I have cited at length these passages because I think that they exhibit clearly the opinions and convictions of Socrates on the most important of all subjects. We behold here a man of a very religious mind, holding with the utmost tenacity the idea of a Providence, the Benefactor of men and their Judge, since it discriminates between them by reward and punishment: nor is it an impersonal Providence, an abstract Reason, but “a wise world-maker,” who loves man and does him good, and whose operations in this very purpose of doing him good indicate unity of design and perfection of execution: and yet in his conception of the godhead itself he halts between unity and plurality, and beside a statement such as we might read in a Pauline epistle of the one God who orders in harmony the universe and holds it together, we find him passing to the recognition and worship of many gods: beside words to his judges most sublime and most pathetic, concerning the issue of life and of death, we find him with his last breath directing his friend to discharge the sacrifice of a cock which he had promised to Æsculapius. He does not attempt to solve either the rational or the moral antagonism between many gods and one; but practically he throws himself into the worship of his country, referring to the law of each place as that which should determine for ever man the question how the gods are to be honoured. And in this I believe that he is typical of the whole race of philosophers at whose head he stands. Like him they spoke of one God, and they offered the cock to Æsculapius. If we seek the highest expressions concerning the divine unity, wisdom, and power which are to be found in their writings, they approach S. Paul: if we consider other expressions, and above all, their practice, it is in the main that other word of Socrates, Worship according to the law of your country. In the doctrine attributed to him both by Xenophon and Aristotle, that he identified virtue and prudence, and believed that no man is willingly wicked, but only out of ignorance, we have a proof which can scarcely be exceeded in force how entirely the standing-point of Socrates was that above attributed to the Greek mind in general, that of a religion according to nature. It ignores in the most emphatic because in the most unconscious way the inclination to evil in man. The relation between God and man is simply that of greater and less. There is a physical affinity and a numerical proportion between that mighty nature which is ruled through all its length and breadth by a pervading reason, and the portion of it contained in man’s body and soul.(358)