BOOK II. V. 22-26 



and favouring the unworthy. To her is debited all 

 that is spent andcredited all that is received, she alone 

 fills both pages in the whole of mortals' account ; 

 and we are so much at the mercy of chance that 

 Chance herself, by whom God is proved uncertain, 

 takes the place of God. Another set of people 

 banishes fortune also, and attributes events to its 

 star and to the laws of birth, holding that for all men 

 that ever are to be God's decree has been enacted once 

 for all, while for the rest of time leisure has been 

 vouchsafed to Him. This belief begins to take root, 

 and the learned and unlearned mob aUke ffo marchinsr 



o o 



on towards it at the double : witness the warnings 

 drawn from hghtning, the forecasts made by oracles, 

 the prophecies of augurs, and even inconsiderable 

 trifles — a sneeze, a stumble — counted as omens. 

 His late Majesty put abroad a story that on the day 

 on which he was almost overthrown by a mutiny in 

 the army he had put his left boot on the ^\Tong foot. 

 This series of instances entanffles unforeseeinar 

 mortahty, so that among these things but one thing 

 is in the least certain — that nothing certain exists, 

 and that nothing is more pitiable, or more presump- 

 tuous, than man ! inasmuch as with the rest of hving 

 creatures their sole anxiety is for the means of Ufe, 

 in which nature's bounty of itself suffices, the one 

 blessing indeed that is actuaUy preferable to every 

 other being the fact that they do not think about 

 glory, money, ambition, and above all death. 



But it agrees with Ufe's experience to beUeve that Therot^ert 

 in these matters the gods exercise an interest in ^^'^' 

 human affairs ; and that punishment for wickedness, 

 though sometimes tardy, as God is occupied in so 

 vast a mass of things, yet is never frustrated ; and 



185 



