It’s the birthday of Scottish philosopher and essayist David Hume (April 26, Old Style, 1711-1776), best known for spinning such yarns as A Treatise of Human Nature (1739-1740), Enquiries concerning Human Understanding (1748), and Concerning the Principles of Morals (1751). Hume is considered “the most important philosopher ever to write in English,” according to the good people over at The Hume Society, who must surely be unbiased.

Hume was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, and raised at Ninewells, a small family estate near Berwick-upon-Tweed. (You can’t make up these names. My life is complete.) Hume was raised by his widowed mother, who early on recognized that he was “uncommonly wake-minded” and shipped him off to  Edinburgh University when he was still 11, where he read literature and philosophy and math and science. In 1729, having used his brain too much—something you don’t see every day from an 18-year-old—Hume had a nervous breakdown and took several years to recover. (The Hume Society is strangely quiet about this.)

Along the way, Hume ditched his family’s Calvinism in spite of how much fun Calvinism is and went on to apply the scientific method to the question of how the mind acquires knowledge, and after having many smart thoughts in the right order, decided that “no theory of reality is possible.” So that’s useful.

Later in his life, Hume published his six-volume History of England, which became a bestseller and finally made him some money. He also spent three years in Paris, where he was surprisingly popular in salons. Fun fact: Hume was friends with Jean-Jacques Rousseau until Rousseau—on the run from actual persecution—got paranoid and decided Hume was conspiring against him. Hume wasn’t. The friendship tanked. Hume spent the end of his life pleasantly in Edinburgh, where he became BFFs with a lovely young woman named Nancy Orde, to whom it was rumored he was engaged. But Hume never married. He died of cancer at 65, one of the most influential thinkers of, well, ever.

It’s also the birthday of Jess Stearn (1914-2002), who wrote many books about the occult and weird psychic things and is best known for two biographies about Edgar Cayce, the reincarnation proponent. Stearn came to believe in the idea of serial lives himself, which leads us to the real reason I mention him at all: when Stearn died at 87, he had no funeral because, you know, reincarnation. Think of the savings.

Have a pleasant Friday, being careful not to overuse your brain, and stay scrupulously honest to the data.