Hume

(David), philosopher and historian, b. Edinburgh, 26 April, 1711. In 1735 he went to France to study, and there wrote his Treatise on Human Nature , published in 1739. This work then excited no interest friendly or hostile. Hume’s E ays Moral and Political appeared in 1742, and in 1752 his Inquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals which of all his writings he considered the best. In 1755 he published his Natural History of Religion , which was furiously attacked by War burton in an anonymous tract. In 1754 he published the first volume of his History of England , which he did not complete till 1761. He became secretary to the Earl of Hertford, amba ador at Paris, where he was cordially welcomed by the philosophers. He returned in 1766, bringing Rou eau with him. Hume became Under Secretary of State in 1767, and in 1769 retired to Edinburgh, where he died 25 Aug. 1776. After his death his Dialogues on Natural Religion were published, and also some unpublished e ays on Suicide, the Immortality of the Soul, etc. Hume’s last days were singularly cheerful. His friend, the famous Dr. Adam Smith, considered him “as approaching as nearly to the idea of a perfectly wise and virtuous man as perhaps the nature of human frailty will permit.”