THE NATURE OF THE GODS. 225XVI. Thus far have I been rather exposing the dreams of dotards than giving the opinions of philosophers. Not much more absurd than these are the fables of the poets, who owe all their power of doing harm to the sweetness of their language; who have represented the Gods as enraged with anger and inflamed with lust; who have brought before our eyes their wars, battles, combats, wounds ; their hatreds, dissensions, discords, births, deaths, complaints, and lamentations; their indulgences in all kinds of intemperance; their adulteries; their chains; their amours with mortals, and mortals begotten by im mortals. To these idle and ridiculous flights of the poets we may add the prodigious stories invented by the Magi, and by the Egyptians also, which were of the same nature, together with the extravagant notions of the multitude at all times, who, from total ignorance of the truth, are al ways fluctuating in uncertainty.

Now, whoever reflects on the rashness and absurdity of these tenets must inevitably entertain the highest respect and veneration for Epicurus, and perhaps even rank him in the number of those beings who are the subject of this dispute; for he alone first founded the idea of the exist ence of the Gods on the impression which nature herself hath made on the minds of all men. For what nation, what people are there, who have not, without any learning, a natural idea, or prenotion, of a Deity ? Epicurus calls this Trp6T)4/ic ; that is, an antecedent conception of the fact in the mind, without which nothing can be understood, in quired after, or discoursed on ; the force and advantage of which reasoning we receive from that celestial volume of Epicurus concerning the Rule and Judgment of Things.

XVII. Here, then, you see the foundation of this ques tion clearly laid ; for since it is the constant and universal opinion of mankind, independent of education, custom, or law, that there are Gods, it must necessarily follow that this knowledge is implanted in our minds, or, rather, in nate in us. That opinion respecting which there is a gen eral agreement in universal nature must infallibly be true ; therefore it must be allowed that there are Gods ; for in tliis we have the concurrence, not only of almost all phi losophers, but likewise of the ignorant and illiterate. It