Hume’s views concerning the existence of body or external objects are notoriously difficult and intractable. The paper sheds light on the concept of body in Hume’s Treatise by defending three theses. First, that Hume’s fundamental tenet that the only objects that are present to the mind are perceptions must be understood as methodological, rather than metaphysical or epistemological. Second, that Hume considers legitimate the fundamental assumption of natural philosophy that through experience and empirical observation we know body. Third, that many of the contradictions and difficulties that interpreters attribute to Hume’s concept of body should be attributed instead, as Hume does, to every system of philosophy. Hume is notoriously difficult to pin down on fundamental questions, and this is specially the case of his position with regard to external objects or bodies in the Treatise. Although he insists that “nothing is ever really present with the mind but its perceptions or impressions and ideas ...” (T 1.2.6.7)1, throughout the Treatise Hume appeals to bodies and external objects as such. In her influential paper, “The Objects of Hume’s Treatise,” Marjorie Grene painstakingly documents the different senses of ‘objects,’ and she convincingly argues that ‘object’ as external existence dominates the Treatise (Grene 1994). Despite Hume’s firm commitment to the thesis that the only objects that can be present to the mind are perceptions, the objects most present in the Treatise do not seem to be perceptions. Interpretations vary widely. Some argue that perceptions are only the immediate objects of the mind, that Hume’s “approach to the external world is inside-out” (D. Norton 2004). Others maintain that Hume, like Berkeley, whose self-proclaimed idealism does not prevent him from speaking with the vulgar about quads and trees, merely engages in the facile discourse of the common man, endorsing only the existence of perceptions. For Hume, external objects or bodies are nothing but collections of perceptions. Others find greater significance in Hume’s vulgar attitude; Hume appears to be not just speaking, but also thinking with the vulgar. These interpreters draw a distinction 1 References to the Treatise are to David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. David Fate Norton and Mary J. Norton (New York: Oxford University Press, 2011), hereafter cited as “T” followed by Book, part, section, and paragraph numbers. See, for instance, also T 1.4.2.21, 47; T 2.2.2.22; T 3.1.1.2. 207 The Concept of Body in Hume’s Treatise © ProtoSociology Volume 30/2013: Concepts – Contemporary and Historical Perspectives between an ordinary context or standpoint that allows bodies and a philosophical standpoint that is reductive and acknowledges only perceptions. Finally, others regard Hume’s views irremediably inconsistent, or worse. John Passmore complains of the substantial contradictions displayed in Hume’s remarks on the external world (Passmore 1952, 84–91). Richard Popkin refers to Hume as “schizophrenic” and of “split personality” (Popkin 1966, 98). Barry Stroud suggests that Hume’s position might be inescapably “paradoxical” (Stroud 1977, 245–50). This paper falls into two main parts. In the first, I discuss the most serious problems with the first three positions canvassed above, a discussion that will illuminate some of the motivating reasons behind the more discouraging readings. In the second, I put forward a different interpretation. I defend three central points. First, that Hume’s fundamental thesis concerning the objects of the mind is methodological, rather than metaphysical, or even epistemological. Second, and related, that Hume admits, indeed, insists on different domains of inquiry. Most generally, he contrasts natural philosophy, whose subject is body, and moral philosophy, to which Hume’s own science of man belongs, and whose subject is mind. Third, that there are, indeed, “contradictions and difficulties” involving the concept of body or external existence in the Treatise. But they are not Hume’s. Rather, as Hume explicitly points out, they are found “in every system concerning external objects, and in the idea of matter, which we fancy so clear and determinate ...” (T 1.4.5.1)