Now, celestial bodies, and all those things which proceed in any eternal order, cannot be made by man; the being who made them is therefore preferable to man.

What, then, is that being but a God?
If there be no such thing as a Deity, what is there better than man, since he only is possessed of reason, the most excellent of all things?
But it is a foolish piece of vanity in man to think there is nothing preferable to him.

There is, therefore, something preferable; consequently, there is certainly a God." When you behold a large and beautiful house, surely no one can persuade you it was built for mice and weasels, though you do not see the master; and would it not, therefore, be most manifest folly to imagine that a world so magnificently adorned, with such an immense variety of celestial bodies of such exquisite beauty, and that the vast sizes and magnitude of the sea and land were intended as the abode of man, and not as the mansion of the immortal Gods?
Do we not also plainly see this, that all the most elevated regions are the best, and that the earth is the lowest region, and is surrounded with the grossest air?
so that as we perceive that in some cities and countries the capacities of men are naturally duller, from the thickness of the climate, so mankind in general are affected by the heaviness of the air which surrounds the earth, the grossest region of the world.
Yet even from this inferior intelligence of man we may discover the existence of some intelligent agent that is divine, and wiser than ourselves; for, as Socrates says in Xenophon, from whence had man his portion of understanding?
And, indeed, if any one were to push his inquiries about the moisture and heat which is diffused through the human body, and the earthy kind of solidity existing in our entrails, and that soul by which we breathe, and to ask whence we derived them, it would be plain that we have received one thing from the earth, another from liquid, another from fire, and another from that air which we inhale every time that we breathe.
VII.

But where did we find that which excels all these things--I mean reason, or (if you please, in other terms) the mind, understanding, thought, prudence; and from whence did we receive it?
Shall the world be possessed of every other perfection, and be destitute of this one, which is the most important and valuable of all?
But certainly there is nothing better, or more excellent, or more beautiful than the world; and not only there is nothing better, but we cannot even conceive anything superior to it; and if reason and wisdom are the greatest of all perfections, they must necessarily be a part of what we all allow to be the most excellent.
Who is not compelled to admit the truth of what I assert by that agreeable, uniform, and continued agreement of things in the universe?
Could the earth at one season be adorned with flowers, at another be covered with snow?
Or, if such a number of things regulated their own changes, could the approach and retreat of the sun in the summer and winter solstices be so regularly known and calculated?
Could the flux and reflux of the sea and the height of the tides be affected by the increase or wane of the moon?
Could the different courses of the stars be preserved by the uniform movement of the whole heaven?
Could these things subsist, I say, in such a harmony of all the parts of the universe without the continued influence of a divine spirit?
If these points are handled in a free and copious manner, as I purpose to do, they will be less liable to the cavils of the Academics; but the narrow, confined way in which Zeno reasoned upon them laid them more open to objection; for as running streams are seldom or never tainted, while standing waters easily grow corrupt, so a fluency of expression washes away the censures of the caviller, while the narrow limits of a discourse which is too concise is almost defenceless; for the arguments which I am enlarging upon are thus briefly laid down by Zeno: VIII.

"That which reasons is superior to that which does not; nothing is superior to the world; the world, therefore, reasons." By the same rule the world may be proved to be wise, happy, and eternal; for the possession of all these qualities is superior to the want of them; and nothing is superior to the world; the inevitable consequence of which argument is, that the world, therefore, is a Deity.