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Bible Encyclopedias
Hume, David
The Nuttall Encyclopedia
or Philosopher and historian, born in Edinburgh, the younger son of a Berwickshire laird; after trial of law and mercantile life gave himself up to study and speculation; spent much of his life in France, and fraternised with the sceptical philosophers and encyclopedists there; his chief works, "Treatise on Human Nature", "Essays" (1741-42), "Principles of Morals", and "History of England" (1754-61); his philosophy was sceptical to the last degree, but from the excess of it provoked a reaction in Germany, headed by Kant, which has yielded positive results; he found in life no connecting principle, no purpose, and had come to regard it as a restless aimless, heaving up and down, swaying to and fro on a waste ocean of blind sensations, without rational plot or counterplot, God or devil, and had arrived at an absolutely non-possumus stage, which, however, as hinted, was followed by a speedy and steady rebound, in speculation at all events; Hume's history has been characterised by Stopford Brooke as clear in narrative and pure in style, but cold and out of sympathy with his subject, as well as inaccurate; personally, he was a guileless and kindly man (1711-1776).
Public Domain.
Wood, James, ed. Entry for 'Hume, David'. The Nuttall Encyclopedia. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/nut/h/hume-david.html. Frederick Warne & Co Ltd. London. 1900.
