[Review of An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature, 1740]

F. A. Hayek: Review of An Abstract of a Treatise of Human Nature (August 1938)

Hayek’s brief bibliographical review endorses Keynes and Sraffa’s attribution of the anonymous 1740 Abstract to Hume. It moves from evidence of authorship to a correction of the supposed early relationship between Hume and Adam Smith. Hayek presents the pamphlet as Hume’s attempt to improve the reception of his Treatise through anonymous self-review. The decisive evidence is its anticipation of later revisions:

That in doing so he could not resist the temptation to suggest improvements which he only introduced in Volume III of the Treatise, which appeared some months after the pamphlet, gives him away beyond doubt to the modern student.

Authorship thus emerges from the sequence of textual changes. Hayek then connects the pamphlet’s obscurity with a consequential biographical error:

The only reference to the pamphlet in his correspondence has been misinterpreted and has given rise to the legend that Adam Smith at the age of 17 had prepared an abstract of the Treatise for his teacher Hutcheson, who had sent it on to Hume who in turn attempted to have it printed.

The alternative identification of “Mr. Smith” as a Dublin bookseller places the correspondence within Hume’s efforts to arrange republication outside English copyright restrictions. The review’s significance is this double correction: recovering Hume’s self-promotional authorship and removing the alleged evidence that Hume and Adam Smith met before about 1750.