Hume's Dialogues and Paradise Lost

Peter Dendle

Discussions of the background of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) tend to focus more on scientific, philosophical, and theological sources than on literary ones, which is only natural given that the work is a philosophical dialogue. Yet the epistolary-dialogue form, a departure from Hume's usual expository philosophical style, encourages exploring the Dialogues as a work of literature independently of its contribution to the history of philosophy. ¹ Newton, Clarke, and the French skeptics are crucial background figures in understanding the importance of Hume's criticism of natural theology, and the influence of classical writers such as Cicero and Lucretius is equally obvious; but it is not sufficiently appreciated that more recent literary figures such as Milton, Dryden, and Pope also inform the Dialogues. Their influence is not as great as that of those others named, perhaps, but it represents a significant substratum, illuminating in many ways Hume's conceptualization of the cosmological and philosophical principles to which he responds. The Restoration and Augustan poets, essayists, and even novelists contribute images evoked and examples raised by the disputants in Hume's dialogue, and an understanding of how these images are used in the Dialogues contributes toward a broader understanding of the conceptual foundations of Hume's philosophy in relation to the intellectual mainstream of the Enlightenment in general.

Among the various works Hume quotes in the Dialogues, including those of Dryden, Lord Bacon, and Lucretius, Paradise Lost provides the longest quotation and is the only source quoted more than once. In the opening pages of the Dialogues (D 134) Philo quotes five lines from Book 2 of Paradise Lost (PL, 565-69), in which the fallen angels, emerging from their great pandemonic council, [End Page 257] take to philosophical speculation. ² He cites the passage out of context, to demonstrate that skepticism, if forced, is not meaningless and that "Vain Wisdom all and false Philosophy" may yet "charm Pain" and "arm the obdurate breast / With stubborn Patience." Thus Philo defends against Cleanthes' charge that skepticism amounts to empty raillery and can have no practical consequences in one's behavior. The image of the demonic council, confounded in meandering speculation, is an appropriate lead-in for the work as a whole: like the characters in the Dialogues, Milton's devils "reasoned high.... And found no end, in wandering mazes lost" (PL, 2.558-61).

The second of the three quotations from Paradise Lost occurs a third of the way through the Dialogues, when Philo notes in Part V, "The two great sexes of male and female, says MILTON, animate the world" (D, 168; PL, 8.151). Here the innocent adage of Edenic proliferation becomes twisted into an impertinent analogy concerning the sexuality of deities: "Why must this circumstance [sexual reproduction], so universal, so essential, be excluded from those numerous and limited Deities?" (D, 168). ³ It is among the insolent analogies that Philo claims must follow from Cleanthes' principles. In Part X (D, 195-96) Demea offers a third quotation from Paradise Lost, the longest in the Dialogues, in his attempt to portray the misery of the human condition in this world. The nine lines from Book 11 of Paradise Lost he cites express the wretchedness of the human condition rather morbidly. ⁴ Thus, the three quotations from Paradise Lost are either distorted for an insalutary effect or are unwholesome to begin with, and they loosely mark the beginning, middle, and latter part of the Dialogues (just as they are taken from the beginning, middle, and latter part of Paradise Lost).

The world of Paradise Lost is very much one of counsel and debate, discourse and dialogue: the heavenly and hellish councils of books 2 and 3 give way to the more pastoral conversations within the garden, where Adam and Eve struggle to understand their condition, Raphael and Michael offer wisdom, and Satan tempts. Although the backdrop is the entire cosmos rather than Cleanthes' library, Milton's epic no less than Hume's Dialogues progresses through its stages by the primary vehicle of dialogue rather than action. Paradise Lost affirms the very role of dialectical (as opposed to intuitive) reasoning as the characteristically human epistemological foundation. Raphael, recounting the differences [End Page 258] between humans and angels, reveals: "...reason is her [the soul's] being, /Discursive, or intuitive; discourse / Is oftest yours, the latter most is ours ..." (PL, 5.487-89). ⁵ Thus, when the angels are removed from the system altogether as they are in the writings of Hume and of many eighteenth-century intellectuals, only "discursive," or dialectical, reason remains. It is fallible, progresses only in starts and stops, and is subject to the limitations of the disputants. The characteristically dialectical nature of human knowledge informs Hume's entire corpus (as in "Of a Particular Providence and of a Future State" and "A Dialogue") but is most explicit in the Dialogues. Whereas in Plato, for instance, the dialogue form is often unrelated to the apodictic deductions achieved, in Hume the form is intimately connected with the content of the work. Pamphilus notes in the frame epistle, "Any question of philosophy, on the other hand, which is so obscure and uncertain, that human reason can reach no fixed determination with regard to it; if it should be treated at all; seems to lead us naturally into the style of dialogue and conversation" (D, 128). The division of material among different disputants, each of whom embodies a different personality and upbringing (and who thus vary in "habit, caprice, or inclination"), is a logical outgrowth of the principles Hume expounds concerning irresolvability in speculation on metaphysics or matters outside the scope of common observation. Milton scornfully submits that "men only disagree / Of creatures rational" (PL, 2.497)--i.e., of the two classes of rational beings, human and angelic, only humans disagree amongst themselves. Even the demons sustain a unified front against God and humankind. Demea, too, complains of "the eternal disputations of men" (D, 130), though Pamphilus protests with a rebellious pride that "Reasonable men may be allowed to differ, where no one can reasonably be positive" (D, 128).

