11. (p. 47) La Logique, ou l’art de penser (The Art of Thinking; also known as the Port-Royal Logic) by Antoine Arnauld (1612-94) and Pierre Nicol (1625—95) was published in 1662.
12. (p. 48) Pierre-Daniel Huet (1630—1721), Bishop of Avranches. Author of a sceptical work, Traité philosophique de la faiblesse de l’esprit humain (A Philosophical Treatise on the Weakness of Human Understanding) published in 1723.
13. (p. 49) John Locke (1632–1704) published, anonymously, The Reasonableness of Christianity in 1695.
14. (p. 49) Pierre Bayle (1674-1706) was a leading sceptic. Hume refers to articles in Bayle’s Dictionnaire historique et critique (Historical and Critical Dictionary). This massive, rambling work was first published in 1697, and is a treasure-house of sceptical arguments. For a recent assessment of Bayle, see Elisabeth Labrousse, Bayle, Oxford, 1983.
15. (p. 49) The essay ‘Of Atheism’ in Essays, published in 1597, by Francis Bacon (1561-1626). Compare also: ‘A little philosophy, says lord BACON, makes men atheists: A great deal reconciles them to religion. For men, being taught, by superstitious prejudices, to lay stress on a wrong place; when that fails them, and they discover, by a little reflection, that the course of nature is regular and uniform, their whole faith totters, and falls to ruin. But being taught, by more reflection, that this very regularity and uniformity is the strongest proof of design and of a supreme intelligence, they return to that belief, which they had deserted; and they are now able to establish it on a firmer and more durable foundation’ (NHR.4 2). References of the form ‘N H R.n’ are to page n. of The Natural History of Religion, in the edition listed in the Select Bibliography.
16. (p. 49) Psalm XIV:1.
17. (p. 50) Platonists were followers of Plato, and Peripatetics, of Aristotle.
18. (p. 51) I Corinthians II:9.
19. (p. 52) Nicolas Malebranche (1638-1715). His De la reckerche de la vérité (The Search after Truth) was originally published in 1674-5, and was in a sixth edition by 1712. For the influence of Malebranche on Hume, among others, see C. J. McCraken, Malebranche and British Philosophy, Oxford, 1983.
20. (p. 52) Exodus III:14.
21. (p. 53) Argument a posteriori: an argument, often inductive, from factual premisses established by observation and experience.
22. (p. 54) Proof a priori: a deductive derivation of a conclusion from premisses which are logically or conceptually true. For the variety of uses of a priori and a posteriori in eighteenth-century authors, see J. P. Ferguson, The Philosophy of Dr Samuel Clarke and its Critics, New York, 1974, Chapter 2.
23. (p. 55) The final cause of a process is the end result achieved, which is thought of as the purpose or aim of the process. The notion of final causes is Aristotelian in origin. For Hume’s rejection of the Aristotelian classification of causes, see T.221.
24. (p. 56) Compare E.25—32.
25. (p. 57) ‘There is no phaenomenon in nature, but what is compounded and modify’d by so many different circumstances, that in order to arrive at the decisive point, we must carefully separate whatever is superfluous, and enquire by new experiments, if every particular circumstance of the first experiment was essential to it. These new experiments are liable to a discussion of the same kind; so that the utmost constancy is requir’d to make us persevere in our enquiry, and the utmost sagacity to choose the right way among so many that present themselves.’ T.225.
26. (p. 59) animalcule: literally, a tiny animal. It used to be thought that sperm contains a tiny but complete offspring.
27. (p. 60) Simonides (550-470 BC), lyric poet. Hiero, tyrant of Syracuse. The story is in Cicero, De Natura Deorum, I, xxii.
28. (p. 61) Galileo’s Dialogue (see Note 10, above) has three characters, one supporting the Copernican theory, a second defending the Aristotelian and Ptolemaic conception, and a third, an intelligent layman, who gives his assent to the arguments of the supporter of Copernicus. See the modern translation by S. Drake, Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, Berkeley, 1953.
29. (p. 65) ‘In all the incidents of life we ought still to preserve our scepticism. If we believe, that fire warms, or water refreshes, ‘tis only because it costs us too much pains to think otherwise… Where reason is lively, and mixes itself with some propensity, it ought to be assented to. Where it does not, it never can have any title to operate upon us.’ T.317.
30. . (p. 66) For the origin of this passage in the writings of the Newtonian, Colin Maclaurin (1698-1746), see the Introduction, Note 21.
