' [10:1]
The same Hume who thus pleasantly rebuked 'most religious philosophers,'
was himself a true Atheist. That he lacked faith in the supernatural
must be apparent to every student of his writings, which abound with
reflections far from flattering to the self-love of religionists, and
little calculated to advance their cause. Many Deists have been called
Atheists: among others Robert Owen and Richard Carlile, both of whom
professed belief in something superior to nature, something acting upon
and regulating matter, though not itself material. [11:1] This something
they named _power_. But Hume has shown we may search 'in vain for an
idea of power or necessary connection in all the sources from which we
would suppose it to be derived. [11:2] Owen, Carlile, and other
Atheists, falsely so called, supposed power the only entity worthy of
deification. They dignified it with such appellations as 'internal or
external cause of all existence,' and ascribed to it intelligence, with
such other honourable attributes as are usually ascribed to 'deified,
error.' But Hume astonished religious philosophers by declaring that,
'while we argue from the course of nature and infer a particular
intelligent cause, which first bestowed, and still preserves order in
the universe, we embrace a principle which is both uncertain and
useless.
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