Substantive Differences between Two Texts of Hume's Treatise

Hume Studies Volume XXVI, Number 2, November 2000, pp. 245-277 Substantive Differences between Two Texts of Hume's Treatise DAVID FATE NORTON MARY J. NORTON Because our student edition of Hume's Treatise1 has appeared before publication of our critical edition of the same work, scholars using the former will find it difficult to determine how and where the text of the Treatise found there differs substantively from other editions, and from, most importantly, the widely used version of the text edited by L. A. Selby-Bigge and revised by P. H. Nidditch.2 Fortunately, we now have this opportunity to report the substantive differences between the text found in the OFT Treatise and the text found in SBN. In addition, this report allows us to focus on many of the substantive emendations we have made to the copytext and to bring to these emendations a level of attention they might not otherwise receive. Some preliminary clarifications are in order. We are currently in the process of producing, as one part of the planned Clarendon Edition of the Works of David Hume, a critical edition of the Treatise of Human Nature.3 As one part of this effort, we have established a critical text of this work. In doing so, we have with great regularity followed the readings provided by a copytext. We have also prepared for this critical edition a critical apparatus that reports in comprehensive detail how the critical text differs from the copytext. In doing so, we have distinguished between what bibliographers typically call substantive differences and accidental or formal differences. While many scholars are generally familiar with these terms, a brief review of them will help to avoid misunderDavid Fate Norton is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus, Department of Philosophy, McGiIl University, 855 Sherbrooke Street West, Montreal, Quebec H3A 2T7, Canada. Mary J. Norton is an independent scholar, e-mail: davidnorton@telus.net 246 David Fate Norton and Mary f. Norton standings about our larger purposes and our purposes in this relatively brief article. Two of the terms mentioned, critical edition and critical text, may appear to be synonyms, but they are not. A text is a critical text only if at least one editor has exercised principled and systematic editorial judgment over the substantive components of the text (over each word and each related set of words—each sentence or paragraph, for example) and also over each accidental or formal component of the text (over orthography, capitalization, punctuation , italics, etc.). This judgment will be "principled and systematic" only if it explicitly includes a thorough examination of all available historical evidence, including evidence of variant readings, concerning the text. The process that produces a critical text of a modern author ordinarily starts from an authoritative printed text—from, where such a copy exists, a particular copy of the text produced as part of an edition seen through the press by the author.4 In the past it was typically the edition chosen that was designated the copytext, but at least some bibliographers now use this term in a narrower sense. By copytext these scholars mean a particular copy of an authoritative edition of the text, namely, that particular copy from which an editor begins the process of producing a critical edition. We here use copytext in this earlier, less restricted sense.5 From what has been said, it will be seen that the copytext provides editors intent on producing a critical text with a starting point. It provides editors with that version of the text over which principled and systematic judgment is to be exercised. Moreover, the copytext provides editors with substantial guidance in their efforts to establish a critical text, for, having settled on a copytext, editors follow the readings and forms of that text unless they find good reasons to do otherwise. These "good reasons" may be many and varied, but they include such things as the evidence provided by any holograph corrections or amendments in the hand of the author, the recognition of misprints of several kinds, and changes in printing style (the discontinuance of the use of small caps at the beginning of each paragraph, for example). Clearly, then, the critical text...