Both works are concerned with justifying the ways of God to humankind. The stated project of Milton's epic is "That to the highth of this great argument / I may assert eternal providence, / And justify the ways of God to men" (PL, 1.24-26). This is much the same concern underlying the later Dialogues, especially X and XI, which address such attempts to reconcile God's benevolence with the evil observed in the world. Cleanthes says he is willing to repose the whole of their dispute on this one issue, whether there is more misery than happiness in the world (and thus by implication to what extent God may be considered good). Cleanthes never balances out Philo's presentation, and Demea only conspires with Philo to denigrate the effects, if not the cause, of Creation. The overall effect is thus different in the two works: Milton struggles to defend the Deity with all the resources at his command, whereas Philo paints the ways of God in a notoriously unflattering manner. It will be profitable to explore in greater detail how Hume's subversive tendency functions against the stately backdrop of Milton's epic. [End Page 259]

I. The Limits of Human Reason: Being Lowly Wise

Subversive as his speculations may sometimes be, Philo's conclusions in some respects are not so far off from the prelapsarian wisdom of Milton's Eden. The sum of Philo's wisdom is to keep speculation to topics of daily experience. Philo's attack on natural religion is based on the imprecision, the remoteness, and the inaccessibility of topics beyond the usual course of daily human affairs. This is not quite Milton's position, but both share a similar regard for moderate and localized common-sense. ⁶ Adam welcomes Raphael to Eden to fill in the gaps of his knowledge, to learn things "Unknown, which human knowledge could not reach" (PL, 7.75), "Things above earthly thought, which yet concerned / Our knowing, as to highest wisdom seemed" (PL, 7.82-83). Adam surmises that such knowledge will allow him and Eve to better worship the Creator: "[we] not to explore the secrets ask / Of his eternal empire, but the more / To magnify his works, the more we know" (PL, 7.95-97). Raphael approves of Adam's attitude, and consents "to answer thy desire / Of knowledge within bounds; beyond abstain / To ask, nor let thine own inventions hope / Things not revealed ..." (PL, 7.119-25, see through 130). He discourses at length about the history of Creation and the events leading up to the present moment, and again cautions against over-inquisitiveness as he concludes his instruction with the closing words of Book 7: "if else thou seek'st / Aught, not surpassing human measure, say" (PL, 7.639-40).⁷ He remains firm that human knowledge has prescribed boundaries.

Adam, in turn, begins to unfold to Raphael his own rudimentary delvings into the nature of things, confessing that he arrives at a seeming obstacle in the cosmic disorganization implied in certain observable imbalances in Creation (PL, 8.25ff.). Raphael answers that the human perspective is not the widest and that what the divine Architect concealed from humankind is best kept hidden--all that is required for happiness is set within comfortable reach. Uriel concedes that even the seven arch-angels cannot fully understand the causes of the various parts and relations of the cosmos: "But what created mind can comprehend / Their number, or the wisdom infinite / That brought them forth, but hid thir causes deep" (PL, 3.705). If the angels are unable to penetrate too deeply into the divine secrets, mere humans are even more at a loss. Raphael even pictures the Deity laughing at humans as they bumblingly form "quaint opinions wide" (PL, 8.78) concerning the cosmos and as they "... build, unbuild, contrive / To save appearances ..." (PL, 8.81). In a lengthy address (PL, 8.66-178) Raphael again impresses upon Adam the necessity for humans to restrain their reasonings [End Page 260] to the prescribed circuits (the very speech, in fact, from which a quotation is pulled in the Dialogues [D, 168]): "heaven is for thee too high / To know what passes there; be lowly wise: / Think only what concerns thee and thy being; / Dream not of other Worlds ..." (PL, 8.172-75). Adam obligingly promises Raphael to restrain his restless meditations: "But apt the mind or fancy is to rove / Unchecked, and of her roving is no end; / Till warned, or by experience taught, she learn, / That not to know at large of things remote / From use, obscure and subtle, but to know / That which before us lies in daily life, / Is the prime wisdom, what is more, is fume, / Or emptiness, or fond impertinence, / And renders us in things that most concern / Unpractised, unprepared, and still to seek" (PL, 8.188-97).

The first epistle of Alexander Pope's Essay on Man (1733) incorporates these ideas into a more regular and systematic framework, beginning with a caveat also dear to Philo: "Thro' worlds unnumber'd tho' the God be known, / 'Tis ours to trace him only in our own." ⁸ Epistle 1 of the Essay criticizes human presumption in evaluating God's Creation. This theme is similar to the lesson Adam learns in Paradise Lost, though in spirit it is closer to classical philosophy: rational rather than religious reasons are advanced for the necessity of humility in the pursuit of knowledge (skeptical prudence rather than pious reverence--a distinction roughly reflecting that between Philo and Demea). The few discoveries science offers are set against the vast fields of the ever-widening unknown. Pope details the vast fecundity and diversity of the natural world, both on this earth and in the larger astronomical picture, in order to make the human perspective appear limited and our place in the cosmos confined (which is also Philo's tack in Part II, for instance). In his discussion of the causes of evil and misery in Part XI Philo presupposes such a prescription against undue prying. He says that for happiness, humans only require greater industry, whereas if we asked for greater strength, judgment, sensibility, etc., "we might be told, that we impiously pretend to break the order of nature, that we want to exalt ourselves into a higher rank of being, that the presents which we require, not being suitable to our state and condition, would only be pernicious to us" (D, 209). By whom might we "be told" something like this? Possibly, one such as Milton or Pope. For Pope the attempt to move beyond our proper sphere ruptures the order of the cosmos: "On superior pow'rs / Were we to press, inferior might on ours...." ⁹ The breaking of one link in the "Vast chain of being" ¹⁰ sends the entire system into turmoil: "Being on being wreck'd, and world on world...." ¹¹

Philo brings smiles to the faces of Cleanthes and Demea when he first engages the topic of human reason and its limits, the primary issue underlying the [End Page 261] philosophical differences between the three disputants (and a recurring tension throughout Hume's philosophical corpus).

Who can retain such confidence in this frail faculty of reason as to pay any regard to its determinations in points so sublime, so abstruse, so remote from common life and experience? (D, 131)

But when we look beyond human affairs and the properties of the surrounding bodies: When we carry our speculations into the two eternities, before and after the present state of things; into the creation and formation of the universe; the existence and properties of spirits; the powers and operations of one universal spirit, existing without beginning and without end; omnipotent, omniscient, immutable, infinite, and incomprehensible: We must be far removed from the smallest tendency to scepticism not to be apprehensive, that we have here got quite beyond the reach of our faculties. (D, 135)

This skeptical trope of the limitations of human knowledge is entirely traditional and known throughout the classical, medieval, Renaissance, and Enlightenment periods in a wide variety of contexts. What is interesting about its appearance in Hume, however, is the freedom it allows him to embark upon the thought experiments that fill out the philosophical skeleton of the Dialogues with vivid and memorable images. ¹²

These images form concrete and colorful alternatives to the over-stylized and lifeless representations of the perfect, harmonious cosmos that theologians had demonstrated time and again and that poets had rendered clichéd. The Dialogues are exciting not because they teach something about human knowledge--Hume does that more effectively in other works anyway--but because in this work he exploits this motif of the limited human perspective to offer fresh and evocative portraits of the cosmos and its contents. Many of these occur sporadically in Hume's previous works, but the Dialogues represent a full-fledged compendium--a veritable gallery of these imagistic panels. Spun from what can only be characterized as a mischievous imagination, these brief, isolated thought experiments openly caricature and implicitly discredit the more conservative and proprietous literary and philosophical portraits of the cosmos offered by [End Page 262] figures such as Milton and Pope. ¹³ The three disputants in the Dialogues are all made to conspire in this endeavor, made possible through such methodological techniques as the ad absurdio ("by your principles, the following scenario would be a plausible hypothesis ..."). In the end the work contains far more of these absurd scenarios than positively constructed ones.

