Natural History of Religion - Early Modern Texts · David Hume Natural History of Religion Dedication [John Home (sometimes spelled ‘Hume’) was a distant relative of DavidHume’s,

The Natural History of Religion

David Hume

1757

Copyright © Jonathan Bennett 2017. All rights reserved

[Brackets] enclose editorial explanations. Small ·dots· enclose material that has been added, but can be read asthough it were part of the original text. Occasional •bullets, and also indenting of passages that are not quotations,are meant as aids to grasping the structure of a sentence or a thought. Every four-point ellipsis . . . . indicates theomission of a brief passage that seems to present more difficulty than it is worth. Longer omissions are reportedbetween brackets in normal-sized type. —This work was the first of Four Dissertations, published in a singlevolume.

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David Hume Natural History of Religion

Contents

Dedication . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21. Polytheism was the primary religion of men . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22. The origin of polytheism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43. The same subject continued . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64. Deities not considered as creators or formers of the world . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85. Various forms of polytheism: allegory, hero-worship . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106. How theism came from polytheism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127. Confirmation of this doctrine . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 158. Rise and fall of polytheism and theism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159. Comparing the two with regard to persecution and toleration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1610. . . . with regard to courage or abasement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1811. . . . with regard to reason or absurdity . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1812. . . .with regard to doubt or conviction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2013. Impious conceptions of the divine nature in popular religions of both kinds . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2414. The bad influence of popular religions on morality . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2615. General corollary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28


Glossary

affection: In speaking of people’s affections for one another,Hume uses the word as we do; but when he speaks innon-relative terms of human ‘affections’, the word coversall kinds of feelings, including anger, fear, etc.

final cause: purpose, design, what something is for

genius: intellectual skill; on page 13 intellectual level

infidelity: lack of religious belief

magian: high priest of the Zoroastrian religion

politeness: social polish

principle: Hume sometimes uses this word in a now-obsolete sense in which it means ‘source’, ‘cause’, ‘driver’,‘energizer’, or the like.

speculative: theoretical (concerning what is the case), incontrast to ‘practical’ (concerning what to do).

tutelar deity: a god protecting some individual person orplace or household

vulgar: uneducated, low-class


Dedication

[John Home (sometimes spelled ‘Hume’) was a distant relative of David

Hume’s, and a Presbyterian minister. His Douglas was vastly successful

in Scotland and England, his other plays much less so.]

To the Reverend John Home, author of Douglas, a Tragedy

My dear Sir, It was the practice of the ancients to addresstheir compositions only to friends and equals, and to maketheir dedications monuments of regard and affection, notof servility and flattery. In those days of open and candidliberty, a dedication did honour to the person to whom itwas addressed without degrading the author. Any partialitytowards the patron was at least the partiality of friendshipand affection.

Another instance of true liberty, of which only ancienttimes can provide us with an example, is the liberty ofthought that engaged men of letters, however different intheir abstract opinions, to maintain a mutual friendshipand regard; and never to quarrel about principles while theyagreed in inclinations and manners. Science was often thesubject of disputation, never of animosity. Cicero, a Platonist,addressed his philosophical treatises sometimes to the StoicBrutus, sometimes to the Epicurean Atticus.

I have a strong desire to renew these laudable practicesof antiquity by addressing the following dissertations to you,my good friend; for such I will always call and esteem you,despite our opposition regarding many of our speculative [see

Glossary] tenets. These differences of opinion I have foundonly to enliven our conversation; while our common passionfor science and letters served as a cement to our friendship.I still admired your genius [see Glossary] even when I imaginedthat you lay under the influence of prejudice; and you havetold me that you excused my errors on account of the candorand sincerity that you thought accompanied them.

But to tell truth, it is less my admiration of your finegenius that has brought me to make this address to youthan my esteem for your character and my affection for yourperson. The generosity of mind that always accompaniesyou, the cordiality of friendship, your spirited honour andintegrity, have made me desire that a monument to ourmutual friendship should be publicly erected and if possiblepreserved for posterity.

I also have the ambition to be the first who publiclyexpresses his admiration for your noble tragedy of Douglas,one of the most involving and affecting pieces that wasever exhibited on any stage. If I expressed a preferencefor it over Maffei’s Merope and over Voltaire’s Mérope, whichit resembles in its subject; if I affirmed that it containsmore fire and spirit than the former, more tenderness andsimplicity than the latter; I might be accused of partiality.And how could I entirely acquit myself, after the professionsof friendship I have made to you? But the unfeigned tearsthat flowed from every eye in the numerous performances ofit on this stage, the unparalleled command you appeared tohave over every affection [see Glossary] of the human breast,are incontestible proofs that you possess the true theatricalgenius of Shakespeare and Otway, refined from the unhappybarbarism of the one and the licentiousness of the other.

You know that my enemies have reproached me withthe love of paradoxes and singular opinions, and I admitthat even my friends have sometimes said the same; andI expect to be exposed to the same accusation on accountof my praise for your Douglas. I shall be told, no doubt,that I had artfully chosen the only time when this highesteem for that piece could be regarded as a paradox, namelybefore its publication; and that not being able to contradictin this particular the sentiments of the public, I have atleast resolved to get in before them. But I shall be amply

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compensated for all these jokes at my expense if you acceptthis testimony of my regard, and believe me to be, with thegreatest sincerity, dear Sir, your most affectionate friend andhumble servant, David Hume.

Introduction

As every enquiry concerning religion is of the utmost impor-tance, two questions especially challenge our attention: (i)the question concerning its foundation in reason, and (ii) thequestion concerning its origin in human nature. Happily,question (i), which is the more important, admits of themore obvious solution, or at least the clearer one. Thewhole frame of nature bespeaks a thinking author; andno rational enquirer can after serious reflection suspendfor a moment his belief regarding the primary principles ofgenuine theism and religion. But question (ii) concerningthe origin of religion in human nature is exposed to moredifficulty. The belief in invisible, thinking power has beenvery generally diffused over the human race, in all placesand in all ages; but it has perhaps not been •so universal asto have no exceptions or •even slightly uniform in the ideasit has suggested. If travellers and historians may be credited,some nations have been found that had no religious beliefs;and no two nations—indeed, hardly any two men—have everagreed precisely on religious matters. So it seems that this·religious· preconception does not arise from an originalinstinct or primary impression of nature such as gives riseto

•self-love,•affection between the sexes,•love of progeny,•gratitude, and•resentment;

since every instinct of this kind has been found to be abso-lutely universal in all nations and ages, and has always aprecise determinate object which it inflexibly pursues. Thefirst religious principles [see Glossary] must be secondary; suchas may easily be perverted by various accidents and causes,and whose operation may sometimes by an extraordinaryconcurrence of circumstances be altogether prevented. Mypresent enquiry addresses two questions: What are theprinciples that give rise to the original belief? What arethe accidents and causes that direct its operation?

1. Polytheism was the primary religion of men

It appears to me that if we consider the improvement ofhuman society from its crude beginnings to a state of greaterperfection, polytheism or idolatry must have been the firstand most ancient religion of mankind. I shall try to confirmthis by the following arguments.

It is an incontestable matter of fact that about 1700 yearsago all mankind were polytheists. The doubtful and scepticalprinciples of a few philosophers, or the not entirely puretheism of one or two nations, do not constitute an objectionworth regarding. Behold, then, the clear testimony of history.The further back we go into antiquity, the more we findmankind plunged into polytheism. No marks, no symptomsof any more perfect religion. The most ancient records ofhuman race still present us with polytheism as the popularand established creed. The north, the south, the east, thewest, give their unanimous testimony to the same fact. Whatcan be opposed to so full an evidence?

As far as writing or history reaches, mankind in ancienttimes seem universally to have been polytheists. Shall weassert that in more ancient times, before the knowledge ofletters or the discovery of any art or science, men entertained

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the principles of pure theism? That would mean that whilethey were ignorant and barbarous they discovered truth, butthey fell into error as soon as they acquired learning andpoliteness [see Glossary].

This would contradict not only all appearance of probabil-ity but also our present experience concerning the principlesand opinions of barbarous nations. The savage tribes ofAmerica, Africa and Asia are all idolaters. Not a singleexception to this rule. If a traveller transported himselfinto any unknown region, and found inhabitants cultivatedwith arts and science, he could not without further inquirysay whether they were theists (though the odds are that theywould not be); but if he found them ignorant and barbarous,he could immediately declare them to be idolaters, withscarcely any possibility of his being mistaken.

It seems certain that, according to the natural progressof human thought, the ignorant multitude must first en-tertain some low and humdrum notion of superior powers,before they stretch their conception to the perfect Being whobestowed order on the whole frame of nature. To assert that

•they regarded the deity as a pure spirit—omniscient,omnipotent and omnipresent—before regarding himas a powerful though limited being, with humanpassions and appetites, limbs and organs,

would be as unreasonable as to imagine that•men inhabited palaces before huts and cottages, orstudied geometry before agriculture.

The mind rises gradually from inferior to superior. Byabstracting from what is imperfect, it forms an idea ofperfection; and, slowly distinguishing the nobler parts ofits own frame from the grosser parts, it learns to transferonly the former—much elevated and refined—to its divinity.The only thing that could disturb this natural progress ofthought would be an obvious and invincible argument that

immediately led the mind into the pure principles of theism,making it overleap at one bound the vast chasm betweenthe human and the divine nature. But though I acceptthat the order and frame of the universe, when carefullyexamined, provides such an argument, I cannot think thatthis consideration had an influence on mankind when theyformed their first crude notions of religion.

The causes of familiar objects never strike our attentionor curiosity; and however extraordinary or surprising theseobjects are in themselves, the raw and ignorant multitudepasses them over without much examination or enquiry.Adam, rising straight into paradise in the full perfectionof his faculties, would naturally be (as Milton representshim) astonished at the glorious appearances of nature, theheavens, the air, the earth, his own organs and limbs; andwould be led to ask where this wonderful scene came from.But a barbarous, necessitous animal such as a man is onthe first origin of society, pressed by so many wants andpassions, has no leisure to wonder at the regular face of na-ture or enquire into the cause of the objects he has graduallybecome accustomed to since his infancy. On the contrary,the more regular and uniform—i.e. the more perfect—natureappears, the more familiar it is to him and the less inclinedhe is to scrutinise and examine it. A monstrous birth exciteshis curiosity, and is regarded as a prodigy. Its novelty alarmshim and immediately sets him trembling, sacrificing, andpraying. But an animal that is complete in all its limbs andorgans is for him an ordinary spectacle, and produces noreligious opinion or attitude. Ask him where that animalcame from; he will tell you that it came from the copulationof its parents. And these? From the copulation of theirs.A few removes satisfy his curiosity, and set the objects atsuch a distance that he entirely loses sight of them. Don’tthink that he will so much as start the question of where

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the first animal came from, much less what the origin wasof the whole system or united fabric of the universe. And ifyou do raise such a question with him, don’t expect him toemploy his mind with any anxiety about such a remote anduninteresting subject lying far outside his intellectual limits.

