vm THEISM; EVOLUTION OF THEOLOGY 185 



speech reaches not even the dignity of sounding 

 brass or tinkling cymbal, and is but the weary 

 clatter of an endless logomachy. One can but 

 suspect that Hume also had reached this con- 

 viction; and that his shadowy and inconsistent 

 theism was the expression of his desire to rest in 

 a state of mind, which distinctly excluded nega- 

 tion, while it included as little as possible of 

 affirmation, respecting a problem which he felt 

 to be hopelessly insoluble. 



But, whatever might be the views of the 

 philosopher as to the arguments for theism, the 

 historian could have no doubt respecting its 

 many-shaped existence, and the great part which 

 it has played in the world. Here, then, was a 

 body of natural facts to be investigated scientific- 

 ally, and the result of Hume's inquiries is 

 embodied in the remarkable essay on the 

 " Natural History of Keligion." Hume antici- 

 pated the results of modern investigation in 

 declaring fetishism and polytheism to be the 

 form in which savage and ignorant men naturally 

 clothe their ideas of the unknown influences 

 which govern their destiny; and they are poly- 

 theists rather than monotheists because, 



"... The first ideas of religion arose, not from a con- 

 templation of the works of nature, but from a concern with 

 regard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes 

 and fears which actuate the human mind ... in order to 

 carry men's attention beyond the present course of things, 

 or lead them into any inference concerning invisible intelli- 



