VIII.—THE UNCHANGEABLE NATURE OF GOD.
Do you think that God is like a vulgar conjuror, and that he is capable for the sake of effect, of assuming, at one time, one form, and at another time, another? Now, in his own character, converting his proper form into a multitude of shapes, now deceiving us, and offering vain images of himself to our imagination? Or do you think that God is single and one, and least of all things capable of departing from his permanent nature and appearance?
IX.—THE PERMANENCY OF WHAT IS EXCELLENT.
But everything, in proportion as it is excellent, either in art or nature, or in both, is least susceptible of receiving change from any external influence.
X.—AGAINST SUPERSTITIOUS TALES.
Nor should mothers terrify their children by these fables, that Gods go about in the night-time, resembling strangers, in all sorts of forms: at once blaspheming the Gods and rendering their children cowardly.
XI.—THE TRUE ESSENCE OF FALSEHOOD AND ITS ORIGIN.
Know you not that, that which is truly false, if it may be permitted me so to speak, all, both gods and men detest?—How do you mean?—Thus: No person is willing to falsify in matters of the highest concern to himself concerning those matters, but fears, above all things, lest he should accept falsehood.—Yet, I understand you not.—You think that I mean something profound. I say that no person is willing in his own mind to receive or to assert a falsehood, to be ignorant, to be in error, to possess that which is not true. This is truly to be called falsehood, this ignorance and error in the mind itself. What is usually called falsehood, or deceit in words, is but a voluntary imitation of what the mind itself suffers in the involuntary possession of that falsehood, an image of later birth, and scarcely, in a strict and complete sense, deserving the name of falsehood.—Lib. ii.
XII.—AGAINST A BELIEF IN HELL.
If they are to possess courage, are not those doctrines alone to be taught, which render death least terrible? Or do you conceive that any man can be brave who is subjected to a fear of death? that he who believes the things that are related of hell, and thinks that they are truth, will prefer in battle, death to slavery, or defeat?—Lib. iii.—Then follows a criticism on the poetical accounts of hell.