_Are there any marks of a distributive justice in the world?_ 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.

110. Thus I bring the dispute, O Athenians, to a short issue with my
antagonists. The course of nature lies open to my contemplation as well
as to theirs. The experienced train of events is the great standard, by
which we all regulate our conduct. Nothing else can be appealed to in
the field, or in the senate. Nothing else ought ever to be heard of in
the school, or in the closet. In vain would our limited understanding
break through those boundaries, which are too narrow for our fond
imagination. While we argue from the course of nature, and infer a
particular intelligent cause, which first bestowed, and still preserves
order in the universe, we embrace a principle, which is both uncertain
and useless. It is uncertain; because the subject lies entirely beyond
the reach of human experience. It is useless; because our knowledge of
this cause being derived entirely from the course of nature, we can
never, according to the rules of just reasoning, return back from the
cause with any new inference, or making additions to the common and
experienced course of nature, establish any new principles of conduct
and behaviour.

111. I observe (said I, finding he had finished his harangue) that you