Zeno, therefore, the chief of your sect, advances no argument sufficient to induce us to think that the world reasons, or, indeed, that it is animated at all, and consequently none to think it a Deity; though it may be said that there is nothing superior to it, as there is nothing more beautiful, nothing more useful to us, nothing more adorned, and nothing more regular in its motions.

But if the world, considered as one great whole, is not God, you should not surely deify, as you have done, that infinite multitude of stars which only form a part of it, and which so delight you with the regularity of their eternal courses; not but that there is something truly wonderful and incredible in their regularity; but this regularity of motion, Balbus, may as well be ascribed to a natural as to a divine cause.
X.What can be more regular than the flux and reflux of the Euripus at Chalcis, the Sicilian sea, and the violence of the ocean in those parts[247] where the rapid tide Does Europe from the Libyan coast divide?
The same appears on the Spanish and British coasts.

Must we conclude that some Deity appoints and directs these ebbings and flowings to certain fixed times?
Consider, I pray, if everything which is regular in its motion is deemed divine, whether it will not follow that tertian and quartan agues must likewise be so, as their returns have the greatest regularity.

These effects are to be explained by reason; but, because you are unable to assign any, you have recourse to a Deity as your last refuge.
The arguments of Chrysippus appeared to you of great weight; a man undoubtedly of great quickness and subtlety (I call those quick who have a sprightly turn of thought, and those subtle whose minds are seasoned by use as their hands are by labor): "If," says he, "there is anything which is beyond the power of man to produce, the being who produces it is better than man.

Man is unable to make what is in the world; the being, therefore, that could do it is superior to man.