An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding

David Hume's An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding was a simplification of an earlier effort, Hume was disappointed with the reception of the Treatise of Human Nature He felt that if "fell dead-born from the press," as he put it, and so tried again to disseminate his ideas to the public by writing a shorter and more polemical work. The Enquiry dispensed with much of the material from the Treatise, in favor of clarifying and emphasizing its most important aspects.