But in point of fact Hume assumes the inevitableness of primeval polytheism, and goes on to make his historic statement, loosely enough, as part of the proof. The historic proposition is indeed so inaccurate as to imply that Hume at this particular point was temporising, since he must have known the facts were not as he said. “It is a matter of fact incontestable”, he writes in the second paragraph of his first section, “that about 1,700 years ago all mankind were polytheists. The doubtful and sceptical principles of a few philosophers, or the theism, and that, too, not entirely pure, of one or two nations, form no objection worth regarding.” Now, all that can be said as to the “impurity” of the monotheism of the ages B.C. applies to the alleged “monotheism” of Christianity itself, as Hume later rather broadly hints; and the “about 1,700 years ago” is thus a blind. The esoteric monotheism even of the Egyptian priesthood, not to speak of the Jewish, was theoretically “purer” than the quasi-monotheism of orthodox Christianity, which made its Deity’s tri-personality much more obvious than the unthinkable unity predicated of the Three. Hume’s proposition as to the supreme antiquity of polytheism, of course, remained true; but his own argument went to show that the beginning of a widespread and popular but “pure” monotheism might much more reasonably be placed at the date of Mohammed, and still more correctly be assigned to some unknown period in the future. Hume knew very well that in his own country the Deists were not greatly more numerous than the philosophic monotheists of Periclean Greece and Ancient Egypt; and that the reigning faith was polytheistic even in Protestant countries, while in the Catholic it was “idolatrous” as well.

Indeed, the drift of the treatise is only too clearly, for orthodox readers, in the direction of showing that Christianity exemplifies all the laws of religious degeneration seen at work in the faiths of the past. Hume did not write his book merely to show how men constructed foolish creeds in antiquity. The headings of the thirteenth and fourteenth sections originally referred to “most popular religions”; but in later editions the “most” was deleted, leaving no exception in favor of contemporary faith. The passage at the end of section vi, which observes that it is “happily the case with Christianity” to be free from contradiction in its presentment of Deity, is one of Gibbonian irony, the innuendo being a good deal more trenchant than the disclaimer; and several passages explicitly satirise Christian dogma. Thus in the eleventh section the proposition that “all popular theology, especially the scholastic, has a kind of appetite for absurdity and contradiction”, is pointed by a sketch of the course of Christian dogma:

“Ecclesiastical history sufficiently confirms these reflections. When a controversy is started, some people pretend always with certainty to foretell the issue. Whichever opinion, say they, is most contrary to plain sense, is sure to prevail, even where the general interest of the system requires not that decision. Though the reproach of heresy may, for some time, be bandied about among the disputants, it always rests at last on the side of reason. Anyone, it is pretended, that has but learning enough of this kind to know the definition of Arian, Pelagian, Erastian, Socinian, Sabellian, Eutychian, Nestorian, Monothelite, etc., not to mention Protestant, whose fate is yet uncertain, will be convinced of the truth of this observation. It is thus a system becomes more absurd in the end, merely from its being reasonable and philosophical in the beginning.

“To oppose the torrent of scholastic religion by such feeble maxims as these—that ‘it is impossible for the same to be and not to be’, that ‘the whole is greater than a part’, that ‘two and three make five’—is pretending to stop the ocean with a bull-rush. Will you set up profane reason against sacred mystery? No punishment is great enough for your impiety. And the same fires which were kindled for heretics will serve also for the destruction of philosophers.”

It is not clear why Professor Huxley should speak of this passage as showing “quite unusual acerbity”: it is exactly in the ironical tone in which Hume speaks of the absurdities of paganism, a tone much more humorous than bitter. His allusion to the prevailing religion as “superstition”, in the well-known passage describing his cheerful attitude towards death, expresses the same temper, always with good humor.

If, then, Hume’s “parade of sarcastic respect” to Christianity was certainly ironical, is there any room for surmise that he was glosing his real sentiments in the matter of Deism? After full reflection the answer must be given in a qualified affirmative. The case is well summed up by Prefessor Huxley:

“Hume appears to have sincerely accepted the two fundamental conclusions of the argument from design: firstly, that a Deity exists; and, secondly, that he possesses attributes more or less allied to those of human intelligence. But at this embryonic stage of theology, Hume’s progress is arrested; and after a survey of the development of dogma, his ‘general corollary’ is that ‘The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment, appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld, did we not enlarge our view, and, opposing one species of superstition to another, set them a quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure, regions of philosophy.’

“Thus it may fairly be presumed that Hume expresses his own sentiments in the words of the speech with which Philo concludes the “Dialogues” [i.e., Hume’s “Dialogues concerning Natural Religion”]:

“ ‘If the whole of natural theology, as some people seem to maintain, resolves itself into one simple, though somewhat ambiguous, at least undefined proposition, That the cause or causes of order in the universe probably bear some remote analogy to human intelligence: If this proposition be not capable of extension, variation, or more particular explication; if it affords no inference that affects human life or can be the source of any action or forbearance; and if the analogy, imperfect as it is, can be carried no further than to the human intelligence, and cannot be transferred, with any appearance of probability, to the other qualities of the mind: if this really be the case, what can the most inquisitive, contemplative, and religious man do more than give a plain, philosophical assent to the proposition, as often as it occurs, and believe that the arguments on which it is established exceed the objections which lie against it? Some astonishment, indeed, will naturally arise from the greatness of the object; some melancholy from its obscurity; some contempt of human reason, that it can give no solution more satisfactory with regard to so extraordinary and magnificent a question. But believe me, Cleanthes, the most natural sentiment which a well-disposed mind will feel on this occasion, is a longing desire and expectation that Heaven would be pleased to dissipate, or at least alleviate, this profound ignorance, by affording some more particular revelation to mankind, and making discoveries of the nature, attributes and operations of the divine object of our faith.’

“Such being the sum total of Hume’s conclusions, it cannot be said that his theological burden is a heavy one. But if we turn from the “Natural History of Religion” to the “Treatise”, the “Inquiry”, 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.”

This view is borne out by the general conduct of the argument in the “Dialogues.” There is there put into the mouth of Philo, the sceptic, the decisive argument that any hypothesis of an “ideal world” such as Berkeley’s, only raises a new problem of causation, since every conceived set of phænomena raise the question of cause just as much as any set which they are put forward to explain; and the orthodox or Deistic disputant, Cleanthes, is made only to reply in vacuous rhetoric, which no competent reader can ever have taken as a logical answer.

“Let us remember”, says Philo, “the story of the Indian philosopher and his elephant. . . . .