The Pursuit of Certainty. Shirley Robin Letwin

be either understood or loved. As vulgar minds, however, found it difficult to believe in an abstract object, they soon began to give the Deity “some sensible representation; such as either the more conspicuous parts of nature, or the statues, images, and pictures, which a more refined age forms of its divinities.”³

      But in thinking that they could know God, or have some feeling for Him, men deceived themselves. They were agitated by hope and fear, or moved by vanity to esteem themselves the Deity’s favourite objects; or at best, they were actuated by a “forced and strained affection.” In fact, their religion merely degraded the Deity into a resemblance to themselves, in order to make Him something that they could understand and worship.⁴ Thus religious belief invariably degenerated into idolatry (and superstition) or fanaticism (and enthusiasm). Of the two possibilities, idolatry was far preferable. It developed out of “weakness, fear, melancholy,” feelings that were favourable to priestly power, rites, and ceremonies. But this was the kindlier, less dangerous alternative. A ceremonial religion was more tolerant and sociable.¹ There was no exclusiveness about the old pagan religions. When the oracle of Delphi was asked to say what rites or forms of worship were most acceptable to the gods, it answered, “Those which are legally established in each city.”² Besides, paganism sat lightly on men’s minds, for it consisted only of a “multitude of stories” that made no “deep impression on the affections and understanding.” They were “light, easy, and familiar,” not at all terrifying—“Who could forbear smiling when he thought of the loves of Mars and Venus or the amorous frolics of Jupiter and Pan?”³ Best of all, paganism confined religious duties to sacrifices in the temple, and left men, once outside the temple, free to think what they pleased.⁴

      Far worse was an abstract theistic religion that required men to approach God directly, and gave them no “sensible exterior observances” to occupy the mind during religious exercises and “abate the violence of its disappointed efforts.” It arose out of presumption, along with hope, imagination, and ignorance, and inspired “a fierce and gloomy spirit of devotion.” Laud should have been praised, rather than condemned for trying to revive some of the primitive popish institutions. They freed thought from concentration “on that divine and mysterious essence so superior to the narrow capacities of mankind”; they let the mind “relax itself in the contemplation of pictures, postures, vestments, buildings3. …,”⁵ and softened the spirit of proud worshippers. Christianity had enough of a disadvantage in its insistence on a single and universal God. A single God was so easily made a pretence for declaring the worship of all other Deities impious and absurd, and insisting that all men had to share the same faith and ceremonies. Monotheism always invited zeal and rancour, “the most furious and implacable of all human passions.” The Jews were ever moved by an “implacable narrow spirit”; the Mohammedans followed “even more bloody principles …,” and the inquisitors from Rome and Madrid, who invariably denounced virtue, knowledge, and love of liberty, offered up more human sacrifices than did barbarous nations. Indeed the intolerance of religions that affirm the unity of God was as remarkable, Hume declared, as the tolerance of polytheism.¹

      There was, moreover, no escape from abstract, theistic religion. It invaded every moment, every feeling, thought, and action. It “inspects our whole conduct, and prescribes a 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.”² And it did nothing to improve life on earth. Whereas pagans were inspired by their gods to live well and happily, to develop “activity, spirit, courage, magnanimity, love of liberty, and all the virtues which aggrandize a people,” belief in a single God, supposed to be infinitely superior to men, subjected men to terror and suffering, led them to believe that he required of them nothing but “the monkish virtues of mortification, penance, humility and passive suffering.”³

      The more profound spiritual effects were even worse. Whereas paganism emphasized ceremonies and idols, abstract theistic religion insisted on conformity in feelings and beliefs. But the ability to fulfil inner obligations, as it depends ultimately on grace, cannot be summoned at will. A worshipper can control only his profession of belief. If asked to do more, he must resort to hypocrisy, of which he himself will often be unaware. It is perhaps a less false hypocrisy than other kinds, but therefore all the more insidious. Men who dare not confess their doubts even to themselves, disguise their infidelity, in private too, by the “strongest asseverations and most positive bigotry.”⁴ The colder their hearts, the greater their fervour in religious exercises, and thus they become accustomed to fraud and falsehood and acquire a “habit of dissimulation.” It is no wonder that the man who shows the highest zeal in religion is commonly distrusted and believed to be ready to deceive and cheat in everything.⁵

      Having discovered the pretensions of the Kirk, and of religious enthusiasts in general, Hume bound himself to undermine them. The “enemies to joy and pleasure” had to be exposed as “hypocrites and deceivers.”¹ He would show that “celibacy, fasting, penance, mortification, self-denial, humility, silence, solitude, and the whole train of monkish virtues” should rather be placed in the catalogue of vices, for they served no purpose but to “stupefy the understanding and harden the heart, obscure the fancy, and sour the temper. …” The man who lived by such rules—“a gloomy, harebrained enthusiast”—perhaps deserved after his death a place in the calendar of saints, but he should never in life, Hume was certain, be welcomed by anyone who was not “as delirious and dismal as himself.”² One had only to remove the “dismal dress” in which virtue had been clothed to reveal her true “gentleness, humanity, beneficence, affability, nay even, at proper intervals, play, frolic, and gaiety”; then it would become clear that virtue did not require “useless austerities and rigours, suffering and self-denial,” but wished rather to make “her votaries and all mankind, during every instant of their existence, if possible, cheerful and happy.”³

      He began to question right down to the foundation, and there grew upon him “a certain boldness of temper” which would not submit to any authority and led him to seek “some new medium by which truth might be establisht.” He gave up all pretence of studying law, for which his family had destined him, and announced his intention of becoming a man of letters, “a Scholar and Philosopher.”⁴

CHAPTER 3

       The Combat of Reason and Passion

      When he surveyed the scene, Hume found enemies of an affable virtue also outside the Kirk. There were many alternatives to Presbyterian theology, ranging from what seemed to be rank materialism to a theology that offered redemption and virtue to all men. They differed in purpose and form from the Kirk’s doctrine, but not significantly, to Hume’s mind, in moral spirit.

      Hobbes, who had provoked the philosophical speculation that dominated England in Hume’s time, did not attract Hume. By emphasizing man’s egoism and brutishness, Hobbes seemed only to have accepted the Calvinist portrait of man in order to support a different, but equally unappealing, conclusion. Yet Hobbes’s opponents, led by the Cambridge Platonists, were no more satisfactory. In trying to answer Hobbes by showing that morality was not arbitrary and variable, but eternal, objective, and demonstrative, they seemed just as bound to God’s service and quite as certain that they knew God’s purposes as any dogmatic Presbyterian.

      Nevertheless, the Cambridge Platonists were reacting against Puritanism. Although many of them were connected with Emmanuel College, that “seminary of Puritans,” they had become impressed by an aspect of Calvinism that had for long been neglected in Scotland. Like the earlier Protestants, their feelings of closeness to God emboldened them to challenge and renounce whatever seemed to conflict with their duty to Him. When they found they could not accept the established interpretation of Calvinism, they transformed Emmanuel College from a haven for extreme puritans into the