at 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 perfection that
commodity is capable of attaining; yet it is necessary, at least
very useful, that there should be some politicians and moralists,
even some geometers, poets and philosophers, among mankind. The
powers of men are no more superior to their wants, considered
merely in this life, than those of foxes and hares are, compared to
_their_ wants and to their period of existence. The inference from
parity of reason is therefore obvious."

In short, Hume argues that, if the faculties with which we are endowed
are unable to discover a future state, and if the most attentive
consideration of their nature serves to show that they are adapted to
this life and nothing more, it is surely inconsistent with any
conception of justice that we should be dealt with, as if we had all
along had a clear knowledge of the fact thus carefully concealed from
us. What should we think of the justice of a father, who gave his son
every reason to suppose that a trivial fault would only be visited by a
box on the ear; and then, years afterwards, put him on the rack for a
week for the same fault?

Again, the suggestion arises, if God is the cause of all things, he is
responsible for evil as well as for good; and it appears utterly
irreconcilable with our notions of justice that he should punish another
for that which he has, in fact, done himself. Moreover, just punishment
bears a proportion to the offence, while suffering which is infinite is
_ipso facto_ disproportionate to any finite deed.

"Why then eternal punishment for the temporary offences of so frail
a creature as man? Can any one approve of Alexander's rage, who
intended to exterminate a whole nation because they had seized his
favourite horse Bucephalus?

"Heaven and hell suppose two distinct species of men, the good and
the bad; but the greatest part of mankind float