Nice. As I said, I had never read a biography of him. Somewhere it was in my mind that he was "irrascible". I do not know where that came from. I guess I was wrong.
One of the really really great thinkers of history (and apparently a great human being). Now I have the conflict. Yahweh says that Lot was the most Righteous and Just (the character who offered his daughters to a Gang Bang and when it did not pan out he had sex with both of them and got them both preggers). But real people say that Hume did not have incest. Who to choose as a hero?? The atheist...or the worst sub-human person in all of history--the guy Yahweh loved??
"Thus died our most excellent and never to be forgotten friend; concerning whose philosophical opinions men will, no doubt, judge variously, every one approving or condemning them, according as they happen to coincide or disagree with his own; but concerning whose character and conduct there can scarce be a difference of opinion. His temper, indeed, seemed to be more happily balanced, if I may be allowed such an expression, than that perhaps of any other man I have ever known. Even in the lowest state of his fortune, his great and necessary frugality never hindered him from exercising, upon proper occasions, acts both of charity and generosity. It was a frugality founded, not upon avarice, but upon the love of independency. The extreme gentleness of his nature never weakened either the firmness of his mind or he steadiness of his resolutions. His constant pleasantry was the genuine effusion of good nature and good humour, tempered with delicacy and modesty, and without even the slightest tincture of malignity, so frequently the disagreeable source of what is called wit in other men..." |
