An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals

A 1912 Reprint Of The Edition Of 1777
Information About This E-Text Edition
The following is an e-text of a 1912 reprint of the 1777 edition of David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Each page was cut out of the original book with an X-acto knife and fed into an Automatic Document Feeder Scanner to make this e-text, so the original book was disbinded in order to save it.
Some adaptations from the original text were made while formatting it for an e-text. Italics in the original book are capitalized in this e-text. The original spellings of words are preserved, such as connexion for connection, labour for labor, etc. Original footnotes are put in brackets at the points where they are cited in the text.
AUTHOR'S ADVERTISEMENT.
Most of the principles, and reasonings, contained in this volume,
were published in a work in three volumes, called A TREATISE OF HUMAN NATURE: A work which the Author had projected before he left College, and which he wrote and published not long after. But not finding it successful, he was sensible of his error in going to the press too early, and he cast the whole anew in the following pieces, where some negligences in his former reasoning and more in the expression, are, he hopes, corrected. Yet several writers who have honoured the Author's Philosophy with answers, have taken care to direct all their batteries against that juvenile work, which the author never acknowledged, and have affected to triumph in any advantages, which, they imagined, they had obtained over it: A practice very contrary to all rules of candour and fair-dealing, and a strong instance of those polemical artifices which a bigotted zeal thinks itself authorized to employ. Henceforth, the Author desires, that the following Pieces may alone be regarded as containing his philosophical sentiments and principles.
I. Of the General Principles of Morals II. Of Benevolence III. Of Justice IV. Of Political Society V. Why Utility Pleases VI. Of Qualities Useful to Ourselves VII. Of Qualities Immediately Agreeable to Ourselves VIII. Of Qualities Immediately Agreeable to Others IX. Conclusion