or as a sort of innate idea of axiomatic certainty divinely impressed upon the mind of every rational being, but as a product of natural human tendencies and passions when placed in the environment in which all primitive peoples live. The analysis of human nature is thus pushed back one step beyond the point reached by the Deists. Hume attempts a genuinely scientific explanation of the existence of religion by showing its necessary dependence upon recognized facts in regard to the nature of men, the conditions and circumstances of the persons among whom religion originated, and the actual history of known religions. Crude as Hume's results undoubtedly are, there can be no doubt of the distinctly scientific character of his attempt or that it was an enormous advance beyond the position which he was criticising. The mere recognition of religion as a natural product of the human mind implies its relation to all other human institutions, and opens all the important psychological and anthropological problems which the scientific treatment of religions has since attempted to solve.
Hume's method, however, is not necessarily evolutionary. In such an inquiry as that attempted by The Natural History of Religion, the all-important problem is the meaning which is to be attached to human nature. Is it to be regarded as static or developing? Is it to be conceived as a complex of abstract, unchanging principles, blended in varying proportions in all individuals, or is the individual to be assumed as the unit and the uniqueness of his personality accepted? Upon the answer to these questions will depend our conclusion regarding the historical character of the investigation. Hume's psychological atomism forced upon him in this case the non-evolutionary view. For him the individual is merely 'a bundle or collection of different perceptions' which are distinct and separable. Moreover, he does not recognize that the real mental content is always unique and individual, as we have now learned to do. The abstract, conceptualized mental element is used at will as an actually existing psychic atom, existing, that is to say, in its generality, as an actual content of all minds. Thus the historical individual is regarded by Hume as a complex of psychological laws or principles which are universal and valid for all individuals. Individual differences
