English Essays: Sidney to Macaulay.
The Harvard Classics. 1909–14.
Introductory Note
David HumeD
Hume is most celebrated for his philosophical writings, in which he carried the empirical philosophy of Locke to the point of complete skepticism. He wrote also a “History of England” in eight volumes, and a large number of treatises and essays on politics, economics, ethics, and esthetics. The following essay, “Of the Standard of Taste,” is a typical example of his clear thinking and admirable style. “He may be regarded,” says Leslie Stephen, “as the acutest thinker in Great Britain of the eighteenth century, and the most qualified interpreter of its intellectual tendencies.”