31. (p. 66) In a letter of 1751, Hume asked Gilbert Elliot of Minto to help him strengthen Cleanthes’ position; and he acknowledged his own tendency towards the view of Philo. He continued: ‘And ’tis not long ago that I burn’d an old Manuscript Book, wrote before I was twenty; which contain’d, Page after Page, the gradual progress of my Thoughts on that head. It begun with an anxious Search after Arguments, to confirm the common Opinion: Doubts stole in, dissipated, return’d, were again dissipated, return’d again; and it was a perpetual Struggle of a restless Imagination against Inclination, perhaps against Reason.’ J. Y. T. Greig (ed.), The Letters of David Hume, Oxford, 1932, Vol. I, p. 154.
32. (p. 67) Again Hurlbutt (see Note 30) has found the origin of this passage in Maclaurin. Plotinus (AD 205-270) was a Roman neo-Platonist whose writings were collected by Porphyry, in the Enneads.
33. (p. 70) Hume describes the soul, or self, as ‘… nothing but a bundle or collection of different perceptions, which succeed each other with an inconceivable rapidity, and are in a perpetual flux and movement.’ T.300.
34. (p. 71) In Cicero’s De Natura Deorum the Epicurean, Velleius, puts such an argument: ‘For the belief in the gods has not been established by authority, custom or law, but rests on the unanimous and abiding consensus of mankind; their existence is therefore a necessary inference, since we possess an instinctive or rather innate concept of them; but a belief which all men by nature share must necessarily be true; therefore it must be admitted that the gods exist.’ Trans. H. Rackham, Loeb, London, 1933, p. 45.
For the assertion that idolaters are atheists, see NHR. 3 3 : ‘To any one, who considers justly of the matter, it will appear, that the gods of all polytheists are not better than the elves or fairies of our ancestors, and merit as little any pious worship or veneration. These pretended religionists are really a kind of superstitious atheists, and acknowledge no being, that corresponds to our idea of a deity.’
35. (p. 72) ‘Had the poor Indian philosopher (who imagined that the earth also wanted something to bear it up) but thought of this word substance, he needed not to have been at the trouble to find an elephant to support it, and a tortoise to support his elephant: the word substance would have done it effectually.’ John Locke, An Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. H. Nidditch, Oxford, 1975. 2, 13, 19.
36. (p. 74) In Cicero, De Natura Deorum, the Stoic, Balbus, says: ‘For when we gaze upward to the sky and contemplate the heavenly bodies, what can be so obvious and so manifest as that there must exist some power possessing transcendent intelligence by whom these things are ruled? Were it not so, how comes it that the words of Ennius carry conviction to all readers–
Behold this dazzling vault of heaven, which
all mankind as Jove invoke
ay, and not only as Jove but as the sovereign of the world, ruling all things with his nod, and as Ennius likewise says —
father of gods and men,
a deity omnipresent and omnipotent? If a man doubts this, I really cannot see why he should not also be capable of doubting the existence of the sun; how is the latter fact more evident than the former?’ Op. cit., pp. 125-7.
37. (p. 75) Titus Lucretius Carus (c.99-55 BC) wrote De Rerum Natura (On the Nature of Things), a poem expounding Epicureanism. Epicurus (341-270 BC), Greek philosopher and scientist, was taught as a boy by the Platonist, Pamphilus, and studied at the Academy. He settled in Athens, and taught in the Gardens. Our knowledge of Epicureanism is largely de
pendent on Lucretius. The passage quoted means: ‘Who is strong enough to rule the sum of the immeasurable, who to hold in hand and control the mighty bridle of the unfathomable? who to turn about all the heavens at one time and warm the fruitful worlds with ethereal fires, or to be present in all places and at all times’. Trans. W. H. D. Rouse, revised M. Ferguson Smith, Loeb, London, 1975, p. 181.
38. (p. 75) ‘What power of mental vision enabled your master Plato to descry the vast and elaborate architectural process which, as he makes out, the deity adopted in building the structure of the universe? What method of engineering was employed? What tools and levers and derricks? What agents carried out so vast an undertaking? And how were air, fire, water and earth enabled to obey and execute the will of the architect?’ Cicero, op. cit., trans. H. Rackham, p. 23.
Hume often used Tully’ as a name of Marcus Tullius Cicero.
