ABSTRACT
David Hume explicitly discusses memory at two places in his Treatise of Human Nature. In both cases, he contrasts ideas of the memory with ideas of the imagination. This chapter examines those discussions within the context of the philosophical principles he developed in the Treatise. It shows that Hume championed a causal theory of the memory, that an idea of the memory represents the impression that was its original cause, and that Hume argued that one can never be certain that a putative idea of the memory fulfills those conditions. Hume distinguishes ideas of the memory from ideas of the imagination in terms of the greater force and vivacity of the former relative to the latter, suggesting that the force and vivacity of an idea of the memory is less than that of an impression and greater than that of an idea of the imagination.
