conceived of capable of feeling pleasure, but incapable of feeling pain, since pleasure can only be known by contrast with pain, and the possibility of increasing life always supposes the possibility of lessening it? Nor is it otherwise with intelligence (εὐβουλία). He only is intelligent who always discovers what will subserve his purpose. If, however, he must discover it, it cannot have been previously known to him. Hence intelligence can only belong to a being who is ignorant about much. Such a being can never feel sure that sooner or later something will not cause his ruin. He will therefore be exposed to fear. A being susceptible of pleasure and exposed to pain, a being who has to contend with dangers and difficulties, and who feels pain and fear, must inevitably, so thought Carneades, be finite and destructible. If, therefore, we cannot conceive of God except in this form, we cannot conceive of Him at all, our conception being self-destructive. [1482] There is yet another reason, according to Carneades, why God cannot have any virtue; because virtue is above its possessor, and there can be nothing above God. [1483] Moreover, what is the position of God in regard to speech? It was easy to show the absurdity of attributing speech to Him, [1484] but to call him speechless (ἄφωνος) seemed also to be opposed to the general belief. [1485] Quite independently, however, of details, the inconceivableness of God appears, so soon as the question is raised, whether the deity is limited or unlimited, material or immaterial. God cannot be unlimited; for what is unlimited is necessarily immovable because it has no place, and soulless because by virtue of its boundlessness it cannot form a whole permeated by a soul; but God we ordinarily think of both as moving and as endowed with a soul. Nor can God be limited; for all that is limited is incomplete. Moreover, God cannot be immaterial, for Carneades, like the Stoics, held that what is immaterial possesses neither soul, feeling, nor activity. Neither can he be material, all composite bodies being liable to change and destruction, and simple bodies, fire, water, and the like, possessing neither life nor reason. [1486] If, then, all the forms under which we think of God are impossible, His existence cannot be asserted. [(γ) Polytheistic views attacked.]