A Treatise of Human Nature · Chapter
Section III: Of the Ideas of the Memory and Imagination explained
Hume distinguishes between memory and imagination as two faculties for recalling impressions.
What happens
Hume distinguishes between memory and imagination as two faculties for recalling impressions. Memory retains vivacity and preserves the original order of impressions, while imagination produces fainter ideas and can freely transpose and change them. This liberty of imagination is grounded in the fact that all ideas are copied from impressions and that no impressions are perfectly inseparable.
Themes in this chapter
Empiricism and the Primacy of Impressions
Hume grounds memory and imagination in impressions, asserting that all ideas are derived from prior impressions.
Association of Ideas
The liberty of imagination to transpose ideas is based on the separability of impressions, a key principle in Hume's associationist framework.
Characters to notice
- David Hume
Author and narrator, presenting his empirical analysis of memory and imagination.
Key passages
“We find by experience, that when any impression has been present with the mind, it again makes its appearance there as an idea; and this it may do after two different ways: either when in its new appearance it retains a considerable degree of its first vivacity, and is somewhat intermediate betwixt an impression and an idea: or when it entirely loses that vivacity, and is a perfect idea.”
Experience shows that an impression can reappear as an idea in two ways: either with a high degree of liveliness, falling between impression and idea, or with a complete loss of liveliness, becoming a pure idea.
Hume introduces the two modes of idea reproduction.
“The faculty, by which we repeat our impressions in the first manner, is called the Memory, and the other the Imagination.”
The faculty that reproduces impressions with vivacity is memory; the other, which produces faint ideas, is imagination.
Defines memory and imagination based on vivacity.
“It is evident, that the memory preserves the original form, in which its objects were presented, and that where-ever we depart from it in recollecting anything, it proceeds from some defect or imperfection in that faculty.”
Memory maintains the original order and form of past experiences; any deviation is due to a flaw in memory.
Memory is tied to the original order, unlike imagination.
“The same evidence follows us in our second principle, of the liberty of the imagination to transpose and change its ideas.”
The same evidence supports the principle that imagination is free to rearrange and alter ideas.
Imagination's freedom to reorder ideas is a key distinction.