 Hume argues that we must “pass from words to the true and real subject of the controversy”—ideas. He believes he has found a way to accurately determine their content—his account of definition. He touts it as “a new microscope or species of optics”, predicting that it will produce equally dramatic results in the moral sciences as its hardware counterparts—telescopes and microscopes—have produced in natural philosophy (EHU 7.1.4/62).