of the Gods; for such as they are discovered to be, he, who would please and obey them, must try with all his power to be like them. If the divine is faithful, man also must be faithful; if it is free, man also must be free; if beneficent, man also must be beneficent; if magnanimous, man also must be magnanimous; as being then an imitator of God he must do and say every thing consistently with this fact.
With what then must we begin? If you will enter on the discussion, I will tell you that you must first understand names[1] (words).—So then you say that I do not now understand names.—You do not understand them.—How then do I use them?—Just as the illiterate use written language, as cattle use appearances: for use is one thing, understanding is another. But if you think that you understand them, produce whatever word you please, and let us try whether we understand it.—But it is a disagreeable thing for a man to be confuted who is now old, and, it may be, has now served his three campaigns.—I too know this: for now you are come to me as if you were in want of nothing: and what could you even imagine to be wanting to you? You are rich, you have children and a wife perhaps, and many slaves: Caesar
- ↑ See ii. 10, i. 17. 12, ii. 11. 4, etc. M. Antoninus, x. 8.
certain intellectual powers which enable him to form a judgment of God's works, and a judgment of man himself. Man has or is supposed to have certain moral sentiments, or a capacity of acquiring them in some way. On the supposition that all man's powers are the gift of God, man's power of judging what happens in the world under God's providence is the gift of God; and if he should not be satisfied with God's administration, we have the conclusion that man, whose powers are from God, condemns that administration which is also from God. Thus God and man, who is God's work, are in opposition to one another.
If a man rejects the belief in a deity and in a providence, because of the contradictions and difficulties involved in this belief or supposed to be involved in it, and if he finds the contradictions and difficulties such as he cannot reconcile with his moral sentiments and judgments, he will be consistent in rejecting the notion of a deity and of providence. But he must also consistently admit that his moral sentiments and judgments are his own, and that he cannot say how he acquired them, or how he has any of the corporeal or intellectual powers which he is daily using. By the hypothesis they are not from God. All then that a man can say is that he has such powers.