Furthermore, if men were at first led by reasoning fromthe frame of nature into believing in one supreme being, theycould never have left that belief in order to accept polytheism.The principles of reason which at first produced and diffusedover mankind such a magnificent opinion would have tobe able even more easily to preserve it. The first inventionand proof of any doctrine is much more difficult than thesupporting and retaining of it.

There is a great difference between historical facts andspeculative opinions; and knowledge of them is propagated indifferent ways. When an historical fact is being passed alongby oral tradition from eye-witnesses and contemporaries, itis disguised in each narration, and may eventually retainlittle if any resemblance to the original truth it was based on.If men’s

•frail memories,•love of exaggeration, and•lazy carelessness

are not corrected by books and writing, they soon pervert theaccount of historical events. The result is something whereargument or reasoning has little or no place, and the truthcannot be recovered. That is how the fables of Hercules,Theseus and Bacchus are supposed to have been originallybased on true history, corrupted by tradition. But the caseis quite different with regard to speculative opinions. If theseopinions are based on arguments so clear and obvious asto carry conviction with people in general, the argumentsthat at first spread the opinions will still preserve them intheir original purity. If the arguments are more abstruse and

further from what ordinary folk can understand, the opinionswill always be confined to a few persons; and as soon as menstop thinking about the arguments, the opinions will beburied in oblivion. Whichever side of this dilemma we take,it seems impossible that theism could through reasoninghave been the primary religion of human race and thenthrough corruption given birth to polytheism and to all thesuperstitions of the heathen world. When reason is obvious,it prevents these corruptions; when it is abstruse, it keepsthe principles entirely from the knowledge of the vulgar [see

Glossary], who are the only ones liable to corrupt any principleor opinion.

2. The origin of polytheism

So if we want to indulge our curiosity by enquiring intothe origin of religion, we must turn our thoughts towardspolytheism, the primitive religion of uninstructed mankind.

If contemplation of the works of nature led men to thethought of invisible, thinking power, they could not possiblyentertain any conception except that of one being, who gaveexistence and order to this vast machine and adjusted allits parts according to one regular plan or connected system.Persons of a certain turn of mind don’t find it altogetherabsurd to suppose that several independent beings, endowedwith superior wisdom, might work together in devising andexecuting one regular plan; but this a merely arbitrarysupposition that must be admitted to be supported neitherby probability nor by necessity, if indeed it is even possible.All things in the universe are evidently of a piece. Eachthing is adjusted to each other thing. One design prevailsthroughout the whole. And this uniformity leads the mind toacknowledge one author; because the thought of different au-thors where there is no difference of attributes or operations

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serves only to perplex the imagination without bringing anysatisfaction to the understanding. Pliny tells us that thestatue of Laocoon was the work of three artists. But if wehad not been told this, we would never have imagined that agroup of figures cut from one stone and united in one planwas not the work and design of one sculptor. It is surelynot natural and obvious to ascribe any single effect to thecombination of several causes.

On the other hand, if we leave the works of natureand trace the footsteps of invisible power in the variousand contrary events of human life, we are inevitably ledto polytheism—the acknowledgment of several limited andimperfect deities. Storms and tempests ruin what is nour-ished by the sun. The sun destroys what is fostered by themoisture of dews and rains. War may be favourable to anation, whom the inclemency of the seasons afflicts withfamine. Sickness and pestilence may depopulate a kingdomamidst the most profuse plenty. The same nation is notequally successful by sea and by land at the same time. Anda nation that now triumphs over its enemies may soon bevanquished by them. In short, the course of events. . . .isso full of variety and uncertainty that if we suppose it tobe immediately ordered by any thinking beings, we mustacknowledge a contrariety in their designs and intentions;either

•a constant combat of opposite powers, or•a single power which, being weak or light-minded,keeps regretting what it has done and changing itsplans.

Each nation has its tutelar deity [see Glossary]. Each elementis subjected to its invisible power or agent. The province ofeach god is separate from that of the others. And the opera-tions of any one god are uncertain and variable. Today heprotects; tomorrow he abandons us. Prayers and sacrifices,

rites and ceremonies, well or ill performed, are the sources ofhis favour or enmity, and produce all the good or ill fortunethat are to be found among mankind.

We may conclude, therefore, that in all the nations thatembraced polytheism the first ideas of religion arose not fromcontemplating the works of nature but from a concern withthe events of life and the human mind’s incessant hopesand fears. Accordingly, we find that all idolaters—havingseparated the provinces of their deities—have recourse tothe invisible agent to whose authority they are immediatelysubjected, and whose province it is to superintend theactivity they are currently engaged in. Juno is invoked atmarriages, Lucina at births. Neptune receives the prayersof seamen, and Mars of warriors. The farmer cultivateshis field under the protection of Ceres, and the merchantacknowledges the authority of Mercury. Each natural eventis supposed to be governed by some thinking agent, andany prosperous or adverse event in life can be the subject ofspecial prayers or thanksgivings.

For men’s attention to be carried beyond the presentcourse of things and led into any inference concerning invisi-ble thinking power, they must be actuated by some passionthat prompts their thought and reflection—some motive thatspurs their first enquiry. But what passion can it be that hassuch a mighty consequence? Surely not speculative curiosity,or the pure love of truth. That motive is too refined for suchgross minds. It would lead men into enquiries into the frameof nature, a subject too comprehensive for their narrowcapacities. So the only passions that can be supposed towork on such barbarians are the ordinary affections [see

Glossary] of human life: the anxious concern for happiness,the dread of future misery, the terror of death, the thirst forrevenge, the appetite for food and other necessaries. Agitatedby hopes and fears of this nature, especially the last, men

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look with trembling curiosity into the course of future causes,and examine the various and contrary events of human life.And in this disordered scene, with eyes still more disorderedand astonished, they see the first obscure traces of divinity.

3. The same subject continued

We are placed in this world, as in a great theatre, wherethe true springs and causes of every event are entirelyconcealed from us; and we do not have sufficient wisdomto foresee the ills we are continually threatened with, orany power to prevent them. We hang in perpetual suspensebetween life and death, health and sickness, plenty andwant; which are distributed among the human speciesby secret and unknown causes whose operation is oftenunexpected and always unaccountable. So these unknowncauses become the constant object of our hope and fear;and while the •passions are kept in perpetual alarm by ananxious expectation of the events, the •imagination is equallyemployed in forming ideas of the powers we so entirelydepend on. If men could anatomise nature according to themost probable philosophy—or at least the most intelligibleone—they would find that these causes are nothing but theparticular constitution and structure of the minute partsof their own bodies and of external objects; and that allthe events about which they are so much concerned areproduced by a regular and constant machinery. But thisphilosophy is too hard for the ignorant multitude, who canonly conceive the unknown causes in a general and confusedmanner; though their imagination, perpetually at work onthe same subject, must try to form some particular anddistinct idea of them. The more they consider these causesthemselves, and the uncertainty of their operation, the lesssatisfaction they meet with in their researches; and they

would eventually have abandoned this arduous project if itwere not for a propensity in human nature which leads intoa system that gives them some satisfaction.

There is a universal tendency among mankind to think ofall things as being like themselves, and to transfer to everyobject the qualities they are familiarly acquainted with andintimately conscious of. We find human faces in the moon,armies in the clouds; and, if not corrected by experienceand reflection, our natural tendency leads us to ascribemalice or good-will to everything that hurts or pleases us.Hence the frequency and beauty of the devices in poetrywhere trees, mountains and streams are personified, and theinanimate parts of nature acquire sentiment and passion.These poetical figures and expressions have no effect on whatwe believe, but they are evidence of a certain tendency in theimagination, without which they could neither be beautifulnor natural. And a river-god is not always taken to be a merepoetical or imaginary personage, but may sometimes enterinto the belief-system of the ignorant vulgar; while each groveor field is represented as possessed by a particular spirit orinvisible power that inhabits and protects it. Indeed, evenphilosophers cannot entirely exempt themselves from thisnatural frailty: they have often ascribed to inanimate matterthe horror of a vacuum, sympathies, antipathies, and otheraffections of human nature. The absurdity is not less when,as all too often happens, we look upwards and transfer hu-man passions and infirmities to the deity, representing himas jealous and revengeful, capricious and partial—in short,a wicked and foolish man in every respect but his superiorpower and authority. No wonder, then, that mankind, beingplaced in such an absolute ignorance of causes, and beingat the same time so anxious concerning their future fortune,should immediately acknowledge a dependence on invisiblepowers that have thought and feeling. The unknown causes

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that continually occupy men’s thought, appearing always inthe same way, are all taken to be of the same kind or species.And before long we ascribe to them thought and reason andpassion, and sometimes even the limbs and shapes of men,so as to bring them nearer to a resemblance with ourselves.

The more a man’s course of life is governed by chanceevents, the more superstitious he is. This can be particularlyobserved in gamblers and sailors, who are of all mankindthe least capable of serious reflection and the most givento frivolous and superstitious beliefs. An ancient warriorsaid that the gods have an influence in every affair, butabove all in war, where the outcome is so uncertain. Allhuman life, especially before the institution of order and goodgovernment, is subject to chance events; so it is natural thatin barbarous ages superstition should prevail everywhere,setting men to enquire earnestly concerning the invisiblepowers who distribute their happiness or misery. Ignorantof astronomy and the anatomy of plants and animals, andtoo little curious to observe the admirable adjustment offinal causes [see Glossary], they remain ignorant of the firstand supreme creator, and of that infinitely perfect spiritwho alone bestowed order on the whole frame of nature.Such a magnificent idea is too big for their narrow concep-tions, which cannot see the beauty of the work or graspthe grandeur of its author. They think of their deities asbeing, however potent and invisible, nothing but a species ofhuman creatures, perhaps raised from among mankind andretaining all human passions and appetites, together withbodily limbs and organs. Since each of these limited beingsis incapable of extending his influence everywhere, theremust be vastly many of them to answer the variety of eventsthat happen over the whole face of nature. Thus, every placeis crammed with local deities; and that is how polytheism didand still does prevail among most of uninstructed mankind.

Any of the human affections may lead us into the notionof invisible, thinking power—hope as well as fear, gratitudeas well as affliction. But if we examine our own hearts orobserve the conduct of others, we shall find that men arethrown onto their knees much oftener by the melancholypassions than by the agreeable ones. Prosperity is easilyreceived as our due, and few questions are asked concerningits cause or author. It begets cheerfulness, activity, alacrity,and a lively enjoyment of every social and sensual pleasure;and when men are in this state of mind they have little leisureor inclination to think of the unknown invisible regions. Onthe other hand, every disastrous event alarms us and startsus wondering about what caused it; fears spring up regardingthe future; and the mind—sunk into diffidence, terror, andmelancholy—has recourse to every method of appeasingthose secret thinking powers that our fortune is supposed todepend on.

No topic is more usual with all popular divines thanto display the advantages of affliction in bringing men toa due sense of religion by subduing the confidence andsensuality which in times of prosperity make them forgetfulof a divine providence. Not only moderns but also ancientshave pursued this line of thought. A Greek historian [Diodorus

Siculus] said that fortune has never bestowed a happinesson mankind without a mixture of envy; she has alwayscombined her gifts with some disastrous circumstance, inorder to chastise men into a reverence for the gods they areapt to forget if they have uninterrupted prosperity.

