'Detachment was in his DNA.'
Essay by Joseph Epstein at the Claremont Review of Books.
"In an Abstract published a year after his Treatise, Hume claimed the book was written to 'explain the principles and operations of our reasoning faculty and the nature of our ideas.' He also allowed that the philosophy underlying his Treatise 'is very skeptical, and tends to give us a notion of the imperfections and narrow limits of human understanding.' Later, in his Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748), he would write that 'in general, there is a degree of doubt, and caution, and modesty, which, in all kinds of scrutiny and decision, ought for ever to accompany a just reasoner.'"
See Hume, "On the Standard of Taste" from Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, in volume 5, and "Of Refinement in the Arts", "Of Money", "Of the Balance of Trade", "Of Taxes", and "Of the Study of History", from Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, in volume 7, Gateway to the Great Books (10 Vol., 1963); and An Inquiry Concerning Human Understanding, in Great Books of the Western World (first edition, 52 Vol., 1952) volumen 35, and (second edition, 60 Vol., 1990) volume 33.
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