re are no gods at all. What
reverence, what love, or what fear can men have of beings who neither wish
them, nor can work them, good or ill? Is idleness the divinest life? "Why,
'tis the very heaven of schoolboys; yet the schoolboys, on their holiday,
employ themselves in games". Nay, he concludes, what the Stoic Posidonius
said of your master Epicurus is true--"He believed there were no gods, and
what he said about their nature he said only to avoid popular odium". He
could not believe that the Deity has the outward shape of a man, without
any solid essence; that he has all the members of a man, without the power
to use them; that he is a shadowy transparent being, who shows no favour
and confers no benefits on any, cares for nothing and does nothing; this
is to allow his existence of the gods in word, but to deny it in fact.

Velleius compliments his opponent on his clever argument, but desires that
Balbus would state his views upon the question. The Stoic consents; and,
at some length, proceeds to prove (what neither disputant has at all
denied) the existence of Divine beings of some kind. Universal belief,
well-authenticated instances of their appearance to men, and of the
fulfilment of prophecies and omens, are all evidences of their existence.
He dwells much, too, on the argument from design, of which so much use has
been made by modern theologians. He furnishes Paley with the idea for his
well-known illustration of the man who finds a watch; "when we see a dial
or a water-clock, we believe that the hour is shown thereon by art, and
not by chance".[1] He gives also an illustration from the poet Attius,
which from a poetical imagination has since become an historical incident;
the shepherds who see the ship Argo approaching take the new monster for a
thing of life, as the Mexicans regarded the ships of Cortes. Much more,
he argues, does the harmonious order of the world bespeak an intelligence
within. But his conclusion is that the Universe itself is the Deity; or
that the Deity is the animating Spirit of the Universe; and that the
popular mythology, which gives one god to the Earth, one to the Sea, one
to Fire, and so on, is in fact a distorted version of this truth. The very
form of the universe--the sphere--is the most perfect of all forms, and
therefore suited to embody the Divine.

[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. ii. 34. Paley's Nat. Theol. ch. i.]

Then Cotta--who though, as Pontifex, he is a national priest by vo