Hume's Philosophy of Religion (review)

510 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY intertransmutability) be transformed into another whose gravity was so proportional, and hence its gravity would depend on its form, which would violate the previously established principle that gravity is independent of the form of a body (pp. 6~-63). The criticism is that "this argument appears to be circular since if it is already known that weight does not depend on the form of the body, there cannot be bodies devoid of gravity or with a different weight/mass proportionality" (p. 63). This is a curious objection insofar as it amounts to saying that Newton's argument is circular since if its main premise is true, then so is the conclusion, which property is usually regarded as a part of validity. Moreover, it is not clear that the problem lies with the premise about gravity being independent of form, since it could lie with the assumption of "universal intertransmutability. Third, the argument seems more like a proof of ignotufa per aeque ignotura rather than a genuine circularity. Fourth, it is questionable whether the argument under criticism can be found in the Principia, since there is little textual evidence that the sequence of statements considered by McMullin constitutes an argument. Finally, he does not examine carefully enough the connection between the text of Corollary 2 of Proposition 6 (which he criticizes), and the main text of this proposition and of the following Proposition 7. Here, then, is a book that needs to be handled carefully and judiciously if all its considerable potential value is to be actualized. MAURICE A. FINOCCHIARO University of Nevada, I.as Vegas j. c. A. Gaskin. Hume's Philosophy of Religion. New York: Barnes and Noble, 1978. Pp xi + t88. $~2.5o. When one considers the influence of Hume's philosophy of religion and the importance its themes had for him throughout his career, it is remarkable that there has been no book before this one in which his views are considered in full, and as they appear in all his major and minor writings. The nearest has been A. Jeffner's Butler and Hume on Religion 0966), which is, of course, a comparative study. So Gaskin's work is very timely; and it is a pleasure to report that it is of very high quality, filling the gap in the literature admirably. The author has provided a systematic analysis of Hume's views on all the major themes he treats; and he has drawn on the essays, the correspondence, and the numerous comments scattered throughout the Treatise and the Enquiries, in addition to the Dialogues, the Natural History of Religion, and the sections on miracles and particular providence. The only work whose theological content is passed over is the essay "On Suicide." Gaskin has, throughout, seen his task as that of mining Hume's system for insight into his views on particular themes in philosophy of religion, rather than that of placing his philosophy of religion within the system as a whole. This is no doubt the right procedure, although there is one place, which I shall mention below, where it has led to interpretative results with which I cannot myself agree. The outcome is a study which brings out very clearly that Hume thought systematically about religion, as indeed he did about most matters BOOK REVIEWS 511 he considered--a fact which the clarity and engagingness of the many separate discussions makes it easy to forget. Part x takes us, theme by theme, through Hume's critique of the design argument , his views on the various facets of the problem of evil, his brief but powerful attack on Clarke's version of the cosmological argument, the use he makes of his embryonic theory of meaning in the analysis of religious doctrines, and his arguments on immortality. There are several interesting defenses of Hume against recent attacks on his examination of the design argument, and Gaskin shows how much Hume's discussion of evil can contribute to our understanding of the distinct difficulties into which that problem divides. For someone as inclined to agree with his author as Gaskin is, the temptation to credit Hume with contributions to twentieth-century debates on...