i EARLY LIFE 11 



title of " wake-minded " at home; betook himself 

 to a foreign country. 



" I went over to France, with a view of prosecuting my 

 studies in a country retreat : and there I laid that plan of 

 life which 1 have steadily and successfully pursued. I re- 

 solved to make a very rigid frugality supply my deficiency 

 of fortune, to maintain unimpaired my independency, and 

 to regard every object as contemptible except the improve- 

 ment of my talents in literature." * 



Hume passed through Paris on his way to 

 Rheims, where he resided for some time; though 

 the greater part of his three years' stay was spent 

 at La Fleche, in frequent intercourse with the 

 Jesuits of the famous college in which Descartes 

 was educated. Here he composed his first work, 

 the " Treatise of Human Nature "; though it 

 would appear from the following passage in the 

 letter to Cheyne, that he had been accumulating 

 materials to that end for some years before he left 

 Scotland. 



"I found that the moral philosophy transmitted to us 

 by antiquity laboured under the same inconvenience that 

 has been found in their natural philosophy, of being en- 

 tirely hypothetical, and depending more upon invention 

 than experience : every one consulted his fancy in erecting 

 schemes of virtue and happiness, without regarding human 

 nature, upon which every moral conclusion must depend." 



This is the key-note of the " Treatise "; of 

 which Hume himself says apologetically, in one of 

 his letters, that it was planned before he was 



* My Own Life. 



