(For here I think I may without offence adapt slightly Plato’s language where he says that the man, and especially the king, best equipped for this life is he who depends on God for all that relates to happiness, and does not hang in suspense on other men, whose actions, whether good or bad, are liable to force him and his affairs out of the straight path.(318) And though no one should allow me to paraphrase or change that passage or alter that word,(319) and though I should be told that I must leave it undisturbed like something holy and consecrated by time, even in that case I shall maintain that this is what that wise man meant. For when he says “depends on himself,” assuredly he does not refer to a man’s body or his property, or long descent, or distinguished ancestors. For these are indeed his belongings, but they are not the man himself; his real self is his mind, his intelligence, and, in a word, the god that is in us. As to which, Plato elsewhere calls it “the supreme form of the soul that is within us,” and says that “God has given it to each one of us as a guiding genius, even that which we say dwells in the summit of our body and raises us from earth towards our celestial affinity.”(320) It is on this that he plainly says every man ought to depend, and not on other men, who have so often succeeded when they wish to harm and hinder us in other respects. Indeed it has happened before now that even without such a desire men have deprived us of certain of our possessions. But this alone cannot be hindered or harmed, since “Heaven does not permit the bad to injure what is better than itself.”(321) This saying also is from Plato. But it may be that I am wearying you with these doctrines of his with which I sprinkle my own utterances in small quantities, as with salt or gold dust. For salt makes our food more agreeable, and gold enhances an effect to the eye. But Plato’s doctrines produce both effects. For as we listen to them they give more pleasure than salt to the sense, and they have a wonderful power of sweetly nourishing and cleansing the soul. So that I must not hesitate or be cautious of criticism if someone reproaches me with being insatiable and grasping at everything, like persons at a banquet who, in their greed to taste every dish, cannot keep their hands from what is set before them.(322) For something of this sort seems to happen in my case when, in the same breath, I utter panegyric and philosophic theories, and, before I have done justice to my original theme, break off in the middle to expound the sayings of philosophers. I have had occasion before now to reply to those who make such criticisms as these, and perhaps I shall have to do so again.)