Nay, I will ask you what is chance? Is it a body? Is it a spirit? Is it a being distinguished from all other beings, having a peculiar existence or dwelling in any place; or, rather, is it not a mode or fashion of being? When a ball rolls against a stone, we are apt to say it is a chance; but is it anything more than an accidental hitting of these bodies one against another? If, by this chance, or this knock, the ball changes its straight course into an oblique one; if its motion from direct becomes reflected; if it ceases to roll on its axis, but winds and whirls about like a top, shall I from thence infer that motion in general proceeds in this ball from this same chance? Shall I not rather apprehend that the ball owes it to itself, or to the impulse of the arm which delivered it? Or, because the circular motions of the wheels of a clock are determined one by the other, in their degrees of swiftness, shall I be less anxious to find out what may be the cause of these several motions; whether it lies in the wheels themselves, or is derived from the moving force of a weight which sets them in motion? But neither these wheels nor this ball could produce this motion in themselves, nor do they owe it to their own nature, if they can be deprived of it, without changing this very nature; it is, therefore, likely they are moved extraneously and by some power not inherent to them. And as for the celestial bodies, if they should be deprived of their motion, would their nature then be altered, and would they cease being bodies? I cannot believe they would. Yet they move, and as they move not of themselves, nor by their own nature, it behoves us, Lucilius, to examine whether there is not some principle, not inherent to them, which causes this motion. Whatever you may find it, I call it God. If we should suppose these great bodies to be without motion, we should not then ask who moves them, but still the question would be pertinent as to who made these bodies, as I may ask who made these wheels or that ball? And though each of these bodies were supposed to be but a mass of atoms, fortuitously knit together through the shape and conformation of their parts, I should take one of these atoms, and ask: “Who created this atom: is it matter; is it spirit; and has it any idea of itself?” If so, then it existed a minute before it did exist; it was, and it was not at the same time; and if it be the author of its own being, and of its manner of being, why did it make itself a body rather than a spirit? Moreover, has this atom had a beginning, or is it eternal, infinite, and will you make a God of this atom?[888]