The next step in the evolution of English thought was to consist in a return to Locke's method, involving a complete breach with seventeenth-century Platonism, and with the Continental metaphysics that it had inspired. This decisive movement was effected by one in whom German criticism has recognised the greatest of all British philosophers. David Hume (1711-1776) was born and bred at Edinburgh, which also seems to have been through life his favourite residence. But his great work, the _Treatise on Human Nature_, was written during a stay in France, between the ages of twenty-three and twenty-six. Thus his precocity was even greater than Berkeley's. Indeed, such maturity of thought so early reached is without a parallel in history. But Hume's style had not then acquired the perfection--the inimitable charm, Kant calls it--of his later writings; and, whether for this or for other reasons, the book, in his own words, "fell dead-born from the press." In middle life the office of librarian of the Advocates' Library at Edinburgh gave him access to the materials for his _History of England_, which proved a source of fame and profit. A profound historical scholar, J. S. Brewer, tells us that Hume "possessed in a pre-eminent degree some of the highest excellences of a historian." Other historians have treated their subjects philosophically; he furnishes the sole instance of a great speculative genius who has also produced a historical masterpiece of the first order. But morally it is a blot on his fame. It is sad that a philosopher should have deliberately perverted the truth, that one who has {78} [Illustration: DAVID HUME.] performed priceless services to freedom of thought should have made himself the apologist of clericalising absolutism, and, still more, that a master of English played this part to some extent through hatred of the great English people engendered by disappointed literary ambition. It may be mentioned, however, as a possible extenuation that towards the middle of the eighteenth century the highest English ability had thrown itself, with few exceptions, on the Tory side. It must be mentioned {79} also that in private life Hume's character was entirely admirable--cheerful, generous, and gentle, without a frailty and without a stain. His opinions were unpopular; but his life offered no handle for obloquy, although his studious retirement was more than once exchanged for the responsibilities of political office, and the freedom from pedantry so conspicuous in his writings bears witness to habits of well-bred social intercourse.