Book 1, Part 1, Of Ideas, Their Origin, Composition, Connexion, Abstraction, Etc. Summary and Analysis

Hume's Treatise of Human Nature is composed of three books. The first book, 'Of the Understanding' contains four parts of what he believes are the basic features of the human mind and cognition generally. Part 1 covers The Elements of the Mental World. At the outset, it bears noting that there is a cottage industry devoted to determining the proper interpretation of Hume's Treatise. This guide gives what the author understands as the ordinary interpretation of the book.

Hume is one of the arch-empiricists in the history of philosophy. As such, he believes that knowledge of the world comes primarily through experience. Hume is usually interpreted to divide knowledge into two parts: definitions and observations. Definitions are trivially true, like 2 + 2 = 4 and have no substantive...