PART I: CONCERNING GOD.
Page: 36

conclude that it has been fashioned, not mechanically, but by
divine and supernatural skill, and has been so put together that
one part shall not hurt another.

Hence anyone who seeks for the true causes of miracles, and
strives to understand natural phenomena as an intelligent being,
and not to gaze at them like a fool, is set down and denounced
as an impious heretic by those, whom the masses adore as the
interpreters of nature and the gods. Such persons know that,
with the removal of ignorance, the wonder which forms their only
available means for proving and preserving their authority would
vanish also. But I now quit this subject, and pass on to my
third point.

After men persuaded themselves, that everything which is created
is created for their sake, they were bound to consider as the
chief quality in everything that which is most useful to
themselves, and to account those things the best of all which
have the most beneficial effect on mankind. Further, they were
bound to form abstract notions for the explanation of the nature
of things, such as goodness, badness, order, confusion, warmth,
cold, beauty, deformity, and so on; and from the belief that
they are free agents arose the further notions of praise and
blame, sin and merit.

I will speak of these latter hereafter, when I treat of human
nature; the former I will briefly explain here.

Everything which conduces to health and the worship of God they
have called good, everything which hinders these objects they
have styled bad; and inasmuch as those who do not understand the
nature of things do not verify phenomena in any way, but merely
imagine them after a fashion, and mistake their imagination for
understanding, such persons firmly believe that there is an
order in things, being really ignorant both of things and their
own nature. When phenomena are of such a kind, that the
impression they make on our senses requires little effort of
imagination, and can consequently be easily remembered, we say
that they are well-ordered; if the contrary, that they are
ill-ordered or confused. Further, as things which are easily