"David Hume - The Natural History of Religion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hume David)

from inferior to superior: By abstracting from what is imperfect, it
forms an idea of perfection: And slowly distinguishing the nobler
parts of its own frame from the grosser, it learns to transfer only
the former, much elevated and refined, to its divinity. Nothing
could disturb this natural progress of thought, but some obvious and
invincible argument, which might immediately lead the mind into the
pure principles of theism, and make it overleap, at one bound, the
vast interval which is interposed between the human and the divine
nature. But though I allow, that the order and frame of the
universe, when accurately examined, affords such an argument; yet I
can never think, that this consideration could have an influence on
mankind, when they formed their first rude notions of religion.

The causes of such objects, as are quite familiar to us, never
strike our attention or curiosity; and however extraordinary or
surprising these objects in themselves, they are passed over, by the
raw and ignorant multitude, without much examination or enquiry.
A/DAM\, rising at once, in paradise, and in the full perfection of
his faculties, would naturally, as represented by M/ILTON\, be
astonished at the glorious appearances of nature, the heavens, the
air, the earth, his own organs and members; and would be led to ask,
whence this wonderful scene arose. But a barbarous, necessitous
animal (such as a man is on the first origin of society), pressed by
such numerous wants and passions, has no leisure to admire the
regular face of nature, or make enquiries concerning the cause of
those objects, to which from his infancy he has been gradually
accustomed. On the contrary, the more regular and uniform, that is,
the more perfect nature appears, the more is he familiarized to it,
and the less inclined to scrutinize and examine it. A monstrous
birth excites his curiosity, and is deemed a prodigy. It alarms him
from its novelty; and immediately sets him a trembling, and
sacrificing, and praying. But an animal, compleat in all its limbs
and organs, is to him an ordinary spectacle, and produces no
religious opinion or affection. Ask him, whence that animal arose;
he will tell you, from the copulation of its parents. And these,
whence? From the copulation of theirs. A few removes satisfy his
curiosity, and set the objects at such a distance, that he entirely
loses sight of them. Imagine not, that he will so much as start the
question, whence the first animal; much less, whence the whole
system or united fabric of the universe arose. Or, if you start such
a question to him, expect not, that he will employ his mind with any
anxiety about a subject, so remote, so uninteresting, and which so
much exceeds the bounds of his capacity.

But farther, if men were at first led into the belief of one
Supreme Being, by reasoning from the frame of nature, they could
never possibly leave that belief, in order to embrace polytheism;
but the same principles of reason, which at first produced and
diffused over mankind, so magnificent an opinion, must be able, with
greater facility, to preserve it. The first invention and proof of