Arnobius — Against the Nations 2.58
58.1. What then? Are we alone ignorant, not knowing who is the maker of souls, who their constitutor, what cause fashioned the human, whence evils burst forth, or why the highest king suffers them both to be and to be done and does not drive them from human affairs? Have you yourselves anything of these explored and known?
2. If you wish to set out the boldness of suspicions, can you unfold and bring forth whether this world that holds us is unbegotten or constituted in some time? If constituted and made, by what kind of work or for the sake of what thing?
3. Can you bring in and explain the reason why it does not remain fixed and immobile but is always carried about in orbital motions—whether it turns itself by its own will and wish or is twisted by the pushes of some power? What is the place and space itself in which it is set and rolled—infinite, finite, empty or solid? Who sustains it, resting on outermost hinges, or rather does it support itself by its own force and hang by an inner breath?
4. Asked, can you make plain and most learnedly show what opens snow into feathery crusts; what reason and cause there was that the first day did not rise from western parts and end the light in the east; how the sun itself by one and the same contact effects such varied—nay contrary—things; what the moon is; what the stars; why it does not remain in one appearance, or why through the whole body of the world these little bits of fire had to gather and be fixed; why some of them are small, others larger and greater, these of dull light, those of sharper and shining brightness?
Latin
58.1. Quid ergo? nos soli ignoramus, nescimus, quisnam sit animarum conditor, quisnam constitutor, quae causa hominem finxerit, mala unde proruperint, vel cur ea rex summus et esse patiatur et confici neque ab rebus propellat humanis? Vos enim horum quicquam exploratum habetis et cognitum?
2. Si suspicionum exponere volueritis audaciam, potestis explicare ac promere, mundus iste qui nos habet utrumne sit (in>genitus an tempore in aliquo constitutus? Si constitutus et factus est, quonam operis genere aut rei cuius ob causam?
3. Potestis inducere atque expedire rationem, cur non fixus atque immobilis maneat sed orbito semper circumferatur in motus sua ipse <se> sponte et voluntate circumagat an virtutis alicuius inpulsionibus torqueatur? locus ipse ac spatium, in quo situs est ac volutatur, quid sit? infinitus, finitus, inanis an solidus? quis eum sustineat extremis cardinibus nitens an ipse se potius vi propria sufferat et spiritu interiore suspendat?
4. Potestis interrogati planum facere scientissimeque monstrare, quid nivem in plumeas subaperiat crustulass quidnam fuerit rationis et causae, ut non ab occiduis partibus dies primus exsurgeret et lucem in oriente finiret quemadmodum sol ipse uno eodemque contactu tam varias res efficiat, quinimmo contrariass quid sit luna? quid stellae? cur una specie aut illa non maneat, aut per somne mundi corpus frustilla haec ignea convenerit atque oportuerit figi? cur alia ex his parva, ampliora et maiora sint alia, obtunsi haec luminis, acutioris illa et fulgidae claritatis?