Governments too steady and uniform, as they are seldom free, so are they, in the judgment of some attended with another sensible inconvenience: they abate the active powers of men; depress courage, invention, and genius; and produce a universal lethary in the people.

Hume advocated a compatibilist theory of free will that proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy. Of Miracles section X of the Enquiry was often publiDavid Humed separately. Here he reports that at the age of eighteen "there seem'd to be open'd up to me a new Scene of Thought.

Without direct impressions of a metaphysical "self" he concluded that humans have no actual conception of the self only of a bundle of sensations associated with the self. 26 April] 1711 – 25 August 1776) was a Scottish philosopher historian economist and essayist known especially for his philosophical empiricism and scepticism. Hume advocated a compatibilist theory of free will that proved extremely influential on subsequent moral philosophy.