Does anyone doubt that the sun and the moon in their periodic revolutions exercise an influence upon this abiding-place of the human race? That the heat of the one gives life to our bodies, loosens the hard earth, reduces excessive moisture, and breaks off the bonds of gloomy winter that enchains all things, while the warmth of the other with its efficacious and pervasive power determines the ripening of the crops? That there is some relation between human fecundity and the course of the moon? That the one by its circuit marks out the year, and the other, moving in a smaller orbit, the month? Yet, although these advantages should be removed, would not the sun itself form a fitting spectacle for our eyes, and be worthy of our adoration if it merely passed across the sky? Would not the moon be a sight worthy of our eyes even if it traversed heaven as idly as a star? And the firmament itself — who is not held spellbound by it whenever it pours forth its fires by night and glitters with its horde of countless stars? Who, when he marvels at them, stops to think of their utility to himself? Behold the mighty company as it glides by overhead, how, under the appearance of an organism that is immovable and at rest, its members conceal from us their speed. How much takes place in that night of which we take note only for the purpose of numbering and distinguishing the days! What a multitude of events is being unrolled beneath this silence! What a chain of destiny is being traced by their unerring path! These bodies, which you imagine have been strewn about for no other purpose than for ornament, are one and all at work. For there is no reason why you should suppose that there are only seven wandering stars, and that all the others are fixed; there are a few whose movements we apprehend, but, farther removed from our sight, are countless divinities19 a that go their rounds, and very many of those that our eyes can reach proceed at an imperceptible pace and veil their movements.