II. The First Cause and the Outside Observer: "Tell, if ye saw"

In Part X Demea introduces the image of a person dropped into the universe out of nowhere, with no prior experience, left to form a conception of the world without prejudices ("Were a stranger to drop, in a sudden, into this world ..." D, 196). Philo likewise appeals to a hypothetical observer removed from the expectations of common life, free to evaluate the cosmos objectively: "a very limited intelligence, whom we shall suppose utterly unacquainted with the universe ..." (D, 203). What is this recurring image but the Enlightenment philosopher's Adam? In Paradise Lost Adam is a limited intelligence unacquainted with the universe, and Milton paints him vividly as an inquisitorial surveyor of God's Creation. Adam is led to form a conception of the First Cause from no basis other than his own reason and observation of the world. He relates his primordial experiences and his reasoning process to Raphael, at least as far back as he can: "for who himself beginning knew?" (PL, 8.251). He recalls that upon initially waking, he examined first the sky, then the animals and landscapes around him, then his own limbs and body, "But who I was, or where, or from what cause, / Knew not ..." (PL, 8.270-71). Naively he asks the sun and animals if they can reveal whence he came: "... fair creatures, tell, / Tell, if ye saw, how came I thus, how here? / Not of my self; by some great maker then, / In goodness and in power pre-eminent; / Tell me, how may I know him, how adore ..." (PL, 8.276-80). By reason and experience he is led to infer a First Cause, and his first impulse upon deciding there must be a Creator is to discover how to worship it. Thus Adam and Eve praise the maker in their morning hymn: "These are thy glorious works, parent of good, / Almighty, thine this universal frame, / Thus wondrous fair; thy self how wondrous then! / Unspeakable, who sit'st above these heavens / To us invisible or dimly seen / In these thy lowest works, yet these declare / Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine ..." (PL, 5.153-59). These are the first groping meditations of the bewildered yet reverent pair, who vaguely sense evidence of great power and goodness behind the created world; but Adam soon gains confidence and affirms more directly the paradigmatic tenet of natural theology, the "cosmological" or a posteriori argument: "... In contemplation of [End Page 263] created things / By steps we may ascend to God" (PL, 5.511-12). Raphael later reminds Adam of this argument, thus confirming human opinion with angelic knowledge: "heaven / Is as the book of God before thee set, / Wherein to read his wondrous works ..." (PL, 8.66-68). ¹⁴ Thus Milton exploits this figure of the observer without preconceptions to provide an allegedly objective perspective on the created cosmos. Milton demonstrates that certain tenets of the Christian faith are derivable purely from reason and observation--most notably, the existence and, in finer detail, the power and goodness, of a transcendent Creator. Adam can only reason to a certain point, however, and some of his autonomous deductions turn out to be wrong. Further refinements beyond the basic foundations must await revelation through continuous embassies from Heaven, which are required to guide errant human reason, and which are promptly sent.

Hume's use of the neutral observer bears a functional similarity to Milton's Adam, as well as to several other analogous fictional figures such as the inquisitive protagonist of Hayy the Son of Yaqzan by the Muslim philosopher, Ibn Tufayl (d.1185). Raised on an island in the absence of human company, Hayy arrives at an idea of the Necessary Being purely through observation and inference. The work was translated into Latin by Edward Pocock in Oxford in 1671 (reprinted in 1700) and then translated from Pocock's Latin edition into English by George Keith in 1674 and by George Ashwell in 1686. Simon Ockley then produced an English translation directly from the Arabic, published in London (1708 and 1711) and Dublin (1731). Pope admired the work, and many critics believe its influence is discernible in Defoe's Robinson Crusoe (1719) as well. ¹⁵ Furthermore, an anonymous Life and Surprising Adventures of Don Antonio de Trezzanio, which is largely a paraphrase of Ockley's translation of Hayy, appeared in London in 1761. ¹⁶ Along with the speculative writings of Hobbes, Rousseau, and of numerous others of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, these works share an intellectual concern to abstract a "State of Nature," at least hypothetically, to explore and articulate which elements of human thought and behavior are essential and inherent, and which others are contingent and learned. ¹⁷

Several of these isolated "natural state" observers, such as Milton's Adam and Ibn Tufayl's Hayy, deduce that there must be a First Cause behind the created cosmos. Hume's hypothetical visitor into our universe is clearly a response to models of this sort; but unlike these predecessors, his "Adam" finds no convincing [End Page 264] arguments in experience to deduce certain characteristics of the Deity. The argument in Milton and in the other models mentioned primarily addresses the function of the Deity as First Cause, which is at issue in the Dialogues from the opening pages; but Hume delays developing the motif until the later Dialogues, to address the issue of the Deity's benevolence instead. Hume invokes the neutral observer model to show that the harmony of the cosmos and hence the goodness of God is not so self-evident as natural theologians present it.

Philo first sets up the neutral observer model in Part II, although at first the image is not exploited to its fullest capacity ("Were a man to abstract from every thing which he knows or has seen ..." D, 145). He returns to the motif in Part XI, introducing another external observer:

... if a very limited intelligence, whom we shall suppose utterly unacquainted with the universe, were assured that it were the production of a very good, wise, and powerful Being ... he would, from his conjectures, form beforehand a different notion of it from what we find it to be by experience.... But supposing, which is the real case with regard to man, that this creature is not antecedently convinced of a supreme intelligence, benevolent, and powerful, but is left to gather such a belief from the appearances of things; this entirely alters the case, nor will he ever find any reason for such a conclusion. (D, 203-4) ¹⁸

The neutral observer, according to Philo, will not find the harmonious cosmos nor the beneficent Creator as conceived by Adam and Hayy. Philo and Demea increasingly emphasize the pains and ills of life, until it is more than implied that the logical consequences of such strictly empirical principles will be to deduce rather a cruel and uncaring deity.

