Letter: Hume's atheism

"The idea that David Hume was an atheist cannot be confirmed by his own writings on religious matters," says Hugh Maclachlan (Features, 14 June).

Well, a great many people familar with the main body of Hume's work, and not simply works on religion, do see him as a sceptic.

Maclachlan also says: "If he had an opinion about atheism, it is strange he did not take the opportunity to express it."

In the context of the 18th century, it is not at all strange. If you were totally explicit about your irreligion then you risked being intellectually and socially discredited, which is why Hume was still being fairly polite in his posthumously published Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

On his death bed, however, (when he might have been expected to hedge his bets) Boswell reports that Hume was amiably expecting total extinction, not immortality or paradise.

Hume said then, according to Boswell, "he never had entertained any belief in religion since he began to read Locke and Clarke".

Boswell continues: "Hume said flatly that the morality of every religion was bad, and, I really thought, was not jocular when he said that when a man was religious, he concluded he was a rascal, though he had known some instances of very good men being religious."

The above are Hume's own words, reported by the religious James Boswell, at Hume's side as he neared death.

Professor Maclachlan should reflect on them.

Crawford Mackie

Loughborough Road

Kirkcaldy, Fife