Abstract

«Whether I can ever hope for a Recovery? […] Whether my Recovery will ever be perfect, & my Spirits regain their former Spring and Vigor, so as to endure the Fatigue of deep & abstruse thinking?». These are the questions asked by the young Hume in an undated, unsigned and possibly unsent letter to an unnamed physician. The letter, probably wrote in spring 1734, was first published in 1846. Between September 1729 and April 1734 Hume suffered the «Disease of the Learned». Yet in 1736 he was composing the Treatise of Human Nature and enjoyed «good» health and spirits. In the 1776 short autobiography, My Own Life, the youthful disease is turned into a «Health being a little broken by my ardent Application». My Own Life is chiefly a history of Hume’s writings and their early success; it is an introduction to his complete works, where there is no place for the Treatise. The 1734 letter reveals what happened before and during the composition of Hume’s «grand Undertaking», which required an equally great disease; and it can be read as an introduction to it. Like the «sceptical doubt», the «Disease of the Learned» arises naturally from labour of thought and intense reflection; yet, unlike it, it is a malady that can be cured