intention in the fabric of the world."--(IV. pp. 450-51.)

The doctrine that you may call an atheist anybody whose ideas about the
Deity do not correspond with your own, is so largely acted upon by
persons who are certainly not of Hume's way of thinking and, probably,
so far from having read him, would shudder to open any book bearing his
name, except the _History of England_, that it is surprising to trace
the theory of their practice to such a source.

But on thinking the matter over, this theory seems so consonant with
reason, that one feels ashamed of having suspected many excellent
persons of being moved by mere malice and viciousness of temper to call
other folks atheists, when, after all, they have been obeying a purely
intellectual sense of fitness. As Hume says, truly enough, it is a mere
fallacy, because two people use the same names for things, the ideas of
which are mutually exclusive, to rank such opposite opinions under the
same denomination. If the Jew says, that the Deity is absolute unity,
and that it is sheer blasphemy to say that He ever became incarnate in
the person of a man; and, if the Trinitarian says, that the Deity is
numerically three as well as numerically one, and that it is sheer
blasphemy to say that He did not so become incarnate, it is obvious
enough that each must be logically held to deny the existence of the
other's Deity. Therefore; that each has a scientific right to call the
other an atheist; and that, if he refrains, it is only on the ground of
decency and good manners, which should restrain an honourable man from
employing even scientifically justifiable language, if custom has given
it an abusive connotation. While one must agree with Hume, then, it is,
nevertheless, to be wished that he had not set the bad example of
calling polytheists "superstitious atheists." It probably did not occur
to him that, by a parity of reasoning, the Unitarians might justify the
application of the same language to the Ultramontanes, and _vice versa_.
But, to return from a digression which may not be wholly unprofitable,
Hume proceeds to show in what manner polytheism incorporated physical
and moral allegories, and naturally accepted hero-worship; and he sums
up his views of the first stages of the evolution of theology as
follows:--

"These then are the general principles of polytheism, founded in
human nature, and little or nothing dependent on caprice or
accident. As the _ca