Sextus Empiricus: Physics 371
perceive, they have bitter and sweet sense-perceptions. For they do not
encounter sensibles through some other sense but not also through taste.
For this reason, simply to deprive god altogether of this or some other
sense is implausible. 140. For if he has more senses, man will become
better than he was, since, as Carneades said, it would be better if, in
addition to the five senses, he were to have more to provide him with
additional testimony, so that he could grasp more things, rather than to
deprive him of the five. It should be declared then that god has the sense
of taste and through this grasps tastes. 141. But if he grasps things
through taste, he has sense-perceptions
such sense-perceptions, he will be pleased by one thing, and displeased
by another. And so, being displeased by something, he will also be subject
to perturbation and change for the worse. If this is so, he is destructible.
So, if gods exist, they are destructible. Therefore, gods do not exist ....
- Further, if something divine exists, either it is limited or unlimited.
It could not be unlimited, since it would then be immobile and inanimate.
For if that which is unlimited is moved, it goes to one place from another.
That which goes from one place to another is in a place, and being in
place, it is limited. If, then, something is unlimited, it is immobile. Or,
if it is moved, then it is not unlimited. 149. According to similar reasoning,
it is inanimate. For if it is held together by a soul, it is certainly held
together by movement from the middle parts to the limits and from the
limits to the middle parts. But in the unlimited there is no middle or
limits. So, the unlimited is not animate. And for this reason, if the divine
is unlimited, it is neither moved nor animate. But the divine is moved
and is thought to partake of animation. So, the divine is not unlimited. - Nor is it limited. For since the limited is part of the unlimited
and the whole is greater than the part, it is clear that the unlimited will
be greater than the divine and will dominate the divine nature. But it is
absurd to say that there is something greater than god that dominates
the divine nature. Therefore, the divine is not limited. But if it is neither
unlimited nor limited, and there is no third possibility to conceive of,
the divine will be nothing. - Further, if the divine is something, it is either a body or incorpo-
real But it is not incorporeal, since the incorporeal is inanimate and
insensitive and not able to act; neither is it a body, since every body is
changeable and destructible, but the divine is indestructible. Therefore,
the divine does not exist. - But at least if the divine exists it is certainly an animal. And if
it is an animal, certainly it is perfectly virtuous and happy (for without
virtue happiness cannot exist). But if it is perfectly virtuous, it has all
the virtues. But it cannot have all the virtues if it does not have self-