the body, that mankind
does. He must walk, run, lie down, lean, sit, hold, speak, and
discourse. You need not be told the consequence of making the Gods male
and female.

Therefore I cannot sufficiently wonder how this chief of yours came to
entertain these strange opinions. But you constantly insist on the
certainty of this tenet, that the Deity is both happy and immortal.
Supposing he is so, would his happiness be less perfect if he had not
two feet? Or cannot that blessedness or beatitude--call it which you
will (they are both harsh terms, but we must mollify them by use)--can
it not, I say, exist in that sun, or in this world, or in some eternal
mind that has not human shape or limbs? All you say against it is, that
you never saw any happiness in the sun or the world. What, then? Did
you ever see any world but this? No, you will say. Why, therefore, do
you presume to assert that there are not only six hundred thousand
worlds, but that they are innumerable? Reason tells you so. Will not
reason tell you likewise that as, in our inquiries into the most
excellent nature, we find none but the divine nature can be happy and
eternal, so the same divine nature surpasses us in excellence of mind;
and as in mind, so in body? Why, therefore, as we are inferior in all
other respects, should we be equal in form? For human virtue approaches
nearer to the divinity than human form.

XXXV. To return to the subject I was upon. What can be more childish
than to assert that there are no such creatures as are generated in the
Red Sea or in India? The most curious inquirer cannot arrive at the
knowledge of all those creatures which inhabit the earth, sea, fens,
and rivers; and shall we deny the existence of them because we never
saw them? That similitude which you are so very fond of is nothing to
the purpose. Is not a dog like a wolf? And, as Ennius says,

The monkey, filthiest beast, how like to man!

Yet they differ in nature. No beast has more sagacity than an elephant;
yet where can you find any of a larger size? I am speaking here of
beasts. But among men, do we not see a disparity of manners in persons
very much alike, and a similitude of manners in persons unlike? If this
sort of argument were once to prevail, Velleius, observe what it would
lead to. You have laid it down as certain that reason cannot possibly
reside in any but the human form. Another may affirm that it can exist
in none but a terrestrial being; in none