The Natural History of Religion

The Natural History is one of the founding documents of modern philosophical naturalism about religion — religion is a natural human phenomenon to be explained, not a transcendent reality to be assumed.

"The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events." (Natural History §III)

Hume applies his empirical-historical method to religious belief — observing actual religious practice across cultures rather than reasoning a priori from rational principles.

"Examine the religious principles which have, in fact, prevailed in the world." (Natural History, opening)

The Natural History's sceptical method — suspending judgement on the truth of religious claims while studying their psychological-historical causes — is recognisably Pyrrhonian.

"There is nothing which can satisfy this enquiry beyond the limits of our weak conjectures." (Natural History, closing)

The Vienna Circle and the broader twentieth-century positivist movement treated Hume's naturalist-historical method as foundational for the scientific study of religion.

"To know God, says Seneca, is to worship him. All other worship is indeed absurd, superstitious, and even impious." (Natural History §XII)

Liberal theology developed in partial response to Hume — Schleiermacher's On Religion (1799) attempts to relocate religion in feeling, protecting it from Hume's historical-philosophical critique.

"Universal panic, terror, and gloom" produce religion. (Natural History §III, paraphrasing)

The Natural History's comparative-anthropological method anticipates later cultural relativism about religious belief, though Hume himself remained committed to enlightened philosophical rationality.

"The Catholic religion, and all others which tend to a perpetual mixture of human and divine, have, on this principle, derived perpetual novelty." (Natural History §IX, paraphrasing)

A complicated relationship: Hume's naturalism critiques deistic rational theology as much as orthodox supernaturalism. But the broader deistic-Enlightenment context is where the Natural History becomes possible as a philosophical genre.

"The conviction of an invisible intelligent power is much weaker among the common people." (Natural History, paraphrasing)

Hume's closing irony ("the whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery") has been read by some as crypto-nihilist. Hume himself remained committed to common-sense moral and civic life.

"The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery." (Natural History, closing)

A more distant philosophical neighbourhood: Hume's closing meditation on the religious condition of humanity has been read by twentieth-century absurdists as a precursor to their diagnoses.

"Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgement appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny." (Natural History, closing)