Page:The religion of Plutarch, a pagan creed of apostolic times; an essay (IA religionofplutar00oakeiala).pdf/175

 other gifts consecrated in the Temple. On this subject Philinus asserts his firm belief that "all the sacred offerings at Delphi are specially moved by divine forethought to the indication of futurity, and that no fragment of them is dead and irresponsive, but all are filled with divine power." Boethus, as a newly converted Epicurean, makes a mock of this view, this "identification of Apollo with brass and stone, as if chance were not quite competent to account for such coincidences," and he subsequently enlarges his view as follows:—"What possible condition of temporal affairs, my friend, cannot be assigned to natural causes? What strange and unexpected event, occurring by sea or by land, to cities or to individual men, could one predict without some chance of hitting the mark? Yet you would hardly call this prediction; it would be merely assertion, or, rather, the dissemination at random, into the abyss of infinity, of bare words without any guiding principle leading them to a particular end, words which, as they wander about, are sometimes met by chance events which correspond with them." And Boethus continues to insist that, though some predictions may have by accident come true, the original assertions were not the less false on that