“Attack the silence of Pythagoras, and the Orphic beans, and that preposterous brag, "Himself has spoken." Attack the "Ideas" of Plato, and the transbodiment and circulation of our souls, and the reminiscences, and the unlovely loves of lovely bodies, though directed to the beloved's soul. Attack the atheism of Epicurus, and his atoms, and his doctrine of pleasure, unworthy of a philosopher; or Aristotle's petty Providence, and his artificial system, and his discourses about the mortality of the soul, and the exclusively human focus his teaching. Attack the haughtiness of the Stoa, or the greed and vulgarity of the Cynic. Attack for me the emptiness that is full of absurdities - all that stuff about the gods and the sacrifices and the idols and the demons, whether beneficent or malignant, and all the tricks that people play with divination, the calling up of gods or of souls, and the power of stars.”