196. "_Socrates._ Nay; do we not see also, in comparing man with man, strange differences in their powers and imbecilities? for complete manhood, compared with utter infancy, as of a child five or ten days old, has difference in power, which we may well call miraculous: and when we see man excel man so far, what shall we say that the strength of the whole heaven must appear, against ours, to those who can see them together, so as to compare them? Also, to you and me, and to many like us, sundry things are impossible that are easy to other people; as singing to those ignorant of music, and reading or writing to those ignorant of letters;--more impossible than to make women birds, or birds of women. For Nature, as with chance throw, and rough parable, making the form of a footless and wingless beast in changeable matter; then putting on feet and wings, and making it glitter all over with fair variegation and manifold colour, at last brings out, for instance, the wise bee, maker of the divine honey; and out of the voiceless and spiritless egg she brings many kinds of flying and foot-going and swimming creatures, using besides (as runs the old Logos) the sacred art of the great Aether.[H] We then, being altogether mortal and mean, and neither able to see clearly great things nor small, and, for the most part being unable to help ourselves even in our own calamities,--what can we have to say about the powers of the immortals, either over halcyons or nightingales? But the fame of fable such as our fathers gave it to us, this, to my children, O thou bird singing of sorrow, I will deliver concerning thy hymns: and I myself will sing often of this religious and human love of thine, and of the honour thou hast for it from the Gods. Wilt not thou do likewise, O Chaerephon? "_Chaerephon._ It is rightly due indeed, O Socrates, for there is two-fold comfort in this, both for men and women, in their relations with each other. "_Socrates._ Shall we not then salute the halcyon, and so go back to the city by the sands, for it is time? "_Chaerephon._ Indeed let us do so." [H] Note this sentence respecting the power of the creative Athena.