Treatise of Human Nature/Front matter
HUME'S
TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE
L. A. SELBY-BIGGE
London
HENRY FROWDE
New York
MACMILLAN AND CO.
A TREATISE
OF
HUMAN NATURE
BY
DAVID HUME
REPRINTED FROM THE ORIGINAL EDITION IN THREE VOLUMES
AND EDITED, WITH AN ANALYTICAL INDEX, BY
L. A. SELBY-BIGGE, M.A.
FELLOW AND LECTURER OF UNIVERSITY COLLEGE
Oxford
AT THE CLARENDON PRESS
M DCCC LXXXVIII
[All rights reserved]
EDITOR'S PREFACE.
The length of the Index demands apology or at least justification. An index may serve several purposes. It enables a reader or student to find some definite passage, or to see whether a certain point is discussed or not in the work. For this purpose a long is evidently better than a short index, an index which quotes than one which consists of the compiler's abbreviations, and its alphabetical arrangement gives it an advantage over a table of contents which is hardly secured by placing the table at the end instead of the beginning. But besides this, in the case of a well known and much criticised author, an index may very well serve the purpose of a critical introduction. If well devised it should point, not loudly but unmistakeably, to any contradictions or in consequences, and, if the work be systematic, to any omissions which are of importance. This is the aim of the index now offered: it undoubtedly is not what it should be, but Hume's Treatise seems to offer an excellent field for an attempt. Hume loses nothing by close and critical reading, and, though his language is often perversely loose, yet it is not always the expression of loose thinking: this index aims at helping the student to see the difference and to fix his attention on the real merits and real deficiencies of the system: it does not aim at saving him the trouble of studying it for himself.