An Analysis of David Hume’s “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding” In his passage “An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding”, David Hume seeks to answer the popular philosophical question of how human beings acquire knowledge. To Hume, knowledge is what the mind perceives, and these perceptions can be broken down and classified in two distinct categories; (1) Thoughts & Ideas, and (2) Impressions. Although these two “classes” are distinct, Hume contends that all thoughts and ideas are derived from impressions. To quote Hume, impressions are “all our more lively perceptions when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or