Quotes · Quote card
Quotation from A Treatise of Human Nature by David Hume
“reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas”
A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part III, Sect. 16 (Of the Reason of Animals) (Project Gutenberg #4705)
After arguing that animals reason from experience by custom just as humans do, Hume reclassifies reason itself as an instinct.
Citation: "reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas" — David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book I, Part III, Sect. 16 (Of the Reason of Animals) (Project Gutenberg #4705). (id a-treatise-of-human-nature-q3)
Portrait: David Hume, Allan Ramsay, Public domain.