In Paradise Lost not only Adam but also Satan serves as an "outside observer" of the created universe. As Satan approaches Paradise, he is reminded of glories lost, and he delivers a self-searching soliloquy in which he ruefully acknowledges having been created by God (PL, 4.43). But when rousing the forces of heaven for battle, he counters Abdiel's claim that he is subordinate by virtue of being a creation by asserting that he does not in fact know how he came to be: "That we were formed then say'st thou?... / ... who saw / When this creation was? Remember'st thou / Thy making, while the maker gave thee being? / We know no time when we were not as now; / Know none before us, self-begot, self-raised / By our own quickening power, when fatal course / Had circled his full orb, the birth mature / Of this our native heaven, ethereal sons" (PL, 5.853-63). The scene is often read as an instance of Satan lying, since he as much as admits [End Page 265] later in time (though earlier in the narrative) that he knows he is not self-caused. Yet the issue is sufficiently perplexing and its means of resolution sufficiently obscure to grant that he may be expressing at these two different times genuine confusion concerning whether or not he was created. ¹⁹ In this he agrees at least with Adam ("for who himself beginning knew?" PL, 8.251), and thus we cannot take him as simply dissimulating for the sake of maintaining a confident front before his troops. He is more clearly dissimulating in a later episode, when, in the guise of the serpent, he questions the primacy of the gods while singing the tree's praises to Eve. He suggests that because the gods came first in time, they use their advantage to conceal things from humankind, to convince us that all things "from them proceed": "I question it, for this fair earth I see, / Warmed by the Sun, producing every kind, / Them nothing ..." (PL, 9.720-22). If his moral sin is that he deviates from the injunctions of his lord, Satan's intellectual or philosophical sin is that he cannot or will not acknowledge that God is the First Cause and therefore his Creator. ²⁰

The primacy of God as First Cause is, of course, among the driving issues in the Dialogues. Hume's radical views on causation inform his treatment of religion no less than his treatment of scienctific induction. ²¹ Philo, in mounting a case against Cleanthes, considers the need for a First Cause in any systematic cosmology. By way of contrast he entertains the notion that matter is self-caused or contains within itself the principle of its own being: "For aught we can know a priori, matter may contain the source or spring of order originally, within itself, as well as mind does ..." (D, 146). In Part IV Philo contrasts the relative merits of tracing the world to "mind" (to a realm of ideas in the divine mind) to those of tracing it to matter (no further than this material world):

To say, that the different ideas, which compose the reason of the supreme Being, fall into order, of themselves, and by their own nature, is really to talk without any precise meaning. If it has a meaning, I would fain know, why it is not as good sense to say, that the parts of the material world fall into order, of themselves, and by their own nature? (D, 162; cf. D, 163, 171-72, 174)

Philo continues to press the point that matter may contain within itself the principle of order through Part IX. ²² Characteristically, he insists he does not actually [End Page 266] subscribe to this view; yet the plausibility of his case is sufficient to cast into doubt Cleanthes' insistence that "mind" of some sort is necessarily the First Cause. ²³ Purely practical and methodological concerns render the move from matter to mind superfluous.

Philo's hypothetical position, however, is functionally similar to that of Milton's Satan as he rallies his armies in heaven. Faced with disputants who claim that God is the First Cause, Philo and Satan each raise the possibility that the inference is ill-founded. For Philo matter in itself may (for all we know) sufficiently contain all the principles necessary to account for its order. Satan, in the absence of memories of his creation and remembering no time when he was not as now, similarly considers himself as a sufficient explanation for his own being, "self-begot, self-raised" (PL, 5.860). The analogy between the two arguments is not perfect--Satan is not equivalent to matter, at least not outside of Gnostic/Manichean speculation (with which Philo briefly flirts and then rejects in Part XI, incidentally [D, 211]). Nonetheless, both figures employ a similar methodological strategy in refuting the received position of God as First Cause. To resolve questions of primal causality each demands the impossible, a witness to Creation itself--Satan asks, "who saw / When this creation was?" (PL, 5.856-57), and Philo, "Have worlds ever been formed under your eye?" (D, 151).

III. Imperfect Creation: Condemning the Architect

Adam and Philo are both troubled by an incongruity between their intellectual acknowledgment of the perfection of the world and their observation and experience of it as imperfect. Adam worries over "such disproportions" (PL, 8.27), while Philo notes that, "we must consider, that, according to the present œconomy of the world, the course of nature, though supposed exactly regular, yet to us appears not so, and many events are uncertain, and many disappoint our expectations" (D, 206). Such considerations lead them both to a speculative tangent regarding the formation of the world as a trial or failed experiment. Adam briefly entertains, only to reject, the notion entertained by Philo that the Deity is somehow experimenting and that this attempt at world-making is not the only or best one. Confronting Eve with her culinary trespass, he says: "Nor can I think that God, creator wise, / Though threatening, will in earnest so destroy / Us his prime creatures ... / ... so God shall uncreate, / Be frustrate, do, undo, and labor loose, / Not well conceived of God ..." (PL, 9.938-45). It is to such a model as this that Hume alludes when drawing his proto-evolutionary model of the formation of the universe, in which countless eons of disorder proceed until order and stability finally appear from the sheer force of probability, from the [End Page 267] trial of all possible combinations until increasingly stable ones are achieved (D, 183-84). He first raises the notion in Part II (esp. D, 148) but articulates it to greater effect in Part V. "Many worlds might have been botched and bungled, throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out: Much labor lost: Many fruitless trials made: And a slow, but continued improvement carried on during infinite ages in the art of world-making" (D, 167). In Part VIII Philo presents the fullest description in the Dialogues of a universe governed only by a "blind, unguided force" (D, 184), whose random configurations produce small semblances of order, which fall almost immediately back into disorder.

