No
passions, therefore, can be supposed to work on such barbarians,
but the ordinary affections of human life; the anxious concern for
happiness, the dread of future misery, the terror of death, the
thirst of revenge, the appetite for food and other necessaries.
Agitated by hopes and fears of this nature, especially the latter,
men scrutinize, with a trembling curiosity, the course of future
causes, and examine the various and contrary events of human life.
And in this disordered scene, with eyes still more disordered and
astonished, they see the first obscure traces of divinity."--(IV.
pp. 443, 4.)
The shape assumed by these first traces of divinity is that of the
shadows of men's own minds, projected out of themselves by their
imaginations:--
"There is an universal tendency among mankind to conceive all
beings like themselves, and to transfer to every object those
qualities with which they are familiarly acquainted, and of which
they are intimately conscious.... The _unknown causes_ which
continually employ their thought, appearing always in the same
aspect, are all apprehended to be of the same kind or species. Nor
is it long before we ascribe to them thought, and reason, and
passion, and sometimes even the limbs and figures of men, in order
to bring them nearer to a resemblance with ourselves."--(IV. pp.
446-7.)
Hume asks whether polytheism really deserves the name of theism.
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