" In a letter to Hutcheson, Hume merely speaks
of this article as "somewhat abusive;" so that his vanity, being young
and callow, seems to have been correspondingly wide-mouthed and hard to
satiate.
It must be confessed that, on this occasion, no less than on that of his
other publications, Hume exhibits no small share of the craving after
mere notoriety and vulgar success, as distinct from the pardonable, if
not honourable, ambition for solid and enduring fame, which would have
harmonised better with his philosophy. Indeed, it appears to be by no
means improbable that this peculiarity of Hume's moral constitution was
the cause of his gradually forsaking philosophical studies, after the
publication of the third part (_On Morals_) of the _Treatise_, in 1740,
and turning to those political and historical topics which were likely
to yield, and did in fact yield, a much better return of that sort of
success which his soul loved. The _Philosophical Essays Concerning the
Human Understanding_, which afterwards became the _Inquiry_, is not much
more than an abridgment and recast, for popular use, of parts of the
_Treatise_, with the addition of the essays on Miracles and on
Necessity. In style, it exhibits a great improvement on the _Treatise_;
but the substance, if not deteriorated, is certainly not improved. Hume
does not really bring his mature powers to bear upon his early
speculations, in the later work. The crude fruits have not been ripened,
but they have been ruthlessly pruned away, along with the branches which
bore them.
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