HUME, DAVID
David Hume was an eighteenth-century Scottish
philosopher, historian, and social theorist who
influenced the development of skepticism and
empiricism, two schools of philosophical
thought. Hume’s economic and political ideas
influenced Adam Smith, the Scottish economist
and theorist of modern capitalism, and JAMES
MADISON, the American statesman who helped
shape the republican form of government
through his work on the U.S. Constitution.
Hume was born August 25, 1711, in Chirn-
side, near Edinburgh, Scotland. He entered
Edinburgh University when he was twelve. He
left the university after several years of study and
attempted to study law. He did not like the sub-
ject, and instead read widely in philosophy. In
1729 he suffered a nervous breakdown. After a
prolonged recovery, he moved to France in 1734,
where he wrote his first work, A Treatise on
Human Nature. The book was not published
until 1739 and was largely ignored. His next
work, Essays, Moral and Political (1741),
attracted favorable notice. Throughout the
1740s Hume’s religious skepticism doomed his
chances for a professorship at Edinburgh Uni-
versity. He spent the decade as a tutor and then
as secretary to a Scottish general. During this
period he wrote several more works of philoso-
phy, including An Enquiry Concerning the Prin-
ciples of Morals (1751).
In 1752 he was made librarian of the Faculty
of Advocates Library at Edinburgh. From 1754
to 1762, he published his monumental History of
England, which for many years was considered
the basic text of English history. This work
brought him international fame. He later served
as secretary to the British counsel in Paris. He
died August 25, 1776, in Edinburgh.
As a philosopher,Hume espoused a skeptical
viewpoint, distrusting speculation. He believed
that all knowledge comes from experience and
that the mind contains nothing but a collection
of perceptions, that all events are viewed and
interpreted through the sensations of the mind.
He attacked the principle of causality, which
states that nothing can happen or exist without
a cause. Hume was willing to admit that one
event, or set of sense impressions, always pre-
cedes another, but he argued that this did not
prove that the first event causes the second. A
person can conclude that causality exists, but
