Poverty and informed reasoning

Lying in his death bed in 1776, David Hume wrote a moving letter of good-bye to Madame Boufflers, with whom he was almost certainly in love. "I see death approach gradually without any anxiety or regret," wrote Hume to the Comtesse, adding, "I salute you, with great affection and regard, for the last time." It is hard to think that Hume would not have, at that time, looked nostalgically also at the world of ideas and reflections, to which too he was saying goodbye, and with which he was als...