As a student at Edinburgh University, Hume had 'an insurmountable aversion to everything but the pursuits of philosophy and general learning.' In 1734, he went to France for three years, where he completed the Treatise on Human Nature, published in 1739-1740.
In 1745, he was refused the chair of philosophy at Edinburgh because of his religious heterodoxy. He became secretary to Lieutenant-General Arthur St. Clair, joining him on missions to Ireland, Vienna, and Turin. In 1748, he published An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding and, in 1751, the Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals. Despite these publications, in 1752, he was rejected for a professorship at Glasgow University. Between
1754 and 1762, Hume wrote the popular History of England. In 1750, he became keeper of the law library in Edinburgh. In 1763, he returned to France for three years. Amongst his many friends in France were the Enlightenment thinkers Diderot, d'Alembert, and Jean-Jacques Rousseau and, in Scotland, the economist Adam Smith. Hume served as undersecretary of state for Scotland from 1767 to 1769. He spent the last years of his life in Edinburgh, working on the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.
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