The Revelation of Immortality

Abstract

At no time in his adult life did Hume ever believe in any form of personal immortality. This biographical fact, so challengingly at variance with the professed beliefs of most of his contemporaries, is given little expression in his philosophical writings. There is the brief, aphoristic essay ‘Of the Immortality of the Soul’ which Hume perforce never published during his lifetime, and there are sections in the Treatise, in particular ‘Of the Immateriality of the Soul’ which were construed as attacks upon the immortality doctrine. There are a few wayward remarks elsewhere in his private papers and published works—mostly of biographical interest—and that is all. The excuse for devoting a chapter to the present topic is thus not its prominence in Hume’s writing but its importance in the philosophy of religion together with the controversial significance of those relatively brief things which Hume has to say. These add up to a case against immortality which at least one writer has found ‘almost irresistible’.¹

The soul, secur’d in her existence, smiles

At the drawn dagger, and defies its point.

The stars shall fade away, the sun himself

Grow dim with age, and nature sink in years;

But thou shalt flourish in immortal youth,

Unhurt amidst the war of elements,

The wrecks of matter, and the crush of worlds.

Addison, Cato, V i