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David Hume on the existential limitations of philosophical reasoning

I’ve always loved this section from Treatise Book 1 Section 7 in which Hume describes how his philosophical musings seem so ‘strained and ridiculous’ after time with his friends:

Most fortunately it happens, that since reason is incapable of dispelling these clouds, nature herself suffices to that purpose, and cures me of this philosophical melancholy and delirium, either by relaxing this bent of mind, or by some avocation, and lively impression of my senses, which obliterate all these chimeras. I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and am merry with my friends; and when after three or four hours amusement, I would return to these speculations, they appear so cold, and strained, and ridiculous, that I cannot find in my heart to enter into them any farther.

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