David Hume

David Hume wrote A Treatise of Human Nature in France in his twenties and watched it fall, he said, dead-born from the press. He recast its arguments in the Enquiries, was twice refused a professorship as an atheist, and made his fortune with a History of England. His scepticism about causation, the self and miracles woke Kant from his dogmatic slumber, and his essays on taste, politics and economics were read across Europe. Boswell visited him dying and found him cheerful and unbelieving to the end. Adam Smith, his closest friend, said he approached as near to the ideal of a wise and virtuous man as human frailty allows.