ÉPINOMIS

as all other animals. Moreover, we can convince ourselves that they are animated bodies by paying attention to their size. It is not true that they are as small as they appear to us; on the contrary, their mass is of a prodigious magnitude. One cannot refuse to believe this, for it is supported by sufficient demonstrations. Thus, one would not be mistaken to represent the body of the sun as larger than that of the earth; the other celestial bodies also possess a magnitude that surpasses the imagination. Now, what nature, I ask you, could imprint upon such enormous masses a circular movement that has lasted constantly for so many centuries, just as it is today? I maintain that God alone is the cause of such an effect, or that the thing is not possible otherwise. For, as we have demonstrated, a body cannot become animated by any power other than that of God; and since this is possible for God, nothing has been easier for Him than to animate a body—any mass whatsoever—and subsequently to prescribe to it such movement as He deemed most appropriate. In a word, to tell the whole truth on this subject, it is impossible that the earth, the sky, all the constellations, and the masses that compose them move with such precision according to the years, months, and days, and are for us all the source of all goods, unless each of these bodies has near it or within it a soul that directs it. The more man is contemptible in comparison to these great bodies, the more it is fitting that he not spout fantasies in this regard, and that he say nothing that is not intelligible. Now, it is to say nothing intelligible to attribute the cause of these movements to some force or other inherent in the bodies, to certain properties, or to something similar.