But you Stoics, so far from refuting them, even give them authority by the mysterious sense which you pretend to find in them.

Can you, then, think, after this plain refutation, that there is need to employ more subtle reasonings?
But to return from this digression.
XXIV.

We see that the mind, faith, hope, virtue, honor, victory, health, concord, and things of such kind, are purely natural, and have nothing of divinity in them; for either they are inherent in us, as the mind, faith, hope, virtue, and concord are; or else they are to be desired, as honor, health, and victory.

I know indeed that they are useful to us, and see that statues have been religiously erected for them; but as to their divinity, I shall begin to believe it when you have proved it for certain.

Of this kind I may particularly mention Fortune, which is allowed to be ever inseparable from inconstancy and temerity, which are certainly qualities unworthy of a divine being.
But what delight do you take in the explication of fables, and in the etymology of names ?--that Coelus was castrated by his son, and that Saturn was bound in chains by his son! By your defence of these and such like fictions you would make the authors of them appear not only not to be madmen, but to have been even very wise.