uses_ which bestow happiness or misery, are in
general very little known and very uncertain, our anxious concern
endeavours to attain a determinate idea of them: and finds no
better expedient than to represent them as intelligent, voluntary
agents, like ourselves, only somewhat superior in power and wisdom.
The limited influence of these agents, and their proximity to human
weakness, introduce the various distribution and division of their
authority, and thereby give rise to allegory. The same principles
naturally deify mortals, superior in power, courage, or
understanding, and produce hero-worship; together with fabulous
history and mythological tradition, in all its wild and
unaccountable forms. And as an invisible spiritual intelligence is
an object too refined for vulgar apprehension, men naturally affix
it to 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."--(IV. p. 461.)

How did the further stage of theology, monotheism, arise out of
polytheism? Hume replies, certainly not by reasonings from first causes
or any sort of fine-drawn logic:--

"Even at this day, and in Europe, ask any of the vulgar why he
believes in an Omnipotent Creator of the world, he will never
mention the beauty of final causes, of which he is wholly ignorant:
He will not hold out his hand and bid you contemplate the
suppleness and variety of joints in his fingers, their bending all
one way, the counterpoise which they receive from the thumb, the
softness and fleshy parts of the inside of the hand, with all the
other circumstances which render that member fit for the use to
which it was destined. To these he has been long accustomed; and he
beholds them with listlessness and unconcern. He will tell you of
the sudden and unexpected death of such-a-one; the fall and bruise
of such another; the excessive drought of this season; the cold and
rains of another. These he ascribes to the immediate operation of
Providence: And such events as, with good reasoners, are the chief
difficulties in admitting a Supreme Intelligence, are with him the
sole arguments for it....

"We may conclude therefore, upon the whole, that since the vulgar,
in nations which have embraced the