As Hume made his final revisions of the text of the Dialogues in the last months of his life, his judgement on the relation between religious conviction and philosophical investigation remained the same as it had been when he wrote the Treatise forty years earlier:

For as superstition arises naturally and easily from the popular opinions of mankind, it seizes more strongly on the mind, and is often able to disturb us in the conduct of our lives and actions. Philosophy on the contrary, if just, can present us only with mild and moderate sentiments; and if false and extravagant, its opinions are merely the objects of a cold and general speculation, and seldom go so far as to interrupt the course of our natural propensities… Generally speaking, the errors in religion are dangerous; those in philosophy only ridiculous.22

NOTES

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(Further bibliographical details are given in the Select Bibliography, page 152.

1. (p. 1) Quoted in Kemp Smith, Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, Appendix A.

2. (p. 5) See E. C. Mossner, The Life of David Hume, Chapter 33.

3. (p. 5) ‘Hume and the Legacy of the Dialogues’ in G. P. Morice (ed.), David Hume: Bicentenary Papers (Edinburgh, 1977), p. 2. For Mossner’s biography of Hume, see preceding note. Details of the work by Berkeley, and of Mossner’s edition of the Treatise, are given in the Select Bibliography. All references of the form ‘T.n’ are to page n of the Penguin Classics edition of the Treatise.

4. (p. 8) The Natural History of Religion, Section II.

5. (p. 8) Ibid., Section III.

6. (p. 9) ‘Of Superstition and Enthusiasm’ in Essays: Moral; Political and Literary.

7. (p. 10) ‘There is no object, which implies the existence of any other if we consider these objects in themselves, and never look beyond the ideas which we form of them. Such an inference wou’d amount to knowledge, and wou’d imply the absolute contradiction and impossibility of conceiving any thing different.’ T. 135.

8. (p. 11) Treatise, Book I, Part III, Section I, ‘Of knowledge’, Section II, ‘Of probability; and of the idea of cause and effect’.

9. (p. 11) In Hume’s writings, including the Dialogues, the word ‘pretend’ is commonly used to mean ‘propose’, ‘claim’, ‘offer for consideration’.

10.