Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

Summary

Modelled on Cicero's On the Nature of the Gods, Hume's Dialogues are narrated by Pamphilus, a young man, to his friend Hermippus, and report a conversation at the house of Pamphilus's tutor, Cleanthes. Three speakers debate not whether God exists, which all profess to accept, but what can be known of God's nature by reason. Cleanthes is an experimental theist who argues from design: the world is one great machine of lesser machines whose adaptation of means to ends resembles human contrivance, so its cause must resemble a human mind. Demea is an orthodox rationalist and mystic who insists that God's nature is incomprehensible and who favours an a priori proof of a necessarily existent being. Philo, a sceptic, joins Demea at first in stressing the weakness of human reason and then turns the full force of Hume's earlier analysis of causation and analogy against Cleanthes. Philo argues in Parts 2 to 8 that the analogy between the world and a machine is weak, since we have no experience of the origin of worlds; that if like effects prove like causes, a finite, imperfect world proves only a finite, perhaps imperfect, perhaps plural, perhaps embodied designer; that the world might have been botched and bungled through many trials by an infant or a superannuated deity; that the world resembles an animal or vegetable more than a watch, and might arise from generation or vegetation, like the Brahmins' infinite spider; and that an Epicurean hypothesis of matter in eternal motion settling into stable order could account for apparent design. In Part 9 Demea gives his a priori argument for a necessary being; Cleanthes rejects it on the ground that whatever we conceive as existing we can conceive as not existing. Parts 10 and 11 turn to evil. Demea, to drive people toward religion, catalogues human misery, quoting Milton's lazar-house of diseases and describing the disorders of the mind; Philo agrees and asks Epicurus's old questions about a God who is willing but unable, or able but unwilling, to prevent evil. Cleanthes denies that misery outweighs happiness. Philo then identifies four circumstances, pain as a motive, government by general laws, frugal endowment of creatures and inaccurate workmanship of nature, that produce most natural evil, and concludes that the original source of things has no more regard to good than to ill. Demea, realising that Philo has been mocking him, leaves. In Part 12 Philo surprises by conceding that design strikes every mind, reduces the dispute between theist and atheist to a verbal one about degrees of resemblance, and attacks popular superstition. Pamphilus, a doubtful judge, concludes that Philo's principles are more probable than Demea's but that Cleanthes comes nearer the truth.

Plot or Argument

• Pamphilus to Hermippus: why dialogue

  The narrator explains that a question where reasonable people differ, such as the nature of God, suits the dialogue form, and introduces the 'accurate philosophical turn' of Cleanthes, the 'careless scepticism' of Philo and the 'rigid inflexible orthodoxy' of Demea.

• Part 1: Scepticism and the education of the young

  Demea wants religion taught after sceptical humility; Cleanthes argues that no one can live as a total sceptic, whose philosophical melancholy dissipates on contact with life, and that scepticism is used selectively against religion.

• Parts 2–3: The design argument stated and challenged

  Cleanthes presents the world as a great machine and infers an intelligent designer by analogy. Philo objects that the analogy is remote and our experience of worlds nil. Cleanthes replies with the cases of a voice from the clouds and a vegetating library.

• Parts 4–5: The designer's likely attributes

  If God's mind is like ours, it has ideas in succession and needs explanation; if we press the analogy, we get a finite, possibly plural, embodied deity, perhaps the clumsy first attempt of an infant god.

• Parts 6–8: Rival hypotheses

  The world may be an animal with a soul, or produced by generation and vegetation; Brahmins imagine a spider spinning the world. An Epicurean hypothesis of matter in motion finding stable configurations is no worse than design.

• Part 9: The a priori argument

  Demea argues for a necessarily existent being. Cleanthes answers that no existence is demonstrable and that the material world itself might be the necessary being.

• Part 10: The catalogue of misery

  Demea and Philo describe disease, madness, melancholy, war and the anxieties of the prosperous. Philo states Epicurus's questions and asks how divine benevolence resembles human benevolence.

• Part 11: Four sources of natural evil

  Pain rather than diminished pleasure as motive, general laws, scanty endowment of creatures and imprecise workmanship of nature explain most suffering. The best hypothesis is a blind, indifferent cause; Demea departs.

• Part 12: Philo's apparent reversal

  Philo admits the force of design, argues that theist and atheist differ only in degree, condemns superstition and enthusiasm, and calls philosophical scepticism the first step to belief. Pamphilus gives his ambiguous verdict.

