master, and not for mice, we should likewise judge that the world is
the mansion of the Gods." Yes, if I believed that the Gods built the
world; but not if, as I believe, and intend to prove, it is the work of
nature.

XI. Socrates, in Xenophon, asks, "Whence had man his understanding, if
there was none in the world?" And I ask, Whence had we speech, harmony,
singing; unless we think it is the sun conversing with the moon when
she approaches near it, or that the world forms an harmonious concert,
as Pythagoras imagines? This, Balbus, is the effect of nature; not of
that nature which proceeds artificially, as Zeno says, and the
character of which I shall presently examine into, but a nature which,
by its own proper motions and mutations, modifies everything.

For I readily agree to what you said about the harmony and general
agreement of nature, which you pronounced to be firmly bound and united
together, as it were, by ties of blood; but I do not approve of what
you added, that "it could not possibly be so, unless it were so united
by one divine spirit." On the contrary, the whole subsists by the power
of nature, independently of the Gods, and there is a kind of sympathy
(as the Greeks call it) which joins together all the parts of the
universe; and the greater that is in its own power, the less is it
necessary to have recourse to a divine intelligence.

XII. But how will you get rid of the objections which Carneades made?
"If," says he, "there is no body immortal, there is none eternal; but
there is no body immortal, nor even indivisible, or that cannot be
separated and disunited; and as every animal is in its nature passive,
so there is not one which is not subject to the impressions of
extraneous bodies; none, that is to say, which can avoid the necessity
of enduring and suffering: and if every animal is mortal, there is none
immortal; so, likewise, if every animal may be cut up and divided,
there is none indivisible, none eternal, but all are liable to be
affected by, and compelled to submit to, external power. Every animal,
therefore, is necessarily mortal, dissoluble, and divisible."

For as there is no wax, no silver, no brass which cannot be converted
into something else, whatever is composed of wax, or silver, or brass
may cease to be what it is. By the same reason, if all the elements are
mutable, every body is mutable.

Now, according to your doctrine, all the elements are mutable; all
bodies, therefore,