With peculiar propriety, therefore, did Hume term his work a Natural History of Religion. It is an admirable specimen of the deductive method. Its only fault is that he speaks too confidently of the accuracy of the results to which, on such a subject, that method could attain. He believed, that, by observing the principles of human nature, as he found them in his own mind, it was possible to explain the whole course of affairs, both moral and physical 100 These principles were to be arrived at by experiments made on himself; and having thus arrived at them, he was to reason from them deductively, and so construct the entire scheme. This he contrasts with the inductive plan, which he calls a tedious and lingering process; and while others might follow that slow and patient method of gradually working their way towards first principles, his project was, to seize them at once, or, as he expresses himself, not to stop at the frontier, but to march directly on the capital, being possessed of which, he could gain an easy victory over other difficulties, and could extend his conquests over the sciences.101 According to Hume, we are to reason, not in order to obtain

ture, book iii. part ii. "This, however, hinders not but that philosophers may, if they please, extend their reasoning to the supposed state of nature; provided they allow it to be a mere philosophical fiction, which never had, and never could have any reality." The same liberty may be permitted to moral, which is allowed to natural philosophers; and 'tis vely usual with the latter to consider any motion as compounded and consisting of two parts separa te from each other, though, at the same time, they acknowledge it to be in itself uncompounded and inseparable." Philosophical Works, vol. ii. p. 263.

100 And, conver sely, that whatever was "demonstratively false," could "never be distinct ly conceived by the mind." Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 33. Here, a nd sometimes in other passages, Hume, though by no means a Cartesian, reminds us of Descartes.

101 < 'Here, then, is the only expedient, from which we can hope for success in our philosophical researches, to leave the tedious, lingering method, which we have hitherto followed, and instead of taking now and then a castle or a village on the frontier, to march up directly to the capital, or centre of these sciences, to human nature itself; which, being once masters of, we may every where else hope for an easy victory. From this station we may extend our conquests over all those sciences which more immediately concern human life, and may afterwards proceed, at leisure, to discover more fully those which are the objects of pure curiosity." Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. p. 8. See also, in vol. ii. pp. 73, 74, his remarks on the way "to consider the matter à priori.”

ideas, but we are to have clear ideas before we reason.103 By this means, we arrive at philosophy; and her conclusions are not to be impugned, even if they do happen to clash with science. On the contrary, her authority is supreme, and her decisions, being essentially true, must always be preferred to any generalization of the facts which the external world presents.103

Hume, therefore, believed, that all the secrets of the external world are wrapped up in the human mind. The mind was not only the key by which the treasure could be unlocked; it was also the treasure itself. Learning and science might illustrate and beautify our mental acquisitions, but they could not communicate real knowledge; they could neither give the prime original materials, nor could they teach the design according to which those materials must be worked.

In conformity with these views, the Natural History of Religion was composed. The object of Hume in writing it, was, to ascertain the origin and progress of religious ideas; and he arrives at the conclusion, that the worship of many Gods must, every where, have preceded the worship of one God. This, he regards as a law of the human mind, a thing not only that always has happened, but that always must happen. His proof is entirely

102 "No kind of reasoning can give rise to a new idea, such as this of power is; but wherever we reason, we must antecedently be possessed of clear ideas, which may be the objects of our reasoning." Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. p. 217. Compare vol. ii. p. 276, on our arriving at a knowledge of causes "by a kind of taste or fancy." Hence, the larger view preceding the smaller, and being essentially independent of it, will constantly contradict it; and he complains, for instance, that "difficulties, which seem unsurmountable in theory, are easily got over in practice." vol. ii. p. 357; and again, in vol. iii. p. 326, on the effort needed to "reconcile reason to experience." But, after all, it is rather by a careful study of his works, than by quoting particular passages, that his method can be understood. In the two sentences, however, just cited, the reader will see that theory and reason represent the larger view; while practice and experience represent the smaller.

103 "Tis certainly a kind of indignity to philosophy, whose sovereign authority ought every where to be acknowledged, to oblige her on every occasion to make apologies for her conclusions, and justify herself to every particular art and science, which may be offended at her. This puts one in mind of a king arraigned for high treason against his subjects." Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. i. pp. 318, 319.

speculative. He argues that the earliest state of man is necessarily a savage state; that savages can feel no interest in the ordinary operations of nature, and no desire to study the principles which govern those operations; that such men must be devoid of curiosity on all subjects which do not personally trouble them; and that, therefore, while they neglect the usual events of nature, they will turn their minds to the unusual ones,104 A violent tempest, a monstrous birth, excessive cold, excessive rain, sudden and fatal diseases, are the sort of things to which the attention of the savage is confined, and of which alone he desires to know the causes. Directly he finds that such causes are beyond his control, he reckons them superior to himself, and, being incapable of abstracting them, he personifies them; he turns them into deities; polytheism is established; and the earliest creed of mankind assumes a form which can never be altered, as long as men remain in this condition of pristine ignorance."

