Quotation
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“The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery.”
David Hume · Empiricism · Enlightenment · 1779
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the residue of the Dialogues: after design, evil, and analogy have been pressed, natural religion remains a riddle rather than a demonstration. The line is spoken inside a conversation that does not award a simple winner. A rival reading lifts it out as personal despair, or as a claim that the inquiry was pointless, both of which sit badly with a book that has just conducted the inquiry carefully. Part 12 is the last part, and it is famously hard to pin to one settled view.
Did David Hume really say this?
The library’s label is Well attested. Hume's own English in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 12. The book was published after his death. The sentence belongs to the dialogue's close, not to a private diary detached from the speakers. The wording is secure.
Where it comes from
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 12
Approximate date: 1779.
How to use it
A discussion in a church hall in Norwich that quotes the riddle in order to stop listening has used the last line to dodge the parts. The sentence is what the difficulties come to, not a substitute for stating them. A mystery, in this cadence, is not a compliment to confusion; It is what he thinks remains when speculation has overreached; The hall can still tell a careful disagreement from a fog.
A mindset reading
Enigma is a temptation to sound deep without the argument. He has earned the word by a specific critique of the move from the world's order to a human-like designer. Quoting the riddle over a crossword, or over a grief that is simply painful, borrows a conclusion from a different problem; The Dialogues' mystery is about the limits of a kind of reasoning, not about every hard thing in a life.
Understand the philosophy
The key term is natural religion, belief about the divine built from the world and from reason rather than from revelation. Cleanthes, Philo, and Demea carry the pressure. Part 12's riddle is the unsettled end. The English is Hume's, in a book he withheld in his lifetime; Readers still dispute whether Philo speaks for him; The sentence should stay attached to that dispute.
- knowledge
- meaning
FAQ
What does it mean?
The usual reading takes the sentence as the residue of the Dialogues: after design, evil, and analogy have been pressed, natural religion remains a riddle rather than a demonstration. The line is spoken inside a conversation that does not award a simple winner. A rival reading lifts it out as personal despair, or as a claim that the inquiry was pointless, both of which sit badly with a book that has just conducted the inquiry carefully. Part 12 is the last part, and it is famously hard to pin to one settled view.
Did David Hume really say this?
Well attested. Hume's own English in Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 12. The book was published after his death. The sentence belongs to the dialogue's close, not to a private diary detached from the speakers. The wording is secure.
Which work is it in?
Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion, part 12 Approximate date: 1779.