eing
removed, no dread of the superior powers remains. To confirm this
opinion, our curiosity leads us to inquire into the form and life and
action of the intellect and spirit of the Deity.

XVIII. With regard to his form, we are directed partly by nature and
partly by reason. All men are told by nature that none but a human form
can be ascribed to the Gods; for under what other image did it ever
appear to any one either sleeping or waking? and, without having
recourse to our first notions,[87] reason itself declares the same; for
as it is easy to conceive that the most excellent nature, either
because of its happiness or immortality, should be the most beautiful,
what composition of limbs, what conformation of lineaments, what form,
what aspect, can be more beautiful than the human? Your sect, Lucilius
(not like my friend Cotta, who sometimes says one thing and sometimes
another), when they represent the divine art and workmanship in the
human body, are used to describe how very completely each member is
formed, not only for convenience, but also for beauty. Therefore, if
the human form excels that of all other animal beings, as God himself
is an animated being, he must surely be of that form which is the most
beautiful. Besides, the Gods are granted to be perfectly happy; and
nobody can be happy without virtue, nor can virtue exist where reason
is not; and reason can reside in none but the human form; the Gods,
therefore, must be acknowledged to be of human form; yet that form is
not body, but something like body; nor does it contain any blood, but
something like blood. Though these distinctions were more acutely
devised and more artfully expressed by Epicurus than any common
capacity can comprehend; yet, depending on your understanding, I shall
be more brief on the subject than otherwise I should be. Epicurus, who
not only discovered and understood the occult and almost hidden secrets
of nature, but explained them with ease, teaches that the power and
nature of the Gods is not to be discerned by the senses, but by the
mind; nor are they to be considered as bodies of any solidity, or
reducible to number, like those things which, because of their
firmness, he calls [Greek: Steremnia];[88] but as images, perceived by
similitude and transition. As infinite kinds of those images result
from innumerable individuals, and centre in the Gods, our minds and
understanding are directed towards and fixed with the greatest delight