Four Dissertations
Four Dissertations is a collection of four essays by the 18th-century Scottish Enlightenment philosopher David Hume, first published in 1757. The four essays are: The Natural History of Religion In this essay, Hume offers a pioneering naturalist account of the causes, effects, and historical development of religious belief. Hume argues that a crude polytheism was the earliest religion of mankind and locates the origins of religion in emotion, particularly hope, fear, and the desire to control the future. He further argues that monotheism arises from competition between religions, as believers seek to distinguish their deities as superior to all rivals, magnifying those deities until they possess all perfections. Though an enlightened monotheism is more rationally defensible than a superstitious polytheism, in practice polytheism has many advantages. In particular, Hume argues, monotheistic religions tend to be more intolerant and hypocritical, result in greater intellectual absurdities, and foster socially undesirable "monkish virtues", such as mortification, abasement, and passive suffering. Hume concludes the "Natural History" on a note of characteristic skepticism: Of the Passions Hume begins the passions by giving a trite example of what Good and Evil are; Good being pleasure, Evil being pain. He then begins to analyze emotion as a