Thus the universe goes on for many ages in a continued succession of chaos and disorder. But is it not possible that it may settle at last, so as not to lose its motion and active force (for that we have supposed inherent in it), yet so as to preserve an uniformity of appearance, amidst the continual motion and fluctuation of its parts? This we find to be the case with the universe at present.... May we not hope for such a position, or rather be assured of it, from the eternal revolutions of unguided matter, and may not this account for all the appearing wisdom and contrivance which is in the universe? (D, 184)

Philo ostensibly presents this godless cosmogony to provide an alternate account of the world's apparent artifice, that does not require a conscious architect. Yet in the course of erecting this alternate system, Philo takes advantage of certain opportunities to stress the rough and unpolished edges of the present universe. A necessary consequence of the evolutionary model, for instance, is that the cosmos only enjoys its fully blossomed prime for a certain duration but, before and after this prime, exhibits imperfections that look less and less like artifice: thus he draws attention to the "feeble embryo of a world in its first beginnings ... or the rotten carcass of one, languishing in old age and infirmity" (D, 184). Philo's arguments are borrowed from the schools of classical philosophy, and thus enjoy a certain dignity. But Philo further exploits these opportunities (employing Cleanthes' principles, he claims) to suggest not the lack of artifice in the universe but rather the presence of awkward and inept artifice. A crescendo of blasphemy resulting from this thread of the argument occurs at the close of Part V:

This world, for aught he knows, is very faulty and imperfect, compared to a superior standard; and was only the first rude essay of some infant Deity, who afterwards abandoned it, ashamed of his lame performance; it is the work only of some dependent, inferior Deity; and is the object of derision to his superiors: it is the production of old age and dotage in some superannuated Deity; and ever since his death, has run on at adventures, [End Page 268] from the first impulse and active force, which it received from him.... (D, 169)

Philo's unwholesome depiction provides a stark contrast to that portrait of the universe provided by natural theists who insist on the absolute beauty, intricacy, and harmony of the cosmos.

The medieval world-view by which Milton was still largely influenced was quite comfortable in asserting the decayed and corrupt nature of the sub-lunary realm, and Demea is a vestigial representative of this position. ²⁴ The Enlightenment, on the other hand, dazzled by the perfections of Cartesian mathematics and Newtonian physics, witnessed a metaphysical paradigm shift that found itself more profoundly committed to the observable perfection of all God's material works. The machine analogy required it. Philo does not have to go very far back, however, to find kindred spirits in denying the complete perfection and order of Creation insisted upon by Cleanthes. Milton, like Philo, presents nature (at least, Eden) as not fully reducible to the principles of human contrivance. As Raphael approaches Eden, he sees "A wilderness of sweets; for nature here / Wantoned as in her prime, and played at will / her virgin fancies, pouring forth more sweet, / Wild above rule or art ..." (PL, 5.294-97). Though Adam, as we have seen, can discern the hand of a "maker" in the world, there is no sense that this deduction stems from any observed perfection in nature or strict correspondence between the principles of nature with any others (such as "rule" or "art"). In fact Milton is somewhat sketchy in relating Adam's precise line of thought--the conclusion that there is a Creator is a consequence of his realization that he is not self-caused. It does not result from the order or nature of the world but simply from the fact of his existence. Thus Milton is free to present Creation as ordered or chaotic as he wishes, and in fact, he presents it as a delicate balance between the two.

Even before the Fall Adam questions the perfection of the world: "... reasoning, I oft admire, / How nature wise and frugal could commit / Such disproportions, with superfluous hand / So many nobler Bodies to create ..." (PL, 8.25ff). ²⁵ Raphael answers that though the perceived imperfections of the world may not be reconcilable by human reason, there is nonetheless a larger unity of purpose behind all such appearances (PL, 8.66-178). Adam must simply accept that the harmony of the cosmos is reconcilable with observed imperfections; Milton does not attempt to justify God's ways by asserting the harmony of Creation in any empirically observable way. He only goes so far as to assert that God's perfection and the created world's imperfection are compatible. In this he is not far from Philo, who allows that, "There are many inexplicable difficulties in the [End Page 269] works of nature, which, if we allow a perfect Author to be proved a priori, are easily solved, and become only seeming difficulties, from the narrow capacity of man, who cannot trace infinite relations" (D, 166-67). Thus in Philo's argument the admissibilty of an a priori perfect Author is of central importance, and as we have seen, he returns to this point to question its validity. Both Philo and Adam find themselves straddling the same fence for a time--with the perfection of Creation at stake on the one hand, and the denial of human suffering at stake on the other. In fact both Paradise Lost and the Dialogues turn increasingly in their latter portions to portraying the ills of the human condition in vivid detail. The two works differ with regard to the other side of the equation, the perfection of God's cosmos, however: Philo adopts a tone of accusation against an imperfect maker, while Raphael and Adam adopt one of adoration for a larger scheme which can assimilate and comprehend even what must forever appear to the earth-bound as the gravest of imperfections.

While the prelapsarian cosmos of Paradise Lost may only seem imperfect to Adam in certain ways because of his limited human perspective and though it at least remains "sweet" even though "wild above rule or art," after the Fall in Book 9 the natural order suffers a genuinely deteriorative series of shocks. The corruption of nature related in Book 10.651-714 mirrors the moral collapse of the human custodians, and the delicate balances that support the natural processes crumble alongside the delicate psychological balances that proved unstable in Adam and Eve: "thus began / Outrage from lifeless things" (PL, 10.706-7). All nature is now affected, from the excesses and whimsical tendencies of climate to the warring of animals against each other, introduced by "Discord" (the first daughter of Sin, PL, 10.707). Even the very earth is thrown "askance" from its axis, giving rise to climatic inordinacy, with alternating extremes too hot and too cold: "Like change on sea and land, sideral blast, / Vapour, and mist, and exhalation hot, / Corrupt and pestilent: now from the north / ... Bursting thir brazen dungeon, armed with ice / And snow and hail and stormy gust and flaw," etc. ... (PL, 10.693ff ). These images parallel a section of Philo's argument in Parts X and XI, in which the extremes and imbalances of the natural order are presented as evidence against the harmonious perfection in the created order. Philo presents four circumstances that contribute to the ills and misery not only of humans but of all species. The fourth circumstance consists precisely of the excesses of nature characterizing Milton's post-lapsarian world. "There is nothing so advantageous in the universe, but what frequently becomes pernicious, by its excess or defect; nor has nature guarded, with the requisite accuracy, against all disorder or confusion" (D, 210). Winds become tempests, rains become floods or droughts, and there is little sense of a "just temperament and medium" (D, 210). Just as the animals begin devouring each other in post-lapsarian Eden ("Beast now with beast gan war ..." PL, 10.710), so does Demea, in league with [End Page 270] Philo, lament in Part X that "A perpetual war is kindled among all living creatures" (D, 194). The point of this extended disquisition on the excesses of natural processes is ostensibly to show Cleanthes that Creation is not so felicitously suited to human needs as he imagines, and hence that it is not necessarily an object of awe and admiration. In the course of making the point, however, the argument becomes a veritable jeremiad on the human condition, the plight of a species besieged in a hostile and unforgiving environment: "the whole world ... is cursed and polluted," pronounces Demea (D, 194). The consequence is that no benevolent or artistically competent maker can be derived from observation of the present world:

... the inaccurate workmanship of all the springs and principles of the great machine of nature ... are, all of them, apt, on every occasion, to run into the one extreme or the other. One would imagine, that this grand production has not received the last hand of the maker; so little furnished is every part, and so coarse are the strokes, with which it is executed. (D, 210)

If the argument from design portrays the Deity as an artist, Philo suggests that he is a bad one.

As early as Part V Philo draws on craft analogies to portray the creation of the universe with unsavory images, disparaging the competence of the Creator (or Creators) with reference to the shipbuilder analogy. An admirer of the ingenuity required to build a ship will be surprised to find the builder is only a "stupid mechanic" (D, 167), mindlessly following generations of equally dull-witted shipbuilders. In Part XI Philo explores the related analogy of the Deity as architect, an analogy familiar from classical sources (citing Cicero) and employed throughout Paradise Lost (e.g., "as by work / Divine the sovereign architect had framed," PL, 5.255-56; also PL, 1.730, 8.72). Cleanthes is the first to introduce this house / universe analogy in the Dialogues, in Part II, insisting that if the convenience and suitability of a house for human use points to conscious design, then natural conveniences, such as human legs or the eye, must point to the same (D, 144). Philo's immediate answers to Cleanthes regard the dissimilarities between the two terms of the analogy (house and universe), such that an argument from analogy is unwarranted (D, 147 and 151). ²⁶ Yet when Philo brings up the house analogy again in Part XI, he now exploits it aggressively as a gauge of imperfection in the universe--and thus, by Cleanthes' analogy, in the Creator as well. He urges, [End Page 271]

Did I show you a house or palace, where there was not one apartment convenient or agreeable; where the windows, doors, fires, passages, stairs, and the whole œconomy of the building were the source of noise, confusion, fatigue, darkness, and the extremes of heat and cold; you would certainly blame the contrivance, without any farther examination. The architect would in vain display his subtilty.... (D, 204)

Not only is the contrivance itself to be blamed, but without hesitation, Philo proceeds, "If you find many inconveniences and deformities in the building, you will always, without entering into any detail, condemn the architect" (D, 205). The Deity is implicitly revealed to be no more competent an architect than a painter or shipbuilder. Philo is playing the part of Satan in Paradise Lost, condemning the architect. ²⁷ Thus, ironically, the Creator likewise comes to resemble this less wholesome draftsman, Satan--the "author and prime architect" of the ruinous deeds in Eden (PL, 10.356).

In Book 2 of Paradise Lost, as Satan sets out on his journey to the newly-created world, he first passes through the unformed regions separating it from hell. These regions are not beyond the control of God, but they have been left rude and unfashioned. Owing much to classical physicists such as Empedocles and Lucretius, the description portrays the elements contending with each other wildly except where the Creator chooses to direct order: "Into this wild abyss, / The womb of nature and perhaps her grave, / Of neither sea, nor shore, nor air, nor fire, / But all these in their pregnant causes mixed / Confusedly, and which thus must ever fight, / Unless the almighty maker them ordain / His dark materials to create more worlds ..." (PL, 2.910-16). Line 911, referring to the "womb of nature" is a translation from Lucretius, ²⁸ and is also familiar from Spenser's Faerie Queene (Chaos is "the wide wombe of the world"). ²⁹ Having established the birthing metaphor, it is but a short jump from the "womb" of nature to her progeny. In Book 3 Satan crosses the "Limbo of Vanity," and Milton associates all futility and presumption on earth (such as that resulting in the Tower of Babel) with the directionless vapors of this chaotic ether: "All the unaccomplished works of nature's hand, / Abortive, monstrous, or unkindly mixed, / Dissolved on earth, fleet hither ..." (PL, 3.455-57). This embryonic image reappears in the memorable paragraph in Part XI of the Dialogues in which nature miscarries, giving birth only to aberrant offspring:

Look round this universe. What an immense profusion of beings, animated and organized, sensible and active! You admire this prodigious [End Page 272] variety and fecundity. But inspect a little more narrowly these living existences, the only beings worth regarding. How hostile and destructive to each other! How insufficient all of them for their own happiness! How contemptible or odious to the spectator! The whole presents nothing but the idea of a blind nature, impregnated by a great vivifying principle, and pouring forth from her lap, without discernment or parental care, her maimed and abortive children. (D, 211)

The serene and protective image of the "womb of nature" is twisted by Philo into a perverse expression of extreme cosmic pessimism. The "abortive" and "monstrous" by-products of Creation, exiled by Milton beyond the very borders of the formed cosmos, are here presented as pervading and characterizing Creation itself.

