204 HUME 



IX 



extended beyond this life ? 1 Our sole means of 

 knowing anything is the reasoning faculty which 

 God has given us ; and that reasoning faculty 

 not only denies us any conception of a future 

 state, but fails to furnish a single valid argument 

 in favour of the belief that the mind will endure 

 after the dissolution of the body. 



". . . If any purpose of nature be clear, we may affirm that 

 the whole scope and intention of man's creation, so far as we 

 can judge by natural reason, is limited to the present life." 



To the argument that the powers of man are so 

 much greater than the needs of this life require, 

 that they suggest a future scene in which they 

 can be employed, Hume replies : 



" If the reason of man gives him great superiority above 

 other animals, his necessities are proportionably multiplied 

 upon him ; his whole time, his whole capacity, activity, courage, 

 and passion, find sufficient employment in fencing against the 

 miseries of his present condition ; and frequently, nay, almost 

 always, are too slender for the business assigned them. A pair of 

 shoes, perhaps, was never yet wrought to the highest degree of per- 

 fection that commodity is capable of attaining ; yet it is neces- 

 sary, at least very useful, that there should be some politicians and 

 moralists, even some geometers, poets and philosophers, among 



1 ' ' Nor are we therefore authorised to infer A priori, inde- 

 pendent of Revelation, a future state of retribution, from the 

 irregularities prevailing in the present life, since that future 

 state does not account fully for these irregularities. It may 

 explain, indeed, how present evil may be conducive to future 

 good, but not why the good could not be attained without the 

 evil : it may reconcile with our notions of the divine justice the 

 present prosperity of the wicked, but it does not account for the 

 existence of the wicked." Whately, I.e. pp. 69, 70. 