What age or period of life is the most addicted to su-perstition? The weakest and most timid. What sex? Thesame answer must be given. The leaders and examples ofevery kind of superstition, says ·the ancient Greek writer·Strabo, are the women. They arouse the men to devotion andsupplications, and the observance of religious days. It is rare

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to meet with a man who lives apart from females and yet isgiven to such practices. . . . This would lead us to entertaina bad idea of the devotion of monks if we did not know—through an experience that may have been less common inStrabo’s time—that one may practise celibacy and professchastity while maintaining the closest connections and mostentire sympathy with that timorous and pious sex.

4. Deities not considered as creators or formers ofthe world

The only point of theology in which we find almost allmankind in agreement is that the world contains someinvisible, thinking power; but

•whether this power is supreme or subordinate,•whether it is confined to one being or distributedamong several, and

•what attributes, qualities, connections, or principles[see Glossary] of action should be ascribed to ·that beingor· those beings,

—concerning all these points the popular systems of theologydiffer widely. Our ancestors in Europe, before the revival ofletters, believed (as we do now) that there was one supremeGod, the author of nature, whose power was often exerted bythe interposition of his angels and subordinate servants whofurthered his sacred purposes. But they also believed thatnature was full of other invisible powers—fairies, goblins,elves, sprites—beings mightier than men but much inferiorto the celestial natures who surround the throne of God.Now, suppose that someone in those ages had denied theexistence of God and of his angels; could not his impiety havefairly been called ‘atheism’ even if by some odd capriciousreasoning he had still allowed that the popular stories ofelves and fairies were just and well-grounded? Such a

b person would differ from any a genuine theist infinitelymore than he would differ from c someone who absolutelyexcluded all invisible thinking power ·such as elves andfairies·. It is a fallacy, merely from the casual resemblanceof names—·a ‘theism’· and b ‘polytheism’—to rank such op-posite opinions under the same general label.

To anyone who thinks soundly about this matter, it willappear that the ‘gods’ of all polytheists do not deserve piousworship or veneration any more than did the elves or fairiesof our ancestors. These pretended religionists are really akind of superstitious atheists, and acknowledge no beinganswering to our idea of a deity. No first principle of mindor thought; no supreme government and administration; nodivine planning or intention in the structure of the world.

The Chinese, when their prayers are not answered, beattheir idols. [Hume gives a reference for each custom reported in this

paragraph.] The deities of the Laplanders are any large stonethey find that has an extraordinary shape. The Egyptianmythologists, in order to account for animal worship, saidthat the gods, pursued by the violence of earth-born men,who were their enemies, had once had to disguise themselvesas beasts. The Caunii, a nation in Lesser Asia, periodicallywalked to their frontiers, fully armed, beating the air withtheir lances to drive out foreign deities. Some Germannations told Caesar that not even the immortal gods area match for the Suevi. When (in Homer) Venus has beenwounded by Diomedes, her mother Dione says: ‘Many ills,my daughter, have the gods inflicted on men; and many illshave men inflicted on the gods in return.’

If we open any classic author we’ll meet with these grossrepresentations of the deities; and Longinus was right tosay that such ideas of the divine nature, if taken literally,contain a true atheism.

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Some writers have been surprised that the impieties of•Aristophanes should have been tolerated—indeed publiclyperformed and applauded—by the Athenians, who were sosuperstitious and so protective of the public religion that atthat same time they put Socrates to death for his imaginedincredulity. What these writers do not consider is this:

The ludicrous, familiar images under which the godsare represented by •that comic poet, rather thanappearing impious, were the genuine lights in whichthe ancients conceived their divinities.

What conduct can be more criminal or mean than that ofJupiter in the Amphitryon? Yet that play, which showed hisgallant [here = ‘sexual’] exploits, was supposed to be so agree-able to him that it was acted in Rome by public authoritywhenever the state was threatened with pestilence, famine,or any general calamity. The Romans supposed that he, likeall old lechers, would be highly pleased with the recital ofhis former feats of prowess and vigour, and that this was thebest topic on which to flatter his vanity. . . .

It never enters into the head of any polytheist or idolaterto ascribe the origin and fabric of the universe to theseimperfect beings. Hesiod, whose writings (with Homer’s)contained the canonical system of the heathens, supposesthat gods and men sprang equally from the unknown powersof nature. And throughout that author’s Theogony, the onlyinstance of creation or a voluntary production is the creationof Pandora; and she too was formed by the gods merelyout of indignation against Prometheus, who had furnishedmen with fire stolen from the celestial regions. The ancientmythologists, indeed, seem throughout to have embraced theidea of •generation rather than that of •creation or formation;and to have accounted in that way for the origin of thisuniverse.

Ovid, who lived in a learned age and had been instructedby philosophers in the principles of a divine creation orformation of the world, finds that such an idea would notagree with the popular mythology that he is presenting. Sohe leaves it loose and detached from his system: ‘Whicheverof the gods it was’, he says, that dissipated the chaos andintroduced order into the universe. He knew that it couldnot be Saturn or Jupiter or Neptune or any of the receiveddeities of paganism. His theological system had taught himnothing about this, and he leaves the matter undetermined.

Diodorus Siculus, beginning his work with an enumera-tion of the most reasonable opinions concerning the originof the world, makes no mention of a deity or thinking mind;though his history shows that he was much more prone tosuperstition than to irreligion.

And in another passage, talking of a certain nation inIndia, he says, that because there is so much difficultyin accounting for their descent we must conclude them tobe aborigines, without any beginning of their generation,propagating their race from all eternity. . . . He adds: ‘But insuch subjects as these, which exceed all human capacity, itmay well happen that those who say the most know the least,reaching a plausible appearance of truth in their reasoningswhile extremely wide of the real truth and matter of fact.’

A strange sentiment in our eyes, to be embraced by aprofessed and zealous religionist! But it was merely byaccident that the question of the origin of the world everdid in ancient times enter into religious systems, or wastreated by theologians. Only the philosophers deliveredsystems of this kind, and it was pretty late before eventhey thought to avail themselves of a mind or supremeintelligence as the first cause of everything. So far wasit from being thought profane in those days to account forthe origin of things without a deity that philosophers who

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did so—Thales, Anaximenes, Heraclitus and others—wentunchallenged; whereas Anaxagoras, the first undoubtedtheist among the philosophers, may have been the first to beaccused of atheism.

Sextus Empiricus tells us that Epicurus, when a boy,read with his preceptor these verses of Hesiod:

‘Eldest of beings, chaos first arose;Next earth, wide-stretch’d, the seat of all’,

and the young scholar first revealed his genius for inquiryby asking ‘And where did chaos come from?’ His preceptortold him that he must look to the philosophers for a solutionof such questions; and from this hint Epicurus left philologyand all other ·bookish· studies, in order to pursue thatscience from which alone he expected satisfaction withregard to these lofty subjects.

The common people were never likely to push theirresearches so far, or derive their systems of religion fromreasoning, given that philologists and mythologists hardlyever revealed that much penetration. And even the philoso-phers who did talk of such topics readily assented to thecrudest theory, admitting the joint origin of gods and menfrom night and chaos; or from fire, water, air or whateverthey took to be the ruling element.

Nor was it only on their first origin that the gods weresupposed to depend on the powers of nature. Throughouttheir whole existence, it was thought, they were at the mercyof fate or destiny. ‘Think of the force of necessity’, saysAgrippa to the Roman people, ‘that force to which even thegods must submit’. And the younger Pliny tells us thatamidst the darkness, horror, and confusion after the firsteruption of Vesuvius some people concluded that all naturewas going to wrack and that gods and men were perishing inone common ruin.

It is indeed extremely generous to dignify with the name‘religion’ such an imperfect system of theology, putting iton a level with later systems that are based on sounderand loftier principles. The principles of Marcus Aurelius,Plutarch, and some other Stoics and Academics were muchmore refined than the pagan superstition, but for my part Ican scarcely allow even them the honourable label ‘theism’.For if the mythology of the heathens resembles the ancientEuropean system of spiritual beings, excluding God andangels and leaving only fairies and sprites, the creed of thesephilosophers may justly be said to exclude a deity and toleave only angels and fairies.

5. Various forms of polytheism: allegory, hero-worship

[In this chapter, ‘hero-worship’ is meant very literally: worshipping heroic

men after they have been elevated to the status of gods.]But my chief present business is to consider the crudepolytheism of the vulgar, and to trace all its various ap-pearances in the principles of human nature from whichthey are derived.

Anyone who learns by argument the existence of invisiblethinking power must reason from the admirable design ofnatural objects, and must suppose the world to be theworkmanship of that divine being, the original cause of allthings. But the vulgar polytheist in stark contrast deifiesevery part of the universe, and conceives all the conspicuousproductions of nature to be themselves so many real divini-ties. The sun, moon and stars are all gods according to hissystem; fountains are inhabited by nymphs, and trees byhamadryads [= wood nymphs]; even monkeys, dogs, cats andother animals often become sacred in his eyes, and strikehim with a religious veneration. And thus, however strong

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men’s propensity to believe there is invisible, thinking powerin nature, they are just as strongly inclined to rest theirattention on sensible, visible objects; and to reconcile theseopposite inclinations they are led to unite the invisible powerwith some visible object.

The allotting of distinct realms to the various deities isapt to cause some allegory, both physical and moral, to enterinto the vulgar systems of polytheism. The god of war willnaturally be represented as furious, cruel and impetuous;the god of poetry as elegant, polite and amiable; the godof merchandise, especially in early times, as thievish anddeceitful. Admittedly, some of the allegories supposed inHomer and other mythologists have been so strained thatmen of sense are apt entirely to reject them, and to considerthem as mere products of the whims of critics and commen-tators. But it is undeniable, even on the least reflection, thatallegory really has place in the heathen mythology.

•Cupid, the son of Venus,•the Muses, the daughters of Memory,•Prometheus, the wise brother, and Epimetheus thefoolish,

•Hygieia, the goddess of health, descended fromÆsculapius, the god of physic;

who does not see in these and many other instances theplain traces of allegory? When a god is supposed to presideover any passion, event, or system of actions, it is almost un-avoidable to give him a genealogy, attributes, and adventuressuitable to his supposed powers and influence. . . .

We ought not to expect ignorance and superstition toproduce entirely perfect allegories, there being no work ofintellect that requires a more precise hand, or has morerarely met with success. That Fear and Terror are the sonsof Mars is just; but why by Venus? That Harmony is thedaughter of Venus is regular; but why by Mars? That Sleep

is the brother of Death is suitable; but why describe himas enamoured of one of the Graces? And since the ancientmythologists fall into such gross and palpable mistakes, wehave no reason surely to expect such refined and long-spunallegories as some have tried to draw from their fictions.

Lucretius was plainly seduced by the strong appearanceof allegory observable in the pagan fictions. He first ad-dresses himself to Venus as to the generating power thatanimates, renews and beautifies the universe. But he issoon betrayed by the mythology into incoherency when heprays to that allegorical personage to appease the furies ofher lover Mars. This idea is drawn not from allegory but fromthe popular religion, which Lucretius as an Epicurean couldnot consistently accept.

