Things settled down, and promised to be very much as they were before. At least so the Governor thought. We, outside the palace, were not quite so sanguine. But anyhow, what struck me to-day was the similarity between the military oath of these Christians and the military oath prescribed by our great Teacher to his Cynics.” “But,” said I, “does it not seem to you that our military oath ought to be a positive one, namely, that we Cynics will go anywhere and do anything that the General may command—and not a negative one, that we will abstain from grumbling against His orders?” Arrian replied, “As to that, I think our Master follows Socrates, who expressly says that he had indeed a daemon, or at all events a daemonic voice; but that it told him only what to avoid, not what to do.” “Surely,” replied I, “what Socrates said on his trial was, ‘How could I be fairly described as introducing new daemons when saying that _a voice of God manifestly points out to me what I ought to do_?’” “I do not remember that,” said my friend, “but we are near my rooms. Come in and let us look into Plato’s Apologia.” So we went in, and Arrian took out of his book-case Plato’s account of the Speech of Socrates before the jury that condemned him to death. “There, Silanus,” said he, “you see I was right.” And he pointed to these words, “There comes to me, as you have often heard me say, a divine and daemonic something, which indeed my prosecutor Meletus mentioned and burlesqued in his written indictment. This thing, in its commencement, dates back (I believe) from my boyhood, a kind of Voice that comes to me from time to time, and, whenever it comes, it always”—“Mark this,” said Arrian—“_turns me back from doing that (whatever it may be) which I am purposing to do, but never moves me forward_.” I seemed fairly and fully confuted. But suddenly it occurred to me to ask my friend to let me see Xenophon’s version of the same speech. He brought it out. I was not long before I disinterred the very words that I have quoted above, “_a Voice of God that manifestly points out to me what I ought to do_.” And the context, too, indicated that the Voice—which he calls _daemonic_, or a _daemonion_—gave positive directions, recognised as such by his friends.