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knowledge of divine and human things, if men exist but gods do not.
But it is absurd to say that wisdom does not exist. Therefore, it is absurd
to hold that gods do not exist.
- Further, if justice has been introduced for the sake of the interrela-
tion of men with each other and with gods, if gods do not exist, neither
will justice endure. And that is absurd .... - Zeno offered this sort of argument. One might reasonably honour
the gods.There-
fore, gods exist. Some counter this argument by saying that one might
reasonably honour wise men; but one might not reasonably honour non-
existent things; therefore, wise men exist. But this was not acceptable to
the Stoics, for according to them, the wise man is hitherto undiscovered. - Opposing this counter-argument, Diogenes of Babylon says that the
second premiss of Zeno's argument is implicitly this: one might not
reasonably honour things whose nature it is not to exist. For understand-
ing [the premiss] in this way, it is clear that the gods are of such a nature
as to exist. 135. And if so, then they thereby exist. For if once they
existed, they exist now, just as, if atoms once existed, they exist now.
For such things are indestructible and ungenerated, according to our
conception of their bodies. Therefore, the argument will conclude with
a consistent logical connection. But wise men, even though they are of
such a nature as to exist, do not thereby exist. 136. Others say that Zeno's
first premiss, one might reasonably honour the gods, is ambiguous. For
in one sense it means that it may be reasonable for someone to worship
gods, but in another sense it means someone may hold them in high
regard. The premiss is to be taken in the former sense, in which case it
will be false as applied to wise men. - Such is the character of the arguments furnished by the Stoics
and by the disciples of other systems on behalf of the existence of gods.
We should show next that those who teach the non-existence of gods
are not inferior to these in persuasiveness, because of the equal force of
their arguments. - If, then, gods exist, they are living things. And by the same
argument the Stoics employed to teach that the cosmos is an animal, one
may establish that god is an animal. For that which is an animal is better
than that which is not; nothing is better than god; therefore, god is an
animal. Supporting this argument is the common conception of men,
since ordinary people, poets, and the majority of the best philosophers
testify to the fact that god is an animal. So the logical consistency of the
argument is secured. 139. For if gods exist, they are animals. But if they
are animals, they have sense-perception, for every animal is conceived
of as an animal in virtue of its partaking in sense-perception. But if they