Hume on Miracles*

Hume’s Chapter or, as it is often called, Essay on miracles has the fame of a little masterpiece among those of the general public who will have heard of it, or may even have read it, and don’t dislike its conclusions; while among those who do dislike its conclusions it gets the adjective ‘notorious’. It ostensibly sets out to give the ‘wise and learned’ an argument which will forever arm them against any defence of religion, any argument purporting to establish a religion which appeals to miracles, and, equally, to prophecies the fulfilment of which Hume considers to be also a sort of miracle. But if we restrict the title ‘wise and learned’ to people who’ve looked into Hume’s arguments strictly, or as philosophers at least, we find that those who like his outlook often appear to be much embarrassed - Antony Flew, for example, in his chapter on the subject in Hume’s Philosophy of Belief,** and, as I understand from A E Taylor, T H Huxley; while a man who appears to be merely dispassionate, C D Broad, simply makes mincemeat of the argument, as unreasonable in itself and as in any case inconsistent with Hume’s philosophic position. Indeed it seems, from the judgment of such ‘wise and learned’ men, to have been a correct instinct which makes of this chapter of Hume’s Enquiry a separable Essay.

Selby-Bigge remarks that its insertion in the Enquiry is ‘due doubtless ... to other considerations than to a simple desire to illustrate or draw philosophical corollaries from the philosophical principles laid down in the original work’;[1] and elsewhere he shows what he thinks the motive was: Hume wanted to ‘create a murmur among the zealots’.[2] In this he succeeded; and succeeded also, if it’s permissible to guess at part causes in the history of opinions, in being influential. For certainly appeal to miracles and prophecy by way of argument for the truth of Christianity has completely gone out of fashion since Hume’s time. Not that Hume would be more than a contributor to this effect; another rather different one also belonging to the eighteenth century will have been Lessing, with his ‘On the proof of spirit and of power’ - sc. the proof of spirit and of power by the performance of miracles, as opposed to its proof by a report of their performance.*** And no doubt many other influences stemming from that century especially have played their part. But it seems likely that Hume has had some share in producing the temper of the present time.

A strong reason for the fame of the Essay, I should judge, is the literary skill, which is greater in the Enquiry than in the Treatise. Literary skill is independent of soundness in argument or truthfulness in reporting. One of the most agreeable passages in Hume’s chapter, for example, is that in which he reports an account by Cardinal de Retz of an alleged miracle in Saragossa:

There is also a memorable story related by Cardinal de Retz, which may well deserve our consideration. When that intriguing politician fled into Spain, to avoid the persecution of his enemies, he passed through Saragossa, the capital of Aragon, where he was shewn, in the cathedral, a man, who had served seven years as a doorkeeper, and was well known to everybody in town, that had ever paid his devotions at that church. He had been seen, for so long a time, wanting a leg; but recovered that limb by the rubbing of holy oil upon the stump; and the cardinal assures us that he saw him with two legs. This miracle was vouched by all the canons of the church; and the whole company in town were appealed to for a confirmation of the fact; whom the cardinal found, by their zealous devotion, to be thorough believers of the miracle. Here the relater was also cotemporary to the supposed prodigy, of an incredulous and libertine character, as well as of great genius; the miracle of so singular a nature as could scarcely admit of a counterfeit, and the witnesses very numerous, and all of them, in a manner, spectators of the fact, to which they gave their testimony. And what adds mightily to the force of the evidence, and may double our surprise on this occasion, is, that the cardinal himself, who relates the story, seems not to give any credit to it, and consequently cannot be suspected of any concurrence in the holy fraud.

But if one looks up the passage one has to conclude that Hume was probably relying on his memory to report it, and his memory cooked it up a bit in the interests of his argument.**** E.g. you would think from Hume’s passage that de Retz had questioned the townspeople, whereas all he reports is what the Dean and cantors (elevated by Hume into the greater dignity of canons) told him. The comic effect, from the point of view of pious credulity, of a story of being cured by lamp oil, is taken away by making it ‘holy oil’; the Cardinal’s own caution in committing himself as to whether the people, whom he saw at a day’s journey away covering the roads on the way to Saragossa, really were going there to celebrate this miracle - which suggests that he wasn’t sure it was not a leg pull on him - is transmuted into his having found that the whole company in town, by their zealous devotion, were thorough believers in the miracle.

