egard every object as contemptible except
the improvement of my talents in literature."[4]

Hume passed through Paris on his way to Rheims, where he resided for
some time; though the greater part of his three years' stay was spent at
La Fleche, in frequent intercourse with the Jesuits of the famous
college in which Descartes was educated. Here he composed his first
work, the _Treatise of Human Nature_; though it would appear from the
following passage in the letter to Cheyne, that he had been accumulating
materials to that end for some years before he left Scotland.

"I found that the moral philosophy transmitted to us by antiquity
laboured under the same inconvenience that has been found in their
natural philosophy, of being entirely hypothetical, and depending
more upon invention than experience: every one consulted his fancy
in erecting schemes of virtue and happiness, without regarding
human nature, upon which every moral conclusion must depend."

This is the key-note of the _Treatise_; of which Hume himself says
apologetically, in one of his letters, that it was planned before he was
twenty-one and composed before he had reached the age of twenty-five.[5]

Under these circumstances, it is probably the most remarkable
philosophical work, both intrinsically and in its effects upon the
course of thought, that has ever been written. Berkeley, indeed,
published the _Essay Towards a New Theory of Vision_, the _Treatise
Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge_, and the _Three
Dialogues_, between the ages of twenty-four and twenty-eight; and thus
comes very near to Hume, both in precocity and in influence; but his
investigations are more limited in their scope than those of his
Scottish contemporary.

The first and second volumes of the _Treatise_, containing Book I., "Of
the Understanding," and Book II., "Of the Passions," were published in
January, 1739.[6] The publisher gave fifty pounds for the copyright;
which is probably more than an unknown writer of twenty-seven years of
age would get for a similar work, at the present time. But, in other
respects, its success fell far short of Hume's expectations. In a letter
dated the 1st of June, 1739, he writes,--

"I am not much in the humour of such compositions at present,
having received news from London of the success of my _Philosophy_,
which is but indifferent, if I may judge by the sale of the book,
and i