n image or a
picture, you imagine it is wrought by art; when you behold afar off a
ship under sail, you judge it is steered by reason and art; when you
see a dial or water-clock,[157] you believe the hours are shown by art,
and not by chance; and yet that you should imagine that the universe,
which contains all arts and the artificers, can be void of reason and
understanding?

But if that sphere which was lately made by our friend Posidonius, the
regular revolutions of which show the course of the sun, moon, and five
wandering stars, as it is every day and night performed, were carried
into Scythia or Britain, who, in those barbarous countries, would doubt
that that sphere had been made so perfect by the exertion of reason?

XXXV. Yet these people[158] doubt whether the universe, from whence all
things arise and are made, is not the effect of chance, or some
necessity, rather than the work of reason and a divine mind. According
to them, Archimedes shows more knowledge in representing the motions of
the celestial globe than nature does in causing them, though the copy
is so infinitely beneath the original. The shepherd in Attius,[159] who
had never seen a ship, when he perceived from a mountain afar off the
divine vessel of the Argonauts, surprised and frighted at this new
object, expressed himself in this manner:

What horrid bulk is that before my eyes,
Which o'er the deep with noise and vigor flies?
It turns the whirlpools up, its force so strong,
And drives the billows as it rolls along.
The ocean's violence it fiercely braves;
Runs furious on, and throws about the waves.
Swiftly impetuous in its course, and loud,
Like the dire bursting of a show'ry cloud;
Or, like a rock, forced by the winds and rain,
Now whirl'd aloft, then plunged into the main.
But hold! perhaps the Earth and Neptune jar,
And fiercely wage an elemental war;
Or Triton with his trident has o'erthrown
His den, and loosen'd from the roots the stone;
The rocky fragment, from the bottom torn,
Is lifted up, and on the surface borne.

At first he is in suspense at the sight of this unknown object; but on
seeing the young mariners, and hearing their singing, he says,

Like sportive dolphins, with their snouts they roar;[160]

and afterward goes on,

Loud in my ears methinks their voices ring,
As if I heard the God Sylvanus sing.

As at first view the shepherd thinks