PART I: CONCERNING GOD.
Page: 33

instance, eyes for seeing, teeth for chewing, herbs and animals
for yielding food, the sun for giving light, the sea for
breeding fish, &c., they come to look on the whole of nature as a
means for obtaining such conveniences. Now as they are aware,
that they found these conveniences and did not make them, they
think they have cause for believing, that some other being has
made them for their use. As they look upon things as means, they
cannot believe them to be self-created; but, judging from the
means which they are accustomed to prepare for themselves, they
are bound to believe in some ruler or rulers of the universe
endowed with human freedom, who have arranged and adapted
everything for human use. They are bound to estimate the nature
of such rulers (having no information on the subject) in
accordance with their own nature, and therefore they assert that
the gods ordained everything for the use of man, in order to
bind man to themselves and obtain from him the highest honor.
Hence also it follows, that everyone thought out for himself,
according to his abilities, a different way of worshipping God,
so that God might love him more than his fellows, and direct the
whole course of nature for the satisfaction of his blind cupidity
and insatiable avarice. Thus the prejudice developed into
superstition, and took deep root in the human mind; and for this
reason everyone strove most zealously to understand and explain
the final causes of things; but in their endeavor to show that
nature does nothing in vain, i.e. nothing which is useless to
man, they only seem to have demonstrated that nature, the gods,
and men are all mad together. Consider, I pray you, the result:
among the many helps of nature they were bound to find some
hindrances, such as storms, earthquakes, diseases, &c.: so they
declared that such things happen, because the gods are angry at
some wrong done to them by men, or at some fault committed in
their worship. Experience day by day protested and showed by
infinite examples, that good and evil fortunes fall to the lot
of pious and impious alike; still they would not abandon their