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David Hume, a Scottish philosopher and historian who lived from 1711-76, carried the empiricism of John Locke and George Berkeley to the logical extreme of radical skepticism. Although his family wanted him to become a lawyer, he felt an "insurmountable resistance to everything but philosophy and learning". Mr. Hume attended Edinburgh University where he studied but did not graduate, and in 1734 he moved to a French town called La Fleche to pursue philosophy. He later …

…of god the way he had tested our ideas of the self and substance by his rigorous principle of empiricism that I spoke about earlier. In ending I quote Hume in saying "to whatever length any one may push his speculative principles of skepticism, he must act and live and converse like other men… it is impossible for him to persevere in total skepticism, or make it appear in his conduct for a few hours.