Intrinsically linked with the analogy of nature as mother or womb is the more conventional one of God as father. Milton attempts to juggle a dual image of God as stern disciplinarian and loving parent simultaneously, though in practice God the Father comes across more as the disciplinarian, while the Son serves a more intercessional role in mitigating divine justice. Philo likewise appeals to the parental analogy, though here the treatment of God as father is pushed to irreverence:

like a rigid master, [nature] has afforded them [humans] little more powers or endowments, than what are strictly sufficient to supply those necessities. An indulgent parent would have bestowed a large stock, in order to guard against accidents, and secure the happiness and welfare of the creature, in the most unfortunate concurrence of circumstances. (D, 208)

The delicate concatenation of circumstances required for human happiness itself argues a lukewarm parent at best, or one whose first interest is expressly not with human happiness. "Every course of life would not have been so surrounded with precipices, that the least departure from the true path, by mistake or necessity, must involve us in misery and ruin. Some reserve, some fund would have been provided to ensure happiness ..." (D, 208). This line of reasoning parallels Eve's arresting speech in Book IX of Paradise Lost--a very human and unpretending monologue, and one of the more conceptually pivotal in the poem--immediately preceding her temptation by the serpent. Adam, for fear of the Tempter, has tried to dissuade her from wandering off alone (PL, 9.322-41). Her response is that a delicate and tenuous happiness such as he suggests is theirs, provided with no further security, is no meaningful happiness at all. She begins her declamation by criticizing Adam's view of their precarious state: "If this be our condition, thus to dwell / In narrow circuit straightened by a foe ..." (PL, 9.322-23). [End Page 273] Her "narrow circuit" is no more nor less than Philo's "true path," the least departure from which, "by mistake or necessity, must involve us in misery and ruin" (D, 208). Eve's point, and Philo's as well by implication, is that the orthodox position clings to a view of the providential Father that ill accords with human experience and with intuitions concerning what happiness should be a priori. Eve concludes her speech about the dubious happiness of Tempter-besieged Eden: "Frail is our happiness if this be so, / and Eden were no Eden thus exposed" (PL, 9.341-42).

Conclusion

Many of the themes here discussed in relation to Milton and Hume are not unique to them: they reflect well-attested traditions that occur in various classical, medieval, and early modern formulations. It would be useless to claim that Hume owes his attitude toward the limitations of human reason, for instance, to Milton, when there are countless other articulations of the same skeptical trope. A history of skepticism will not so much as mention Milton. Nonetheless, in the century after its publication Paradise Lost dominated the world of English letters to an extent not easily imagined today--there is no modern analogy--and it is important to recognize its inevitable stamp on subsequent literary endeavors of any aspiration. Milton's eminent religious epic provides a modest yet pervasive backdrop for the Dialogues, offering full and elegant articulations of the social, cosmological, and epistemological themes that Hume need only refer to obliquely. Thus the issues here treated receive a certain hue from being associated with Milton's particular formulation. The result is that Hume's subversive causticity is levelled against the world of literature as well as that of philosophy.

The twelve-part structure of the Dialogues is of little ostensible relation to its contents, yet it clearly represents a deviation from the more conventional three-part structure of the philosophical dialogue (e.g., Cicero's De natura deorum and Berkeley's Three Dialogues between Hylas and Philonous). Could the twelve-book structure of Paradise Lost have influenced that of the Dialogues? It is a number associated with other literary endeavors of no small ambition: Virgil's Aeneid comes most readily to mind, along with its English translations such as Dryden's Aeneis. ³⁰ Spenser's The Shepheardes Calender comes in twelve eclogues, one for each month, and it is well-known that he originally envisioned twelve books for The Faerie Queene (as did Cowley for the Davideis). None of these, however, approaches the majestic grandeur that Paradise Lost enjoyed in the English literary tradition in Hume's day, and none seems to have captured Hume's fancy like Milton's epic. Demea calls Milton "the great poet" (D, 195), [End Page 274] and in his History Hume himself is openly appreciative of the epicist and his "wonderful poem" (D, 344): "It is certain, that this author, when in a happy mood, and employed on a noble subject, is the most wonderfully sublime of any poet in any language; Homer and Lucretius and Tasso not excepted." ³¹

In the end, of course, we are dealing with two works undeniably disparate in inspiration and aim. Whereas the panoramic, cosmic view generously provided by Milton's Muse allows him the privilege of looking down upon workings both human and godly from above, Hume knows no such informant: his project is critical rather than apologetic. In the Dialogues the vantage point for all three disputants is this planet (one among many), and they must peer upwards and gaze about to piece together what may be clearly discerned, and what more tentatively inferred. Philo agrees with Eve that "Experience" is the "Best guide," which "open'st wisdom's way" (PL, 9.807-9), and one of the major differences between the two works is that Hume sympathizes with Philo in this conviction whereas Milton is unsupportive of what he views as Eve's limitation. For Philo the heaven-ward search never succeeds in meeting the gaze of a creator; he is not much in the habit, nor is it often his inclination, to acknowledge such a being when aroused to his skeptical mood of philosophizing. But in his critical project he must continually rely upon the traditional orthodox model as a reference point and foil. Ostensibly he responds to Cleanthes' a posteriori case for religion and to Demea's a priori argument, but underlying both of these is the pious and extravagant Christian metaphysic that finds its classical early modern expression in Paradise Lost. Milton looms behind the Dialogues, implicitly providing what all eighteenth-century persons of letters would recognize as the orthodox cosmological framework, whose pillars Philo delights in shaking.

Hurlbutt has articulated what few readers can miss, that "the images of sexual procreation; animal and vegetable causes; and a malevolent, stupid, bungling God are horrifying to Christians." ³² Some of the most notorious images of the Dialogues--nature as abortive mother and the universe as deformed birth, the Creator as callous and stingy parent, the identification of God as a "stupid mechanic," and the implication that he is in his "dotage" or even "death"--are at least echoes, ironically, from the single most august opus in the British literary canon. In some cases Hume has twisted the images, to be sure, in his reformulation of the relationship between human knowledge and the extra-perceptual cosmos. But he has not had to twist them so often as might be expected, and in several cases the puritan master has delivered to him complete and polished objections against the a posteriori methods of natural theism that were the academic [End Page 275] currency of Hume's day. The delicate and polite conversation in Cleanthes's library, attended by impressionable Pamphilus and sensitive Demea (who gives "signs of horror" in response), offers the most suitable context for the greatest shock effect from this battery of impious images.

