¹ Sessions, William Lad, Reading Hume's Dialogues: A Veneration for True Religion (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2002), 207Google Scholar.

² One of the weightier scholars would have to be Norman Kemp Smith, whose introduction to the critical second edition of the Dialogues (New York: Oxford, 1947) was longer than the Dialogues themselves, and defended the position that Hume and Philo were to be identified and that (Hume-Philo) consciously and deliberately set out to produce skepticism about arguments defending theology. That conclusion is shared by Capitan, William H., ‘Part X of Hume's Dialogues’, in Hume, Chappell, V.C., ed. (Notre Dame, 1968): 384–395Google Scholar. See also Penelhum, Terence, ‘Hume's Skepticism and the Dialogues’, in David Hume: Critical Assessments, Vol. 5, edited by Tweyman, Stanley (London: Routledge, 1995): 126–149Google Scholar.

³ Indeed the only book length commentary on the Dialogues, William Lad Sessions' Reading Hume's Dialogues: A Veneration for True ends in the quite different pan of the scale. Bricke, John, “On the Interpretation of Hume's Dialogues,” in David Hume: Critical Assessments, Vol. 5, ed. Tweyman, Stanley (London: Routledge, 1995): 339–358Google Scholar, insists that no one can speak for Hume in the Dialogues, for Hume clearly had a literary enterprise in hand and we must discover through the inconsistencies of the characters and their interactions what the philosophical point of it all is – which he does not say.

⁴ It is often noted that part nine has this literary structure, even if it is not described precisely by this term. See, for example, Calvert, Brian, ‘Another Problem about Part IX of Hume's Dialogues’, in David Hume: Critical Assessments, Vol. 5, edited by Tweyman, Stanley (London: Routledge, 1995)Google Scholar: ‘[E]lsewhere in the Dialogues both Philo and Cleanthes formulate and apparently endorse other versions of the argument [given by Demea in part nine], and these versions are not subject to the kind of criticism directed against that given by Demea. As a result, the status of Part IX, especially if it is thought that Hume intended it as an attack against the general class of cosmological arguments, is enigmatic and hard to assess’ (286).

⁵ I have used the edition of the Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion by Richard Popkin (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980), and will supply notes to that text by part and page; Demea's remarks are 2, 13.

⁶ See Stewart, M. A., ‘Hume and the “Metaphysical Argument A Priori” ’, in Philosophy, Its History and Historiography, Holland, A. J., ed. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983): 243–270Google Scholar.

⁷ Stewart argues that Philo is Hume's mouthpiece (op. cit. note 6, 259) and suggests that ‘Philo's avowed boredom with the a priori argument is a reflection of the same lack of interest that led Hume to write so cliché-ridden a debate upon it,’ op. cit., 265).

⁸ This interesting historical fact is noted by Carnochan, Walter B. in ‘The Comic Plot of Hume's Dialogues’, Modern Philology 85 (May 1988), 518CrossRefGoogle Scholar as well as by Stewart, op. cit., 260).

⁹ In the present article I am not particularly interested in figuring out what Hume may have thought about the arguments – a priori or a posteriori – for the existence of God, so I will not be referring to other texts in which Hume may refer to the matter. Such inter-textual approaches are ably handled – though arriving at distinctly different conclusions – by Noxon, James, ‘Hume's Agnosticism’, in Hume, Chappell, V.C., ed. (Notre Dame, 1968), 361–383Google Scholar, George Nathan, ‘Hume's Immanent God’, in Chappell, ed. (396–423), and ‘The Existence and Nature of God in Hume's Theism’, in Hume: A Re-evaluation, Donald W. Livingston and James T. King, eds. (New York: Fordham University, 1976), 126–149, as well as Kemp Smith, Sessions, Stewart and others, a variety of which may be found in Stanley Tweyman, ed. What I am interested in is the comedy of the Dialogues; particularly, how it plays with the arguments for the existence of God – whether intended by Hume or not is a further question.

¹⁰ Stewart, op. cit. note 6, 243.

¹¹ Stewart notes some historical vagaries in terminology, op. cit. 243–245, his quoted conclusion is on 245.

¹² See Stewart, op. cit., 245–254, the quote is from 248.

¹³ See, for example, the debate among Stove, D. C., ‘Part IX of Hume's Dialogues’, Philosophical Quarterly 28 (1978): 300–309CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Franklin, James, ‘More on Part IX of Hume's Dialogues’, Philosophical Quarterly 30 (1980): 69–71CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Stahl, D. E., ‘Hume's Dialogue IX Defended’, Philosophical Quarterly 34 (1984): 505–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

¹⁴ See Sessions, op. cit. note 1, 206, quoting Cleanthes 3, 8.

¹⁵ Hume, op. cit., 11, 75.

¹⁶ Hume, op. cit., 5, 35.

¹⁷ For the living vegetable see Hume, op. cit., 6, 41, for the dead 12, 18.

¹⁸ Summa Theologica 1, question 2, article 1. I am using the translation of the English Dominicans (New York: Benziger Brothers, 1947).

¹⁹ Summa Theologica 1, question 12, article 5.

²⁰ Hume, op. cit., 9, 55; cf. Summa Theologica 1, q. 2, art. 2, reply 2, where Aquinas says, ‘granted that everyone understands by this word ‘God’ is signified something than which nothing greater can be thought, nevertheless, it does not therefore follow that he understands that what the word signifies exists actually, but only that it exists mentally.'

²¹ Summa Theologica 1, question 12, article 7.

