"David Hume - My Own Life" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

although, perhaps, an undesigned tendency" to subvert a person's
"future and eternal welfare." The author concludes that the Life is
"a dry, unsatisfactory narrative; as little answering its title as
the expectation of the public." Hume's was published again in
1777, 1778, and in several 19th century editions of his collected
works. The following is from the first 1777 edition.



* * * *



MY OWN LIFE

IT Is difficult for a man to speak long of himself without
Vanity; therefore, I shall be short. It may be thought an instance
of vanity that I pretend at all to write my life; but this Narrative
shall contain little more than the History of my Writings; as,
indeed, almost all my life has been spent in Literary pursuits and
occupations. The first success of most of my writings was not such
as to be an object of vanity.

I was born the 26th of April 1711, old style, at Edinburgh. I
was of a good family, both by father and mother: my father's family

is a branch of the Earl of Home's, or Hume's; and my ancestors had
been proprietors of the estate, which my brother possesses, for
several generations. My mother was daughter of Sir David Falconer,
President of the College of Justice: the title of Lord Halkerton
came by succession to her brother.

My family, however, was not rich, and being myself a younger
brother, my patrimony, according to the mode of my country, was of
course very slender. My father, who passed for a man of parts, died
when I was an infant, leaving me, with an elder brother and a
sister, under the care of our mother, a woman of singular merit,
who, though young and handsome, devoted herself entirely to the
rearing and educating of her children. I passed through the ordinary
course of education with success, and was seized very early with a
passion for literature, which has been the ruling passion of my
life, and the great source of my enjoyments. My studious
disposition, my sobriety, and my industry, gave my family a notion
that the law was a proper profession for me; but I found an
unsurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philosophy
and general learning; and while they fancied I was poring upon Voet
and Vinnius, Cicero and Virgil were the authors which I was secretly
devouring.

My very slender fortune, however, being unsuitable to this plan
of life, and my health being a little broken by my ardent

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