182 HUME vm 



to detect. You persist in imagining, that if we grant that 

 divine existence for which you so earnestly contend, you may 

 safely infer consequences from it, and add something to the 

 experienced order of nature by arguing from the attributes 

 which you ascribe to your gods. You seem not to remember 

 that all your reasonings on this subject can only be drawn 

 from effects to causes ; and that every argument, deduced from 

 causes to effects, must of necessity be a gross sophism, since 

 it is impossible for you to know anything of the cause, but 

 what you have antecedently not inferred, but discovered to the 

 full, in the effect. 



" But what must a philosopher think of those vain reasoners 

 who, instead of regarding the present scene of things as the 

 sole object of their contemplation, so far reverse the whole 

 course of nature, as to render this life merely a passage to 

 something further ; a porch, which leads to a greater and 

 vastly different building; a prologue which serves only to 

 introduce the piece, and give it more grace and propriety ? 

 Whence, do you think, can such philosophers derive their 

 idea of the gods ? From their own conceit and imagination 

 surely. For if they derive it from the present phenomena, 

 it would never point to anything further, but must be exactly 

 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 exerted and satisfied. 



"A re there any marks of a distributive justice in the world f 

 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. 1646.) 



