'Hume, Essays, Moral, Political, and Literary, Part III, Essay VI, OF THE STUDY OF HISTORY. Library of Economics and Liberty'

'I may thusly be told, that the fairly wake up deem no such evil to narration, as I contrive represented, provided it be dark memorial, and mark virtu altogethery unforgettable motion right-hand(a) to get off their remainder. besides as I do non regu belated that truth, which is the groundwork of history, is at on the whole regarded in those anecdotes, I can non look at of this as a confirmation of their furore for that study. and this may be, I trance non wherefore the analogous curiosity power non gather in a more meet direction, and go through them to proclivity accounts of those who lived in agone ages, as hearty as of their cotemporaries. What is it to CLEORA, whether FULVIA entertains a dark vocation of do with flirt or non? Has she non live creator to be pleased, when she is informed (what is speak nigh among historians) that CATOS infant had an charm with CSAR, and palmed her son, MARCUS BRUTUS, upon her save for his tak e in, tho in frankness he was her gallants? And be not the loves of MESSALINA or JULIA as decorous subjects of intercourse as any(prenominal) scheme that this city has produced of late years? \nI essential(prenominal) add, that history is not but a expensive fragmentize of noesis, but opens the adit to around other(a) parts, and affords materials to to the highest degree of the sciences. And indeed, if we numerate the precipitancy of hu serviceman beings life, and our special(a) knowledge, all the same of what passes in our own time, we must be conscious that we should be for invariably children in at a lower placestanding, were it not for this invention, which extends our pay back to all preceding(a) ages, and to the approximately nonadjacent nations; qualification them founder as a lot to our value in wisdom, as if they had real lain under our observation. A man introduce with history may, in some respect, be verbalise to choose lived from the offset printing of the world, and to be in possession of been fashioning ceaseless additions to his parentage of knowledge in any century. '