Date: 1748, 1777
"It is remarkable concerning the operations of the mind, that, though most intimately present to us, yet, whenever they become the object of reflection, they seem involved in obscurity; nor can the eye readily find those lines and boundaries, which discriminate and distinguish them."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"And if we can go no farther than this mental geography, or delineation of the distinct parts and powers of the mind, it is at least a satisfaction to go so far."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"Chaced from the open country, these robbers [i.e., superstitions] fly into the forest, and lie in wait to break in upon every unguarded avenue of the mind, and overwhelm it with religious fears and prejudices."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"And shall we esteem it worthy the labour of a philosopher to give us a true system of the planets, and adjust the position and order of those remote bodies; while we affect to overlook those, who, with so much success, delineate the parts of the mind, in which we are so intimately concerned?"
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"But a late Philosopher has taught us, by the most convincing Arguments, that Morality is nothing in the abstract Nature of Things, but is entirely relative to the Sentiment or mental Taste of each particular Being; in the same Manner as the Distinctions of sweet and bitter, hot and cold, arise f...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"In our more serious thinking or discourse, this is so observable, that any particular thought, which breaks in upon the regular tract or chain of ideas, is immediately remarked and rejected."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"The passion for philosophy, like that for religion, seems liable to this inconvenience, that, though it aims at the correction of our manners, and extirpation of our vices, it may only serve, by imprudent management, to foster a predominant inclination, and push the mind, with more determined re...
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"Nothing is more free than the imagination of man; and though it cannot exceed that original stock of ideas, furnished by the internal and external senses, it has unlimited power of mixing, compounding, separating, and dividing these ideas, in all the varieties of fiction and vision."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"It [the imagination] can feign a train of events, with all the appearance of reality, ascribe to them a particular time and place, conceive them as existent, and paint them out to itself with every circumstance, that belongs to any historical fact, which it believes with the greatest certainty."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)
Date: 1748, 1777
"This impression of my senses immediately conveys my thought to the person, together with all the surrounding objects. I paint them out to myself as existing at present, with the same qualities and relations, of which I formerly knew them possessed."
preview | full record— Hume, David (1711-1776)