Characters

• Philo, sceptic

  Witty, ironic critic of natural theology who demolishes the design argument and then partly concedes it; often read as closest to Hume, though Hume never says so.

• Cleanthes, experimental theist

  Pamphilus's tutor, who defends belief in God by analogy from the order of nature and rejects both mysticism and a priori proofs.

• Demea, orthodox rationalist

  Pious defender of God's incomprehensibility and of a priori demonstration, who stresses human misery to drive people to faith and leaves when he realises Philo's alliance was ironic.

• Pamphilus, narrator

  Young pupil of Cleanthes who reports the conversation and awards the debate, unconvincingly, to his tutor.

• Hermippus, addressee

  Friend to whom Pamphilus writes the account.

Lessons

• An analogy is only as strong as the resemblance it rests on

  Philo shows that inferring a designer from the world requires a likeness between worlds and machines that we cannot check, and that the same analogy yields stranger designers when pushed. The method applies to any argument from resemblance.

  • Why does Philo say we would need experience of the origin of worlds to reason about this one?
  • Does Darwin's theory strengthen Philo's Epicurean hypothesis or make the whole debate obsolete?
  • Where do analogies from animal models to human patients face a similar problem?

• The fact of suffering weighs against confident claims about providence

  Parts 10 and 11 argue that even if evil is compatible with a good God, the world as we find it does not support inferring one. Hume moves the problem of evil from logic to evidence.

  • Is Philo's list of four circumstances persuasive? Could the world have had less pain without losing anything?
  • How does Demea's use of misery to promote faith differ from Philo's use of it?

• Where a question is open, let several voices argue it

  Hume chose dialogue for a subject where reasonable people disagree and the author's own view is dangerous. Irony, alliances and a doubtful narrator keep the reader from receiving a verdict ready-made.

  • Why might Hume have given the final verdict to Pamphilus rather than Philo?
  • Is Philo's reversal in Part 12 sincere, strategic or both?

Context

The design argument was a pillar of eighteenth-century British religion, supported by Newtonian science, Boyle Lecturers and natural theologians such as John Ray and William Derham. Hume's Dialogues challenged it from within the experimental method its defenders claimed. They also responded to Samuel Clarke's a priori proof (Demea's argument) and to debates on theodicy after Leibniz and Pope.

Composition

Hume drafted the Dialogues around 1750–51 and circulated them to friends, including Gilbert Elliot, who advised against publication. He revised them in 1761 and again in 1776 in his final illness, adding passages to Part 12. His will charged Adam Smith with publication; when Smith hesitated, Hume made his nephew David Hume the younger responsible, and the book appeared anonymously in 1779 without a publisher's name.

Reception

Early readers found the work dangerous but indecisive. William Paley's Natural Theology (1802) restated the design argument with the watchmaker without fully engaging Hume. Darwin's theory of natural selection gave an empirical form to Philo's alternative hypotheses. Since the twentieth century the Dialogues have been the standard text on the design argument and the evidential problem of evil.

Comparisons

• an-enquiry-concerning-human-understanding

  The Enquiry establishes that causal inference rests on experience of constant conjunction; the Dialogues apply that principle to the universe, which is a single, unique effect with no observed class of similar origins.

• pensees

  Pascal shares Demea's view that reason cannot reach God's nature and that human wretchedness points to the need for religion, but Pascal's wager and hidden God answer a question Philo uses only to unsettle.

• on-the-nature-of-the-universe

  Lucretius's atoms forming worlds by chance motion are the source of the Epicurean hypothesis Philo revives in Part 8 as a rival to design.

• the-consolation-of-philosophy

  Boethius reconciles suffering with providence through Lady Philosophy's teaching; Hume's Philo dismantles exactly that kind of consolation by weighing evidence of misery.

• candide

  Voltaire's satire of Leibnizian optimism appeared in 1759, between Hume's drafts; both attack the claim that this is the best world, Voltaire through comic catastrophe and Hume through Philo's four circumstances.

• the-bible

  The Book of Job also places suffering at the centre of a debate among friends about God's justice; Job's comforters resemble Demea, while Philo plays an irreverent Job without the whirlwind.

Quotes

For Students

A reading companion for classical Christian high school students. See the student guide.

