190 HUME nn 



parts of nature, or the statues, images, and pictures, "which 

 a more refined age forms of its divinities." (IV. p. 461.) 



How did the further stage of theology, mono- 

 theism, arise out of polytheism? Hume replies, 

 certainly not by reasonings from first causes or any 

 sort of fine-drawn logic: 



" Even at this day, and in Europe, ask any of the vulgar 

 why he believes in an Omnipotent Creator of the world, he 

 will never mention the beauty of final causes, of which he 

 is wholly ignorant: He will not hold out his hand and bid 

 you contemplate the suppleness and variety of joints in his 

 fingers, their bending all one way, the counterpoise which 

 they receive from the thumb, the softness and fleshy parts 

 of the inside of the hand, with all the other circumstances 

 which render that member fit for the use to which it was 

 destined. To these he has been long accustomed ; and he 

 beholds them with listlessness and unconcern. He will tell 

 you of the sudden and unexpected death of such-a-one ; the 

 fall and bruise of such another ; the excessive drought of 

 this season ; the cold and rains of another. These he as- 

 cribes to the immediate operation of Providence : And such 

 events as, with good reasoners, are the chief difficulties in 

 admitting a Supreme intelligence, are with him the sole ar- 

 guments for it. . . . 



" We may conclude, therefore, upon the whole, that since 

 the vulgar, in nations which have embraced the doctrine 

 of theism, still build it upon irrational and superstitious 

 grounds, they are never led into that opinion by any process 

 of argument, but by a certain train of thinking, more suita- 

 ble to their genius and capacity. 



" It may readily happen, in an idolatrous nation, that 

 though men admit the existence of several limited deities, 

 yet there is some one God, whom, in a particular manner, 

 they make the object of their worship and adoration. They 

 may either suppose, that, in the distribution of power and 



