Quotation
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“If we take in our hand any volume; of divinity or school metaphysics, for instance; let us ask, Does it contain any abstract reasoning concerning quantity or number? No. Does it contain any experimental reasoning concerning matter of fact and existence? No. Commit it then to the flames.”
David Hume · Empiricism · Enlightenment · 1748
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the closing paragraph as the fork with a match: a volume with neither abstract reasoning about quantity nor experimental reasoning about fact and existence is sophistry and illusion, fit for the flames. Divinity and school metaphysics are examples, not the only possible targets. A rival reading hears a ban on ethics, history, and novels, but the paragraph concerns books that pretend to knowledge while offering neither kind. It ends the Enquiry's account of a mitigated scepticism.
Did David Hume really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Hume's own English at the close of the Enquiry, section 12, part 3. The fire is the fork applied to volumes that fail both tests. The wording is secure.
Where it comes from
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 12, part 3
Approximate date: 1748.
How to use it
A glossy report in a staff room in Sunderland, full of destiny and empty of both a sum and a checkable fact, is the sort of volume the paragraph describes. The flames are a metaphor for refusing it the status of knowledge, not an order to burn a library or a novel that never claimed to demonstrate God. The test is the claim the volume makes; A story that does not pretend to be a proof is not the target.
A mindset reading
The rhetoric is violent on purpose, and it is easy to enjoy as a licence to despise unread subjects. The two questions are the instrument. A book with real experimental reasoning stays, however unfashionable; A book with real mathematics stays; The paragraph does not say that only those two kinds of writing matter; It says that a pretence of knowledge which is neither should not be treated as knowledge.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is the double test, quantity or number on one side and matter of fact and existence on the other. Section 12 has described a mitigated scepticism, and the flames are that stance at its harshest. The English is his. Later readers ask whether his own account of causation survives the test he has just set for other people's volumes.
- knowledge
- mind
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the closing paragraph as the fork with a match: a volume with neither abstract reasoning about quantity nor experimental reasoning about fact and existence is sophistry and illusion, fit for the flames. Divinity and school metaphysics are examples, not the only possible targets. A rival reading hears a ban on ethics, history, and novels, but the paragraph concerns books that pretend to knowledge while offering neither kind. It ends the Enquiry's account of a mitigated scepticism.
Did David Hume really say this?
Well attested. Hume's own English at the close of the Enquiry, section 12, part 3. The fire is the fork applied to volumes that fail both tests. The wording is secure.
Which work is it in?
An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, section 12, part 3 Approximate date: 1748.