sibly accrue to the life of man; then
what reason can we have to pay any adoration, or any honors, or to
prefer any prayers to them? Piety, like the other virtues, cannot have
any connection with vain show or dissimulation; and without piety,
neither sanctity nor religion can be supported; the total subversion of
which must be attended with great confusion and disturbance in life.

I do not even know, if we cast off piety towards the Gods, but that
faith, and all the associations of human life, and that most excellent
of all virtues, justice, may perish with it.

There are other philosophers, and those, too, very great and
illustrious men, who conceive the whole world to be directed and
governed by the will and wisdom of the Gods; nor do they stop here, but
conceive likewise that the Deities consult and provide for the
preservation of mankind. For they think that the fruits, and the
produce of the earth, and the seasons, and the variety of weather, and
the change of climates, by which all the productions of the earth are
brought to maturity, are designed by the immortal Gods for the use of
man. They instance many other things, which shall be related in these
books; and which would almost induce us to believe that the immortal
Gods had made them all expressly and solely for the benefit and
advantage of men. Against these opinions Carneades has advanced so much
that what he has said should excite a desire in men who are not
naturally slothful to search after truth; for there is no subject on
which the learned as well as the unlearned differ so strenuously as in
this; and since their opinions are so various, and so repugnant one to
another, it is possible that none of them may be, and absolutely
impossible that more than one should be, right.

III. Now, in a cause like this, I may be able to pacify well-meaning
opposers, and to confute invidious censurers, so as to induce the
latter to repent of their unreasonable contradiction, and the former to
be glad to learn; for they who admonish one in a friendly spirit should
be instructed, they who attack one like enemies should be repelled. But
I observe that the several books which I have lately published[74] have
occasioned much noise and various discourse about them; some people
wondering what the reason has been why I have applied myself so
suddenly to the study of philosophy, and others desirous of knowing
what my opinion is on such subjects. I likewise perceive that many