meaning that the act of generation admits not only of vice and virtue, but also of grief and joy and the rest, and therefore he would bring men cheerful and pleasant and open-hearted to the task? But the other matter does not come out of Hesiod, nor is it the effect of human wisdom, but of the God, [Sidenote: B] to see through likenesses and differences of temperament, before they stand revealed by a plunge through the passions into great crimes. For the cubs of bears while still tiny, and the young of wolves and apes, show at once the character of their kind, there is no disguise or pretence; but the nature of man is plunged at once into customs and rules and laws, and often conceals the bad points and imitates the good, so that the inborn stain of vice is entirely effaced and removed, or else is undetected for a long time; it assumes a sheath or cloke of [Sidenote: C] cleverness, which we fail to see through. We perceive the wickedness with an effort each time that the blow or prick of the several misdoings touches us. In a word, we think that men become unjust when they commit an injustice, become intemperate when they do a violence, become cowardly when they run away. It is as though we should think that the scorpion grows a sting when he strikes, or vipers their venom when they bite, which would be simple indeed! Take any single bad man, he does not become bad when he appears bad; he has the vice from the first, but it comes out as he gets opportunity and power, the thief, of thieving, the born tyrant, of forcing the laws. But God, by his own nature, apprehends [Sidenote: D] soul better than body; and we may be sure that he is neither ignorant of the disposition and nature of each, nor waits to punish violence of the hands, or insolence of the tongue, or profligacy of the body. For he has himself suffered no wrong; is not angry with the robber because he has met with violence, does not hate the profligate because he has been assaulted; but, as a remedial measure, he often chastises the man whose tendency is to adulterous crime, or to greed, or to injustice, thus destroying vice before it has taken hold, as he might an epilepsy. XXI. ‘Yet we were indignant a little while ago, that the wicked are punished so late and so slowly. And now we complain [Sidenote: E] because God sometimes cuts short the habit and disposition before any wrong is done, not knowing that the thing to come is often worse and more alarming than the thing done, what is hidden than what is apparent, and unable to calculate the reasons why it is better to leave some alone even after they have committed an offence, and to be beforehand with others who are still meditating one; exactly as drugs are of no use for certain persons when sick, but are of service to others who are not actually sick, but are in a state still more dangerous. [Sidenote: F] So it is not always a case of