Plutarch, before replying to these weighty arguments, preaches a short and eloquent sermon on the text, “God moves in a mysterious way.” His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways our ways. We must imitate the philosophic caution of the Academy. Men who never saw a battle may talk of military affairs, or discuss music who never played a note; “but it is a different thing for mere men like ourselves to peer too closely into matters that concern Divine Natures; just as if unskilled laymen were to try to penetrate the intention of an artist, the meaning of a physician’s treatment, the inner significance of a legal enactment, by fanciful guesses and surmises.... It is easier[211] for a mortal to make no definite assertion about the gods, but just this—that _He_[212] knows best the proper time to apply His treatment to wickedness. He can truly discriminate in the character of the punishment required by each offence.” These preliminary observations are in the proper Academic style; they are designed to indicate that the end of a discourse on such intricate matters can only be the modification of doubt by probability, not its settlement by absolute logical certainty.[213] The assumption of the Platonic attitude is appropriately followed by a Plutarchic reading of the teaching of Plato, who is understood as asserting that God, when he made Himself the universal pattern for all beautiful and noble things, granted human virtue to those who are able to follow Him, in order that they might thus in somewise grow like unto Him.[214] Further, as Plato says,[215] the universal nature took on order and arrangement by assimilation to and participation in the Idea and in the Virtue of the Divine Nature. Again, according to Plato, Nature gave us eyes that our soul might behold the order and harmony of the heavenly bodies, and become harmonious and ordered herself, free from flighty passions and roving propensities.[216] Becoming like God in this way, we shall emulate the mildness and forbearance with which He treats the wicked; shall eradicate from our minds the brutish passion for revenge; and shall wait to inflict our punishments until long consideration has excluded every possibility that we may repent after the deed is done. The purport of this argument, and of the examples which Plutarch, always rich in illustration, furnishes in support of it, is clearer than the need of attaching it to the Platonic scheme of creation. Plutarch believes that “God is slow to anger”; because gentleness and patience are part of His nature, and because by speedy punishment, He would save a few, but by delaying His justice He gives help and admonition to many. God, moreover, knows how much virtue He originally implanted in the heart of every man. He knows the character and inclination of every guilty soul; and His punishments are, therefore, different from human penalties, in that the latter regard the law of retaliation only, while the former