David Hume

I am an 18th century philosopher, often considered the most important English language philosopher of all time. I was born in Edinburgh, raised in a modest estate on the Whitadder River in the border lowlands near Berwick called Ninewells, and--because mother found me uncommonly wake-minded--entered university two years early at the age of 12. I was denied the Chair of Ethics at Edinburgh and later the Chair of Logic at Glasgow due to the controversial nature of my Treatise on Human Nature. This despite the fact that I was all but forced to castrate the manuscript at the behest of Bishop Butler (which perhaps also accounts for why the text was such a miserable failure).I never did end up holding an academic post, but that is just as well as teaching may have distracted me from writing my monumental History of England, which kept me in wealth for all of my days.(If you are really interested, you can read my autobiographical essay "My Own Life," here .)