see the authors of the world as I do of works which men produce here. As little do you see your own soul, said Socrates, which yet is the lord of your body, so that, taking your own logic strictly, you must conclude that you do all things by chance and nothing by calculation. Well then, said Aristodemus, the fact is that I do not despise the Divine Power,[74.1] but I esteem all Divine natures too mighty and too glorious to require any service from me. For this reason rather they justly claim our regard, said Socrates, their might and their glory being the natural measure of the honour which they ought to receive from us. Well, be assured, Socrates, that if I could only imagine that the gods had any concern for us, I should not neglect them. And do you really mean to affirm that they actually have no concern for us? Why, consider what they have done for you; in the first place giving you an erect stature, which they gave to no other animal, a stature by virtue of which you not only see better before you, but can look upwards also, and defend yourself in many ways which with downcast eyes were impossible; and in the next place, not content with giving you feet, like other animals, they have furnished {75} you with hands also, the organs by which we practise most of those acts which manifest our superiority to them;[75.1] and, to crown all, while other animals have a tongue, man alone possesses this organ of such a nature that by touching the hollow of the mouth with it in various ways he can mould the emitted voice into articulate speech, significant of what thought wishes to communicate to thought. Again, the love which is a passion that stirs other animals only at certain seasons of the year, man is capable of enjoying at all seasons; and not only do our capacities of bodily efficiency and enjoyment so far surpass those of other animals, but God (ὁ Θεός) has implanted in man a soul of the most transcendent capacity. For what other animal, I ask, has a soul which enables it to own and to acknowledge the existence of the gods, who have disposed all this mighty order of things of which we are a part? What race of animals except man pays any worship to the gods?[75.2] What animal possesses a soul so fit as that of man to guard against the inclemencies of the weather, to prevent or cure disease, to train to bodily strength or to intellectual acuteness? and what animal when it has learned anything can retain the lesson with equal tenacity? Is it not rather plain that, compared with other animals, men live really as gods upon the earth, so strikingly superior {76} are they both in bodily and intellectual endowments; for neither could a creature with man’s reason, but with the body of an ox, have been able fully to execute its purposes; nor, again, could a creature with human hands, but without human intellect, be able to go beyond the brute stage of animal life; and after all this, heaped up as you are with bounties