otion, and
governs everything. He will also be persuaded that the sun, and moon, and
all the stars, and the earth, and sea, are gods, because a certain animal
intelligence pervades and passes through them all: but nevertheless that
it will happen some day or other that all this world will be burnt up with
fire.

XXXVIII. Suppose that all this is true: (for you see already that I admit
that something is true,) still I deny that these things are comprehended
and perceived. For when that wise Stoic of yours has repeated all that to
you, syllable by syllable, Aristotle will come forward pouring forth a
golden stream of eloquence, and pronounce him a fool; and assert that the
world has never had a beginning, because there never existed any beginning
of so admirable a work from the adoption of a new plan: and that the world
is so excellently made in every part that no power could be great enough
to cause such motion, and such changes; nor could any time whatever be
long enough to produce an old age capable of causing all this beauty to
decay and perish. It will be indispensable for you to deny this, and to
defend the former doctrine as you would your own life and reputation; may
I not have even leave to entertain a doubt on the matter? To say nothing
about the folly of people who assent to propositions rashly, what value am
I to set upon a liberty which will not allow to me what is necessary for
you? Why did God, when he was making everything for the sake of man, (for
this is your doctrine,) make such a multitude of water-serpents and
vipers? Why did he scatter so many pernicious and fatal things over the
earth? You assert that all this universe could not have been made so
beautifully and so ingeniously without some godlike wisdom; the majesty of
which you trace down even to the perfection of bees and ants; so that it
would seem that there must have been a Myrmecides(12) among the gods; the
maker of all animated things.

You say that nothing can have any power without God. Exactly opposite is
the doctrine of Strato of Lampsacus, who gives that God of his exemption
from all important business. But as the priests of the gods have a
holiday, how much more reasonable is it that the gods should have one
themselves? He then asserts that he has no need of the aid of the gods to
account for the making of the world. Everything that exists, he says, was
made by Nature: not agreeing with that other philosopher who teaches, that
the uni