188 HUME 



VIII 



accident. As the causes which bestow happiness or misery, are 

 in general very little known and very uncertain, our anxious 

 concern endeavours to attain a determinate idea of them ; and 

 finds no better expedient than to represent them as intelligent, 

 voluntary agents, like ourselves, only somewhat superior in 

 power and wisdom. The limited influence of these agents, and 

 their proximity to human weakness, introduce the various 

 distribution and division of their authority, and thereby give 

 rise to allegory. The same principles naturally deify mortals, 

 superior in power, courage, or understanding, and produce hero- 

 worship ; together with fabulous history and mythological 

 tradition, in all its wild and unaccountable forms. And as an 

 invisible spiritual intelligence is an object too refined for vulgar 

 apprehension, men naturally affix it to some sensible representa- 

 tion ; such as either the more conspicuous parts of nature, or 

 the statues, images, and pictures, which a more refined age 

 forms of its divinities." (IV. p. 461.) 



How did the farther 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 contem- 

 plate 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 braise of such another ; the excessive 

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

 ascribes to the immediate operation of Providence : And such 