The deities of the vulgar are so little superior to humancreatures that where men are affected with strong sentimentsof veneration or gratitude for any hero or public benefactornothing can be more natural than to convert him into agod, in this way filling the heavens with continual recruitsfrom among mankind. Most of the divinities of the ancientworld are supposed to have once been men, and to haveowed their apotheosis [= elevation to divine status] to the ad-miration and affection of the people. The real history oftheir adventures—corrupted by tradition and elevated by themarvellous—became a plentiful source of fable, especially inpassing through the hands of poets, allegorists and priestswho successively improved on the wonder and astonishmentof the ignorant multitude.

Painters and sculptors also came in for their share ofprofit in the sacred mysteries; and furnishing men with sen-sible representations of their divinities, whom they clothed inhuman figures, greatly increased public devotion and fixedits object. It was probably for lack of painting and sculpturein rude and barbarous ages that men deified plants, animals,

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and even brute, unorganised matter, affixing divinity to suchungainly forms rather than being without a sensible objectof worship.

If any Syrian sculpture in early times could have made agood figure of Apollo, the conic stone called Elagabulus wouldnever have become the object of such profound adorationand been accepted as a representation of the solar deity.

Stilpo was banished ·from Athens· by the council ofAreopagus for affirming that the Minerva in the citadel wasnot a divinity but the workmanship of the sculptor Phidias.What degree of reason must we expect in the religious beliefof the vulgar in other nations, when Athenians and theircouncil could entertain such gross conceptions?

These, then, are the general principles of polytheism,founded in a human nature and depending little if at allon b caprice or c accident [i.e. on b episodic thoughts of individual

people or on c external events, these being in contrast to a human

nature.] The causes that bestow happiness or misery arein general very little known and very uncertain; so ouranxious concern tries to get a determinate idea of them,and finds no better expedient than to represent them asthinking voluntary agents—like ourselves except somewhatsuperior in power and wisdom. The limited influence ofthese agents, and their great proximity to human weakness,leads to their being assigned different roles, which givesrise to allegory. The same principles naturally deify mortalswho are superior in power, courage or understanding, andproduce hero-worship, together with fabulous history andmythological tradition, in all its wild and unaccountableforms. And as an invisible spiritual intelligence is toorefined an object for the vulgar to grasp, men naturallyaffix it to some sensible representation, such as •the moreconspicuous parts of nature or •the statues, images andpictures that a more refined age forms of its divinities.

Almost all idolaters, of whatever age or country, concurin these general principles and conceptions; and even theparticular characters and domains that they assign to theirdeities are not very different. The Greek and Roman trav-ellers and conquerors had little difficulty finding their owndeities everywhere, saying ‘This is Mercury, that Venus’, ‘Thisis Mars, that Neptune’, whatever names the strange godshad in their own country. According to Tacitus, the goddessHertha of our Saxon ancestors seems to be no other thanthe Mater Tellus of the Romans; and his conjecture wasevidently just.

6. How theism came from polytheism

The doctrine of one supreme deity, the author of nature, isvery ancient, has spread over great and populous nations,and among them has been embraced by all ranks and condi-tions of men. But if you think it has owed its success to thepower of the invincible reasons on which it is undoubtedlyfounded, you show yourself to be little acquainted with theignorance and stupidity of the people, and their incurableprejudices in favour of their particular superstitions. Even atthis day, and even in Europe, ask any of the vulgar why hebelieves in an omnipotent creator of the world. He will nevermention the beauty of final causes [see Glossary], of which heis wholly ignorant; he will not hold out his hand and tellyou to contemplate the suppleness and variety of joints inhis fingers, their bending all one way, the counterpoise theyreceive from the thumb, the softness and fleshy parts of theinside of his hand and all the other details that fit the handfor its destined use. He has long been accustomed to allthese, and beholds them with listlessness and unconcern.He will tell you of

•this person’s sudden and unexpected death,

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•that one’s fall and bruising,•the excessive drought of this season,•the cold and rains of another.

He ascribes these to the immediate operation of providence.Events that good reasoners see as the chief difficulties inadmitting a supreme intelligence are with him the solearguments for it!

Many theists—even the most zealous and refined ofthem—have denied a particular providence, and have as-serted that the Sovereign mind or first principle [see Glossary]of all things, having fixed general laws by which nature isgoverned, gives free and uninterrupted course to these lawsand does not keep disturbing the settled order of events byparticular interventions. They say that

we get the chief argument for theism from the beau-tiful connection and rigid observance of establishedrules, which also enables us to answer the principalobjections against it.

But so little is this understood by the generality of mankindthat when someone ascribes all events to natural causesand denies the particular interposition of a deity, they areapt to suspect him of the grossest infidelity [see Glossary].A little philosophy, says Lord Bacon, makes men atheists; agreat deal reconciles them to religion. For men are taughtby superstitious prejudices to lay the stress on a wrongplace; and when that fails them, and a little reflection showsthem that the course of nature is regular and uniform, theirwhole faith totters and falls to ruin. But being taught bymore reflection that this very regularity and uniformity isthe strongest proof of design and of a supreme intelligence,they return to the belief they had deserted; and now theycan establish it on a firmer and more durable foundation.

Convulsions in nature, disorders, prodigies, miracles,though quite opposite to the plan of a wise superintendent,

impress mankind with the strongest sentiments of religionbecause these are events whose causes seem the mostunknown and unaccountable. Madness, fury, rage, andan inflamed imagination, though they sink men nearest tothe level of beasts, are for a similar reason often thoughtto be the only states in which we can have any immediatecommunication with the Deity.

So we can conclude, on the whole, that since the vulgarin nations that have embraced the doctrine of theism stillbase it on irrational and superstitious principles, they arenever led into it by any process of argument but by a certaintrain of thinking more suitable to their genius [see Glossary]and capacity.

It can easily happen in an idolatrous nation that thoughmen admit the existence of several limited deities, there issome one God whom they make the special object of theirworship and adoration. They may suppose that a in thedistribution of power and territory among the gods, theirnation was subjected to the jurisdiction of that particulardeity; or they may b think of one god as the prince or suprememagistrate of the rest, having the same nature as them butruling them with an authority like what an earthly sovereignexercises over his subjects and vassals. Therefore, whetherthis god is considered as a their special peculiar patronor as b the general sovereign of heaven, his votaries willtry by every art to insinuate themselves into his favour;and—supposing him to be pleased with praise and flattery,as they are—will spare no eulogy or exaggeration in theiraddresses to him. As men’s fears or distresses become moreurgent, they invent new strains of adulation; and even hewho outdoes his predecessor in swelling up the titles of hisdivinity is sure to be outdone by his successor in newerand more pompous epithets of praise. Thus they proceed,until eventually they arrive at infinity itself, beyond which

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there is no further progress. If they try to get further andrepresent a magnificent simplicity, they risk running intoinexplicable mystery and destroying their deity’s thinkingnature, the only possible basis for any rational worship oradoration. While they confine themselves to the notion ofa perfect being, the creator of the world, they happen tocoincide with the principles of reason and true philosophy;though they are guided to that notion not by reason—ofwhich they are largely incapable—but by the adulation andfears of the most vulgar superstition.

We often find among barbarous nations, and even some-times among civilised ones, that when every strain of flatteryhas been exhausted towards human princes, when everyhuman quality has been applauded to the utmost, theirservile courtiers finally represent them as real divinities, andpoint them out to the people as objects of adoration. Howmuch more natural is it, therefore, that a limited deity who atfirst is taken to be only the immediate author of the particulargoods and ills in life should eventually be represented assovereign maker and modifier of the universe?

Even where this notion of a supreme deity is alreadyestablished, though it ought naturally to lessen every otherworship and lower the status of every ·other· object of rev-erence, if a nation has believed in some subordinate tutelardivinity, saint or angel, their addresses to that being aregradually elevated and encroach on the adoration due totheir supreme deity. The Virgin Mary, before being checkedby the Reformation, had risen from being merely a goodwoman to usurping many attributes of the Almighty; and inall the prayers and petitions of the Muscovites, God and St.Nicholas go hand in hand.

Thus the deity who lustfully converted himself into a bullin order to carry off Europa, and ambitiously dethronedhis father, Saturn, became the Optimus Maximus of the

heathens. Thus, the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacobbecame the supreme deity or Jehovah of the Jews.

[After a complex paragraph on the politics of the beliefin the immaculate conception of the Virgin Mary, Humecontinues:] Rather than relinquish this propensity to adula-tion, religionists in all ages have involved themselves in thegreatest absurdities and contradictions.

Homer in one passage calls Oceanus and Tethys ‘theoriginal parents of all things’, conformably to the establishedmythology and tradition of the Greeks; yet in other passageshe could not forbear complimenting Jupiter, the reigningdeity, by calling him ‘the father of gods and men’. He forgetsthat every temple, every street, was full of the ancestors,uncles, brothers and sisters of this Jupiter; who was inreality nothing but an upstart parricide and usurper. Asimilar contradiction can be seen in Hesiod; and is lessexcusable because his professed intention was to deliver atrue genealogy of the gods.

If there were a religion (and we may suspect Ma-hometanism to be one) which sometimes a painted the Deityin the most sublime colours as the creator of heaven andearth; sometimes b degraded him nearly to a level withhuman creatures in his powers and faculties, while also as-cribing to him suitable infirmities, passions and partialitiesof the moral kind; that religion, after it was extinct, wouldalso be cited as an instance of the contradictions that arisefrom the b gross, vulgar, natural conceptions of mankind,opposed to their continual propensity towards a flattery andexaggeration. Nothing indeed would prove more strongly thedivine origin of any religion than to find it to be free froma contradiction that is so incident to human nature. Andhappily this is the case with Christianity.

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7. Confirmation of this doctrine

It appears certain that although the original notions of thevulgar represent the Divinity as a limited being, and considerhim only as the particular cause of health or sickness, plentyor want, prosperity or adversity, yet when more magnificentideas are urged on them they think it dangerous to refusetheir assent. Will you say that your deity •is finite andbounded in his perfections? •may be overcome by a greaterforce? •is subject to human passions, pains and infirmities?•has a beginning, and may have an end? They dare not an-swer Yes to this. Thinking it safest to go along with the higherpraises, they try by an affected ravishment and devotion toingratiate themselves with him. As confirmation of this, wemay observe that in this case the assent of the vulgar ismerely verbal, and that they are incapable of conceiving thesublime qualities that they seemingly attribute to the Deity.Their real idea of him, despite their pompous language, isstill as poor and frivolous as ever.

