Some one asked Epictetus one day how we can be sure that all our actions are under the inspection of God. "Do you think," said Epictetus, "that all things are a unity?" (_i.e._ in the polity of the cosmos). "Yes." "Well then, do you not think that things earthly are in sympathy (_sympathein_) with things heavenly?" "Yes." Epictetus reminded his listener of the harmony of external nature, of flowers and moon and sun. "But are leaves and our bodies so bound up and united with the whole, and are not our souls much more? and are our souls so bound up and in touch with God (_synapheis to theo_) as parts of Him and portions of Him, and can it be that God does not perceive every motion of these parts as being His own motion cognate with Himself (_symphyous_)?"[85] He bade the man reflect upon his own power of grasping in his mind ten thousand things at once under divine administration; "and is not God able to oversee all things, and to be present with them, and to receive from all a certain communication?" The man replied that he could not comprehend all these things at once. "And who tells you this--that you have equal power with Zeus? Nevertheless, he has placed by every man a guardian (_epitropon_), each man's {59} Daemon, to whom he has committed the care of the man, a guardian who never sleeps, is never deceived. For to what better and more careful watch (_phylaki_) could He have entrusted each of us? When then you (plural) have shut your doors and made darkness within, remember never to say that you are alone, for you are not; but God is within and your Daemon (Greek: _ho hymeteros daimon_); and what need have they of light to see what you are doing?"[86] Here another feature occurs--the question of the daemons. Seneca once alludes to the idea--"for the present," he writes to Lucilius, "set aside the view of some people, that to each individual one of us a god is given as a pedagogue, not indeed of the first rank, but of an inferior brand, of the number of those whom Ovid calls 'gods of the lower order' (_de plebe deos_); yet remember that our ancestors who believed this were so far Stoics, for to every man and woman they gave a _Genius_ or a _Juno_. Later on we shall see whether the gods have leisure to attend to private people's business."[87] But before we pursue a side issue, which we shall in any case have to examine at a later point, let us look further at the central idea.