Part 12 (1/2)
Though the rhetoric of Cleanthes may be admired, its irrelevancy to the point at issue ion of declamation, he works himself into a passion:
”You alone, or aleneral harmony You start abstruse doubts, cavils, and objections: You ask me what is the cause of this cause? I know not: I care not: that concerns not me I have found a Deity; and here I stop o further who are wiser or ”--(II p 466)
In other words, O Cleanthes, reasoning having taken you as far as you want to go, you decline to advance any further; even though you fully ad forbids you to stop where you are pleased to cry halt! But this is si your reason to abdicate in favour of your caprice It is iine that Hume, of all men in the world, could have rested satisfied with such an act of high-treason against the sovereignty of philosophy We may rather conclude that the last word of the discussion, which he gives to Philo, is also his own
”If I anorance of causes, and can absolutely give an explication of nothing, I shall never esteee to shove off for a e, must immediately, in its full force, recur upon me
Naturalists[32] indeed very justly explain particular effects by eneral causes should remain in the end totally inexplicable; but they never surely thought it satisfactory to explain a particular effect by a particular cause, which was no more to be accounted for than the effect itself An ideal systen, is not a whit more explicable than a material one, which attains its order in a like manner; nor is there any more difficulty in the latter supposition than in the former”--(II p 466)
It is obvious that, if Hume had been pushed, hethe existence of a God, and of a certain remote resemblance of his intellectual nature to that of ht possess more or less probability, but was incapable on his own principles of any approach to demonstration And to all attempts to make any practical use of his theism; or to prove the existence of the attributes of infinite wisdom, benevolence, justice, and the like, which are usually ascribed to the Deity, by reason, he opposes a searching critical negation[33]
The object of the speech of the iinary Epicurean in the eleventh section of the _Inquiry_, entitled _Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State_, is to invert the arguy_
That faainst the _a priori_ scepticishteenth century, who based their arguments on the inconsistency of the revealed scheme of salvation with the attributes of the Deity, consists, essentially, in conclusively proving that, from a moral point of view, Nature is at least as reprehensible as orthodoxy
If you tell ion must be false because it is inconsistent with the divine attributes of justice andleave to point out to you, that there are undeniable natural facts which are fully open to the same objection Since you admit that nature is the work of God, you are forced to allow that such facts are consistent with his attributes
Therefore, you must also admit, that the parallel facts in the scheme of orthodoxy are also consistent with theround QED In fact, the solid sense of Butler left the Deis to stand upon Perhaps, however, he did not reht in his own cause, but another coeth hiuy_, but unfortunately drives theood Bishop would hardly have approved
”I deny a Providence, you say, and supreuides the course of events, and punishes the vicious with infamy and disappointment, and rewards the virtuous with honour and success in all their undertakings But surely I deny not the course itself of events, which lies open to every one's inquiry and exas, virtue is attended with more peace of mind than vice, and meets with a more favourable reception fro to the past experience of mankind, friendshi+p is the chief joy of human life, and moderation the only source of tranquillity and happiness I never balance between the virtuous and the vicious course of life; but ae is on the side of the for all your suppositions and reasonings? You tell s proceeds fron But, whatever it proceeds from, the disposition itself, on which depends our happiness and misery, and consequently our conduct and deportment in life, is still the saulate my behaviour by my experience of past events And if you affirm that, while a divine providence is allowed, and a supreht to expect soood, and punishment of the bad, beyond the ordinary course of events, I here find the same fallacy which I have before endeavoured to detect You persist in irant that divine existence for which you so earnestly contend, youto the experienced order of nature, by arguing from the attributes which you ascribe to your Gods You sees on this subject can only be drawn frouross sophis of the cause, but what you have antecedently not inferred, but discovered to the full, in the effect
”But what must a philosopher think of those vain reasoners who, instead of regarding the present scene of things as the sole object of their contemplation, so far reverse the whole course of nature, as to render this lifefurther; a porch, which leads to a greater and vastly different building; a prologue which serves only to introduce the piece, and give it race and propriety? Whence, do you think, can such philosophers derive their idea of the Gods? Froination surely For if they derive it fro further, but must be exactly adjusted to them That the divinity may _possibly_ be endoith attributes which we have never seen exerted; overned by principles of action which we cannot discover to be satisfied; all this will freely be allowed But still this is mere _possibility_ and hypothesis We never can have reason to _infer_ any attributes or any principles of action in him, but so far as we know them to have been exerted and satisfied
