The Philosophy of David Hume by Will Durant

Hume is an intellectual giant. We could have stood on his shoulders. But we choose not to. Here is why.

Philosophy, which among the ancients had been left relatively free as the religion of the elite, was compelled to become the servant and apologist of the faith of the masses. In these monotheistic creeds-Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism-merit and "salvation" were more and more divorced from virtue and attached to ritual observance and unquestioning belief. In consequence educated persons became either martyrs or hypocrites; and as they rarely chose martyrdom, the life of man was tarnished with lip service and insincerity. (P 153)

In today’s monopoly by the politically correct, how many educated persons choose to become martyrs?

The following are some quotes from Story of Civilization, Volume IX.

reason alone can never be a motive for any action of the will … "Nothing can oppose or retard the impulse of passion but a contrary impulse" … Reason is, and ought to be, the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."93 He proceeds to a subtle analysis of the "passions". (P 145)

"We tend to give the name of virtue to any quality in others that gives us pleasure by making for our advantage, and to give the name of vice to any human quality that gives us pain." (P 145)

The rules of morality are not supernatural revelations, but neither are they the conclusions of reason, for "reason," Hume repeats, "has no influence on our passions or actions." Our moral sense comes not from Heaven but from sympathy-fellow feeling with our fellow men; and this feeling is pan of the social instinct by which, fearing isolation, we seek association with others. "Man's very first state and situation may justly be esteemed social"; a "state of nature" in which men lived without social organization "is to be regarded as a mere fiction"; society is as old as man. Being members of a group, men soon learned to commend actions advantageous-and to condemn actions injurious-to the community. Furthermore, the principle of sympathy inclined them to receive or imitate the opinions that they heard around them; in this way they acquired their standards and habits of praise and blame, and consciously or not they applied these judgments to their own conduct; this, and not the voice of God (as Rousseau and Kant were to imagine) is the origin of conscience. (P 146)

As for design, the adaptation of organs to purposes may have resulted not from divine guidance but from nature's slow and bungling experiments through thousands of years. (Here is "natural selection" 1,800 years after Lucretius, 108 years before Darwin.)  (P 150)

One would imagine that this grand production has not received the last hand of the maker, so little finished is every part, and so coarse are the strokes with which it is executed. Thus the winds . . . assist men in navigation; but how oft, rising up to tempests and hurricanes, do they become pernicious! Rains are necessary to nourish all the plants and animals of the earth; but how often are they defective! how often excessive! . . . There is nothing so advantageous in the universe but what frequently becomes pernicious by its excess or defeat; nor has nature guarded with the requisite accuracy against all disorders or confusion. (P 150)

A perpetual war is kindled amongst all living creatures. Necessity, hunger, want, stimulate the strong and courageous; fear, anxiety, terror agitate the weak and infirm. The first entrance into life gives anguish to the newborn infant and to its wretched parent; weakness, impotence, distress attend every stage of that life, and it is at last finished in agony and horror. . . . Observe, too, . . . the curious artifices of nature, in order to embitter the life of every living being. . . . Consider that innumerable race of insects, which either are bred on the body of each animal, or flying about, infix their stings in him. . . . Every animal is surrounded with enemies, which incessantly seek his misery and destruction. . . . Man is the greatest enemy of man. Oppression, injustice, contempt, contumely, violence, sedition, war, calumny, treachery, fraud; by these they mutually torment each other. ••• Look around this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences. . . . How hostile and destructive to each other! . . . The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children. (P 151)

The mind of primitive man interpreted all causation on the analogy of his own volition and action: behind the works and forms of nature -rivers, oceans, mountains, storms, pestilences, prodigies, etc.-he imagined acts of will by hidden persons of supernatural power; hence polytheism was the first form of religious belief. Since many forces or events were harmful to man, fear had a large share in his myths and rituals; he personified and sought to propitiate these evil forces or demons. Perhaps (Hume slyly suggests) Calvin's God was a demon, cruel, malicious, arbitrary, and difficult to appease. Since the good gods were conceived as like human beings except in power and permanence, they were supposed to give aid and comfort in return for gifts and flattery; hence the rituals of offerings, sacrifices, adoration, and solicitous prayer. As social organization increased in size and reach, and local rulers submitted to greater kings, the world of divinities underwent a like transformation; an order of hierarchy and obedience was ascribed in imagination to the gods; monotheism grew out of polytheism, and while the populace still knelt to local deities or saints, cultured men worshiped Zeus, Jupiter, God.

Unfortunately religion became more intolerant as it became more unified. Polytheism had allowed many varieties of religious belief; monotheism demanded uniformity. Persecution spread, and the cry for orthodoxy became "the most furious and implacable of all human passions." Philosophy, which among the ancients had been left relatively free as the religion of the elite, was compelled to become the servant and apologist of the faith of the masses. In these monotheistic creeds-Judaism, Christianity, Mohammedanism-merit and "salvation" were more and more divorced from virtue and attached to ritual observance and unquestioning belief. In consequence educated persons became either martyrs or hypocrites; and as they rarely chose martyrdom, the life of man was tarnished with lip service and insincerity.

In less combative moods Hume condoned a measure of hypocrisy. When he was consulted as to whether a young clergyman who had lost his faith should remain in the Church and accept its preferments, David answered, Remain. (P 153)