ABSTRACT
David Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, in 1711. His father, a lawyer, died before David was 2 years old. He was raised by his mother, a deeply religious woman, on a pleasant, but modest, family estate at Ninewells, near Berwick in southern Scotland. Young David was very religious as a boy, often making lists of his sins so that he could seek forgiveness. But shortly after beginning his studies at the University of Edinburgh, at age 12, he seems to have lost his faith. In 1729, when he was only 18, Hume had a breakthrough, discovering what he called “a new Science of Thought. Hume was appointed Librarian to the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh in 1752. In this post, he wrote a multivolume history of England. He also managed to infuriate the library curators with his selections, and in 1757, he was forced to resign when he refused to remove books the curators considered obscene.
