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SECTION V.
The doubt mentioned by you in the next place, is, as I may say, an inquiry which is made in common both by the learned and the unlearned, I mean concerning sacrifices, "what utility or power they possess in the universe, and with the Gods, and on what account they are performed, appropriately indeed to the powers who are honoured by them, but usefully to those by whom the gifts are offered." In the same place, also, another objection occurs, viz. "that the interpreters of prophecies and oracles ought to abstain from animals, lest the Gods should be polluted by the vapours arising from them. For this is contrary to the assertion, that the Gods are especially allured by the vapours of animals."
The hostile opposition, therefore, in the things that are now proposed, may be easily dissolved by demonstrating the dignity of wholes with
