s his opinion that the arguments of
the Stoic seemed to him to have "the greater probability". It was the
great tenet of the school which he most affected, that probability was the
nearest approach that man could make to speculative truth. "We are not
among those", he says, "to whom there seems to be no such thing as truth;
but we say that all truths have some falsehoods attached to them which
have so strong a resemblance to truth, that in such cases there is no
certain note of distinction which can determine our judgment and assent.
The consequence of which is that there are many things probable; and
although they are not subjects of actual perception to our senses, yet
they have so grand and glorious an aspect that a wise man governs his life
thereby".[1] It remained for one of our ablest and most philosophical
Christian writers to prove that in such matters probability was
practically equivalent to demonstration.[2] Cicero's own form of
scepticism in religious matters is perhaps very nearly expressed in the
striking anecdote which he puts, in this dialogue, into the mouth of the
Epicurean.

[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. i. 5.]

[Footnote 2: "To us, probability is the very guide of life".--Introd. to
Butler's Analogy.]

"If you ask me what the Deity is, or what his nature and attributes are,
I should follow the example of Simonides, who, when the tyrant Hiero
proposed to him the same question, asked a day to consider of it. When the
king, on the next day, required from him the answer, Simonides requested
two days more; and when he went on continually asking double the time,
instead of giving any answer, Hiero in amazement demanded of him the
reason. 'Because', replied he, 'the longer I meditate on the question, the
more obscure does it appear'".[1]

[Footnote 1: De Nat. Deor. i. 22.]

The position of Cicero as a statesman, and also as a member of the College
of Augurs, no doubt checked any strong expression of opinion on his part
as to the forms of popular worship and many particulars of popular belief.
In the treatise which he intended as in some sort a sequel to this
Dialogue on the 'Nature of the Gods'--that upon 'Divination'--he states
the arguments for and against the national belief in omens, auguries,
dreams, and such intimations of the Divine will.[1] He puts the defence
of the system in the mouth of his brother Quintus, and takes himself the
destructive side of the argument: but whether this was meant to gi