The result is a pretty shrub enough; but not the tree of knowledge, with its roots firmly fixed in fact, its branches perennially budding forth into new truths, which Hume might have reared.

Perhaps, after all, worthy Mrs.Hume was, in the highest sense, right.

Davie was "wake-minded," not to see that the world of philosophy was his to overrun and subdue, if he would but persevere in the work he had begun.
But no--he must needs turn aside for "success": and verily he had his reward; but not the crown he might have won.
In 1740, Hume seems to have made an acquaintance which rapidly ripened into a life long friendship.

Adam Smith was, at that time, a boy student of seventeen at the University of Glasgow; and Hume sends a copy of the _Treatise_ to "Mr.Smith," apparently on the recommendation of the well-known Hutcheson, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the university.
It is a remarkable evidence of Adam Smith's early intellectual development, that a youth of his age should be thought worthy of such a present.
In 1741 Hume published anonymously, at Edinburgh, the first volume of _Essays Moral and Political_, which was followed in 1742 by the second volume.
These pieces are written in an admirable style and, though arranged without apparent method, a system of political philosophy may be gathered from their contents.

Thus the third essay, _That Politics may be reduced to a Science_, defends that thesis, and dwells on the importance of forms of government.
"So great is the force of laws and of particular forms of government, and so little dependence have they on the humours and tempers of men, that consequences almost as general and certain may sometimes be deduced from them as any which the mathematical sciences afford us."-- (III.