u think, will admit that? If it were true, what occasion was there to
come so gradually to it? And to what purpose? You might have answered
it on your own authority. I perceive your gradations from happiness to
virtue, and from virtue to reason; but how do you come from reason to
human form? There, indeed, you do not descend by degrees, but
precipitately.

Nor can I conceive why Epicurus should rather say the Gods are like men
than that men are like the Gods. You ask what is the difference; for,
say you, if this is like that, that is like this. I grant it; but this
I assert, that the Gods could not take their form from men; for the
Gods always existed, and never had a beginning, if they are to exist
eternally; but men had a beginning: therefore that form, of which the
immortal Gods are, must have had existence before mankind;
consequently, the Gods should not be said to be of human form, but our
form should be called divine. However, let this be as you will. I now
inquire how this extraordinary good fortune came about; for you deny
that reason had any share in the formation of things. But still, what
was this extraordinary fortune? Whence proceeded that happy concourse
of atoms which gave so sudden a rise to men in the form of Gods? Are we
to suppose the divine seed fell from heaven upon earth, and that men
sprung up in the likeness of their celestial sires? I wish you would
assert it; for I should not be unwilling to acknowledge my relation to
the Gods. But you say nothing like it; no, our resemblance to the Gods,
it seems, was by chance. Must I now seek for arguments to refute this
doctrine seriously? I wish I could as easily discover what is true as I
can overthrow what is false.

XXXIII. You have enumerated with so ready a memory, and so copiously,
the opinions of philosophers, from Thales the Milesian, concerning the
nature of the Gods, that I am surprised to see so much learning in a
Roman. But do you think they were all madmen who thought that a Deity
could by some possibility exist without hands and feet? Does not even
this consideration have weight with you when you consider what is the
use and advantage of limbs in men, and lead you to admit that the Gods
have no need of them? What necessity can there be of feet, without
walking; or of hands, if there is nothing to be grasped? The same may
be asked of the other parts of the body, in which nothing is vain,
nothing useless, nothing superfluous; therefore we may