You ascribe, cleanthes (and I believe justly), a purpose and intention to Nature.  But what, I beseech you, is the object of that curious artifice and machinery, which she has displayed in all animals?  The preservation alone of individuals, and propagation of the species.  It seems enough for her purpose, if such a rank be barely upheld in the universe, without any care or concern for the happiness of the members that compose it.  No resource for this purpose:  no machinery, in order merely to give pleasure or ease:  no fund of pure joy and contentment:  no indulgence, without some want or necessity accompanying it.  At least, the few phenomena of this nature are overbalanced by opposite phenomena of still greater importance.

Our sense of music, harmony, and indeed beauty of all kinds, gives satisfaction, without being absolutely necessary to the preservation and propagation of the species.  But what racking pains, on the other hand, arise from gouts, gravels, megrims, toothaches, rheumatisms, where the injury to the animal machinery is either small or incurable?  Mirth, laughter, play, frolic, seem gratuitous satisfactions, which have no further tendency:  spleen, melancholy, discontent, superstition, are pains of the same nature.  How then does the Divine benevolence display itself, in the sense of you Anthropomorphites?  None but we Mystics, as you were pleased to call us, can account for this strange mixture of phenomena, by deriving it from attributes, infinitely perfect, but incomprehensible.

And have you at last, said cleanthes smiling, betrayed your intentions, Philo?  Your long agreement with DEMEA did indeed a little surprise me; but I find you were all the while erecting a concealed battery against me.  And I must confess, that you have now fallen upon a subject worthy of your noble spirit of opposition and controversy.  If you can make out the present point, and prove mankind to be unhappy or corrupted, there is an end at once of all religion.  For to what purpose establish the natural attributes of the Deity, while the moral are still doubtful and uncertain?

You take umbrage very easily, replied DEMEA, at opinions the most innocent, and the most generally received, even amongst the religious and devout themselves:  and nothing can be more surprising than to find a topic like this, concerning the wickedness and misery of man, charged with no less than Atheism and profaneness.  Have not all pious divines and preachers, who have indulged their rhetoric on so fertile a subject; have they not easily, I say, given a solution of any difficulties which may attend it?  This world is but a point in comparison of the universe; this life but a moment in comparison of eternity.  The present evil phenomena, therefore, are rectified in other regions, and in some future period of existence.  And the eyes of men, being then opened to larger views of things, see the whole connection of general laws; and trace with adoration, the benevolence and rectitude of the Deity, through all the mazes and intricacies of his providence.