One expects a hero in an epic and a victor in a debate. The parts of Paradise Lost that most resemble classical epic, however, appear to cast Satan in the role of hero, and despite the youthful opinions of Pamphilus, the artful and mischievous Philo--rather than calm, philosophical Cleanthes--seems to emerge triumphant from the Dialogues. Both works, then, exploit generic conventions only to subvert the traditional expectations: in the case of Milton, to provide a dramatic and psychologically penetrating exploration of the human condition in the context of revolution-torn England; in the case of Hume, in a more religiously subversive vein, to explode the blithely unreflective eighteenth-century expressions of the ancient argument of natural theism, and more broadly, to help rid the world of vulgar superstitions. It is very much to Hume's purpose and advantage, then, that in his almost solitary rebellion against the current of the philosophical and literary community he appropriate the rhetorical and conceptual arsenal of that figure who is not only England's greatest literary icon barring Shakespeare alone, but who is also, much more than the Bard, the very model of sober and contemplative piety.

University of Toronto

Notes

1. See Robert H. Hurlbutt III, Hume, Newton, and the Design Argument (Lincoln, Neb., 1985), 213-43; John Valdimir Price, David Hume (New York, 1968), 145-51; and A. G. Vink, "The Literary and Dramatic Character of Hume's Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion," Religious Studies, 22 (1986), 387-96.

2. References are to Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, ed. Norman Kemp-Smith (New York, 19472), abbreviated as D, followed by page number, and Milton, Paradise Lost, in The Poems of John Milton (London, 1968), ed. John Carey and Alastair Fowler, as PL, followed by book and line number.

3. Cf. Hurlbutt, 216.

4. "Intestine stone and ulcer, colic-pangs, / Daemoniac frenzy, moping melancholy, / And moon-struck madness, pining atrophy, / Marasmus and wide-wasting pestilence. / Dire was the tossing, deep the groans: DESPAIR / Tended the sick, busiest from couch to couch. / And over them triumphant DEATH his dart / Shook, but delay'd to strike, tho' oft invok'd / With vows, as their chief good and final hope" (484-93). Demea inexplicably omits line 488: "Dropsies, and asthmas, and joint-racking rheums" (should appear between the lines beginning "Marasmus" and "Dire"). Is Milton too saturnine even for Demea?

5. Cf. Stephen Fallon, Milton among the Philosophers: Poetry and Materialism in Seventeenth-Century England (Ithaca, 1991), 216-17.

6. See Albert Fields, "Milton and Self-Knowledge," Publications of the Modern Language Association, 83 (1968), 392-99; Lee Jacobus, Sudden Apprehension: Aspects of Knowledge in Paradise Lost (The Hague, 1976), 53ff.; Irene Samuel, Plato and Milton, Cornell Studies in English (Ithaca, 1947), 103-29; and Howard Schultz, Milton and Forbidden Knowledge (New York, 1955).

7. See Harinder Singh Marjara, Contemplation of Created Things: Science in Paradise Lost (Toronto, 1992), 280ff.

8. Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, ed. Maynard Mack (London, 1950), III, 1.21-22.

9. Pope, Essay on Man, 1.241-42.

10. Pope, Essay on Man, 1.237.

11. Pope, Essay on Man, 1.254.

12. See Michael Morrisroe, "Hume's Rhetorical Strategy: A Solution to the Riddle of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion," Texas Studies in Literature and Language, 11 (1969), 963-74, 972; cf. Gary Shapiro, "The Man of Letters and the Author of Nature: Hume on Philosophical Discourse," The Eighteenth Century: Theory and Interpretation, 26 (1985), 115-37, 129-30; and Stanley Tweyman, Descartes and Hume: Selected Topics (Delmar, N.Y., 1989), 119-53; also Hurlbutt 148, 228-29, and 237.

13. See James E. Force, "Newton's God, Newton's Cosmogony, and Hume's Cometary 'Seeds,' " presented at "Religion as a Residual Force in the Age of Locke and Newton," Symposium at the Western Conference on British Studies at Tucson, Arizona (18 October 1991).

14. See Marjara, 289-99.

15. See Nawal Muhammad Hassan, Hayy Bin Yaqzan and Robinson Crusoe: A Study of an Early Arabic Impact on English Literature (Baghdad, 1980), 31ff.

16. See Abu Bakr Ibn Tufail, The History of Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, tr. A. S. Fulton (revision of Simon Ockley's translation; New York, 1929), 35-36 and Hassan, 4-15; Kemp-Smith, 54; and Nicholas Hudson, " 'Why God No Kill the Devil?' The Diabolical Disruption of Order in Robinson Crusoe," Review of English Studies, 39 (1988), 494-501, 501.

17. For discussion see Maximillian Novak, Defoe and the Nature of Man (London, 1963), 22-64.

18. See also Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principles of Morals, ed. L. A. Selby-Bigge, rev. P. H. Nidditch (Oxford, 19753), 42.

19. See J. M. Evans, Paradise Lost and the Genesis Tradition (Oxford, 1968), 224-27; Fallon, 220; Jacobus, 27ff.; Priscilla St. George, "Psychomachia in Books V and VI of Paradise Lost," Modern Language Quarterly, 27 (1966), 185-96. Cf. John Peter, A Critique of Paradise Lost (New York, 1960), 71; but also William Empson, Milton's God (London, 19652), 64ff.

20. See Fallon, 194-243.

21. See J. C. A. Gaskin, Hume's Philosophy of Religion (London, 1978), 9-40.

22. Matter "may contain some qualities, which, were they known, would make its non-existence appear as great a contradiction as that twice two is five" (D, 190); that is, it may not be possible that things could admit of any other disposition.

23. See S. A. Grave, "Hume's Criticism of the Argument from Design," Revue internationale de philosophie, 30 (1976), 64-78, 67ff.

24. See Morrisroe, 973.

25. See Marjara, 47-52.

26. Cf. Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, XI (Selby-Bigge, 143).

27. See also Hurlbutt, 160.

28. De rerum natura 5.259. Cf. the reference to "nature's womb" in PL, 5.181.

29. Frederick Morgan Padelford (ed.), The Faerie Queene, Book Three (Baltimore, 1934), 89; 3.6.36.

30. William Porter, Reading the Classics and "Paradise Lost" (Lincoln, Neb., 1993), 94-97.

31. Hume, The History of England (London, 1823), VII, 343. Hume also refers to Milton's "great genius" (History, 345). He does not consider Milton to be in such a "happy mood" all the time, however: he considers almost a third of Paradise Lost "almost wholly destitute of harmony and elegance, nay, of all vigour of imagination" (History, 343).

32. Hurlbutt, 233.