39. (p. 76) Compare: ‘I shall only observe this one thing, that the greater the improvements and discoveries are, which are daily made in astronomy and natural philosophy; the more clearly is this question [whether the supreme cause of all things is a being indued with liberty and choice] continually determined, to the shame and confusion of atheists.’ Samuel Clarke, A Demonstration of the Being and Attributes of God, p. 142.
40. (p. 76) Compare the attack on anthropomorphism by the Sceptic, Cotta, in De Natura Deorum: ‘You don’t perceive what a number of things you are let in for, if we consent to admit that men and gods have the same form.’ Cicero, op. cit., p. 93.
41. (p. 77) Compare: ‘’Tis evident therefore, that the self-existent being must be infinite in the strictest and most complete sense. But now as to the particular manner of his being infinite… it is as impossible for our finite understandings, to comprehend or explain; as it is for us to form an adequate idea of infinity.’ Samuel Clarke, op. cit., p. 91.
42. (p. 78) John Milton, Paradise Lost, viii, 150-1.
43. (p. 78) See the Epicurean argument: ‘… since it is agreed that the gods are supremely happy, and no one can be happy without virtue, and virtue cannot exist without reason, and reason is only found in the human shape, it follows that the gods possess the form of man.’ Cicero, op. cit., p. 49.
44. (p. 81) For example: ‘As for Pythagoras, who believed that the entire substance of the universe is penetrated and pervaded by a soul… Next, Xenophanes endowed the universe with mind, and held that, as being infinite, it was god.’ Cicero, op. cit., p. 31.
45. (p. 83) L. Licinius Lucullus (c. 110-57 BC), Roman general, famous as the conqueror of Mithradates. He obtained great wealth from his campaigns in Asia, and was renowned for his lavish life style. See the introductory sections of Cicero, Academica, II.
46. (p. 84) ‘…’ tis commonly allow’d by philosophers, that what the vulgar call chance is nothing but a secret and conceal’d cause.’ T.181.
47. (p. 85) Hesiod (c. 700 BC), one of the oldest known Greek poets. The Theogony, one of his two major poems to have survived, gives an account of the gods of Greece and their genealogy. See also NHR. 28, n.I.
48. (p. 88) Compare: ‘It is confessed, that the utmost effort of human reason is to reduce the principles, productive of natural phenomena, to a greater simplicity, and to resolve the many particular effects into a few general causes, by means of reasonings from analogy, experience, and observation. But as to the causes of these general causes, we should in vain attempt their discovery…’ E.30.
49. (p. 90) Plato, Timaeus, 29d—31g.
50. (p. 91) Compare: ‘While a warm imagination is allow’d to enter into philosophy, and hypotheses embrac’d merely for being specious and agreeable, we can never have any steady principles, nor any sentiments, which will suit with common practice and experience.’ T.319.
Also: ‘But that all his arguments, though otherwise intended, are, in reality, merely sceptical, appears from this, that they admit of no answer and produce no conviction. Their only effect is to cause that momentary amazement and irresolution and confusion, which is the result of scepticism.’ E.15 5, n.1.
51. (p. 92) ‘Thus the wise man will make use of whatever apparently probable presentation he encounters, if nothing presents itself that is contrary to that probability, and his whole plan of life will be charted out in this manner.’ Cicero, op. cit., p. 595.
52. (p. 92) ‘A correct judgment… avoiding all distant and high enquiries, confines itself to common life, and to such subjects as fall under daily practice and experience.’ E.162.
53. (p. 92) ‘While we cannot give a satisfactory reason, why we believe, after a thousand experiments, that a stone will fall, or fire burn; can we ever satisfy ourselves concerning any determination, which we may form, with regard to the origin of worlds, and the situation of nature, from, and to eternity.’ Idem.
54. (p. 92) In the system of Epicurus, the atoms (primordia)‘… being many and shifted in many ways, they are harried and set in motion with blows throughout the universe from infinity, thus by trying every kind of motion and combination, at length they fall into such arrangements as this sum of things consists of…’ Lucretius, op. cit., p. 85.
55. (p. 92) ‘At this point must I not marvel that there should be anyone who can persuade himself… that the fortuitous collision of… particles produces this elaborate and beautiful world?’ Cicero, op. cit., p. 213.
See also, Samuel Clarke, op. cit., p. 119.
56. (p. 96) Compare Cicero, op. cit., II, lxii-lxiv.
57. (p. 97) ‘Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny, concerning this subject.’ NHR. 76.
