The Encyclopedia Americana (1920)/Home, Henry

HOME, Henry, Lord Kames, Scottish lawyer and author: b. Kames, Berwickshire, 1696; d. Edinburgh, 27 Dec 1782. He studied law at Edinburgh, and, called to the bar in 1724, soon acquired reputation by a number of publications on the civil and Scottish law. In 1752 he became a judge of session, and assumed the title of Lord Kames. In addition to legal works he published ‘Essays on British Antiquities’; ‘Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion,’ in which he advocates the doctrine of philosophical necessity; ‘Introduction to the Art of Thinking’; and his best-known work, ‘Elements of Criticism,’ in which, discarding all arbitrary rules of literary composition, he endeavors to establish a new theory on the principles of human nature. In 1776 he published the ‘Gentleman Farmer’; and in 1781 ‘Loose Thoughts on Education.’