of matter and impressions, especially reflective ones, to colours, tastes, smells, and other sensible qualities."
— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Author
Work Title
Place of Publication
London
Publisher
Printed for John Noon
Date
January 1739
Metaphor
"Ideas may be compared to the extension and solidity of matter and impressions, especially reflective ones, to colours, tastes, smells, and other sensible qualities."
Metaphor in Context
Ideas may be compared to the extension and solidity of matter and impressions, especially reflective ones, to colours, tastes, smells, and other sensible qualities. Ideas never admit of a total union, but are endowed with a kind of impenetrability by which they exclude each other, and are capable of forming a compound by their conjunction, not by their mixture. On the other hand, impressions and passions are susceptible of an entire union, and, like colours, may be blended so perfectly together, that each of them may lose itself, and contribute only to vary that uniform impression which arises from the whole. Some of the most curious phenomena of the human mind are derived from this property of the passions.
(II.ii.6)
(II.ii.6)
Categories
Provenance
Searching in Past Masters
Citation
Published anonymously with vols. I and II appearing in January in 1739 and vol. III appearing in November of 1740. Only 1 entry in the ESTC (1740).
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. 3 vols. (London: Printed for John Noon, 1739; Thomas Longman, 1740). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO><Link to ECCO-TCP><Link to OLL>
Reading David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, eds. D. F. and M. J. Norton (Oxford: OUP, 2000). Searching in Past Masters and OLL editions.
David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature. Being an Attempt to Introduce the Experimental Method of Reasoning into Moral Subjects. 3 vols. (London: Printed for John Noon, 1739; Thomas Longman, 1740). <Link to ESTC><Link to ECCO><Link to ECCO-TCP><Link to OLL>
Reading David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, eds. D. F. and M. J. Norton (Oxford: OUP, 2000). Searching in Past Masters and OLL editions.
Theme
Inside and Out; Materialism
Date of Entry
09/29/2003
Date of Review
09/26/2010