The Magians [see Glossary] say that the original intelligencewho is the first principle of all things reveals himself immedi-ately to the mind and understanding alone; but has placedthe sun as his image in the visible universe, and when thesun diffuses its beams over the earth and the firmament it isa faint copy of the glory that resides in the higher heavens. Ifyou want to escape the displeasure of this divine being, youmust be careful never to set your bare foot on the ground,or spit into a fire, or throw any water on it, even if it isconsuming a whole city. Who can express the perfectionsof the Almighty? say the Mahometans. Even the noblest ofhis works are but dust and rubbish compared to him. Howmuch more must human conception fall short of his infiniteperfections? His smile and favour makes men for ever happy;and the best method to obtain it for your children is to cut

off from them, while they are infants, a little bit of skinabout half the width of a farthing. The Roman Catholics say:take two bits of cloth about an inch and a half square, jointhem by the corners with two strings or pieces of tape aboutsixteen inches long, throw this over your head making oneof the bits of cloth lie on your breast and the other on yourback, keeping them next your skin: There is not a bettersecret for recommending yourself to the infinite Being whoexists from eternity to eternity!. . . .

8. Rise and fall of polytheism and theism

It is remarkable that the principles of religion have a kindof flux and reflux in the human mind, and that men havea natural tendency to rise from idolatry to theism, and tosink again from theism into idolatry. Because the vulgar—i.e. all mankind with a few exceptions—are ignorant anduninstructed, they never

•elevate their contemplation to the heavens, or•dig into the secret structure of vegetable or animalbodies

far enough to discover a supreme mind or original provi-dence that bestowed order on every part of nature. Theytake a more confined and selfish view of these admirableworks: finding their own happiness and misery to dependon the secret and unforeseen influence of external objects,they constantly attend to the unknown causes that governall these natural events and distribute pleasure and pain,good and ill, by their powerful but silent operation. Theunknown causes are still appealed to on every occasion; andthis general appearance or confused image embraces theperpetual objects of human hopes and fears, wishes andanxieties. The active imagination of men, uneasy in thisabstract conception of objects that it is incessantly thinking

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about, gradually begins to make them more particular and togive them shapes more suitable to the imagination’s naturalgrasp. It represents them as sensible, thinking beings, likemankind; actuated by love and hatred, and capable of beingswayed by gifts and entreaties, by prayers and sacrifices.Hence the origin of religion, and hence the origin of idolatryor polytheism.

But the anxious concern for happiness that createsthe idea of these invisible, thinking powers does not allowmankind to remain long with the first simple conception ofthem as

•powerful but limited beings,•masters of human fate but slaves to destiny and thecourse of nature.

Men’s exaggerated praises and compliments still swell theiridea, so that—elevating their deities to the utmost boundsof perfection—they eventually beget the attributes of unityand infinity, simplicity and spirituality. Such refined ideasare not a good fit for vulgar comprehension, so they don’tremain long in their original purity but have to be supportedby the notion of inferior mediators or subordinate agentsthat interpose between mankind and their supreme deity.These demi-gods or middle beings, partaking more of humannature and being more familiar to us, become the chiefobjects of devotion and gradually bring back the idolatrythat had formerly been banished by the ardent prayers andpanegyrics of fearful and poverty-stricken mortals. But asthese idolatrous religions continually fall into grosser andmore vulgar conceptions, they at last destroy themselves and,by the vile representations they form of their deities, makethe tide turn again towards theism. But in this alternaterevolution of human sentiments the propensity to returnto idolatry is so strong that the utmost precaution cannoteffectively prevent it. And some theists—particularly the

Jews and Mahometans—have been aware of this, as canbe seen in their banishing all the arts of statuary andpainting, and not allowing sculptures or pictures even ofhuman figures lest the common infirmity of mankind shouldlead from them to idolatry. The feeble apprehensions of mencannot be satisfied with conceiving their deity as a pure spiritand perfect intelligence, but their natural terrors keep themfrom attributing to him the least limitation or imperfection.They fluctuate between these opposite sentiments. Theirinfirmity drags them downwards from •an omnipotent andspiritual deity to •a limited and corporeal one, and from thatto •a statue or visible representation. And their endeavour atelevation pushes them upwards from •the statue or materialimage to •the invisible power, and from that to •an infinitelyperfect deity, the creator and sovereign of the universe.

9. Comparing the two with regard to persecutionand toleration

Polytheism or idolatrous worship, being based entirely onvulgar traditions, is liable to the great inconvenience that anypractice or opinion, however barbarous or corrupted, may beauthorised by it; and full scope is given for knavery to imposeon credulity until morals and humanity are expelled fromthe religious systems of mankind. At the same time, idolatryalso has the evident advantage that by limiting the powersand functions of its deities it naturally admits the gods ofother sects and nations to a share of divinity, and makesall the various deities—as well as rites, ceremonies andtraditions—compatible with one another. Theism is oppositein both its advantages and its disadvantages. Because itsupposes one sole deity who is the perfection of reason andgoodness, it should banish from religious worship everythingfrivolous, unreasonable or inhuman, and set before men

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the most illustrious example of justice and benevolence aswell as the most powerful motives for them. These mightyadvantages could not be outweighed but they are somewhatdiminished by inconveniences arising from the vices andprejudices of mankind. With only one object of devotionbeing acknowledged, the worship of other deities is regardedas absurd and impious. Indeed, this unity of object seemsnaturally to require the unity of faith and ceremonies, andprovides scheming men with a pretence for representingtheir adversaries as profane and as the objects of divineas well as human vengeance. Each sect is positive thatits own faith and worship are entirely acceptable to thedeity, and none can conceive that the same being should bepleased with different and opposite rites and principles; sothe various sects naturally fall into animosity and dischargeon each other the most furious and implacable of all humanpassions—sacred zeal and rancour.

The tolerating spirit of both ancient and modern idolatersis very obvious to anyone with the least knowledge of thewritings of historians or travellers. When the oracle of Delphiwas asked ‘What rites or worship are most acceptable tothe gods?’, it replied: ‘Those that are legally established ineach city.’ It seems that even priests in those ages couldallow salvation to those of a different communion. TheRomans commonly adopted the gods of the conquered people,and never disputed the attributes of the local and nationaldeities in whose territories they resided. The religious warsand persecutions of the Egyptian idolaters are indeed anexception to this rule, but ancient authors explain themas arising from singular and remarkable causes. Differentspecies of animals were the deities of the different sectsamong the Egyptians; and the deities were in continualwar, engaging their votaries in the same quarrels. Theworshippers of dogs could not for long remain at peace with

the adorers of cats or wolves. But where that factor was notat work, the Egyptian superstition was not so incompatibleas is commonly imagined, since we learn from Herodotusthat very large contributions were given by ·the Egyptianpharaoh· Amasis towards rebuilding the temple of Delphi.

The •intolerance of almost all religions that have main-tained the unity of God is as remarkable as the •contraryprinciple of polytheists. The implacably narrow spirit of theJews is well known. Mahometanism set out with still morebloody principles, and even today it deals out damnation—though not fire and faggot—to all other sects. And if amongChristians the English and Dutch have embraced the princi-ples of toleration, this has come from the steady resolutionof the civil magistrate in opposition to the continued effortsof priests and bigots.

The disciples of Zoroaster shut the doors of heavenagainst all but the Magians. Nothing could obstruct theprogress of the Persian conquests more than the Persia’sfurious zeal against the temples and images of the Greeks.And after the overthrow of that empire we find the polytheistAlexander immediately re-establishing the worship of theBabylonians, which their former monotheist princes hadcarefully abolished. Even that conqueror’s blind and devotedattachment of to the Greek superstition did not stop him fromsacrificing according to the Babylonian rites and ceremonies.

I venture to affirm that few corruptions of idolatry andpolytheism are more pernicious to society than this cor-ruption of theism, ·namely, religious intolerance·, whencarried to the utmost height. The (i) human sacrifices ofthe Carthaginians, Mexicans and many barbarous nationsscarcely exceed (ii) the Inquisition and persecutions of Romeand Madrid. For one thing, less blood may be spilled in (i)than in (ii). Also, the human victims in (i), being chosen bylot or by some exterior signs, do not affect the rest of the

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society in as considerable a degree as (ii) does, where virtue,knowledge and love of liberty are the qualities that call downthe fatal vengeance of inquisitors, the loss of them leavingthe society in the most shameful ignorance, corruption andbondage. The illegal murder of one man ·picked out for this·by a tyrant is more pernicious than the death of a thousandby pestilence, famine or any undistinguishing calamity.

10. . . . with regard to courage or abasement

From the comparison of theism and idolatry we can formsome other observations that will also confirm the vulgaropinion that the corruption of the best things gives rise tothe worst.

Where the deity is represented as infinitely superior tomankind, this belief—though altogether just—is apt whenjoined with superstitious terror to sink the human mindinto the lowest submission and abasement, and to representthe monkish virtues of mortification, penance, humility andpassive suffering as the only qualities acceptable to him.Whereas where the gods are conceived to be only a littlesuperior to mankind, many of them having been advancedfrom that inferior rank, we are more at our ease in ouraddresses to them, and may even without profaneness aspiresometimes to rivalry with them. This leads to activity, spirit,courage, magnanimity, love of liberty, and all the virtues thatmake a people great.

The heroes in paganism correspond exactly to the saintsin popery and the holy dervishes in Mahometanism. Theplace of Hercules, Theseus, Hector and Romulus is now filledby Dominic, Francis, Anthony and Benedict. The means ofobtaining celestial honours among mankind, which usedto involve the destruction of monsters, the subduing oftyrants and the defence of our native country, now involves

whippings and fastings, cowardice and humility, abjectsubmission and slavish obedience.

One great incitement to the pious Alexander in his warlikeexpeditions was his rivalry towards Hercules and Bacchus,whom he rightly claimed to have excelled. After that generousand noble Spartan Brasidas fell in battle, the inhabitantsof Amphipolis, whose defence he had embraced, paid himheroic honours, ·declaring him to have become a minor god.·And in general, all founders of states and colonies among theGreeks were raised to this inferior rank of divinity by thosewho reaped the benefit of their labours.

This gave rise to the observation of Machiavelli that thedoctrines of the Christian religion (meaning the RomanCatholic, for he knew no other) which recommend onlypassive courage and suffering had subdued the spirit ofmankind and fitted them for slavery and subjection. Thiswould certainly be right if there were not many other cir-cumstances in human society that control the genius andcharacter of a religion.

Brasidas seized a mouse and, being bitten by it, let it go.‘There is nothing so contemptible’, he said, ‘that it cannot besafe if it only has the courage to defend itself.’ Bellarminepatiently and humbly allowed fleas and other odious verminto prey on him. He said: ‘We shall have heaven to reward usfor our sufferings; but these poor creatures have nothing butthe enjoyment of the present life.’ Such difference there isbetween the maxims of a Greek hero and those of a Catholicsaint.

11. . . . with regard to reason or absurdity

Here is another observation to the same effect, and newevidence that the corruption of the best things begets theworst. If without prejudice we examine the ancient heathen

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mythology, as contained in the poets, we shall not find init any such monstrous absurdity as we may at first tend toexpect. Where is the difficulty in conceiving that the samepowers or principles [see Glossary], whatever they were, thatformed this visible world, men and animals, also produced aspecies of thinking creatures of more refined substance andgreater authority than the rest? It is easy to conceive thatthese creatures may be capricious, revengeful, passionateand voluptuous, and among ourselves nothing is more likelyto engender such vices than the licence of absolute authority.In short, the whole mythological system is so natural thatit seems more than probable that somewhere in the vastvariety of planets and worlds contained in this universe it isreally carried into execution.

