Cleo. Give me leave: There can, I say, be no greater proof of this, than the second commandment, which palpably points at all the absurdities and abominations which the ill-guided fear of an invisible cause had already made, and would still continue to make men commit; and in doing this, I can hardly think, that any thing but Divine Wisdom could, in so few words, have comprehended the vast extent and sum total of human extravagancies, as it is done in that commandment: For there is nothing so high or remote in the firmament, nor so low or abject upon earth, but some men have worshipped it, or made it one way or other the object of their superstition.
Hor.——Crocodilon adorat
Pars hæc: illa pavet saturam serpentibus Ibin.
Effigias sacri nitet aurea Cercopitheci.
A holy monkey! I own it is a reproach to our species, that ever any part of it should have adored such a creature as a god. But that is the tip-top of folly, that can be charged on superstition.
Cleo. I do not think so; a monkey is still a living creature, and consequently somewhat superior to things inanimate.
Hor. I should have thought mens adoration of the sun or moon infinitely less absurd than to have seen them fall down before so vile, so ridiculous an animal.
Cleo. Those who have adored the sun and moon never questioned, but they were intelligent as well as glorious beings. But when I mentioned the word inanimate, I was thinking on what the same poet you quoted said of the veneration men paid to leeks and onions, deities they raised in their own gardens.
Porrum & cepe nefas violare, & frangere morsu:
O sanctas genteis, quibus hæc nascuntur in hortis