In the variety of his communication on social duties he could not easily, and perhaps he did not desire entirely, to avoid either religious or political subjects; hazardous, both of them, under the jealous tyranny of democracy. It remains a question how far he was subject to superstition; but his honesty is so authenticated that it seems fairer to impute to him some weakness in credulity than any intention to deceive. If we may believe his own account, reported by his two principal disciples, he believed himself divinely impelled to the employment to which he devoted his life, inquiring and teaching the duty of man to man. A divine spirit, in his idea, constantly attended him; whose voice, distinctly heard, never expressly commanded what he was indisposed to do, but frequently forbade what he had intended. To unveil the nature of Deity was not among his pretensions. He only insisted on the perfect goodness and perfect wisdom of the Supreme God, the creator of all things, and the constant superintendence of his providence over the affairs of men. As included in these, he held that everything done, said, or merely wished by men, was known to the Deity, and that it was impossible he could be pleased with evil. The unity of God, though implied in many of his reported discourses, he would not in direct terms assert; rather carefully avoiding to dispute the existence of the multifarious gods acknowledged in Greece; but he strongly denied the weaknesses, vices, and crimes commonly imputed to them. Far however from proposing to innovate in forms of worship and religious ceremonies, so various in the different Grecian states, and sources of more doubt and contention than any other circumstances of the heathen religion, he held that men could not, in these matters, do wrong if they followed the laws of their own country and the institutions of their forefathers. He was therefore regular in sacrifice, both upon the public altars and in his family. He seems to have been persuaded that the Deity, by various signs, revealed the future to men; in oracles, dreams, and all the various ways usually acknowledged by those conversant in the reputed science of augury. “Where the wisdom of men cannot avail,” he said, “we should endeavour to gain information from the gods; who will not refuse intelligible signs to those to whom they are propitious.” Accordingly he consulted oracles himself, and he recommended the same practice to others, in every doubt on important concerns.