The Natural History of Religion

Where religion came from, if it did not come from revelation: fear, hope, and invisible agents blamed for the weather.

English, the original language, and your language

First published: 1757(aged 46)
Original language: English

Overview

The account taught from pulpits and assumed by most scholars ran that mankind began with the knowledge of one God and declined from it into idolatry. This dissertation of 1757 reverses the order. The first religion was polytheism, and it grew not out of contemplating the design of the heavens but out of fear and hope about what could not be predicted: the storm, the harvest, the fever. The ordinary mind manages that fear by imagining invisible agents behind events, agents that can be flattered and bargained with. One god comes later, and by competition: worshippers raise their own above the neighbours' until they have raised him to infinity. The two states then keep changing places — a god pushed so high that he becomes remote leaves room for saints and intercessors, who harden in their turn into gods. The book adds that the religions of one god are the more intolerant of the two, and that the virtues they press — fasting, self-abasement, submission — do nobody any good. It reached print inside an improvised volume. Two essays, on suicide and on the immortality of the soul, were pulled after the sheets were printed, when William Warburton set about the publisher with the threat of prosecution; a piece on taste was dropped in to fill the space. Warburton then attacked what survived, in a pamphlet published with no name on it and framed as a letter addressed to himself — his friend Richard Hurd saw it through the press and was at once taken for the author. Hume told his publisher he was positively assured that Warburton had written that letter to himself. He said afterwards that the attack was some consolation for an otherwise flat reception. The serious study of religion as a natural human phenomenon starts here.

Key concepts

Why does Hume think polytheism comes before monotheism?

Hume argues that polytheism arises first because early people explain particular events through separate, limited powers. Thunder, disease, harvests, and war each invite their own invisible cause before anyone unifies them under one supreme deity. Monotheism comes later, when admiration, fear, or priestly reasoning elevates one god above the rest and suppresses the others.

Why do Hume’s gods resemble human beings?

Hume’s gods resemble human beings because people project their own passions, needs, and social arrangements onto invisible causes. They imagine deities who can be angered, flattered, bribed, or persuaded, then construct rituals suited to those imagined personalities. Anthropomorphism therefore does not decorate religion from outside; it supplies the form in which uncertain causes become intelligible.

How does religion turn fear into superstition?

Superstition turns uncertainty into a demand for ritual control. When people cannot discover the causes of suffering or success, they attach hopes and fears to invisible agents and seek protection through ceremonies, prohibitions, and offerings. Hume treats this response as psychologically intelligible without treating it as evidence: the need for reassurance explains the practice, not the power of its object.

Why does Hume call monotheism less tolerant than polytheism?

Monotheism is less tolerant, Hume argues, because one exclusive god leaves less room for rival divine powers. Polytheism can add another deity without destroying its whole arrangement; monotheism treats competing worship as error or insult. Once one creed claims sole possession of truth, religious disagreement can become a threat requiring suppression rather than another custom to accommodate.

Does religion make people more moral in Hume’s account?

Religion does not reliably create morality, Hume argues, because moral conduct rests on human sentiments and social interests rather than theological belief. Religious practices may coexist with cruelty, fraud, or persecution, while doctrines can reward ceremonies more readily than humane conduct. Religion can influence behaviour, but its supernatural claims do not supply the foundation of moral judgment.

Themes of the book

What this book returns to, gathered into themes and ordered by how much of the text each one occupies.

Religion Before Theology

Hume asks how religion arises from human experience before it receives a theological justification. The answer decides whether faith begins with reason, or with fear, uncertainty, and the imagination seeking causes.

Hume treats religion as a history of human responses to uncertainty, not as a deduction from theology. In 1757, he traced the movement from polytheism toward theism through fear, hope, imagination, and the tendency to project human passions onto nature. That account challenges the claim that religious belief begins in reason or moral insight: dogma grows from psychological and social pressures, while rival forms of faith preserve contradiction rather than settle it. Religion explains human conduct before it proves any divine truth.

belief
human nature
theism
superstition
psychology
theology
mythology
anthropomorphism
polytheism
reason
ritual
fear
identity
tradition
imagination
epistemology
suffering
uncertainty
contradiction
faith
religious psychology
religious belief
skepticism
natural theology
religion and morality
monotheism
popular religion
religious origins
philosophy of religion
religious practice

Enter a dialogue

Within this work

passages held: 76
distinct concepts: 173
by passages held, corpus-wide: #562

What this book thinks together

The wheel takes this book’s leading concepts and shows how often they come up together. The wider the band between two, the more of its passages speak of both. Among them, most often together: “polytheism” and “theism”.

Concept co-occurrence, strongest first 8 concepts, joined by 21 pairings. 73 pairings reach beyond these concepts and are not drawn.
Concept	Paired concept	Shared passages
polytheism	theism	6
mythology	polytheism	5
polytheism	religious psychology	5
anthropomorphism	theism	4
polytheism	superstition	4
religious psychology	theism	4
superstition	theism	4
anthropomorphism	polytheism	3
anthropomorphism	religious psychology	3
anthropomorphism	superstition	3
human nature	superstition	3
polytheism	reason	3
anthropomorphism	mythology	2
human nature	religious psychology	2
human nature	polytheism	1
human nature	theism	1
mythology	reason	1
mythology	superstition	1
mythology	theism	1
reason	superstition	1
religious psychology	superstition	1

Works held

The author's work in order, this book marked in place. Your-language title first, the original beneath it where the two differ; side chips show which full texts are held.

1739 A Treatise of Human Nature
The quarry from which nearly everything else on this shelf was cut, and now the most read of Hume's books — which is the opposite of what he wanted.
EN
1741 Essays
Not one book but a collection under a single title, and the place on this shelf where Hume writes for the general reader — on politics, trade, taste and manners — rather than for philosophers.
EN
1748 An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Shorter, sharper and re-argued: the first part of the Treatise remade for a general reader, and carrying two sections on religion that the earlier book had deliberately left out.
EN
1751 An Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals
The moral theory of the Treatise's third book, rebuilt for the readers who were never going to open the original.
EN
1752 Hume's Political Discourses
Twelve essays on money, trade, taxes, public credit and population, published in 1752 and later folded into his collected essays — economics before there was a word for it.
EN
1757 The Natural History of Religion you are here EN
1779 Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion
A conversation in three voices that its author kept by him for a quarter of a century, revising it three times and letting nobody print it while he lived.
EN

— or open another of their works