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[1] 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 universe is a concrete mass of rough and smooth, and hooked and crooked bodies, with the addition of a vacuum: this he calls a dream of Democritus, and says that he is here not teaching, but wishing;—but he himself, examining each separate part of the world, teaches that whatever exists, and whatever is done, is caused, or has been caused, by natural weights and motions. In this way he releases God from a great deal of hard work, and me from fear; for who is there who, (when he thinks that he is an object of divine care,) does not feel an awe of the divine power day and night? And who, whenever any misfortunes happen to him (and what man is there to whom none happen?) feels a dread lest they may have befallen him deservedly—not, indeed, that I agree with that; but neither do I with you: at one time I think one doctrine more probable, and at other times I incline to the other.
XXXIX. All these mysteries, O Lucullus, lie concealed and enveloped in darkness so thick that no human ingenuity
- ↑ From μύρμηξ an ant.
