Summary: A Treatise of Human Nature (page 12)

This passage deserves to be quoted in full: in a few lines, Hume exposes an illusion bound up with what is most intimate, most personal, and probably most dear to us—the self.

There are some philosophers, who imagine we are every moment initmately conscious of what we call our SELF; that we feel its existence and its continuance in existence; and are certain, beyond the evidence of a demonstration, both of its perfect identity and simplicity. The strongest sensation, the most violent passion, say they, instead of distracting us from this view, only fix it the more intensely, and make us consider their influence on self either by their pain or pleasure. To attempt a farther proof of this were to weaken its evidence; since no proof can be deriv'd from any fact, of which we are so intimatley conscious; nor is there any thing, of which we can be certain, if we doubt of this.

Unluckily all these positive assertions are contrary to that very experience, which is pleaded for them, nor have we any idea of self, after the manner it is here explain'd. For from what impression cou'd this idea be deriv'd?

This question 'tis impossible to answer without a manifest contradiction and absurdity; and yet 'tis a question, which must necessarily be answer'd , if we wou'd have the idea of self pass for clear and intelligible.

It must be some one impression, that gives rise to every real idea. But self or person is not any one impression, but that to which our several impressions and ideas are suppos'd to have a reference. If any impression gives rise to the idea of self, that impression must continue invariably the same, thro' the whole course of our lives; since self is suppos'd to exist after that manner. But there is no impression constant and invariable. Pain and pleasure, grief and joy, passions and sensations succeed each other, and never all exist at the same time. It cannot, therefore, be from any of these impressions, or from any other, that the idea of self is deriv'd; and consequently there is no such idea ¹.

In a few deft moves, Hume dismantles the very principle of our personal identity—the foundation of our personality: the self.

The syllogism is watertight:

There is no impression of the self; rather, it is that to which all our impressions relate.

There is therefore no idea of it, since every idea derives from an impression.

Since there is neither impression nor idea of the self, it must be dismissed as mere fiction.

This simple reasoning would suffice, but Hume reinforces it with a second line of argument:

The self must be understood as something identical—fixed and stable: hence the notion of personal identity.

Yet what we find in our mind is only a succession of ideas and impressions, nothing fixed or identical.

And so, again, the self must be dismissed as mere fiction.

We are left with a kind of atomism of the mind, in the sense that nothing binds these separate perceptions together into anything resembling a substantial self:

What must become of all our particular perceptions upon this hypothesis? All these are different, and distinguishable, and separable from each other, and may be separately consider'd, and may exist separately, and have no need of any thing to support their existence. After what manner, therefore, do they belong to self; and how are they connected with it? For my part, when I enter most intimately into what I call myself, I always stumble on some particular perception or other, of heat or cold, light or shade, love or hatred, pain or pleasure. I never can catch myself at any time without a perception, and never can observe any thing but the perception ².

The self dissolves entirely into these scattered perceptions—it vanishes as a superfluous term, no longer needed to account for what intimate consciousness delivers to us.

Hume then offers us a thought experiment: And were all my perceptions remov'd by death, and cou'd I neither think, nor feel, nor see, nor love, nor hate after the dissolution of my body, I shou'd be entirely annihilated, nor do I conceive what is farther requisite to make me a perfect non-entity ³.

Hume is simply drawing out the consequences of a point established much earlier: if there is no substance—or rather, if a substance is in reality nothing but a collection of simple ideas ⁴—then the so-called substance that is the self likewise dissolves into a mere bundle of perceptions.

This is precisely Hume's conclusion: The rest of mankind [...] are nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement ⁵.

If the mind is a kind of theatre, and there is properly no simplicity in it at one time, nor identity in different, the question arises: What then gives us so great a propension to ascribe an identity to these successive perceptions, and to suppose ourselves possest of an invariable and uninterrupted existence thro' the whole course of our lives? ⁶

Once again, following a process now familiar to us, we must trace the origin of an illusion—identify what can lead us to forge such a fiction.

And once again the same mechanism is at work: the resemblance between successive impressions facilitates the transition of the mind from one object to another, and renders its passage as smooth as if it contemplated one continu'd object. This resemblance is the cause of the confusion and mistake, and makes us substitute the notion of identity, instead of that of related objects ⁷.

But as we feel that it is absurd to speak of one and the same object where we see only different related objects [...], interrupted and variable, in order to justify to ourselves this absurdity, we often feign some new and unintelligible principle, that connects the objects together, and prevents their interruption or variation. Thus we feign the continu'd existence of the perceptions of our senses, to remove the interruption; and run into the notion of a soul, and self, and substance, to disguise the variation ⁸.

It is, as we can see, always the same mechanism—the one that has given rise to other fictions: the notions of cause, of substance, and of a continuous and independent external world.

While Berkeley likewise rejects these three fictions, the self is somewhat spared in his doctrine: if to be is to be perceived—esse est percipi—the mind attains with him the supreme dignity of that which perceives.

There is thus no "deconstruction" of the Ego in Berkeley, who elsewhere ascribes to it a character of simplicity:

A Spirit is one simple, undivided, active Being: as it perceives Ideas, it is called the Understanding, and as it produces or otherwise operates about them, it is called the Will ⁹.

On this point, then, Hume goes further than Berkeley—further, indeed, than any other thinker of his time.

The extraordinary conclusions of his system left him in profound intellectual isolation.

This leads him, at the close of Book I, to give us this long lament—what might be called the "sceptic's blues":

I am first affrighted and confounded with that forelorn solitude, in which I am plac'd in my philosophy, and fancy myself some strange uncouth monster, who not being able to mingle and unite in society, has been expell'd all human commerce, and left utterly abandon'd and disconsolate. [...] I have expos'd myself to the enmity of all metaphysicians, logicians, mathematicians, and even theologians; and can I wonder at the insults I must suffer? I have declar'd my disapprobation of their systems; and can I be surpriz'd, if they shou'd express a hatred of mine and of my person? When I look abroad, I foresee on every side, dispute, contradiction, anger, calumny and detraction. When I turn my eye inward, I find nothing but doubt and ignorance. All the world conspires to oppose and contradict me ¹⁰.

¹ 1.4.6, p.164
² Ibid.
³ P.165
⁴ P.16
⁵ P.165
⁶ Ibid.
⁷ P.166
⁸ Ibid.
⁹ A Treatise Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge, §27
¹⁰ 1.4.7, p.172