184: HUME viii 



actly adjusted to them. That the divinity may possibly be 

 endowed with attributes which we have never seen exerted ; 

 may be governed by principles of action which we cannot 

 discover to be satisfied ; all this will freely be allowed. 

 But still this is mere possibility and hypothesis. We never 

 can have reason to infer any attributes or any principles of 

 action in him, but so far as we know them to have been ex- 

 erted and satisfied. 



" Are there any marks of a distributive justice in the 

 world ? If you answer in the affirmative, I conclude that 

 since justice here exerts itself, it is satisfied. If you reply 

 in the negative, I conclude that you have then no reason to 

 ascribe justice, in our sense of it, to the gods. If you hold 

 a medium between affirmation and negation, by saying that 

 the justice of the gods at present exerts itself in part, but 

 not in its full extent, I answer that you have no reason to 

 give it any particular extent, but only so far as you see it, 

 at present, exert itself ."(IV. pp. 164-6.) 



Thus, the Freethinkers said, the attributes of 

 the Deity being what they are, the scheme of 

 orthodoxy is inconsistent with them; whereupon 

 Butler gave the crushing reply: Agreeing with 

 you as to the atributes of the Deity, nature, by 

 its existence, proves that the things to which you 

 object are quite consistent with them. To whom 

 enters Hume's Epicurean with the remark: Then, 

 as nature is our only measure of the attributes of 

 the Deity in their practical manifestation, what 

 warranty is there for supposing that such measure 

 is anywhere transcended? That the " other side " 

 of nature, if there be one, is governed on different 

 principles from this side? 



Truly on this topic silence is golden; while 



