28. For where there are
weddings, marriages, births, nurses, arts,4228
| 4228
i.e., either the arts which belong to each god (cf. the words in ii.
18: “these (arts) are not the gifts of science, but the
discoveries of necessity”), or, referring to the words
immediately preceding, obstetric arts. |
and weaknesses; where there are
liberty and
slavery; where there are
wounds,
slaughter, and
shedding
of blood; where there are
lusts, desires,
sensual pleasures; where
there is every mental passion arising from disgusting
emotions,—there must of necessity be nothing godlike there; nor
can that
cleave to a superior
nature which
belongs to a fleeting race,
and to the frailty of
earth. For who, if only he recognises and
perceives what the
nature of that
power is, can believe either that a
deity had the generative members, and was deprived of them by a very
base operation; or that he at one time
cut off the
children sprung from
himself, and was
punished by suffering imprisonment; or that he, in a
way, made
civil war upon his
father, and deprived him of the right of
governing; or that he, filled with
fear of one younger when overcome,
turned to flight, and hid in remote solitudes, like a fugitive and
exile? Who, I say, can believe that the
deity reclined at
men’s
tables, was
troubled on account of his avarice,
deceived
his suppliants by an ambiguous reply,
excelled in the tricks of
thieves,
committed adultery, acted as a
slave, was
wounded, and in
love, and submitted to the seduction of impure desires in all the forms
of
lust? But yet you declare all these things both were, and are,
in your gods; and you pass by no form of vice, wickedness, error,
without bringing it forward, in the wantonness of your fancies, to the
reproach of the gods. You must, therefore, either seek out other
gods, to whom all these
reproaches shall not apply, for they are
a human and earthly race to whom they apply; or if there are only these whose names
and character you have declared, by your beliefs you do away with
them: for all the things of which you speak relate to
men.
E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
