Most of the principles, and reasonings, contained in this volume,
[Footnote: Volume II. of the posthumous edition of Hume's works
published in 1777 and containing, besides the present ENQUIRY, A
DISSERTATION ON THE PASSIONS, and AN ENQUIRY CONCERNING HUMAN
UNDERSTANDING. A reprint of this latter treatise has already
appeared in The Religion of Science Library (NO. 45)]
were published in a work in three volumes, called A TREATISE OF
HUMAN NATURE: A work which the Author had projected before he
left College, and which he wrote and published not long after.
But not finding it successful, he was sensible of his error in
going to the press too early, and he cast the whole anew in the
following pieces, where some negligences in his former reasoning
and more in the expression, are, he hopes, corrected. Yet several
writers who have honoured the Author's Philosophy with answers,
have taken care to direct all their batteries against that
juvenile work, which the author never acknowledged, and have
affected to triumph in any advantages, which, they imagined, they
had obtained over it: A practice very contrary to all rules of
candour and fair-dealing, and a strong instance of those
polemical artifices which a bigotted zeal thinks itself
authorized to employ. Henceforth, the Author desires, that the
following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his
philosophical sentiments and principles.
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