No sane man fears the gods; for it is madness to fear what is beneficial, and no one loves those whom he fears. You, Epicurus, in the end leave God unarmed, you have stripped him of all his weapons, of all his power, and, in order that no one may have need to fear him, you have thrust him beyond the range of fear. Surrounded, therefore, as he is, by a vast and impassable wall, and removed beyond the reach and sight of mortals, you have no reason to stand in awe of him; he has no means of bestowing either blessing or injury; in the space that separates our own from some other heaven16 he dwells alone, without a living creature, without a human being, without a possession, and avoids the destruction of the worlds that crash around and above him, having no ear for our prayers and no concern for us. And yet you wish to seem to worship this being, from a feeling of gratitude, I suppose, as if he were a father; or, if you do not wish to seem grateful, because you have from him not a single benefit, but are yourself merely a combination of atoms17 and of those mites of yours that have met blindly and by chance, why do you worship him? “Because of his glorious majesty,” you say, “and his exceptional nature.” Granting that you do this, you clearly do it without the inducement of any reward, of any expectation; there is, therefore, something that is desirable in itself, whose very worth induces you, that is, the honorable. But what is more honorable than gratitude? The opportunity for this virtue is limited only by life.