2. So then, since our opponents are for ever talking about our faith, we have to tell them that we allow it on the ground that it is a good thing for the many, and we confess that we teach those who cannot forsake everything else and investigate the evidence, to believe even without reasoning; and our opponents, though they would not confess so much, do the same. Could any man who has been drawn to Philosophy and has dashed into some philosophic sect, either at random, or because he has had access to some particular teacher, get thus far any other way than by believing that sect to be the best? For it is not by waiting to hear the arguments of all the philosophers and of the different sects, and by learning how some may be upset and others established, that a man chooses to be a Stoic, or a follower of Plato, or a |89 Peripatetic, or an Epicurean, or to belong to any other philosophic school; but it is by an unreasoning impulse, though they will not admit the fact, that they come, for instance, to forsake the others and adopt Stoicism: rejecting Plato's doctrine as less dignified than that of the others, or the Peripatetic system because it is more human, and more readily than others admits the blessings of mankind. And there are some who in their alarm at the faintest approach to the doctrine of Providence, arguing from what on earth befalls both bad and good, rashly conclude that there is no Providence, and take the view of Epicurus and Celsus.