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Example research essay topic: David Hume Natural History Of Part 2 - 1,887 words

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... of the World. (Hume, 1977) But while Christianity is thus even in its popular forms definitely theistic, this is not in Hume's view an unqualified advantage. So far from being so, it has, he declares, been the fateful source of three great evils. (Hume, 1977) When God is conceived as single and universal, unity of object calls for unity of faith and ceremonies, and so furnishes designing men with a pretence for discharging on each other "that sacred zeal and rancor, the most furious and implacable of all human passions. " (Hume, 1977) Idolatry is sociable and tolerant; all religions which maintain the unity of God are, he holds, as remarkable for the opposite principles. Virtue, knowledge, love of liberty, are the qualities which call down the fatal vengeance of inquisitors; and when expelled, leave the society in the most shameful ignorance, corruption, and bondage. (Hume, 1977) In the ancient world religion was limited to sacrifices in the temple; outside the temple men were free to think as they pleased; it was the business of philosophy alone to regulate men's ordinary behavior. Philosophy now confines itself mostly to the closet. Its place is now supplied by the modern religion, which inspects our whole conduct, and prescribes an universal rule to our actions, to our words, to our very thoughts and inclinations; a rule so much the more austere, as it is guarded by infinite, though distant, rewards and punishments; and no infraction of it can ever be concealed or disguised. (Hume, 1977) When the Gods are conceived to be only a little superior to mankind, and to have been, many of them, advanced from that inferior rank, men are more at their ease in addressing them, and aspire to emulation of them.

Hence activity, spirit, courage, magnanimity, love of liberty, and all the virtues which aggrandize a people. (Hume, 1977) When, on the other hand, the Deity is represented as infinitely superior to mankind, this belief, however just, is apt, when joined with supernatural terrors, to sink the mind into such abasement that none save the monkish virtues of mortification, penance, humanity, and passive suffering, are represented as acceptable to him. (Hume, 1977) Even more distinctive, Hume declares, is yet another difference between Christianity and pagan religions -- it is also, he adds, another instance how the corruption of the best begets the worst -- the manner in which Christianity has perverted reason from its true and proper function. Since the heathen mythologies rested on traditional stories which varied from city to city -- "numberless like the popish legends" -- and were all of equal authority, philosophical argument could play but little part in the pagan theologies. (Hume, 1977) It was manifestly impossible to reduce them to a canon, or to any determinate articles of faith. Accordingly, religion and philosophy, in being thus so different, had each to be patient of the other. They made a 'fair partition' of mankind between them. Philosophy catered for the needs of the learned and wise, religion for the no less rightful needs of the simple and illiterate. How different, Hume exclaims, is the situation in the Christian centuries!

And at first sight, how much more in keeping with human reason! (Hume, 1977) In Christianity the authority is conveyed by a sacred book the comparatively consistent teaching of which has been so instilled into men by their earliest education that when they become speculative reasoners they continue in their assent to it, the more so as it is the professed support of the theism to which they are independently inclined. But how deceitful -- Hume would have us observe -- all these appearances turn out to be! Philosophy soon finds that she is very unequally yoked with her new associate. Instead of regulating theology, as they advance together, she is at every turn perverted to serve the purposes of superstition. Reason aids in drawing the logical consequences of dogmas -- consequences often so much more contrary to plain reason than the dogmas as first conceived.

But over the dogmas reason has itself no control; should it attempt to question them, and the reproach of heresy be bandied about among the disputants, the reproach always rests at last on the side of reason. This pertinacious bigotry, of which you complain, as so fatal to philosophy, is really her offspring, who, after allying with superstition, separates himself entirely from the interest of his parent, and becomes her most inveterate enemy and persecutor. (Hume, 1977) Amazement must of necessity be raised: Mystery affected: Darkness and obscurity sought after: And a foundation of merit afforded to the devout votaries, who desire an opportunity of subduing their rebellious reason, by the belief of the most unintelligible sophisms. (Hume, 1977) But the tale of the sins which Hume would lay at the door of religion is not yet complete. More general and more immediately operative are, he declares, its baleful effects in the moral sphere. These effects, as he enumerates them are, in the main, twofold. First, there is the tendency, characteristic of the traditional religions, to multiply new and frivolous species of merit, in the observance of rites or in the holding of abstruse beliefs; and to treat them as being of higher value than the duties of everyday life.

