Instruct me, then, concerning their origin; inform me where they are, what sort of body, what mind, they have, and what is their course of life; for these I am desirous of knowing.

You attribute the most absolute power and efficacy to atoms.
Out of them you pretend that everything is made.

But there are no atoms, for there is nothing without body; every place is occupied by body, therefore there can be no such thing as a vacuum or an atom.
XXIV.

I advance these principles of the naturalists without knowing whether they are true or false; yet they are more like truth than those statements of yours; for they are the absurdities in which Democritus, or before him Leucippus, used to indulge, saying that there are certain light corpuscles--some smooth, some rough, some round, some square, some crooked and bent as bows--which by a fortuitous concourse made heaven and earth, without the influence of any natural power.

This opinion, C.Velleius, you have brought down to these our times; and you would sooner be deprived of the greatest advantages of life than of that authority; for before you were acquainted with those tenets, you thought that you ought to profess yourself an Epicurean; so that it was necessary that you should either embrace these absurdities or lose the philosophical character which you had taken upon you; and what could bribe you to renounce the Epicurean opinion?
Nothing, you say, can prevail on you to forsake the truth and the sure means of a happy life.
But is that the truth?
for I shall not contest your happy life, which you think the Deity himself does not enjoy unless he languishes in idleness.