book takes its place as perhaps the most remarkable single work in English philosophical literature. The common statement that Book I of the Treatise is to be preferred to the first Inquiry because it is 'more thorough'—while perfectly true—might be misleading to one not equally acquainted with both works. A great many of the perversely subtle discussions in the Treatise which Hume ruthlessly pruned away in revising it, were not only mere digressions, tending seriously to confuse the reader, but they were, in themselves, by no means uniformly convincing. To do away with many of these discussions was in itself a real advantage; but, unfortunately, Hume was not so much trying to improve the book as trying to make it more acceptable. The result is that, along with what was at once irrelevant and of doubtful validity, he omitted much that was really essential to the adequate statement of his peculiar views on metaphysics.
One would naturally expect to find much the same thing true in the case of the Inquiry concerning the Principles of Morals. As a matter of fact, however, in spite of what is evidently the current view, I am strongly of the opinion that the Inquiry is not only a clearer, but a better statement of Hume's ethical theory than the third book of the Treatise. Here the elimination has nearly always conduced to that really consecutive treatment which is so important in any philosophical work, and nothing in the least essential to the system as a whole seems to have been left out. Much more important for us, however, is the fact that, in the second Inquiry, Hume does away with the one exasperating ambiguity of his earlier work, i.e., his treatment of 'sympathy.' Other comparisons between the Inquiry and the corresponding book of the Treatise will be noted, as it becomes necessary. This, however, is so important that we must take account of it at the very beginning.
In both the Treatise and the Inquiry,—though the order of exposition in the two works differs otherwise, in certain respects,—Hume begins with the fact of moral approbation. He first shows—in the Treatise at considerable length; in