Again, in reporting on the evidence - if one is to be willing to entertain evidence at all - for the miracles at the tomb of the Jansenist saint, Paris, Hume is able to indulge his malicious wit at its most brilliant:

There is another book in three volumes (called Recueil des Miracles de l’Abbé Paris) giving an account of many of these miracles, and accompanied with prefatory discourses, which are very well written. There runs, however, through the whole of these a ridiculous comparison between the miracles of our Saviour and those of the Abbé; wherein it is asserted, that the evidence for the latter is equal to that for the former: As if the testimony of men could ever be put in the balance with that of God himself, who conducted the pen of the inspired writers. If these writers, indeed, were to be considered merely as human testimony, the French author is very moderate in his comparison; since he might, with some appearance of reason, pretend, that the Jansenist miracles much surpass the other in evidence and authority.[3]

‘What’, he says in the main body of his argument, ‘have we to oppose to such a cloud of witnesses, but the absolute impossibility or miraculous nature of the events, which they relate?’[4] Well, Hume has suppressed what - namely the lack of sobriety on the part of those who went in for the cult of those miracles - which was also a cult of going into wild convulsions and similar things. Indeed of his three stories, the only one of which he gives a really pretty fair account is the Tacitus one - which is, upon the whole, rather convincing than otherwise.

The accusations against Hume’s arguments by his critics, which seem sound enough, can be listed quite briefly:

1. Hume dodges about between different definitions of a miracle as (i) anything contrary to the uniform course of experience[5], or (ii) a transgression of a law of nature by a particular volition of the Deity or by the interposition of some invisible agent.[6]

2. The first definition is question begging, as may be seen from his remark: ‘it is a miracle, that a dead man should come to life; because that has never been observed in any age or country.’[7]

3. Indeed Hume carries the first definition to an extreme point of absurdity: ‘There must therefore be a uniform experience against every miraculous event, otherwise the event would not merit that appellation.’[8] This is self-defeating, as the alleged miraculous event, having possibly happened, would be enough to call its miraculous character in question - since if it had happened there would not be uniform experience against it; and hence its miraculous character could not be adduced as an argument against it having happened.

4. Hume’s aim is to procure (what has indeed been procured) that the miraculous character of an event shall be sufficient reason to reject the story of its having occurred without investigation of any evidence. This is a strange termination of an argument which starts with the thesis that a wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.

5. Hume misdescribes the role of testimony in human knowledge. ‘The reason’, he says, ‘why we place any credit in witnesses and historians, is not derived from any connexion, which we perceive a priori, between testimony and reality, but because we are accustomed to find a conformity between them. But when the fact attested is such a one as has seldom fallen under our observation, here is a contest of two opposite experiences.’[9] Well, I have not merely not often, but never, experienced an earthquake; yet there is no conflict, no principle of experience which in this case gives me a ‘degree of assurance against the fact’ that witnesses to earthquakes endeavour to establish.

6. On the point of consistency with his own philosophy, there could hardly be a defence. Hume is so clear that no amount of uniformity of experience can possibly be a rational ground, or evidence, let alone proof, that the like must happen in a similar case, that it really looks as if his tongue were in his cheek when he says that the occurrence of a miracle is disproved just by the fact of its being a violation of the laws of nature; that it is ruled out as an impossible event. In the very next chapter but one he repeats his constant position that, reasoning a priori, we must grant that anything may produce anything. ‘The falling of a pebble may, for aught we know, extinguish the sun.’[10] And yet in this chapter we get him saying ‘The raising of a house or ship into the air is a visible miracle. [He wasn’t thinking of cataclysms!] The raising of a feather, when the wind wants ever so little of a force requisite for that purpose, is as real a miracle, though not so sensible with regard to us.’[11] In short, for purposes of this chapter he is adopting the mechanistic determinism - the picture of nature bound fast in fate by inviolable laws - which belonged not to Hume’s conceptions but to those of his century - the effect of Newtonian science (?). His own view is

That there is nothing in any object, consider’d in itself, which can afford us a reason for drawing a conclusion beyond it; and That even after the observation of a frequent or constant conjunction of objects, we have no reason to draw any inference concerning any object beyond those of which we have had experience; I say, let men be once fully convinc’d of these two principles, and this will throw them so loose from all common systems, that they will make no difficulty of receiving any, which may appear the most extraordinary.[12]

