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Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 February 2009

B. M. Laing
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Extract

Professor Kemp Smith in providing a new edition of Hume’s Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, embodying all the author’s additions and corrections, has given expression to the perennial interest and fascination which this work has possessed for many minds during the odd one hundred and fifty years since it was first published by Hume’s nephew. The editor himself has performed a great service by contributing an Introduction and a clear and concise summary of the Dialogues, in both of which he expounds his own view as to how Hume’s discussion is to be interpreted. Hume employs three characters—Demea, Philo, and Cleanthes; and

Type
Articles
Information
Philosophy , Volume 12 , Issue 46 , April 1937 , pp. 175 - 190
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 1937

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References

page 180 Note 1 The reference is to the Éléments de la Philosophic de Newton (1738), Traité de Métaphysique (1734), Le Désastre de Lisbonne (1756). There are many similarities of phrasing in the two writers, e.g. light is anatomized, (which I have been unable to trace in Newton).

page 181 Note 1 Enquiry, Sect. xi.

page 185 Note 1 Part III, Sect, xii (at end).

page 185 Note 2 Sect. ix.

page 185 Note 3 e.g. S’Gravesende in his essay Sur I’évidence.

page 185 Note 4 Cleanthes in the Dialogues (Part I) says: In vain would the sceptic make a distinction between science and common life, or between one science and another. The arguments employed in all, if just, are of a similar nature, and contain the same force and evidence.

page 186 Note 1 This form of the argument has a likeness to Voltaire's statement of the teleological view. The arrangements in nature “font une demonstration qui, à force d'être sensible, en est presque méprisée par quelques philosophes” (Élements de la Philosophic de Newton, I, Ch. i). Cf. other passages, “Je ne sais …. si jamais il y a eu un plus bel argument que cet verset: Coeli enarrant gloriam Dei.”

page 186 Note 2 In the eighteenth century it is probable that order and design were not two distinct ideas. In a footnote to Le Désastre de Lisbonne (vers. 75) Voltaire expresses a view concerning the order of the universe, which, according to the Avertissement, was interpreted to signify that “this word order applied to nature is void of sense, unless it signifies an arrangement of which we apprehend the regularity and design.” Cf. Cleanthes' declaration concerning what is to be taken as a whole.

page 188 Note 1 Cleanthes' anthropomorphism can hardly be objectionable to an orthodoxy which holds that God created man in His own image, for, if so, man has a likeness to the Divine Nature. His theory is labelled experimental theism (Part V) and contrasted with the true system of theism.