represents the gods as corporeal Beings in human likeness has been much derided; thus Cicero, for instance, in the passage quoted (c. 18) laughs at Epicurus for alleging that the gods have only _quasi_ bodies, flesh and blood. But from this there follows only that they are, as it were, the implicit, as we see it stated of the soul and things palpable to the senses, that they have behind them what is implicit. Our talk of qualities is no better; for if justice, goodness, and so on, are to be taken _in sensu eminentiori_, and not as they are with men, we have in God a Being in the same way possessed of only something resembling justice and the other qualities. With this there is closely connected the theory of Epicurus that the gods dwell in vacant space, in the intermediate spaces of the world, where they are exposed neither to rain or wind or snow or the like.[165] For the intermediate spaces are the vacuum, wherein, as the principle of movement, are the atoms in themselves. Worlds, as phenomena, are complete continuous concretions of such atoms, but concretions which are only external relations. Between them, as in vacuum, there are thus these Beings also, which themselves are certainly concretions of atoms, but concretions which remain implicit. Yet this leads only to confusion, if a closer definition is given, for concretion constitutes what is for the senses, but the gods, even if they were concretions, would not be realities exactly such as these. In illogical fashion the general, the implicit, is taken out of reality and set above it, not as atoms, but just as before, as a combination of these atoms; in this way this combination is not itself the sensuous. This seems ridiculous, but it is connected with the interruptions spoken of, and with the relation of the vacuum to the plenum, the atom. So far, therefore, the gods belong to the category of negativity as against sensuality, and as this negative is thought, in that sense what Epicurus said of the gods may still to some extent be said. To this determination of God a larger measure of objectivity of course belongs, but it is a perfectly correct assertion that God, as Thought, is a holy Being, to whom reverence is due for His own sake alone. The first element in a happy life is therefore reverence for the gods, uninfluenced by fear or hope.