7. On Hume’s own account of belief, belief in miracles is actually a thing that can’t happen.

All belief of matter of fact or real existence is derived merely from some object, present to the memory or senses, and a customary conjunction between that and some other object. Or in other words; having found, in many instances, that any two kinds of objects - flame and heat, snow and cold - have always been conjoined together; if flame or snow be presented anew to the senses, the mind is carried by custom to expect heat or cold, and to believe that such a quality does exist, and will discover itself upon a nearer approach. This belief is the necessary result of placing the mind in such circumstances. It is an operation of the soul, when we are so situated, as unavoidable as to feel the passion of love, when we receive benefits; or hatred, when we meet with injuries. All these operations are a species of natural instincts, which no reasoning or process of the thought and understanding is able either to produce or to prevent.[13]

This he knows how to turn to his own advantage - it gives more inwardness and point to the mockery at the end of the chapter on miracles:

So that, upon the whole, we may conclude, that the Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even at this day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without one. Mere reason is insufficient to convince us of its veracity: And whoever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience.

Broad may say, like someone criticising a student’s essay, that Hume doesn’t in this essay maintain his otherwise ‘extremely high standards’; he mistook what Hume was at. The essay is brilliant propaganda. For the question of consistency is not very important; but the argument for Hume’s account of causality, that this just is the unavoidable way we do think, is as silly if addressed to believers in miracles as the proof of God from universal consent addressed to atheists. But Hume turns the difficulty he is really in to most successful account.

These are the principal objections urged against Hume’ Essay. But there is something further, I think, to be said about the argument, which will throw light on the persuasive skills with which it is constructed.

The principle which Hume sets up for rejecting all testimony as to miracles is this: ‘Suppose ... that the fact, which the testimony endeavours to establish, partakes of the extraordinary and the marvellous; in that case, the evidence, resulting from the testimony, admits of a diminution, greater or less, in proportion as the fact is more or less unusual.’[14] In pursuance of this principle he draws the conclusion, from the uniformity of experience against miracles and their consequent impossibility, that one ought to reject all testimony in favour of a miracle, that no testimony is sufficient to establish a miracle, unless the testimony be of such a kind that its falsehood would be more miraculous than the fact which it endeavours to establish. The conclusion, which is to the taste of many people, it must be admitted, is nevertheless ostensibly a development of a thesis not relating to miracles but only to what is ‘extraordinary and marvellous’, i.e. what is out of the way, like earthquakes (to people in this part of the world), fireballs, going as stiff as a board under hypnosis so that you can receive repeated heavy blows without pain or harm, or lie across a gap with only your head and heels supported and be sat on by three hefty men as if you were a bench.

It is easily checked by probability theory what the true state of the case is. If, relative to our background information, the probability of an earthquake in Spain on a given day is less than the probability of a mendacious journalistic report the next day that there had been an earthquake in Spain, then the probability of the earthquake’s having happened, even when we read the report in today’s newspapers, is still less than ½. This much we can concede to Hume; it both accords with probability theory and is intuitively acceptable. (It used, Keynes tells us, to be disputed whether the improbability of an event did not make the report of it more probable.[15]) On the other hand, the odds in favour of there having been a Spanish earthquake yesterday are increased even in this case by the appearance of a newspaper report today unless the journalists are such awful liars that they are just as likely to report a non-existent earthquake as one that did happen. This condition could scarcely be fulfilled, for it is a near certainty that they would report an earthquake that did happen, and nothing like a certainty that they would invent an earthquake in Spain rather than some other lie.[16]

