HUME’S expectation of popularity from his “Essays” seems to have been modest, while from his “Treatise on Human Nature” he anticipated success which would make him at once one of the dictators of philosophical thought. To his intense disappointment, no one noticed the “Treatise,” while the “Essays” gave him immediate reputation. It was so with nearly all the rest of what he esteemed his great works. His “Enquiry Concerning the Human Understanding” and his “Natural History of Religion” failed to reward him with the applause he expected, while his “History of England” was immediately accepted at a valuation at least as high as he himself had put upon it. He had, to a remarkable degree, what Sidney Smith called the Scotch love of “metapheesics,” and if it brought him little besides opprobrium from his own generation, it has caused him to be studied by all subsequent generations with Locke and Berkeley as one of the few British philosophers whose opinions, right or wrong, are too important to be left out of consideration.

  He was born in Edinburgh, April 26th, 1711. He studied at the university of his native city, but he owed his education more to himself than to scholastic training. His means were always limited and his life regular. He made a deliberate and successful attempt to suppress everything in himself which threatened to interfere with his work. His writings need not be defended against the attacks made upon them during his lifetime and since. But as far as he taught the scientific “skepticism,” which means “looking” into all the phenomena of nature as the revelation of unity of purpose, he is entitled to be classed with those whose work made possible the educated scientific intellect of which the locomotive, the telegraph, and the electric motor are manifestations.