The chief objection to it with regard to this planet is thatit is not warranted by any sound reason or authority. The an-cient tradition insisted on by heathen priests and theologiansis a weak foundation; and it has been transmitted by so manycontradictory reports, all supported by equal authority, thatit became absolutely impossible to fix a preference amongthem. So a few volumes must contain all the polemicalwritings of pagan priests, and their whole theology mustconsist more of traditional stories and superstitious practicesthan of philosophical argument and controversy.

But where the fundamental basis of any popular religionis theism, that tenet is so agreeable to sound reason thatphilosophy is apt to combine with such a system of theology.And if the other dogmas of that system are contained in asacred book such as the Koran, or are determined by anyvisible authority like that of the Roman pope, speculative rea-soners naturally go on assenting to a theory that •has beeninstilled into them by their earliest education and •possessessome degree of consistency and uniformity. But as theseappearances will certainly all prove deceitful, philosophy

will soon find herself very unequally yoked with her newassociate; and instead of regulating each principle as theyadvance together, she is constantly being diverted to servethe purposes of superstition. For besides the unavoidableincoherences that must be reconciled and adjusted, it is safeto say that all popular theology—especially the scholastic—has a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction. Ifthat theology didn’t go beyond reason and common sense, itsdoctrines would appear too easy and familiar. Amazementmust be raised, mystery affected, darkness and obscuritysought after, and a foundation of merit provided for thedevout votaries who want an opportunity to subdue theirrebellious reason by believing unintelligible sophisms.

Ecclesiastical history sufficiently confirms these reflec-tions. When a controversy is started, some people alwaysclaim with certainty to foretell the outcome. Their view is:

Whichever opinion is most contrary to plain sense issure to prevail, even where the general interest of thesystem does not require that decision. The reproachof ‘heresy’ may for a while be bandied about amongthe disputants, but it always ends up being heldagainst the side of reason. Anyone who has enoughlearning of this kind merely to know the definitionsof ‘Arian’, ‘Pelagian‘, ‘Erestian’, ‘Socinian’, ‘Sabellian’,‘Eutychian’, ‘Nestorian’, ‘Monothelite’—not to mention‘Protestant’, whose fate is still uncertain—will be con-vinced of the truth of this observation.

This is how a system becomes more absurd in the end, merelyfrom being reasonable and philosophical in the beginning.

Opposing the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeblemaxims as that

•it is impossible for the same thing to be and not to be,•the whole is greater than a part,•two and three make five

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is trying to stop the ocean with a bull-rush! Will you setup profane reason against sacred mystery? No punishmentis great enough for your impiety. And the fires kindled forheretics will serve also for the destruction of philosophers.

12. . . .with regard to doubt or conviction

We frequently meet with people who are •so sceptical withregard to history that they assert it to be impossible for anynation ever to believe anything as absurd as the principlesof Greek and Egyptian paganism, and at the same time •sodogmatic with regard to religion that they think that no othercommunion is guilty of the same absurdities. Cambyses en-tertained such prejudices, and very impiously ridiculed—andeven wounded—Apis, the great god of the Egyptians, whoappeared to his profane senses to be nothing but a largespotted bull. Herodotus judiciously ascribes his passionateoutburst to a real madness or disorder of the brain, becauseif Cambyses had been sane he never would have openlyaffronted any established worship; for on that head everynation are best satisfied with their own, and think they havethe advantage over every other nation.

The Roman Catholics are a very learned sect; apart fromthe church of England, no one communion can dispute theirclaim to be the most learned of all the Christian churches.Yet Averroes, the famous Arabian, who surely had heardof the Egyptian superstitions, declares that of all religionsthe most absurd and nonsensical is the one whose votariescreate their deity and then eat him.

I believe, indeed, that no tenet in all paganism would giveso fair a scope to ridicule as this of the real presence ·ofthe body and blood of Christ in the bread and wine of theEucharist·. For it is so absurd that it eludes the force ofall argument. There are even some funny stories about it,

which are commonly told by the Catholics themselves. [Hetells two: One relates that a communicant was mistakenlygiven a counter instead of a wafer, and complained to thepriest: ‘I wish you had not given me God the Father; he isso hard and tough there is no swallowing him.’ The otherconcerns a newly converted Turk who, the day after hisfirst communion, was asked how many Gods there are andreplied: ‘None. You have told me all along that there is butone God, and yesterday I ate him.’]

Such are the doctrines of our brethren the Catholics.But we are so accustomed to these doctrines that we neverwonder at them; though in a future age it will probablybecome difficult to persuade some nations that any humancreature could ever embrace such principles. And it is athousand to one that these nations will themselves havesomething just as absurd in their own creed, to which theywill give a most implicit and most religious assent.

[Hume recalls observing a Turkish ambassador and aFrench Capuchin friar beholding one another in astonish-ment. He comments:] Thus all mankind stand staring at oneanother; and there is no beating it into their heads that theturban of the African is as good or as bad a fashion as thecowl of the European. . . .

We can imagine this conversation between a scholar fromthe Sorbonne and a priest of ancient Egypt:

•‘How can you worship leeks and onions?’•‘If we worship them, at least we do not at the sametime, eat them.’

•‘But what strange objects of adoration are cats andmonkeys?’

•‘They are at least as good as the relics or rotten bonesof martyrs.’

•‘Are you not mad to cut one another’s throat aboutthe preference of a cabbage or a cucumber?’

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•Yes, I will agree, if you will admit that it is evenmadder to fight about the preference among volumesof sophistry, ten thousand of which are not equal invalue to one cabbage or cucumber.

Every bystander will easily judge (though unfortunatelythere are few bystanders) that if any popular system couldbe established merely by exposing the absurdities of othersystems, every votary of every superstition could give asufficient reason for his blind and bigoted attachment to theprinciples he has been brought up with. But even withoutthis support, there is still plenty of religious zeal and faithamong mankind. Diodorus Siculus reports a remarkableexample of this, of which he was himself an eye-witness.While Egypt lay under the greatest terror of the Roman name,a Roman soldier was accidentally guilty of the sacrilegiousimpiety of killing a cat; and the whole people rose upon himwith the utmost fury, all the efforts of the prince not beingenough to save him. I’m sure that the senate and people ofRome would not have been so delicate with regard to theirnational deities. A little time after that episode, they veryfrankly voted Augustus a place in the celestial mansions,and they would have dethroned every god in heaven for hissake, if had he seemed to want this. . . .

‘Despite the sanctity of our holy religion,’ says Cicero, ‘nocrime is more common with us than sacrilege; but was itever heard of that an Egyptian violated the temple of a cat,an ibis, or a crocodile?’ In another place he says: ‘There isno torture an Egyptian would not undergo rather than injurean ibis, an aspic, a cat, a dog or a crocodile.’ Thus, whatDryden observes in Absolom and Achitophel is true:

Of whatsoe’er descent their godhead be,Stock, stone, or other homely pedigree,In his defence his servants are as boldAs if he had been born of beaten gold.

Indeed, the baser the materials of which a divinity is com-posed, the greater the devotion he is likely to arouse inthe breasts of his deluded votaries. They exult in theirshame, and think their deity regards it as meritorious inthem to brave for his sake all the ridicule and abuse of hisenemies. Ten thousand Crusaders enlist under the holybanners, and openly triumph in the parts of their religionthat their adversaries regard as the most disgraceful.

There is admittedly a difficulty in the Egyptian systemof theology, as indeed few systems of that kind are entirelyfree from difficulties. Given their method of propagation, acouple of cats could in fifty years stock a whole kingdom;and in twenty more years, if religious veneration were stillpaid to them, not only would it be easier in Egypt to finda god than a man (which Petronius says was the case insome parts of Italy), but the gods would eventually starvethe men, leaving themselves neither priests nor votaries. Itis probable, therefore, that this wise nation—the most cele-brated in antiquity for prudence and sound policy—foresawsuch dangerous consequences and reserved all their worshipfor the full-grown divinities, drowning the holy spawn orlittle unweaned gods without any scruple or remorse. So thepractice of warping the tenets of religion in order to serveworldly interests is emphatically not to be regarded as aninvention of these later ages.

When the learned and philosophical •Varro was discours-ing about religion, he did not claim to be delivering anythingbeyond probabilities and appearances—-such were his goodsense and moderation! But the passionate and zealousAugustine insults •the noble Roman on his scepticism andreserve, and professes the most thorough belief and assur-ance. Yet a heathen poet, contemporary with Augustine,regards his religious system as being so false that even thecredulity of children could not get them to believe it.

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Is it strange, when mistakes are so common, to findeveryone positive and dogmatic? And that the zeal oftenrises in proportion to the error? Spartian writes: ‘At thistime the Jews began a war, because they had been forbiddento mutilate the genitals.’

If there was ever a nation or a time in which the publicreligion lost all authority over mankind, we might expect•infidelity in Rome during the time of Cicero would openlyhave erected its throne, and that Cicero himself would inevery speech and action have been •its most open supporter.But whatever sceptical liberties that great man might take inhis writings or in philosophical conversation, in the commonconduct of life he seems to have avoided the charge of irreli-gion and profaneness. Even in his own family, and to his wifeTerentia whom he highly trusted, he was willing to appear adevout religionist; and there remains a letter addressed toher in which he seriously asks her to offer sacrifice to Apolloand Æsculapius in gratitude for the recovery of his health.

Pompey’s devotion was much more sincere: in all hisconduct during the civil wars he paid a great regard toauguries, dreams and prophesies. Augustus was taintedwith superstition of every kind. As it is reported of Milton thathis poetical genius never flowed with ease and abundancein the spring, so Augustus observed that his own geniusfor dreaming was never as perfect or as reliable duringthat season as during the rest of the year. That great andable emperor was also extremely uneasy when in changinghis shoes he happened to put the right shoe on the leftfoot. In short, it cannot be doubted that the votaries of theestablished superstition of antiquity were as numerous inevery state as those of the modern religion are today. Itsinfluence was as universal ·as the modern religion’s·, thoughit was not as great. It was assented to by as many people,though that assent seems not to have been so strong, precise,

and affirmative.We may observe that despite the dogmatic, imperious

style of all superstition, the conviction of the religionistsin all ages is more pretended than real, and hardly evercomes anywhere near the solid belief and persuasion thatgoverns us in the common affairs of life. Men dare not admit,even to their own hearts, the doubts they entertain on suchsubjects. They make a merit of implicit faith, and disguiseto themselves their real infidelity by the strongest assertionsand most positive bigotry. But nature is too hard for all theirendeavours, and doesn’t allow the dim flickering light offeredin those shadowy regions to equal the strong impressionsmade by common sense and by experience. The usual courseof men’s conduct belies their words, and shows that theirassent in religious matters is some inexplicable operation ofthe mind between disbelief and conviction, but coming muchcloser to the former than to the latter.

