ination. I acknowledge that, in the present order of things,
virtue is attended with more peace of mind than vice, and meets
with a more favourable reception from the world. I am sensible
that, according to the past experience of mankind, friendship is
the chief joy of human life, and moderation the only source of
tranquillity and happiness. I never balance between the virtuous
and the vicious course of life; but am sensible that, to a
well-disposed mind, every advantage is on the side of the former.
And what can you say more, allowing all your suppositions and
reasonings? You tell me, indeed, that this disposition of things
proceeds from intelligence and design. But, whatever it proceeds
from, the disposition itself, on which depends our happiness and
misery, and consequently our conduct and deportment in life, is
still the same. It is still open for me, as well as you, to
regulate my behaviour by my experience of past events. And if you
affirm that, while a divine providence is allowed, and a supreme
distributive justice in the universe, I ought to expect some more
particular reward of the good, and punishment of the bad, beyond
the ordinary course of events, I here find the same fallacy which I
have before endeavoured 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?