“To those who ask, Where hast thou seen the gods, or how dost thou comprehend that they exist and so worshipest them?  I answer, in the first place, that they may be seen even with the eyes; in the second place, neither have I seen my own soul, and yet I honor it.  Thus then with respect to the gods, from what I constantly experience of their power, from this I comprehend that they exist, and I venerate them.” (xii. 28, and the note.  Comp.  Aristotle de Mundo, c. 6; Xen.  Mem. i. 4, 9; Cicero, Tuscul. i. 28, 29; St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans, i. 19, 20; and Montaigne’s Apology for Raimond de Sebonde, ii. c. 12.) This is a very old argument, which has always had great weight with most people, and has appeared sufficient.  It does not acquire the least additional strength by being developed in a learned treatise.  It is as intelligible in its simple enunciation as it can be made.  If it is rejected, there is no arguing with him who rejects it:  and if it is worked out into innumerable particulars, the value of the evidence runs the risk of being buried under a mass of words.

Man being conscious that he is a spiritual power, or that he has such a power, in whatever way he conceives that he has it—­for I wish simply to state a fact—­from this power which he has in himself, he is led, as Antoninus says, to believe that there is a greater power, which, as the old Stoics tell us, pervades the whole universe as the intellect[A] ([Greek:  nous]) pervades man. (Compare Epictetus’ Discourses, i. 14; and Voltaire a Mad^e.  Necker, vol. lxvii., p. 278, ed.  Lequien.)

[A] I have always translated the word [Greek:  nous], “intelligence” or “intellect.”  It appears to be the word used by the oldest Greek philosophers to express the notion of “intelligence” as opposed to the notion of “matter.”  I have always translated the word [Greek:  logos] by “reason,” and [Greek:  logikos] by the word “rational,” or perhaps sometimes “reasonable,” as I have translated [Greek:  noeros] by the word “intellectual.”  Every man who has thought and has read any philosophical writings knows the difficulty of finding words to express certain notions, how imperfectly words express these notions, and how carelessly the words are often used.  The various senses of the word [Greek:  logos] are enough to perplex any man.  Our translators of the New Testament (St. John, c. 1.) have simply translated [Greek:  ho logos] by “the word,” as the Germans translated it by “das Wort;” but in their theological writings they sometimes retain the original term Logos.  The Germans have a term Vernunft, which seems to come nearest to our word Reason, or the necessary and absolute truths which we cannot conceive as being other than what they are.  Such are what some people have called the laws of thought, the conceptions of space and of time, and axioms or first principles, which need no proof and cannot be proved or denied.  Accordingly the Germans can say, “Gott ist