ESSAYS ON SUICIDE AND THE IMMORTALITY OF THE SOUL:

                                  

                     THE COMPLETE 1783 EDITION

                                  

                                  

                             David Hume

                                  

                                  

                               5195

                                  

                                  
Copyright 1995, James Fieser (jfieser@utm.edu). See end note for
details on copyright and editing conventions. This is a working
draft; please report errors.[1]

                                  
Editor's Note: Hume's essays on the suicide and the immortality of
the soul were completed around 1755 and printed as part of a book of
essays titled Five Dissertations. When pre-release copies of Five
Dissertations provoked controversy among influential readers, Hume
and his printer Andrew Millar agreed to have the two essays
physically removed from the printed copies. They were replaced with
an essay titled "Of the Standard of Taste," and the book of essays
appeared in 1757 under the title Four Dissertations. Rumors about
the two withdrawn essays circulated for years, and clandestine
copies appeared anonymously in French (1770) and later in English
(1777). In 1783 the two essays were published more openly, and this
time with Hume's name attached. Like the 1770 and 1777 publications,
the 1783 publication was not authorized by Hume. Along with Hume's
two essays, the anonymous editor of the 1783 edition included his
own critical notes to Hume's two pieces, and excerpts from
Rousseau's La Nouvelle Heloise on the subject of suicide. The
contents, then, of the 1883 publication are as follows:

                                  

     Preface                                           p. iii

     Essay I. On Suicide (Hume)                        p. 1

     Essay II. On the immortality of the soul (Hume)   p. 23

     Anti-Suicide (anonymous editor)                   p. 39

     Immortality of the Soul (anonymous editor)        p. 53

     Letter 114 from Rousseau's Eloisa               p. 67

     Letter 115 from Rousseau's Eloisa               p. 90

                                  
A copy of the original two essays as they were printed in Five
Dissertations is in the possession of the National Library of
Scotland. That copy contains nineteen corrections in Hume's hand and
is Hume's final surviving revision of the essays. None of these
corrections appear in the 1783 edition.

                              * * * *

                                  

                                  

                               ESSAYS

                                  

                                 ON

                                  

                             SUICIDE,

                                  

                                AND

                                  

                         THE IMMORTALITY

                                  

                               OF THE

                                  

                              SOUL,