Henry Home (Lord Kames), an aesthetician and moral philosopher, was born at Kames, Berwickshire, Scotland. He was educated at home and indentured to a writer of the signet in Edinburgh, but he resolved to become an advocate and was admitted to the Scottish bar in 1724. He became a judge of the Court of Session in 1752 and assumed the judicial title of Lord Kames. He was advanced to the High Court of Justiciary in 1763 and was still serving at the time of his death.

Kames wrote a number of books, several of them on legal subjects. His Sketches of the History of Man (2 vols., Edinburgh, 1774) bridged his interests in history and philosophy, and he frequently referred to the Sketches in his Essays on the Principles of Morality and Natural Religion (3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1779). His other philosophical work is Elements of Criticism (2nd ed., Edinburgh, 1763), a...