reason is the slave of passion; humans are driven by feeling rather than logic,

feeling comes first and rationality is then used to sustain the initial feeling,

believed that not all feelings are equal and that education of the passions is necessary,

Hume believed that sympathy, re-assurance, good example, encouragement and art should be the preferred teaching method and only for the select few should rationality be used,

via the thesis that belief in God is irrational, arguing for and against God using rationality is thereby futile

believer in religious toleration where people that belong to a particular belief should not be held accountable and would have to be put right via rational argumentation, but should be seen as emotional creatures that should be left in peace so long as they do likewise,

having a rational argument over God is considered by Hume the height of follies and arrogance,

disbelief in personal identity, the "myself" being elusive and irrational, but the "self" being interpreted as a summation of perceptions,

in response to René Descartes, that considered throwing out every single irrational thought, Hume argued that the irrational should instead be preserved for the simple reason because it works for each individual,