Note 717 — Chapter V

‘By degrees, the active imagination of men, uneasy in this abstract conception of objects, about which it is incessantly employed, begins to render them more particular, and to clothe them in shapes more suitable to its natural comprehension. It represents them to be sensible, intelligent beings like mankind; actuated by love and hatred, and flexible by gifts and entreaties, by prayers and sacrifices. Hence the origin of religion. And hence the origin of idolatry, or polytheism.’ Hume's Philosophical Works, vol. iv. p. 472. ‘The primary religion of mankind arises chiefly from an anxious fear of future events,’ p. 498.