These specifically religious duties, if otherwise harmless, still divide the attention, and so tend to weaken men's attachment to the natural motives of justice and humanity. (Hume, 1977) The specifically religious duties are of two kinds. There are outward observances. These constitute what Hume regarded as the kindlier, less dangerous side of religion -- the side in which it turns towards rites and ceremonies. But among the religious duties are also counted -- this, Hume points out, is the very essence of religion in its modern as distinguished from its ancient forms -- the cultivation of certain feelings and the holding of certain beliefs; and it is to these inner obligations that he traces the further, yet greater, evils to which, as he contends, religion has given birth.

These inner obligations, unlike outward acts, cannot be voluntarily fulfilled; they depend on 'Grace. ' The utmost the worshipper can at will command is a profession of belief -- an insincerity which, as it becomes confirmed, affects the whole character and takes to itself permanent form in the darker vice of hypocrisy. Hume maintains, evidently with mischievous intent, that the ancients, no matter how wildly irrational their beliefs and practices, are as sincere in them as are the adherents of any of the Christian creeds. (Hume, 1977) This, again, is only his indirect way of declaring that religious belief is at best never more than half-belief -- make belief treated as a religious duty. Men dare not avow, even to their own hearts, the doubts which they entertain on such subjects: They make a merit of implicit faith; and disguise to themselves their real infidelity, by the strongest asseveration's and most positive bigotry. But nature is too hard for all their endeavours, and suffers not the obscure, glimmering light, afforded in these shadowy regions, to equal the strong impressions, made by common sense and experience. The usual course of men's conduct belies their words, and shows, that their assent in these matters is some unaccountable operation of the mind between disbelief and conviction, but approaching much nearer to the former than to the latter. (Hume, 1977) Owing to the religious and other conditions in Hume's time -- as is shown by the literature of this period, and not least by the writings of those whose zeal for religion is not in question -- hypocrisy was a much more common vice, at least in its religious forms, than it would now seem to be. Hume draws attention to it repeatedly and with unusual emphasis.

Many religious exercises are entered into with seeming fervor, where the heart, at the time, feels cold and languid: A habit of dissimulation is by degrees contracted: And fraud and falsehood become the predominant principle. Hence the reason of the vulgar observation, that the highest zeal in religion and the deepest hypocrisy, so far from being inconsistent, are often or commonly united in the same individual character. When we have to do with a man, who makes a great profession of religion and devotion, has this any other effect upon several, who pass for prudent, than to put them on their guard, lest they be cheated and deceived by him? (Hume, 1977) Hume, as the reader will have observed, has been careful to avoid attacking religion directly; he professes to be attacking only what he describes as being its popular, superstitious, fanatical forms. But it is far from clear what it is that remains when these are discounted; and the few, brief, passages in which he has expressed his mind on the subject are more bewildering than helpful.

Thus we are told that true religion is "nothing but a species of philosophy"; and the only explanation which he has thought good to add is that this species of philosophy is skeptical, not in the extreme fashion, but in its more mitigated form "when its undistinguished doubts are, in some measure, corrected by common sense and reflection. " (Hume, 1977) Hume opens his Natural History of Religion with the assertion that the whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent Author, and that no rational inquirer can suspend his belief a moment in "the primary principles of genuine religion. " (Hume, 1977) "But, if we turn from the Natural History of Religion, to the Treatise, the Enquiry, and the Dialogues, the story of what happened to the ass laden with salt, who took to the water, irresistibly suggests itself. Hume's theism, such as it is, dissolves away in the dialectic river, until nothing is left but the verbal sack in which it was contained. " (Hume, 1977) This is also evident in the use which Hume makes of the teaching of Plato, as interpreted by Cicero, that there are three kinds of atheists: those who deny a Deity, those who deny his Providence, and those who assert that he is influenced by prayers, devotions, and sacrifices. (Hume, 1977) That Hume should find himself able to agree in classing the second type as atheistic is due to his manner of interpreting the doctrine of Providence. Divine Existence, he teaches, is the source or principle of order, i. e... the principle determining the regular course of nature the order which by its fixed laws enables us to arrange our lives with prudence and foresight, and in so doing to benefit by the goods which 'Providence' has provided. Similarly, Hume's reason for classing as atheists the third type -- those who believe that God is influenced by prayers and sacrifices, and that there are therefore special religious duties -- is that they conceive God in unworthy anthropomorphic fashion as intervening, like man and the other animals, only by special acts in special circumstances -- through auguries, dreams, and oracles, as the Greeks and Romans believed, through certain special happenings and revelations as the Jews and Christians teach.

Bibliography Hume, D. The Natural History of Religion, edited by H. E. Root. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1977. Livingston, D.

and King, J. Hume: A Re-evaluation. New York: Fordham Univ. Press, 1976.


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