²² That the five ways have a certain internal relation has been ignored by some, but since my main argument is to say something about Hume, I will merely note two scholars who argue for a relation among the proofs such as I will be maintaining; see Copleston, Frederick, A History Philosophy, vol. 2 part 2 (Garden City, NY: Image, 1962), 65Google Scholar; Gilson, Etienne, The Spirit of Medieval Philosophy (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1991), 73–81Google Scholar or A History of Christian Philosophy in the Middle Ages (London: Sheed and Ward, 1955), 370–371.

²³ See, for example, Taylor, Richard, Metaphysics (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1992)Google Scholar.

²⁴ About this he has a famous debate with Bonaventure; according to Aquinas the eternity of the world cannot be proven (nor can temporal creation be proven or disproven philosophically); for the eternal actual cause could have for all eternity had its foot down in the dust of possibility, and from eternity the order impressed by his completely actual foot could be given to the possibly ordered, possibly actual dust. The analogy to foot and dust is Aquinas'; see St. Thomas Aquinas, Siger of Brabant, St.Bonaventure, , On the Eternity of the World, translated by Vollert, Cyril, Kendzierski, Lottie, Byrne, Paul (Milwaukee: Marquette University Press, 1984), 22Google Scholar.

²⁵ Hume, op. cit., 9, 54.

²⁶ Many scholars seem to think so; though Dye, James gives us ‘A Word on Behalf of Demea’ in Hume Studies 15, 1 (April 1989): 120–140Google Scholar.

²⁷ Hume, op. cit., 9, 55; italics original.

²⁸ Hume, op. cit., 9, 55; italics added.

²⁹ Summa Theologica 1, q. 12, art. 5.

³⁰ Hume, op. cit., 9, 55.

³¹ Hume, op. cit., 10, 58; William Sessions notes also that Demea forsakes argument for confession of feeling in the next section (op. cit. note 1, 148).

³² Hume, op. cit., 2, 15.

³³ Hume, op. cit., 9, 56.

³⁴ Hume, op. cit., 6, 43; Nathan, op. cit. note 9, argues that this view, which Philo considers several times and Cleanthes admits in part nine, is Hume's own.

³⁵ Hume, op. cit., 8, 53.

³⁶ Hume, op. cit., 9, 55–56.

³⁷ D.C. Stove considers in detail the inconcinnities of Part IX and concludes that ‘twentieth century writers have exaggerated or even invented Hume's philosophical achievements,’ ‘ignored or even praised’ his lapses (op. cit. note 13, 308). Calvert, (op. cit. note 3, 290–291), offers several (more and less charitable) plausible reasons/causes for the problems Hume's characters present in this section.

³⁸ It may be, as Stahl, Donald E. complains, in “Hume's Dialogue IX Defended” The Philosophical Quarterly 34, 137 (October 1984): 505–507CrossRefGoogle Scholar, that ‘when we speak of the existence of mathematical entities we mean something else than what we mean when we speak of the existence of non-abstract entities’ (506), but Philo clearly is using the existence of the one (mathematical order) as an analogy for the existence of the other (order of the physical world); that Hume ordinarily considers abstract reasoning about number distinct from matters of fact and existence proves nothing very much about Philo, or the Dialogues. Distinct things may yet be analogous to each other; Philo may not speak for Hume; Hume may be confused about existence; Hume may be using Philo to exhibit an absurdity in empiricism's thought about causes of existence… 

³⁹ Hume, op. cit., 9, 54–55.

⁴⁰ Hume, op. cit., 9, 55–56.

⁴¹ Hume, op. cit., 3, 26.

⁴² It is plausible that Hume is merely trying to write a roman a clef commentary on the contemporary debate instigated by Clarke, as Stewart argues, still – what comment is he intent upon making about this debate?

⁴³ Cleanthes had insisted that if he could show ‘the particular causes of each individual in a collection of twenty particles of matter, I should think it very unreasonable should you afterwards ask me what was the cause of the whole twenty’ (Hume, op. cit., 9, 56). But in the philosophy of empiricist mind this is precisely the problem – what is the string that holds the pearls of various experiences together as mine? Or, using our algebraic metaphor, why is it the regularities of products of nine, rather than five, that we notice? Even the most slothful should see that this question is reasonable, and needs an answer.

⁴⁴ Though I am loathe not to note Nicholas Capaldi's statement that ‘Hume has been seriously distorted by his analytic readers,’ and if we understood him correctly we ‘could appreciate why the so-called philosophy of mind is sterile.’ See ‘The Historical and Philosophical Significance of Hume's Theory of the Self’ in Philosophy, Its History and Historiography, A.J. Holland, ed. (Dordrecht: D. Reidel, 1983), 271–285; the quotes are from pages 281 and 280 respectively.

⁴⁵ William Sessions asks a similar question, and comes up with a similar response: ‘Which of our pieties do you find most attractive, the characters implicitly solicit…? Of course, a reader may very well demur’ (op. cit. note 1, 210). Nathan (in Chappell, ed.) concludes that ‘[w]hat Hume seems to see himself as doing is purifying the conception of God from the anthropomorphic accretions which have been attached to it’ (‘God in Hume's Theism,’ 148).

⁴⁶ Richard White, in ‘Hume's Dialogues and the Comedy of Religion,’ Hume Studies 14: 390–407, considers that the comedy that Cleanthes' objection in section nine can be used against his own hypothesis of an Intelligent Designer (as he in fact says the world could have its own necessity) is an exceptionally clear example of Hume's intent to kill religion by laughter. It is certainly comic; but this section's destructive capacity – like that of the Dialogues generally – is overstated.