142 l/-23
ting] them, it is not the nature of the gods which erred, but human in-
ference.
And so the general issue is agreed upon by all people of all nations;
for in the minds of all there is an inborn and, as it were, engraved
[conviction] that there are gods. 13. There is disagreement about what
they are like, but no one denies that they exist. Cleanthes, [a leader of]
our [school] said that four causes accounted for the formation of concep-
tions of the gods in the minds of men. First, he cited the cause I was
just mentioning, which is derived from the premonition of future events;
second, one we have derived from the magnitude of the benefits we
receive from our temperate climate, the fertility of the land and the
bounty of many other benefits; 14. third, one which strikes fear into our
minds because of thunderbolts, storms, cloudbursts, snowstorms, hail,
natural devastation, plagues, earthquakes and underground rumblings,
showers of stones and blood-coloured raindrops, and monstrosities which
violate nature, whether human or animal, and flashes of light seen in the
sky, and the stars which the Greeks call 'comets' and we [Romans] call
'curly-haired' [stars] ... when frightened by these men came to believe
that there is a certain divine power in the heavens; 15. the fourth cause,
and also the most effective, is the regularity of the motions and revolutions
of the heaven, and the distinctive and varied, yet orderly beauty of the
sun, moon and all the stars; just looking at them indicates clearly enough
that these things are not the result of chance. When someone goes
into a house or gymnasium or public forum and sees the orderliness of
everything, and its regularity and systematic character, he cannot judge
that these things happen with no cause, but he understands that there
is someone who is in charge and runs things; in the same way, but much
more so, in the midst of so many motions and changes, and the orderly
patterns of so many things of such great size which since the beginning
of time have never belied themselves, one must decide that natural mo-
tions on such a scale are governed by some intelligence.
- For all his intellectual acuity, Chrysippus nevertheless puts these
points in such a way that they seem to be the teachings of nature and
not his own discoveries. "If," he says, "there is something in nature
which the human mind, reason, strength and power cannot accomplish,
then certainly that which does accomplish it is better than man; but the
heavenly bodies and everything which is part of the eternal natural order
cannot be created by man; therefore, that by which they are created is
better than man; but what would you call this thing if not god? Indeed,
if there are no gods, what can there be in nature which is better than
man? For reason exists in man alone, and there is nothing more splendid
than that; but it is arrogant lunacy for there to be a man who supposes