Hume on What Makes Truth Agreeable

2017 October 18

David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, Book II, Section X:

“The first and most considerable circumstance requisite to render truth agreeable, is the genius and capacity, which is employ’d in its invention and discovery. What is easy and obvious is never valu’d; even what is in itself difficult, if we come to the knowledge of it without difficulty, and without any stretch of thought or judgment, is but little regarded.”

Here Hume means one’s own effort, or application of one’s abilities, not “genius” in the modern sense of someone with extraordinary mental capacity.

Tags: philosophy