ally
considered and proclaimed to be a heretic and impious by those whom the
vulgar worship as the interpreters both of Nature and the gods. For
these know that if ignorance be removed, amazed stupidity, the sole
ground on which they rely in arguing or in defending their authority, is
taken away also. But these things I leave and pass on to that which I
determined to do in the third place.

After man has persuaded himself that all things which exist are made for
him, he must in everything adjudge that to be of the greatest importance
which is most useful to him, and he must esteem that to be of surpassing
worth by which he is most beneficially affected. In this way he is
compelled to form those notions by which he explains Nature; such, for
instance, as _good_, _evil_, _order_, _confusion_, _heat_, _cold_,
_beauty_, and _deformity_, etc.; and because he supposes himself to be
free, notions like those of _praise_ and _blame_, _sin_ and _merit_,
have arisen. These latter I shall hereafter explain when I have treated
of human nature; the former I will here briefly unfold.

It is to be observed that man has given the name _good_ to everything
which leads to health and the worship of God; on the contrary,
everything which does not lead thereto he calls _evil_. But because
those who do not understand Nature affirm nothing about things
themselves, but only imagine them, and take the imagination to be
understanding, they therefore, ignorant of things and their nature,
firmly believe an _order_ to be in things; for when things are so placed
that if they are represented to us through the senses, we can easily
imagine them, and consequently easily remember them, we call them well
arranged; but if they are not placed so that we can imagine and remember
them, we call them badly arranged or _confused_. Moreover, since those
things are more especially pleasing to us which we can easily imagine,
men therefore prefer order to confusion, as if order were something in
Nature apart from our own imagination; and they say that God has created
everything in order, and in this manner they ignorantly attribute
imagination to God, unless they mean perhaps that God, out of
consideration for the human imagination, has disposed things in the
manner in which they can most easily be imagined. No hesitation either
seems to be caused by the fact that an infinite number of things are
discovered which far surpass our imagination, and very many which
co