An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

A character in Virginia Woolf's To the Lighthouse delights in the tale of David Hume stuck in a bog, calling on the aid of a woman who won't help him out until he recites the Lord's Prayer. While historically unconfirmed, the story may well reflect Hume's experience of popular sentiment regarding his radically empirical philosophy. In his Treatise of Human Nature, Hume attacks the very validity of causation, contending that because, he argues, sense experience is the only basis of knowledge, we may ultimately assert 'knowledge' only on the basis of probability, not principle. In denying epistomological confirmation of any absolute, Hume thus denied the existence of God, drawing criticism and disdain but securing significance in all metaphysical reasoning to follow.