What shall I say in reply to such shameless effrontery?
What I have been yearning to hear from you this long time: how you came to believe in the providence of the gods.
I was convinced of it first by the order of natural events: the sun who always travels the same road and the moon similarly, and the recurring seasons, and the growth of plants, and the birth of animals, and these animals themselves so ingeniously contrived that they feed themselves and reason, and move about and walk, and build houses and make shoes, and all the rest of it. Do not these seem to you the works of providence?
Why, Timokles, you have assumed the
very question in dispute, for it remains to be seen.
whether each of these is accomplished by providence. That natural events are such as you describe I, too, admit, but it does not follow of
necessity that they owe their existence to any intelligent foresight. For it is possible that they
had some other origin, and yet have now a consistent and methodical existence. But this forced
action of theirs you call 'order,' and then, forsooth, you fly into a rage if some one rejects your
argument when, after recounting and praising the
nature of objects, you go on to believe that this
is a proof that each of them is also put in its