To ex-Hume

I meant to exhume the origin of ideas from its grave.
I just started to read Hume's "Concerning Human Understanding" and once again, I felt that dead person - me connection similar to what I realized when I read Ayn Rand's "Romantic Manifesto." Allow me to quote Hume:

The most lively thought is still inferior to the dullest sensation...

We may observe a like distinction to run through all the other perceptions of the mind. A man in a fit of anger, is actuated in a very different manner from one who only thinks of that emotion. If you tell me, that any person is in love, I easily understand your meaning, and form a just conception of his situation; but never can mistake that conception for the real disorders and agitations of the passion. When we reflect on our past sentiments and affections, our thought is a faithful mirror, and copies its objects truly; but the colours which it employs are faint and dull, in comparison of those in which our original perceptions were clothed. It requires no nice discernment or metaphysical head to mark the distinction between them...

Here therefore we may divide all the perceptions of the mind into two classes or species, which are distinguished by their different degrees of force and vivacity. The less forcible and lively are commonly denominated Thoughts or Ideas. The other species want a name in our language...Let us, therefore, use a little freedom, and call them Impressions...By the term impression, then, I mean all our more lively perceptions, when we hear, or see, or feel, or love, or hate, or desire, or will. And impressions are distinguished from ideas, which are the less lively perceptions, of which we are conscious, when we reflect on any of those sensations or movements above mentioned.

Am I relieved. That I'm not alone. Well, Hume and Rand are dead. And I don't necessarily subscribe to whatever moral or abstruse philosophy they espouse. But my relief is mostly on the awareness that not everyone has an aversion towards thinking about the unknown and facing the uncertain.