Hume Passes On

David Hume would certainly have rejected the description of a death as “passing on.” He was famous as a non-believer. James Boswell visited the dying Hume in order to see if he had, as so many do, gotten right with religion in extremis. Boswell asked if Hume even feared no longer existing, but the reply was that he was not concerned with the fact that he did not exist before the beginning of life, so why should not existing bother him at the end of life.