105

104 "A barbarous, necessitous animal (such as a man is on the first origin of society), pressed by such numerous wants and passions, has no leisure to admire the regular face of nature, or make inquiries concerning the cause of those objects to which, from his infancy, he has been gradually accustomed. On the contrary, the more regular and uniform, that is the more perfect, nature appears, the more is he familiarized to it, and the less inclined to scrutinize and examine it. A monstrous birth excites his curiosity, and is deemed a prodigy. It alarms him from its novelty, and immediately sets him a trembling, and sacrificing, and praying. But an animal complete in all its limbs and organs, is to him an ordinary spectacle, and produces no religious opinion or affection. Ask him whence that animal arose? he will tell you, from the copulation of its parents. And these, whence? From the copulation of theirs. A few removes satisfy his curiosity, and set the objects at such a distance that he entirely loses sight of them. Imagine not that he will so much as start the question, whence the first animal, much less whence the whole system, or united fabric of the universe arose. Or, if you start such a question to him, expect not that he will employ his mind with any anxiety about a subject so remote, so uninteresting, and which so much exceeds the bounds of his capacity." Natural History of Religion, in Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 439. See also pp. 463-465.

105 "By degrees, the active imagination of men, uneasy in this abstract conception of objects, about which it is incessantly employed, begins to render them more particular, and to clothe them in shapes more suitable to its natural comprehension. It represents them to be sensible, intelligent beings like mankind; actuated by love and hatred, and flexible by gifts and entreaties, by prayers and sacrifices. Hence the origin of religion. And

These propositions, which are not only plausible, but which are probably true, ought, according to the inductive philosophy, to have been generalized from a survey of facts; that is, from a collection of evidence respecting the state of religion and of the speculative faculties among savage tribes. But this, Hume abstains from doing. He refers to none of the numerous travellers who have visited such people; he does not, in the whole course of his work, mention even a single book where facts respecting savage life are preserved. It was enough for him, that the progress from a belief in many Gods to a belief in one God, was the natural progress; which is saying, in other words, that it appeared to his mind to be the natural progress. With that, he was satisfied. In other parts of his essay, where he treats of the religious opinions of the ancient Greeks and Romans, he displays a tolerable, though by no means remarkable, learning; but the passages which he cites, do not refer to that entirely barbarous society in which, as he supposes, polytheism first arose. The premisses, therefore, of the argument are evolved out of his own mind. He

106

hence the origin of idolatry, or polytheism." Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 472. "The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events." p. 498.

We

108" It seems certain, that, according to the natural progress of human thought, the ignorant multitude must first entertain some grovelling and familiar notion of superior powers, before they stretch their conception to that perfect Being who bestowed order on the whole frame of nature. may as reasonably imagine, that men inhabited palaces before huts and cottages, or studied geometry before agriculture, as assert that the Deity appeared to them a pure spirit, omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent, before he was apprehended to be a powerful though limited being, with human passions and appetites, limbs and organs. The mind rises gradually from inferior to superior. By abstracting from what is imperfect, it forms an idea of perfection; and slowly distinguishing the nobler parts of its own frame from the grosser, it learns to transform only the former, much elevated and refined, to its divinity. Nothing could disturb this natural progress of thought, but some obvious and invincible argument, which might immediately lead the mind into the pure principles of theism, and make it overleap, at one bound, the vast interval which is interposed between the human and the Divine nature. But though I allow, that the order and frame of the universe, when accurately examined, affords such an argument, yet I can never think that this consideration could have an influence on mankind, when they formed their first rude notions of religion." Nutural History of Religion, in Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 438.

reasons deductively from the ideas which his powerful intellect supplied, instead of reasoning inductively from the facts which were peculiar to the subject he was investigating.

Even in the rest of his work, which is full of refined and curious speculation, he uses facts, not to demonstrate his conclusions, but to illustrate them. He, therefore, selected those facts which suited his purpose, leaving the others untouched. And this, which many critics would call unfair, was not unfair in him; because he believed, that he had already established his principles without the aid of those facts. The facts might benefit the reader, by making the argument clearer, but they could not strengthen the argument. They were more intended to persuade than to prove; they were rather rhetorical than logical. Hence, a critic would waste his time if he were to sift them with a minuteness which would be necessary, supposing that Hume had built an inductive argument upon them. Otherwise, without going far, it might be curious to contrast them with the entirely dif ferent facts which Cudworth, eighty years before, had collected from the same source, and on the same subject. Cudworth, who was much superior to Hume in learning, and much inferior to him in genius, 107 displayed, in his great work on the Intellectual System of the Universe, a prodigious erudition, to prove that, in the ancient world, the belief in one God was a prevailing doctrine. Hume, who never refers to Cudworth, arrives at a precisely opposite conclusion. Both quoted ancient writers; but while Cudworth drew his inferences from what he found in those writers, Hume drew his from what he found in his own mind. Cudworth, being more learned, relied on his reading; Hume, having more genius, relied on

107 Not that he was by any means devoid of genius, though he holds a rank far below so great and original a thinker as Hume. He had, however, collected more materials than he was able to wield; and his work on the Intellectual System of the Universe, which is a treasure of ancient philosophy, is badly arranged, and, in many parts, feebly argued. There is more real power in his posthumous treatise on Eternal and Immutable Morality.