cularly mention
Fortune, which is allowed to be ever inseparable from inconstancy and
temerity, which are certainly qualities unworthy of a divine being.

But what delight do you take in the explication of fables, and in the
etymology of names?--that Coelus was castrated by his son, and that
Saturn was bound in chains by his son! By your defence of these and
such like fictions you would make the authors of them appear not only
not to be madmen, but to have been even very wise. But the pains which
you take with your etymologies deserve our pity. That Saturn is so
called because _se saturat annis_, he is full of years; Mavors, Mars,
because _magna vortit_, he brings about mighty changes; Minerva,
because _minuit_, she diminishes, or because _minatur_, she threatens;
Venus, because _venit ad omnia_, she comes to all; Ceres, _a gerendo_,
from bearing. How dangerous is this method! for there are many names
would puzzle you. From what would you derive Vejupiter and Vulcan?
Though, indeed, if you can derive Neptune _a nando_, from swimming, in
which you seem to me to flounder about yourself more than Neptune, you
may easily find the origin of all names, since it is founded only upon
the conformity of some one letter. Zeno first, and after him Cleanthes
and Chrysippus, are put to the unnecessary trouble of explaining mere
fables, and giving reasons for the several appellations of every Deity;
which is really owning that those whom we call Gods are not the
representations of deities, but natural things, and that to judge
otherwise is an error.

XXV. Yet this error has so much prevailed that even pernicious things
have not only the title of divinity ascribed to them, but have also
sacrifices offered to them; for Fever has a temple on the Palatine
hill, and Orbona another near that of the Lares, and we see on the
Esquiline hill an altar consecrated to Ill-fortune. Let all such errors
be banished from philosophy, if we would advance, in our dispute
concerning the immortal Gods, nothing unworthy of immortal beings. I
know myself what I ought to believe; which is far different from what
you have said. You take Neptune for an intelligence pervading the sea.
You have the same opinion of Ceres with regard to the earth. I cannot,
I own, find out, or in the least conjecture, what that intelligence of
the sea or the earth is. To learn, therefore, the existence of the
Gods, and of what description and character they are, I must apply
else