[196:1] Geffcken in the Neue Jahrbücher, xxi. 162 f.
[197:1] Mullach, Fragmenta Philosophorum, iii. 7, from Stob. Flor. i. 85.
SALLUSTIUS
'ON THE GODS AND THE WORLD'[200-1]
I. What the Disciple should be; and concerning Common Conceptions.
Those who wish to hear about the Gods should have been well guided from childhood, and not habituated to foolish beliefs. They should also be in disposition good and sensible, that they may properly attend to the teaching.
They ought also to know the Common Conceptions. Common Conceptions are those to which all men agree as soon as they are asked; for instance, that all God is good, free from passion, free from change. For whatever suffers change does so for the worse or the better: if for the worse, it is made bad; if for the better, it must have been bad at first.
II. That God is unchanging, unbegotten, eternal, incorporeal, and not in space.
Let the disciple be thus. Let the teachings be of the following sort. The essences of the Gods never came into existence (for that which always is never comes into existence; and that exists for ever which possesses primary force and by nature suffers nothing): neither do they consist of bodies; for even in bodies the powers are incorporeal. Neither are they contained by space; for that is a property of bodies. Neither are they separate from the First Cause nor from one another, just as thoughts are not separate from mind nor acts of knowledge from the soul.
