 For Hume the chief point about the similarity between ourselves and our ancestors is that histories greatly contribute to the scientific account of human nature by massively extending our otherwise very limited observational data base. Hume writes: “Mankind are so much the same, in all times and places, that history informs us of nothing new or strange in this particular. Its chief use is only to discover the constant and universal principles of human nature, by showing men in all varieties of circumstances and situations, and furnishing us with materials from which we may form our observations and become acquainted with the regular springs of human action and behaviour. These records of wars, intrigues, factions, and revolutions, are so many collections of experiments, by which the politician or moral philosopher fixes the principles of his science, in the same manner as the physician or natural philosopher becomes acquainted with the nature of plants, minerals, and other external objects, by the experiments which he forms concerning them” (Hume [E], pp. 83–84). On this account of history, it is perhaps the single most important resource for the philosopher seeking to construct a scientific account of human nature. Among the historians produced by eighteenth century Scotland were Turnbull, Hume, Smith, Ferguson and William Robertson. In light of Hume’s observation it is not surprising that so much history was written by men prominent for their philosophical writings on human nature.