Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism

1761

William Hogarth

When England’s most famous engraver, William Hogarth, reworked his earlier etching Enthusiasm Delineated (1761) into the version published under the title of Credulity, Superstition, Fanaticism (1762), he transformed the puppets underneath the pulpit from Adam and Eve, Peter and Paul, and Moses and Aaron to three well-known contemporary ghost figures. In the later etching, the figures below the Whitefield persona become secular instances of superstition: Mrs. Veal from Defoe’s “A True Relation of the Apparition of One Mrs. Veal” (1706), the murdered Julius Caesar, and Sir George Villiers of Brookesby (who was thought to have returned from beyond the grave in order to predict the murder of his son).  In comparing the two paintings, one finds that Hogarth makes very slight changes: most of the figures remain, but are slightly altered to include a critique of popular beliefs in general (rather than merely religious enthusiasm).  Hogarth’s two etchings reveal a correlation between religious enthusiasm, an emotional state that (as Locke shows) is never grounded in empirical evidence but in mere belief, and superstition, or the belief in the possibility of the miracle.  For David Hume, such enthusiasm or belief in miracles amounts to “a Contrariety of Evidence” (as he puts it in the relevant section of his An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding).  As Hume puts it, “there must, therefore, be a uniform Experience against every miraculous Event, otherwise the Event would not merit that Appellation. And a uniform Experience amounts to a Proof.” Hume thus invokes a primary principle of science: that experience determines whether or not something can be deemed a “theory” through the probability that, if it is repeated, the result will be the same. Within the secular, there is thus a division between what is and is not scientifically verifiable. Empiricism is only the first step in verifying that the subjective perception indeed correlates to an objective principle of nature.  Therefore, secular epistemology not only rebukes the religious for mere unfounded belief, but also leads to the creation of the scientific process in an attempt to eliminate the possibility of empiricism used in propagating the superstition (qua “bearing witness” of the kind found in Defoe’s account of Mrs. Veal). Whereas Hogarth’s first sketch reveals the inherent faith in the deity through the three statues, the later, published version here shown exemplifies secular superstition: both are shown to be problematic. Hogarth thus not only attacks the comical fervor of religious zealots, but the naïve empiricism that emerges with print culture. This is to say, secularization not only requires empiricism, but also demands skepticism.

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