Reading Guide

Watch for

• Pamphilus's letter to Hermippus at the start, where he explains why the nature of God suits the dialogue form and sketches the three speakers. Keep asking whether Pamphilus is a reliable judge.
• Cleanthes's statement of the design argument in Part 2, with the world as one great machine made of lesser machines, and Philo's patient dismantling of the analogy in Parts 2 through 8.
• Cleanthes's two counterexamples in Part 3, the articulate voice from the clouds and the vegetating library. They are his strongest replies, and Philo is notably silent after them.
• The catalogue of misery in Part 10, which Demea begins to drive people toward faith and Philo turns into Epicurus's old questions about evil.
• Demea's departure at the end of Part 11, and Philo's apparent reversal in Part 12, where he admits that design strikes every mind and calls scepticism the first step toward belief.

Key terms and names

Natural religion

Knowledge of God gained by reason and experience alone, without revelation. The three speakers agree that God exists; their dispute is how much reason can know of God's nature.

Argument from design

Cleanthes's argument that the adjustment of means to ends in nature resembles human contrivance, so that its cause must resemble a human mind. Philo attacks the strength of the resemblance.

Anthropomorphism

Demea's charge against Cleanthes: picturing God with human-like mind and qualities. Philo presses the point by showing how far the analogy could carry, even to a body or several gods.

A priori argument

Demea's proof in Part 9 that a necessarily existent being must exist as the cause of the chain of causes. Cleanthes answers that whatever we conceive as existing we can also conceive as not existing.

Epicurean hypothesis

Philo's suggestion in Part 8 that matter in endless motion might fall by chance into stable, self-sustaining order, producing the appearance of design without a designer.

The four circumstances

Philo's list in Part 11 of the conditions that produce most natural evil: pain as a motive, government by general laws, the frugal endowment of creatures, and the inaccurate workmanship of nature.

Mystic

The name Cleanthes gives Demea in Part 4 for insisting that God's nature is wholly incomprehensible. Cleanthes argues that a God of whom nothing can be understood is hardly different from no God at all.

Seminar Questions

1. Comprehension How does Cleanthes state the argument from design in Part 2, and what is Philo's first objection to the analogy between the world and a machine?
2. Comprehension What alternative accounts of the world's order does Philo propose in Parts 6 through 8?
3. Comprehension Why does Demea leave the conversation at the end of Part 11?
4. Interpretation Demea catalogues human misery in Part 10 to drive people toward religion, but Philo uses the same catalogue against Cleanthes. What does this reversal show about the risks of Demea's strategy?
5. Interpretation Philo argues that a finite, imperfect world proves at most a finite, imperfect designer, perhaps one who botched and bungled many worlds first. Does Cleanthes have an adequate answer, and why does he cling to the analogy?
6. Interpretation In Part 12 Philo concedes that design strikes every mind and says scepticism is the first step to belief. Is he sincere, ironic, or both? What evidence in Parts 1 and 12 supports your reading?
7. Interpretation Pamphilus judges that Cleanthes comes nearest the truth. Why might Hume give the verdict to his least philosophical character?
8. Big Question Can reason alone tell us what God is like, or only that God is? If the world contains both order and great suffering, what can it teach about its Maker without revelation?

Faith Connections

• Romans 1:20 (Scripture)

  Paul says that God's invisible attributes, his eternal power and divine nature, are clearly seen through the things that are made. Cleanthes defends something close to this claim, and Philo questions how much of God's nature can actually be read from creation.

• Job 38-41 (Scripture)

  When Job demands an answer for his suffering, God replies by displaying the wonders of creation and asking where Job was when the earth was founded. Hume's Parts 10 and 11 pose Job's question as a philosophical argument, but without the voice from the whirlwind.

• Aquinas, Summa Theologiae I, q.2, a.3 (Church Fathers)

  Aquinas's fifth way argues from things lacking knowledge that act for an end to an intelligence directing them. Cleanthes's design argument is a probabilistic relative of this proof, and comparing them shows that Philo's attack on analogy does not obviously touch Aquinas's argument from final causes.

• Augustine, Enchiridion 11 (Church Fathers)

  Augustine holds that God, being supremely good, would not permit evil in his works unless he were able to bring good even out of evil. This is the kind of answer to Epicurus's questions that none of Hume's speakers fully develops.

