HUME, DAvrn, the philosopher and historian, was b. at Edinburgh on April 26, (0. S.) 1711. His father was the laird or proprietor of the estate of Ninewells in Ber wickshire, but David being the youngest son had to make his own fortune with no other assistance than an education and the influence of his respectable family. He was educated at home and at the college of Edinburgh. His father designed law as his pro fession and he submitted to the initial steps of the proper practical training, but it was not a pursuit to his liking. Deserting it he experimented on a mercantile house in but commerce was not more congenial to him than jurisprudence and he gave it a very short trial. Ho now became a musty student, devoting himself to books with no settled practical object before him. He has recorded his sufferings at this time from despondency and depression of spirits, caused apparently by the effects of monotonous study on the stomach. At 23 years of age he went to France and lived some time in La Fleche, where he describes himself as wandering about in solitude and dreaming the dream of his philosophy. In:1739 he published the first and second lad6k of his Treatise on Human Nature—the germ of his philosophy and still perhaps the best exposition of it, since it has there a freshness and decision approaching to paradox, which he modified in his later works. Although the dawn of a new era in philosophy, this hook was little noticed. It was a work of demolition. By separating the impressions or ideas ereat«I on the thinking mind by an external world from the absolute existence of that world itself, he showed that almost everything concerning the latter was taken for granted, and he demanded proof of its existence of a kind not yet afforded. It was thus that he set a whole army of philosophers at work, either to refute what he had said or seriously sto fill up the blanks which he discovered, and hence he originated both the Scotch and the German school of metaphysicians. In 1741 and 1742 he publi,hed two small volumes called Essays Moral and Political; they were marked by learning and thought and elegantly written, but are not among the more remarkable of his woilts. Ile felt keenly at this time the want of some fixed lucrative pursuit, and his longing for independence was the cause of a sad interruption to his studious and philosophical pur suits. He was induced to become the companion or guardian of an insane noUeman and had to mix with the jealousies and mercenary objects of those 11 ho naturally gather round such a center. In 1747 he obtained a rather more congenial appointment as sec retary to gen. St. Clair, whom he accompanied in the expedition to the coast of France and the attack on port L'Orient, the depot of the French East Inc: company; this affair ]tad no important results, but it gave Hume a notion of actual tit arfare. Next year he accompanied the gen. in a diplomatic mission to France, and as he traveled he took notes of his impressions of Holland, Germany. and Italy,,m hich arc published in his Life and Correspondence. In 1751 he published his Inquiry into the Principles y
Morals, a work of great originality and one of the clearest expositions of the ieading principles of what is termed the utilitarian system. At the same time he intended to publish his Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, but his friends, altatred by the skep tical spirit pervading them, prevailed on him to lay them aside, and they were not made public till after his Leath. In his 35th year he had unsuccessfully competed for the chair of moral philosophy in Edinburgh, and at this period we find him unsuccessful in an attempt to obtain the chair of logic in Glasgow. Next year, in 1759, appeared his Political Discourses. Here again he made an era in literature, for in this little work he announced those principles of political economy comprehending the doctrine of free trade, which it fell to his friend Adam Smith more fully and comprehensively to develop. He was appointed at this time keeper of the advocates' litha•y with a very small salary, which he devoted to a charitable purpose. It was here that, surrounded with books, he formed the design of writing the history of England. In 1754 he issued a quarto volume of the Ilistory of the Stuarts, containing the Reigns of James I. and Charles I., and presently completed this portion of the work in a second volume, bring ing it down to the revolution. He then went backwards through the house of Tudor, and completed the work from the Roman period downwards in 1562. While so employed he published Four Dissertations: the _Natural History o fReligion; of the Pas sions; of Tragedy; of the Standard of Taste (1757). Two other dissertations intended to accompany these were canceled by him after they were printed—they are On Suicide and The Immortality of the Soul, and were subsequently printed in his works In 1763 he went to France as secretary to lord. Hertford's embassy; here he was in his element, and found fame at last. He became familiar with the brilliant wits and savants of the Parisian circle—with Turgot, D'Alembert, Helvetius, Ilol•iaph, Diderot. Buffon, Malesherbes, Crebillon, and the rest, as well as with the no h ss distinguished female eminences, De Boufflers, Page de Boccage, Geofrin, Du Dfiand, and L'Espi passe. His sojourn in Paris was unfortunate in bringing him into intimacy with the restless, vain, and self-tormenting Rousseau, who, after experiencing much substantial kindness from Hume, got suspicions and forced him into a memorable quarrel. After his return home in 1766 he accepted the responsible office of under-secretary of state for she home department. In his own life he says: "I returned to Edinburgh in 1769 very opulent (for I possessed a revenue of £1000 a year), healthy and though somewhat stricken in years, with the prospect of enjoying long my case and of seeing the increase of my reputation." His health gave way in 1674, and he died at Edinburgh Aug. 25, 1776. See Hume's Life by J. H. Burton (1850), and the admirable edition of his works by T. II. Green and T. H. Grosse (4 vols., 1875).