”_Are there any marks of a distributive justice in the world?_ If you answer in the affirmative, I conclude that, since justice here exerts itself, it is satisfied If you reply in the negative, I conclude that you have then no reason to ascribe justice, in our sense of it, to the Gods If you hold athat the justice of the Gods at present exerts itself in part, but not in its full extent, I answer that you have no reason to give it any particular extent, but only so far as you see it, _at present_, exert itself”--(IV pp 164-6)
Thus, the Freethinkers said, the attributes of the Deity being what they are, the scheave the crushi+ng reply: Agreeing with you as to the attributes of the Deity, nature, by its existence, proves that the things to which you object are quite consistent with them To whom enters Hume's Epicurean with the remark: Then, as nature is our only measure of the attributes of the Deity in their practicalthat such measure is anywhere transcended? That the ”other side” of nature, if there be one, is governed on different principles froolden; while speech reaches not even the dignity of sounding brass or tinkling cyomachy One can but suspect that Hume also had reached this conviction; and that his shadowy and inconsistent theism was the expression of his desire to rest in a state of ation, while it included as little as possible of affir a problem which he felt to be hopelessly insoluble
But, whatever u its reat part which it has played in the world Here, then, was a body of natural facts to be investigated scientifically, and the result of Hume's inquiries is embodied in the reion_ Huation in declaring fetishi+snorant men naturally clothe their ideas of the unknown influences which govern their destiny; and they are polytheists rather than ion arose, not from a conteard to the events of life, and from the incessant hopes and fears which actuate the human mindin order to carry s, or lead theent power, they ht and reflection, soes their first inquiry But what passion shall we have recourse to, for explaining an effect of such hty consequence? Not speculative curiosity merely, or the pure love of truth That ross apprehensions, and would leadthe frae and comprehensive for their narrow capacities No passions, therefore, can be supposed to work on such barbarians, but the ordinary affections of human life; the anxious concern for happiness, the dread of future e, the appetite for food and other necessaries
Agitated by hopes and fears of this nature, especially the latter,curiosity, the course of future causes, and examine the various and contrary events of human life
And in this disordered scene, with eyes still more disordered and astonished, they see the first obscure traces of divinity”--(IV
pp 443, 4)
The shape assumed by these first traces of divinity is that of the shadows of inations:--
”There is an universal tendency as like themselves, and to transfer to every object those qualities hich they are familiarly acquainted, and of which they are intimately conscious The _unknown causes_ which continually e always in the same aspect, are all apprehended to be of the sa before we ascribe to theht, and reason, and passion, and so them nearer to a resemblance with ourselves”--(IV pp
446-7)
Hume asks whether polytheism really deserves the name of theism
”Our ancestors in Europe, before the revival of letters, believed as we do at present, that there was one supreh in itself uncontrollable, was yet often exerted by the interposition of his angels and subordinate ministers, who executed his sacred purposes But they also believed, that all nature was full of other invisible powers: fairies, goblins, elves, sprights; beings stronger and htier than men, but much inferior to the celestial natures who surround the throne of God Now, suppose that any one, in these ages, had denied the existence of God and of his angels, would not his impiety justly have deserved the appellation of atheish he had still allowed, by so, that the popular stories of elves and fairies were just and well grounded? The difference, on the one hand, between such a person and a genuine theist, is infinitely greater than that, on the other, between hient power And it is a fallacy, merely from the casual rese, to rank such opposite opinions under the same denomination
”To any one who considers justly of the matter, it will appear that the Gods of the polytheists are no better than the elves and fairies of our ancestors, and merit as little as any pious worshi+p and veneration These pretended religionists are really a kind of superstitious atheists, and acknowledge no being that corresponds to our idea of a Deity No first principle of overnment and administration; no divine contrivance or intention in the fabric of the world”--(IV pp 450-51)