Hunic PREFACE. IN THIS EDITION we have sought to avoid the inconveniences which are apt to attend commentaries on philosophical writers, by the plan of putting together, in the form of continuous introductions, such explanation and criticism as we had to offer, and confining the footnotes almost entirely to references, which have been carefully distinguished from Hume's own notes. For the introductions to the first and second volumes Mr. Green alone is responsible. The introduction to the third is. the work of Mr. Grose, who also has undertaken the revision of Hume's text. Throughout the introductions to Volumes I. and II., except where the contrary is stated, Hume' must be understood to mean Hume as represented by the Treatise on Human Nature.' In taking this as intrinsically the best representation of his philosophy, we may be thought to have overlooked the well-known advertisement which (in an edition posthumously published) he prefixed to the volume containing his Inquiries concerning the Human Understanding and the Principles of Morals.' In it, after stating that the volume is mainly a reproduction of what he had previously published in the Treatise,' he expresses a hope that some negligences in his former reasoning, and more in the expression,' have been cor |