How was A Treatise of Human Nature received when it first appeared?

When A Treatise of Human Nature was first published, its reception was notably poor. David Hume himself later described the work as having fallen "dead-born from the press," failing to generate enough attention to even provoke a response from critics.1

Despite Hume's claim in his Autobiography that the work went unnoticed, it did not entirely escape attention. When Hume later sought a position as a professor of moral philosophy at Edinburgh in 1744, the Treatise was cited by his opponents as evidence of heresy and atheism, which contributed to his unsuccessful candidacy.1