(b) Hume.--David Hume was born in Edinburgh in 1711, and died in the same
city, 1776. His position as librarian, which he held in the place of
his birth, 1752-57, gave the opportunity for his _History of England_(
1754-62). His chief work, the _Treatise on Human Nature_, which, however,
found few readers, was composed during his first residence in France in
1734-37. Later he worked over the first book of this work into his
_Enquiry concerning Human Understanding_ (1748); the second book into _A
Dissertation on the Passions_; and the third _into An Enquiry concerning
the Principles of Morals_. These, and others of his essays, found so much
favor that, during his second sojourn in France, as secretary to Lord
Hertford, in 1763-66, he was already honored as a philosopher of world-wide
renown. Then, after serving for some time as Under-Secretary of State, he
retired to private life at home (1769).

The three books of the _Treatise on Human Nature_, which appeared in
1739-40, are entitled _Of the Understanding, Of the Passions, Of Morals_.
Of the five volumes of the Essays, the first contains the _Essays Moral,
Political, and Literary_, 1741-42; the second, the _Enquiry concerning
Human Understanding_, 1748; the third, the _Enquiry concerning the
Principles of Morals_, 1751; the fourth, the _Political Discourses_, 1752;
the fifth, 1757, the _Four Dissertations_, including that _On the Passions_
and the _Natural History of Religion_. After Hume's death appeared the
_Autobiography_, 1777; the _Dialogues concerning Natural Religion_, 1779;
and the two small essays on _Suicide_ and the _Immortality of the Soul_,
1783.[1] The _Philosophical Works_ were published in 1827, and frequently
afterward.[2]

[Footnote 1: Or 1777, cf. Green and Grose's edition, vol. iii. p. 67
_seq_.--Tr.]

[Footnote 2: Among the works on Hume we may mention Jodl's prize treatise,
1872, and Huxley's _Hume_ (English Men of Letters), 1879. [The reader may
be referred also to Knight's _Hume_ (Blackwood's Philosophical Classics),
1886; to T.H. Green's "Introductions" in Green and Grose's edition of the
collected works in four volumes, 1874 (new ed. 1889-90), which is now
standard; and to Selby-Bigge's reprint of the original edition of the
_Treatise_, I vol., 1888, with a valuable Analytical Index.]]

Hume's object, like that of Berkeley, is the improvement of Locke's
doctrine of knowledge. In several respects he does not go so far as
Berkeley, in others