Thus, given that the mind of man appears to have such aloose and unsteady texture that even today when so manypersons earn their livings using the hammer and chisel on it,they cannot engrave theological tenets on it with any lastingimpression; how much more must this have been the casein ancient times when so many fewer people were dedicatedto the holy function? No wonder that the appearances werethen very inconsistent, with men sometimes seeming to bedetermined infidels and enemies to the established religion,without being so in reality—or at least without knowing theirown minds in that respect.

Something else that made the ancient religions muchlooser than the modern ones is that the former were•traditional and the latter are •scriptural; and the ancienttradition was complex, contradictory, and often doubtful, sothat it could not possibly be reduced to any standard andcanon or yield any determinate articles of faith. There were

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countless stories of the gods, as there are popish legends;and though almost everyone believed some of these stories,no-one could believe or know all of them; while at the sametime they must all have admitted that no one story stood ona better foundation than the rest. The traditions of differentcities and nations were often directly opposite, and no reasoncould be given for preferring one to another. And as therewere countless stories that were not firmly embedded in thetradition, there was an insensible gradation from the mostfundamental articles of faith to those loose and precariousfictions. So the pagan religion, whenever one got close to itand examined it piecemeal, seemed to vanish like a cloud.It could never be pinned down by any fixed dogmas andprinciples. And though this did not convert the general runof mankind from this absurd faith—for when will the peoplebe reasonable?—it did make them falter and hesitate morein maintaining their principles, and was even apt to produce,in certain frames of mind, some practices and opinions thathad the appearance of settled infidelity.

To which we may add that the fables of the pagan religionwere in themselves light, easy, and familiar; without devils,or seas of brimstone, or any object that could much terrifythe imagination. Who could refrain from smiling when hethought of the loves of Mars and Venus, or the amorousfrolics of Jupiter and Pan? In this respect it was a truepoetical religion, except that it had too much levity for thegraver kinds of poetry. We find that it has been adopted bymodern bards, who have not talked with greater freedomand irreverence of the gods they regarded as fictions than

the ancients did of the gods they regarded as real.Here is an inference that might be thought to be sound:

A certain system of religion made no deep impressionon the minds of a people; therefore it was positivelyrejected by all men of common sense, and oppositeprinciples were generally established by argument andreasoning, in spite of the prejudices of education.

This is certainly not sound; indeed, I think that a contraryinference may be more probable. The less pushy and dog-matic any sort of superstition appears to be, the less willit provoke men’s anger and indignation, or provoke theminto enquiring into its foundation and origin. Anyway, hismuch is obvious: the command of any religious faith overthe understanding is wavering and uncertain, subject toevery variety of mood and dependent on present events thatstrike the imagination. Religions differ in this respect only indegree. An ancient will alternate clear signs of impiety withclear signs of superstition alternately throughout a wholediscourse;1 a modern often thinks in the same way, thoughhe may be more guarded in his expression.

Lucian tells us explicitly that anyone who did not believethe most ridiculous fables of paganism was regarded by thepeople as profane and impious. And, indeed, why wouldthat agreeable author have employed the whole force of hiswit and satire against the national religion if that religionhad not been generally believed by his countrymen andcontemporaries?

1 Witness this remarkable passage of Tacitus: ‘Besides the manifold vicissitudes of human affairs, there were prodigies in heaven and earth, thewarning voices of the thunder, and other intimations of the future, auspicious or gloomy, doubtful or not to be mistaken. Never surely did moreterrible calamities of the Roman people, or evidence more conclusive, prove that the Gods take no thought for our happiness, but only for ourpunishment.’ Augustus’s quarrel with Neptune is an instance of the same kind. If the emperor did not believe Neptune to be a real being withdominion over the sea, what was his anger based on? And if he did believe it, what madness to provoke that deity still further!

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Livy acknowledges, as frankly as any divine would dotoday, the common incredulity of his age; but then hecondemns it as severely. Who can imagine that a nationalsuperstition which could delude such an able man wouldnot also impose on the general run of the people?

The Stoics bestowed many magnificent and even impiousepithets on their ·ideal· sage—that he alone was rich, free,a king, and equal to the immortal gods. They forgot toadd that he was no more prudent or intelligent than anold woman. For surely nothing can be more pitiful thanthat sect’s views on religious matters, when they seriouslyagree with the common augurs that when a raven croaksfrom the left it is a good omen, but a rook’s making a noisefrom the same direction is a bad one. Panaetius was theonly Greek Stoic who so much as doubted with regard toauguries and divinations. Marcus Antoninus tells us thathe himself had received many admonitions from the godsin his sleep. It is true that Epictetus forbids us to pay anyattention to the language of rooks and ravens; but it is notbecause they do not speak truth; it is only because theycan foretell nothing but the breaking of our neck or theforfeiture of our estate—which he says are circumstancesthat nowise concern us. Thus the Stoics join a philosophicalenthusiasm to a religious superstition. The force of theirmind, being all turned to the side of morals, unbent itself inthat of religion. . . .

The same Cicero who in his own family put on an appear-ance of being a devout religionist does not scruple in a publiccourt of judicature to treat the doctrine of a future state asa ridiculous fable to which nobody could give any attention.Sallust reports Caesar as speaking the same language in theopen senate.

But that all these freedoms did not imply a total anduniversal infidelity and scepticism among the people is too

obvious to be denied. Though some parts of the nationalreligion hung loose on the minds of men, other parts adheredto them more closely; and it was the chief business ofthe sceptical philosophers to show that there was no morefoundation for one than for the other. This is the procedure ofCotta in the dialogues concerning the nature of the gods. Herefutes the whole system of mythology by leading orthodoxreaders from •the more momentous stories that were believedto •the more frivolous ones that everyone ridiculed, doingthis gradually: from the gods to the goddesses, from thegoddesses to the nymphs, from the nymphs to the faunsand satyrs. His master, Carneades, had employed the samemethod of reasoning.

Upon the whole, the greatest and most observable differ-ences between •a traditional, mythological religion and •asystematic, scholastic one are two. (i) The former is oftenmore reasonable, as consisting only of a multitude of storieswhich, however groundless, do not involve outright absurdityand demonstrative contradiction. (ii) The former also sits soeasily and lightly on men’s minds that, though it may be asuniversally accepted ·as the latter·, it fortunately makes nosuch deep impression on the affections and understanding.

13. Impious conceptions of the divine nature inpopular religions of both kinds

The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from ananxious fear of future events; and it is easy to conceive whatideas will naturally be entertained of invisible, unknownpowers when men are subject to dismal anxieties of anykind. Every image of vengeance, severity, cruelty and malicemust occur, and must increase the ghastliness and horrorthat oppresses the dazzled believer. Once a panic has seizedthe mind, the active imagination still further multiplies the

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objects of terror; while the profound darkness—or, worse,the glimmering light—we are surrounded by represents thespectres of divinity in the most dreadful forms imaginable.And no idea of perverse wickedness can be formed that thoseterrified devotees do not unhesitatingly apply to their deity.

This appears to be the natural state of religion whensurveyed in one light. But if instead we consider the spirit ofpraise and eulogy that necessarily has a place in all religionsand is the consequence of these very terrors, we mustexpect a quite contrary system of theology to prevail. Everyvirtue, every excellence, must be ascribed to the divinity,and no exaggeration will be regarded as sufficient to reachthe perfections he is endowed with. Whatever strains ofpraise can be invented are immediately embraced, withoutconsulting any arguments or phenomena. They are regardedas sufficiently confirmed by the fact that they give us moremagnificent ideas of the divine objects of our worship andadoration.

Here therefore is a kind of contradiction between thedifferent principles [see Glossary] of human nature that enterinto religion. Our natural terrors present the notion of adevilish and malicious deity; our propensity to adulationleads us to acknowledge one that is excellent and divine. Theinfluences of these opposite principles are various, accordingto the different situations of the human understanding.

In very barbarous and ignorant nations, such as theAfricans and Indians—indeed, even the Japanese—who canform no extensive ideas of power and knowledge, worshipmay be paid to a being whom they admit to be wicked anddetestable; though they may be cautious about uttering thisadmission in public, or in his temple, where he may besupposed to hear their reproaches.

Such rough and imperfect ideas of the Divinity stay fora long time with all idolaters, and it is safe to say that the

Greeks themselves never entirely got rid of them. Xenophonremarks, in praise of Socrates, that this philosopher did notaccept the vulgar opinion that the gods know some thingsand are ignorant of others; he maintained that they kneweverything—what was done, said, or even thought. But asthis was a strain of philosophy much above the conceptionof his countrymen, it is not surprising that in their booksand conversation they very frankly blamed the deities whomthey worshipped in their temples. Herodotus in particularoften freely ascribes envy to the gods, the most suitablesentiment of all to a mean and devilish nature. The paganhymns, however, sung in public worship, contained nothingbut epithets of praise; even while the actions ascribed to thegods were the most barbarous and detestable. When the poetTimotheus recited a hymn to Diana, enumerating with thegreatest eulogies all the actions and attributes of that cruel,capricious goddess, one of his audience said: ‘May yourdaughter become such as the deity whom you celebrate.’

As men further exalt their idea of their divinity, it is theirnotion of his power and knowledge that is enlarged, nottheir notion of his goodness. On the contrary, their terrorsnaturally increase in proportion to the supposed extent of hisknowledge and authority; while they believe that no secrecycan conceal them from his scrutiny, and that even the inmostrecesses of their hearts lie open before him. So they mustbe careful not to form explicitly any sentiment of blameand disapproval. All must be applause, ravishment, extasy.And while their gloomy anxieties make them ascribe to himmeasures of conduct that would be highly blamed in humancreatures, they must still purport to praise and admire thatconduct in the object of their devotional addresses. So it issafe to say that popular religions are, in the conception oftheir more vulgar votaries, really a kind of demonism; and thehigher the deity is exalted in power and knowledge, the lower

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he is automatically depressed in goodness and benevolence,no matter what epithets of praise may be bestowed on him byhis dazzled adorers. Among ·low-level· idolaters a the wordsmay be false, and belie b the secret opinion. But amonghigher-level religionists b the opinion itself contracts a kindof falsehood and belies c the inward sentiment. The c heartsecretly detests such measures of cruel and implacablevengeance; but b the judgment doesn’t dare not to pronouncethem perfect and adorable. The additional misery of thisinward struggle worsens all the other terrors by which theseunhappy victims to superstition are for ever haunted.

Lucian observes that a young man who reads the historyof the gods in Homer or Hesiod, and finds their factions,wars, injustice, incest, adultery and other immoralities sohighly celebrated, is much surprised when he later comesinto the world and finds that punishments are inflicted bylaw on the very actions he had been taught to ascribe tosuperior beings. The contradiction is perhaps even strongerbetween the representations given us by some later religionsand our natural ideas of generosity, lenience, impartialityand justice; and in proportion to the multiplied terrors ofthese religions the barbarous conceptions of the divinityare multiplied on us. Nothing can preserve untainted thegenuine principles of morals in our judgment of humanconduct but the absolute necessity of these principles tothe existence of society. If common conception can indulgeprinces in a system of ethics somewhat different from whatshould regulate private persons, how much more thosesuperior beings whose attributes, views, and nature areso totally unknown to us? The gods have maxims of justicepeculiar to themselves.