58. (p. 98) ‘… therefore I shall not at this time use any variety of arguments, but endeavour by one clear and plain series of propositions necessarily connected and following one from another, to demonstrate the certainty of the being of God, and to deduce in order the necessary attributes of his nature…’ Samuel Clarke, op. cit., p. 16.
59. (p. 99) ‘Whatever exists, has a cause of its existence, either in the necessity of its own nature; and then it must have been eternal: or in the will of some other being; and then that other being must, at least in the order of nature and causality have existed before it… Either there has always existed one unchangeable and independent being, from which all other beings that are or ever were in the universe, have received their original; or else there has been an infinite succession of changeable and dependent beings… which latter supposition is so very absurd…’ idem., pp. 18-19, 23-4.
60. (p. 99) See above, Introduction, p. 18.
61. (p. 100) ‘Now that the material world does not exist thus necessarily, is evident… For whether we consider the form of the world, with the disposition and motion of its parts; or whether we consider the matter of it, as such, without respect to its present form; every thing in it, both the whole and every one of its parts, their situation and motion, the form and also the matter, are the most arbitrary and dependent things… If he [the atheist] says that the particular form is necessary; he must affirm it to be a contradiction to suppose that any part of the world can be in any respect otherwise than it now is…’ Samuel Clarke, op. cit., pp. 43-5.
62. (p. 101) See T.121-6.
63. (p. 104) Perhaps a reference to Edward Young (1683-1765).
64. (p. 104) Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz (1641-1716) had maintained that in creating the world, God creates the best of all possible worlds. (See his Theodicy, trans. E. M. Huggard, ed. A. Farrer, London, 1951.)
Dr King is William King (1650-1729), Archbishop of Dublin, and author of De Origine Mali (1702). A translation of this by Edmund Law, An Essay on the Origin of Evil, was published in London in 1732.
Anders Jeffner (Butler and Hume on Religion, Stockholm, 1966, p. 151) points out that neither Leibniz nor King deny the existence of human misery; and that there are similarities between King’s description of evil and that given below by Demea, beginning ‘The whole earth… is cursed and polluted’.
65. (p. 105) Compare, Hume, ‘Of Superstitio
n and Enthusiasm’, loc. cit.
66. (p. 106) John Milton, Paradise Lost, xi, 484-93, omitting line 488.
67. (p. 106) ‘Monuments to human misery and wickedness are found every-where – prisons, hospitals, gallows, and beggars. Here you see the ruins of a flourishing city; in other places you cannot even find the ruins… Properly speaking, history is nothing but the crimes and misfortunes of the human race.’ Bayle, op. cit., ‘Manicheans’.
68. (p. 108) Charles V (1500-1558), King of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, resigned his thrones in 1556 and 1558. Hume is quoting from the article on Charles V in Bayle, op. cit.
69. (p. 108) Probably a reference to Cicero, De Senectute (On Old Age), xxiii, 83-4, where Cato says: ‘Nay, if some god should give me leave to return to infancy from my old age, to weep once more in my cradle, I should vehemently protest; for truly, after I have run my race I have no wish to be recalled, as it were, from the goal to the starting-place. For what advantage has life — or, rather, what trouble does it not have?’ Trans. W. A. Falconer, Loeb, London, 1923.
70. (p. 108) John Dryden, Aureng–Zebe, iv, i, 41-2. Hume has ‘hope’ in place of ‘think’.
71. (p. 109) Compare Bayle, op. cit., ‘Paulicians’. This whole speech by Philo shows the influence of Bayle’s discussion of the problem of evil. Like Bayle, Philo opposes anthropomorphic theodicies, and declares that reason can provide no solution.
72. (p. 109) ‘For example, if you say that God has permitted sin in order to manifest his wisdom, which shines forth more in the midst of the disorders that man’s wickedness produces every day than it would in a state of innocence, you will be answered that this is to compare God either to a father who allows his children to break their legs so that he can show everyone his great skill in mending their broken bones, or to a king who allows seditions and disorders to develop through his kingdom so that he can gain glory by overcoming them. The conduct of this father and this monarch is so contrary to the clear and distinct ideas by which we judge goodness and wisdom and in general all the duties of a father and a king, that our reason cannot conceive how God could act in this way. But, you will say, the ways of God are not our ways. Stop at this point, it is a text of scripture [Isaiah 55:8], and do not reason any further.’ Bayle, op. cit., ‘Paulicians’.
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