“Are there any marks of a distributive justice in the world?” he puts it to his hearers. “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 as far as you see it _at present_ exert itself.” * * * * * We had rather anticipated that we should find Hume among those “zealous and refined theists” who point to the “beautiful connection” and “single plan” of nature as to the ultimate evidence of an intelligence back of it. But now that we have gathered together his important denials, we begin to feel that Hume’s “zeal” for theism must be of the most restrained order, that the “refinement” of his proof must approach attenuation. And so in the end, it proves. Not but that there are emphatic enough avowals of conviction: “The whole frame of nature bespeaks an intelligent author;” we find it written, “and no rational enquirer can, after serious reflection, suspend his belief a moment with regard to the primary principles of genuine Theism and Religion.” But this firmness of assertion is not an enduring mood. Elsewhere we find at least one “rational enquirer” suspending his belief, not for a moment, but indefinitely. The essay which opens with the passage just quoted concludes with these words: “The whole is a riddle, an enigma, an inexplicable mystery. Doubt, uncertainty, suspense of judgment appear the only result of our most accurate scrutiny concerning this subject. But such is the frailty of human reason, and such the irresistible contagion of opinion, that even this deliberate doubt could scarcely be upheld did we not enlarge our view, and opposing one species of superstition to another, set them-a-quarrelling; while we ourselves, during their fury and contention, happily make our escape into the calm, though obscure regions of philosophy.”