Logic and Rhetoric

Central argument: Philo's case against natural theology runs this way. An argument from analogy is only as strong as the likeness between cases. We have experience of houses and machines being made, but none of worlds being made, so the likeness between the world and a machine is weak. Even granting it, like effects prove like causes, so an imperfect and finite world proves at most an imperfect, finite, perhaps plural designer. And the mixture of good and evil in the world, explained by Philo's four circumstances, fits a cause indifferent to good and ill better than a perfectly good one. Therefore reason alone cannot establish the moral attributes of God, though Philo finally grants that some remote analogy to intelligence remains.

Rhetorical device: hypophora (raising questions and answering them). In Part 10 Philo restates Epicurus: Is he willing to prevent evil, but not able? then is he impotent. Is he able, but not willing? then is he malevolent. Is he both able and willing? whence then is evil. Each question is answered in a single word until the last, which is left hanging, so that the unanswered question carries the force of the argument.

Debate: Resolved: Philo's concession in Part 12 is sincere, and Hume's Dialogues end closer to theism than to scepticism.

Memory Work

We are terrified, not bribed to the continuance of our existence

To be a philosophical Sceptic is, in a man of letters, the first and most essential step towards being a sound, believing Christian

Writing Prompts

Essay: In Part 12 Philo seems to grant what he denied for eleven parts. Using his objections in Parts 2, 5, and 11 and his concession in Part 12, argue what Hume's Dialogues finally conclude about how much reason can know of God.

Comparison with Pensees: Pascal and Hume both doubt that proofs from nature can bring a person to God, and Philo even calls scepticism the first step toward being a believing Christian. Compare Pascal's use of doubt with Philo's, and argue whether either work leaves room for faith, and what kind.

Medical Lens

Parts 10 and 11 are a philosophical inventory of suffering, physical and mental. Demea quotes Milton's lazar-house (Paradise Lost XI), which names 'demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, and moon-struck madness' among diseases, and lists remorse, anxiety, dejection and despair as disorders of the mind. Philo asks why pain rather than a diminution of pleasure moves animals, why gout, migraine and rheumatism cause suffering out of proportion to any protective function, and why the anxious fear death more than they love life. These passages are useful for teaching on the meaning of pain, the evolutionary function of distress, and the ethics of consolation. Hume's own revision of the work during his fatal illness, and his tranquil death described by Adam Smith, link the book to the history of the good death, but that is biographical context.

• Part 1

  Cleanthes says the sceptic's 'philosophical melancholy' dissipates on contact with external objects and passions.

  Melancholia DepressionPhilosophy AS Therapy
• Part 10

  Demea quotes Milton's lazar-house (stone, ulcer, colic, frenzy, melancholy, madness, atrophy, marasmus, pestilence) and catalogues disorders of the mind; a hospital full of diseases as a specimen of the world's ills.

  Madness PsychosisMelancholia DepressionPlague EpidemicStarvation NutritionAsylum Institution
• Part 10

  Philo on why the miserable remain alive: terrified, not bribed, to continue existing; the man of delicate temper as more sensitive and therefore more unhappy.

  SuicideNeurosis AnxietyDeath Dying
• Part 10

  Gratuitous pains of gout, gravel, migraine, toothache and rheumatism, and spleen, melancholy and superstition as pains of the mind.

  PainMelancholia DepressionMind Body
• Part 11

  Four circumstances behind natural evil: pain as motive, general laws, frugal endowment of animals, inaccurate workmanship of nature (including excess or deficiency of humours and disease).

  PainDisability DeformityHumoral Medicine

Creative Prompts

• Dialogue

  Add a fourth speaker to Part 10: a modern pain physician who explains what nociception is for and challenges Philo's claim that much pain is gratuitous.

• Fiction

  Write the scene in 1776 in which Hume, dying, revises Part 12 while a friend urges him to burn the manuscript.

• Essay

  Compare Philo's 'four circumstances' with evolutionary explanations of why chronic pain, anxiety and depression persist. What does Darwin answer, and what remains of Philo's challenge?

• Classroom

  Have students each defend the position of Cleanthes, Demea or Philo, then switch roles halfway through, as Philo does in Part 12.

Further Reading

• The Nature of the Gods, Cicero

  Hume's classical model.

• Natural Theology, William Paley

  The watchmaker argument restated after Hume.

• The Natural History of Religion, David Hume

  Hume's account of the psychological origins of religion in fear and hope.

• Hume's Philosophy of Religion, J. C. A. Gaskin

• The Infidel and the Professor, Dennis C. Rasmussen

  On Hume and Adam Smith, including the publication of the Dialogues and Hume's death.