In 1933 Keynes, who had been collecting the works of David Hume for almost as long as he had collected books, received from his brother Geoffrey a copy of a pamphlet An Abstract of a Book Lately Published entitled A Treatise of Human Nature, etc., originally published anonymously in London in 1740. According to tradition, the author of the Abstract was the young Adam Smith. On examining the work, Keynes began to doubt the accepted story, doubts that he confirmed in discussions with Piero Sraffa, another Cambridge economist-book collector. They were able to show that the pamphlet was not the product of Smith but rather of Hume himself. Keynes and Sraffa republished the pamphlet with Cambridge University Press in 1938, adding a joint introduction. This appears below.

From An Abstract of A Treatise on Human Nature 1740: A Pamphlet hitherto Unknown by David Hume (1938)

In the summer of 1734 Hume left Bristol for France. There he remained for three years, first of all at Rheims and then at La Fleche in Anjou. In this period the Treatise of Human Nature was mainly composed. In the autumn of 1737 he wrote to his friend, Henry Home:*

I am sorry I am not able to satisfy your curiosity, by giving you some general notion of the plan upon which I proceed. But my opinions are so new, and even some terms I am obliged to make use of, that I could not purpose, by any abridgement, to give my system an air of likelihood, or so much as make it intelligible.