“Very well! let them stop moving if they can,” you say. But you really mean this: “Let all the heavenly bodies, separated as they are by vast distances and appointed to the task of guarding the cosmos, leave their posts; let sudden confusion arise, let stars clash with stars, let the harmony of the world be destroyed, and the divine creations totter to destruction; let the heavenly mechanism, moving as it does with the swiftest speed, abandon in the midst of its course the progressions that had been promised for so many ages, and let the heavenly bodies that now, as they alternately advance and retreat, by a timely balancing keep the world at an equable temperature be suddenly consumed by flames, and, with their infinite variations broken up, let them all pass into one condition; let fire claim all things, then let sluggish darkness take its place, and let these many gods10 be swallowed up in the bottomless abyss.” Is it worth while to cause all this destruction in order to convince you? They do you a service even against your will, and for your sake they follow their courses even if these result from some earlier and more important cause.