"Hume, David - Letter to a friend in Edinburgh [PG]" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

point of Pleasure; and this is the Origin of my Philosophy."

Agreeable to this summary View, he tells us, p. 123.

"Let us fix our Attention out of ourselves as much as
possible. -- We really never advance a Step beyond
ourselves; nor can conceive any Kind of Existence, but
these Perceptions which have appeared in that narrow
Compass: This is the Universe of the Imagination, nor have
we any Idea but what is there produced."

Accordingly,

"An Opinion or Belief may be most accurately defined, A lively
Idea related or associated with a present Impression; and is more
properly an Act of the sensitive than of the cognitive Part of our
Natures."

And,

"Belief in general consists in nothing but the Vivacity of an
Idea. Again, the Idea of Existence is the very same with the Idea
of what we conceive to be existent. -- Any Idea we please to form
is the Idea of a Being; and the Idea of a Being is any Idea we
please to form. And as to the {8} Notion of an external Existence,
when taken for something specifically different from our
Perceptions, we have shown its absurdity: And what we call a Mind
is nothing but a Heap or Collection of different Perceptions
united together by certain Relations, and supposed, tho' falsly,
to be endowed with a perfect Simplicity."

And,

"The only Existence, of which we are certain, are Perceptions.
When I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always
stumble on some particular Perception or other. -- I never can
catch myself at any Time without a Perception, and never can
observe any Thing but the Perception. -- If any one think he has a
different Notion of himself, I must confess I can reason no longer
with him. -- I may venture to affirm of the rest of Mankind, that
they are nothing but a Bundle of Perceptions, which succeed each
other with an inconceivable Rapidity, and are in a perpetual Flux
and Movement." --

And lest the Reader should forget to apply all this to the Supreme
Mind, and the Existence of the First Cause, he has a long Disquisition
concerning Causes and Effects, the Sum of which amounts to this, That
all our Reasoning concerning Causes and Effects are derived from
nothing but Custom: That {9}