Thus Hume’s argument that the more improbable the event the less weight has testimony to it is sound enough. But we did not need that argument to show that if an event is of a kind to have no finite probability at all - i.e. if it is an impossible event - then testimony to it has no weight at all, does not add to the probability one whit, so that there is no need to look into the evidence that it has occurred. That is clear from the impossibility, without recourse to the thesis that the more improbable the event, and the more probable lying or deceiving testimony to it, the less weight has any testimony to it. The way the argument is developed gives one the impression that testimony cannot add to probability at all where lying or deceived testimony is more probable than the event. To be sure, Hume does not say this, whence then the impression? It arises, surely, because he has used the point about the diminishing weight of testimony as the first step in an argument which begins by saying ‘A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence’ and ends by saying a wise man need not look at this sort of evidence at all. Only if testimony here could not add to the probability at all could this be a reasonable course of argument. Of course he has put in that it can’t add to the probability because the event is impossible - but then the earlier argument is not needed, has no serious role. And it sounds as if the earlier argument - the argument that the non-occurrence of the event plus testimony is more probable than its occurrence plus testimony if false testimony to it is more probable than it is - were being invoked or echoed in the conclusion, that the falsehood of the testimony has got to be more improbable than the miracle, i.e. has got to be a greater miracle, if the testimony is to be worth considering. For that the testimony is otherwise not worth considering would follow by the a priori argument that its falsehood had got to be a greater miracle than the event - and so more improbable. Here a finite probability is being conceded, at least rhetorically, as you can’t have a greater improbability than an impossibility! An argument of such a kind, to show that no testimony can have any weight, must be fallacious if the finite probability is conceded; for the ratio of the probability that the event will be reported if it has occurred (near certainty for some events of an extraordinary nature, if publicly occurring) to the probability that, if has not occurred, that particular lie should be invented, may be high. It is in this ratio that the consequent odds (odds after testimony) exceed the antecedent odds in favour of the event.

* From an undated and unpublished manuscript.

** Antony Flew, Hume’s Philosophy of Belief: A Study of his first Enquiry (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1961).

*** See the previous paper on ‘Prophecy and Miracles’ in this volume.

**** See Mémoires du Cardinal de Retz contenant ce qui s’est passé de remarquable en France pendant les premiers années du regne de Louis XIV. Nouvelle edition exactement revue et corrigée. Tome troisième. (Geneva: Fabry & Barillot, 1777), pp.483-484:

L’on my montra un homme qui servoit à allumer les lampes qui y font en nombre prodigieux, & l’on me dit qu’on l’y avoit vu sept ans à la porte de cette église avec une seule jambe. Je l’y vis avec deux. Le doyen avec tous les chanoines m’assurerent que toute la ville l’avoit vu comme eux, & que si je voulois encore attendre deux jours, je parlerois à plus de vingt mille hommes, meme du dehors, qui l’avoient vu comme ceux de la ville. Il avoit recouvré la jambe, à ce qu’il disoit, en se frottant de l’huile de ces lampes. On célebre tous les ans la fête de ce prétendu miracle avec un concours incroyable de peuple, & il est vrai qu’encore à une journée de Saragosse, je trouvai les grands chemins couverts de gens de toute sorte de qualités qui y couroient.

A marginal note in the manuscript of her paper records that Anscombe had consulted an earlier edition of 1718 of the Mémoires (volume 5) published in Amsterdam, the text of which may have warranted her saying that de Retz referred to cantors rather than canons.

1 David Hume, Enquiries Concerning Human Understanding and Concerning the Principle of Morals, reprinted from the posthumous edition of 1777 and edited with introduction, comparative table of contents, and analytical index by L A Selby-Bigge, third edition with text revised and notes by P H Nidditch (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1975), p.xix. [Hereafter: Enquiries]

2 Enquiries, p.xii.

3 Enquiries: Additional Note to p.125, l.4, at p. 344.

4 Enquiries, p. 125.

5 Enquiries, pp. 114-15.

6 Enquiries, p. 115.

7 Enquiries, p. 115.

8 Enquiries, p. 115.

9 Enquiries, p. 113.

10 Enquiries, p. 164, in Section XII ‘On the Academical or Sceptical Philosophy’.

11 Enquiries, p. 115, footnote 1.

12 David Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature, edited by L A Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1888), p.139.

13 Enquiries, pp.46-47.

14 Enquiries, p.113.

15 John Maynard Keynes, A Treatise on Probability (London: Macmillan Co, 1921), p.183. [What Keynes actually says is ‘... Laplace in his Essai philosophique (pp.98-102) ... argues that a witness is less to be believed when he asserts an extraordinary fact, declaring the opposite view (taken by Diderot in the article on ‘Certitude’ in the Encylopédie) to be inconceivable before ‘le simple bon sens’.’]

16 For the formula, see Keynes, loc.cit.,