14. Popular religions’ bad influence on morality

Here I cannot refrain from mentioning a fact that may beworth the attention of students of human nature. It is certainthat in every religion, however sublime the verbal definitionit gives of its divinity, many and perhaps most of the votarieswill still seek the divine favour not through virtue and goodmorals, which alone can be acceptable to a perfect being,but by

•frivolous observances,•intemperate zeal,•rapturous ecstasies, or•believing mysterious and absurd doctrines.

The least part of the Jewish prayer-book, as well as ofthe Pentateuch, consists in precepts of morality; and wecan be sure that that part was always the least observedand regarded. When the old Romans were attacked witha pestilence, they never ascribed their sufferings to theirvices or dreamed of repentance and amendment. They neverthought that they were the general robbers of the world,whose ambition and avarice made the earth desolate andreduced rich nations to want and beggary. They only createda dictator to drive a nail into a door, thinking that this willhave sufficiently appeased their angry deity. . . .

It never happens, but just suppose that a popular religionwere found in which it was explicitly declared that nothingbut morality could gain the divine favour, and that anorder of priests was instituted to inculcate this doctrinein daily sermons and with all the arts of persuasion. Soinveterate are the people’s prejudices that for lack of someother superstition they would regard the essential thing inreligion not as •virtue and good morals but as •attendanceon these sermons. . . .

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Why are people like that? Well, people everywhere degradetheir deities into something like themselves, and considerthem merely as a species of human creatures, somewhatmore potent and thinking. But this does not answer thequestion; for there is no man so stupid that he would not,judging by his natural reason, regard virtue and honestyas the most valuable qualities any person could possess.Why not ascribe the same sentiment to his deity? Why notmake all religion, or the chief part of it, consist in theseattainments?

Nor is it satisfactory to say that the practice of moralityis rejected because it is more difficult than the practice ofsuperstition. For, not to mention the excessive penances ofthe Buddhist monks, it is certain that the Ramadan of theMoslems—

during which the poor wretches, for many days, oftenin the hottest months of the year and in some of thehottest climates of the world, remain without eatingor drinking from sunrise to sunset

—must be more severe than the practice of any moral duty,even for the most vicious and depraved of mankind. Thefour Lents of the Muscovites, and the austerities of someRoman Catholics, appear more disagreeable than meeknessand benevolence. In short, all virtue is agreeable, when menare reconciled to it by ever so little practice; whereas allsuperstition is always odious and burdensome.

Perhaps the following account may be received as a truesolution of the difficulty. The duties a man performs asa friend or parent seem to be something he owes to hisbenefactor or his children, and he cannot fail in these dutieswithout breaking through all the ties of nature and morality.A strong inclination may prompt him to the performance;a sentiment of order and moral obligation joins its forceto these natural ties; and the whole man, if he is truly

virtuous, is drawn to his duty without any effort or endeavour.Even with regard to the virtues that are more austere andmore founded on reflection—such as public spirit, filial duty,temperance or integrity—the moral obligation removes, wethink, all claim to religious merit; and the virtuous conduct isregarded as merely what we owe to society and to ourselves.A superstitious man finds nothing in all this that he hasperformed for the sake of this deity or that can speciallyrecommend him to the divine favour and protection. He doesnot consider that the most genuine method of serving thedivinity is to promote the happiness of his creatures. He stilllooks out for some more immediate service of the supremeBeing, in order to allay the terrors that haunt him. Andany practice that is recommended to him and that either•serves no purpose in life or •offers the strongest violenceto his natural inclinations he will the more readily embraceprecisely because of those very circumstances that shouldmake him absolutely reject it. It seems ·to him· more purelyreligious because no other motive or consideration comesinto it. And if for its sake he sacrifices much of his easeand quiet, his claim of merit appears to be strengthenedin proportion to the zeal and devotion he exhibits. Whenhe restores a loan or pays a debt, this does nothing for hisdivinity, because these acts of justice are what he was boundto perform—and what many would have performed—if therewere no god in the universe. But if he fasts for a day orgives himself a sound whipping, he sees this as having adirect reference to the service of God. No other motive coulddraw him to such austerities. By these distinguished marksof devotion he has now acquired the divine favour, and hemay expect to be rewarded with protection and safety in thisworld and eternal happiness in the next.

Hence the greatest crimes have often been found com-patible with a superstitious piety and devotion. Hence it is

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rightly regarded as unsafe to draw confident conclusionsabout a man’s morals from the fervour or strictness of hisreligious exercises, even if he himself believes them to besincere. Indeed, it has been observed that enormities of theblackest dye have been apt to produce superstitious terrorsand increase the religious passion. Bomilcar, having formeda conspiracy to assassinate the whole senate of Carthageand invade the liberties of his country, lost the opportunitybecause of a continual regard to omens and prophecies.Those who undertake the most criminal and most dangerousenterprises are commonly the most superstitious; as anancient historian remarks on this topic, ‘Their devotionand spiritual faith rise with their fears.’ Catiline was notcontented with the established deities and accepted rites ofthe national religion. His anxious terrors made him seek newinventions of this kind, which he would probably never havedreamed of if he had remained a good citizen and obedientto the laws of his country.

To which we may add that after the commission of crimesthere arise remorses and secret horrors, which give no rest tothe mind but make it resort to religious rites and ceremoniesas expiations of its offences. Whatever weakens or disordersthe internal frame •promotes the interests of superstition;and nothing is more •destructive to them than a manly,steady virtue, which preserves us from disastrous and melan-choly accidents or else teaches us to bear them. Duringsuch calm sunshine of the mind, these spectres of falsedivinity never make their appearance. On the other hand,while we abandon ourselves to the natural undisciplinedsuggestions of our timid and anxious hearts, every kind ofbarbarity is ascribed to the supreme Being, because of theterrors we are agitated by; and every kind of caprice becauseof the methods we adopt to appease him. a Barbarity andb caprice; these qualities, however disguised verbally, can be

seen to form the ruling character of the deity in all popularreligions. Even priests, instead of correcting these depravedideas of mankind, have often been found ready to fosterand encourage them. The more a tremendous the divinity isrepresented as being, the more tame and submissive menbecome to his ministers; and the more b unaccountable themeasures of acceptance he requires, the more necessary itbecomes to abandon our natural reason and yield to theministers’ ghostly guidance and direction. Thus it maybe allowed that the artifices of men worsen our naturalinfirmities and follies of this kind but never originally begetthem. Their root strikes deeper into the mind, and springsfrom the essential and universal properties of human nature.

15. General corollary

Though the stupidity of barbarous and uninstructed menis so great that they may fail to see a sovereign authorin the more obvious works of nature that are so familiarto them, it scarcely seems possible that anyone of goodunderstanding should reject that idea once it has beensuggested to him. A purpose, an intention, a design isevident in everything; and when our thinking broadensenough to contemplate the first rise of this visible system,we must adopt with the strongest conviction the idea ofsome thinking cause or author. The uniform regularitiesthat prevail throughout the universe lead us—naturally, ifnot necessarily—to conceive this intelligence as single andundivided, where the prejudices of education do not opposesuch a reasonable theory. Even the contrarieties of nature,by revealing themselves everywhere, become proofs of someconsistent plan and establish one single purpose or intention,however inexplicable and incomprehensible.

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Good and ill are universally intermingled and confounded;happiness and misery, wisdom and folly, virtue and vice.Nothing is pure and entirely of a piece. All advantages areaccompanied by disadvantages. . . . It is not possible for usby our most chimerical wishes to form the idea of a stationor situation that is altogether desirable. According to thepoet’s fiction, the draughts of life are always mixed from thevessels on each hand of Jupiter; or if any cup is presentedaltogether pure ·and unmixed·, it is drawn (as the same poettells us) from the vessel on the left.

Few exceptions are found to this uniform law of nature:The more exquisite any good is of which a small specimen isprovided for us, the sharper is the evil allied to it.

•The most sprightly wit borders on madness;•the highest effusions of joy produce the deepest melan-choly;

•the most ravishing pleasures are accompanied by themost cruel lassitude and disgust;

•the most glittering hopes make way for the severestdisappointments.

And, in general, no course of life has as much safety as thetemperate and moderate course, which maintains as far aspossible the middle of the road and a kind of insensibilityin everything. (I say ‘safety’ because happiness is not to bedreamed of.)

As the good, the great, the sublime and the ravishingare found eminently in the genuine principles of theism,it may be expected, from the analogy of nature ·describedin the preceding paragraph·, that the base, the absurd, themean and the terrifying will be equally discovered in religiousfictions and chimeras.

The universal propensity to believe in invisible, thinkingpower, if not an original instinct, is at least a general atten-dant of human nature and so may be considered as a kind of

mark or stamp that the divine workman has set on his work;and surely nothing can more dignify mankind than to bethus selected from all other parts of the creation, and to bearthe image or impression of the universal Creator. But consultthis image as it appears in the popular religions of the world.How is the deity disfigured in our representations of him!What caprice, absurdity, and immorality are attributed tohim! How much is he degraded even below the character wewould naturally in common life ascribe to a man of senseand virtue!

What a noble privilege is it of human reason to attain theknowledge of the supreme Being, and to be enabled to inferfrom the visible works of nature such a sublime principle [see

Glossary] as its supreme Creator? But look at the back of themedal. Survey most nations and most ages. Examine thereligious principles that have in fact prevailed in the world.You will scarcely be persuaded that they are anything butsick men’s dreams; or perhaps you’ll regard them as theplayful whimsies of monkeys in human shape rather thanthe serious, positive, dogmatic assertions of a being whodignifies himself with the label ‘rational’.

Hear the verbal protestations of all men: Nothing socertain as their religious tenets. Examine their lives: You willscarcely think they have the smallest confidence in them.

The greatest and truest zeal gives us no security againsthypocrisy. The most open impiety is accompanied by a secretdread and compunction.

No theological absurdities are so glaring that they havenever been embraced by men of the greatest and most culti-vated understanding. No religious precepts are so rigorousthat they have not been adopted by the most voluptuous andmost abandoned of men.

Ignorance is the mother of devotion—a maxim that isproverbial, and confirmed by general experience. Look out

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for a people with no religion at all; if you find them, beassured, that they are only a few degrees above brutes.

What is so pure as some of the morals included in sometheological systems? What is so corrupt as some of thepractices these systems give rise to?

The comfortable views exhibited by the belief in a futurelife are ravishing and delightful. But how quickly they vanishon the appearance of that life’s terrors, which keep a morefirm and durable possession of the human mind!

The whole thing is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicablemystery. Our most careful scrutiny of this subject producesnothing but doubt, uncertainty and suspense of judgment.But such is the frailty of human reason, and such theirresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberatedoubt could scarcely be upheld if we didn’t enlarge our view,oppose one species of superstition to another, and set themquarrelling, while we happily make our escape, into the calmthough obscure regions of philosophy.

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Natural History of Religion - Early Modern Texts · David Hume Natural History of Religion Dedication [John Home (sometimes spelled ‘Hume’) was a distant relative of DavidHume’s,