fashioned, not mechanically, but by divine and supernatural
skill, and has been so put together that one part shall not hurt
another.
Hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and
strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being,
and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced as
an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the
interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that,
with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only
available means for proving and preserving their authority would
vanish also. But I now quit this subject, and pass on to my
third point.
After men persuaded themselves, that everything which is
created is created for their sake, they were bound to consider as
the chief quality in everything that which is most useful to
themselves, and to account those things the best of all which
have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they were
bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature
of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth,
cold, beauty, deformity, and so on ; and from the belief that
they are free agents arose the further notions of praise and
blame, sin and merit.
I will speak of these latter hereafter, when I treat of human
nature ; the former I will briefly explain here.
Everything which conduces to health and the worship of God
they have called good, everything which hinders these objects
they have styled bad ; and inasmuch as those who do not
understand the nature of things do not verify phenomena in any
way, but merely imagine them after a fashion, and mistake their
imagination for understanding, such persons firmly believe that