The Obsolesence of Oracles (29)

Then again, who could feel alarm at the other notions of the Stoics, who ask how there shall continue to be one Destiny and one Providence, and how there shall not be many supreme gods bearing the name of Zeus or Zen, if there are more worlds than one? For, in the first place, if it is preposterous that there should be many supreme gods bearing this name, then surely these persons’ ideas will be far more preposterous; for they make an infinite number of suns and moons and Apollos and Artemises and Poseidons in the infinite cycle of worlds. But the second point is this: what is the need that there be many gods bearing the name of Zeus, if there be more worlds than one, and that there should not be in each world, as pre-eminent governor and ruler of the whole, a god possessing sense and reason, such as the one who among us bears the name of Lord and Father of all? Or again, what shall prevent all worlds from being subject to the Destiny and Providence of Zeus, and what shall prevent his overseeing and directing them all in turn and supplying them all with first principles, material sources, and schemes of all that is being carried out? Do we not in this world of ours often have a single body composed of separate bodies,[*] as, for example, an assembly of people or an army or a band of dancers, each one of whom has the contingent faculty of living, thinking, and learning, as Chrysippus[*] believes, while in the whole universe, that there should be ten worlds, or fifty, or an hundred even, living under one reasoned plan, and organized under one government, is an

impossibility? Yet such an organization is altogether appropriate for the gods. For we must not make them unable to go out, like the queens in a hive of bees, nor keep them imprisoned by enclosing them with matter, or rather fencing them about with it, as those[*] do who make the gods to be atmospheric conditions, or regard them as powers of waters or of fire blended therewith, and bring them into being at the same time with the world, and burn them up with it, since they are not unconfined and free like drivers of horses or pilots of ships, but, just as statues are riveted and welded to their bases, so they are enclosed and fastened to the corporeal; and are partners with it even unto destruction, dissolution, and transmutation, of whatsoever sort may befall.