to know, not only how the good and the honourable are many, but also how
they are one? 'Yes, certainly.' The true guardian of the laws ought to
know their truth, and should also be able to interpret and execute them?
'He should.' And is there any higher knowledge than the knowledge of the
existence and power of the Gods? The people may be excused for following
tradition; but the guardian must be able to give a reason of the faith
which is in him. And there are two great evidences of religion--the
priority of the soul and the order of the heavens. For no man of
sense, when he contemplates the universe, will be likely to substitute
necessity for reason and will. Those who maintain that the sun and the
stars are inanimate beings are utterly wrong in their opinions. The
men of a former generation had a suspicion, which has been confirmed
by later thinkers, that things inanimate could never without mind have
attained such scientific accuracy; and some (Anaxagoras) even in those
days ventured to assert that mind had ordered all things in heaven; but
they had no idea of the priority of mind, and they turned the world,
or more properly themselves, upside down, and filled the universe
with stones, and earth, and other inanimate bodies. This led to
great impiety, and the poets said many foolish things against the
philosophers, whom they compared to 'yelping she-dogs,' besides making
other abusive remarks. No man can now truly worship the Gods who does
not believe that the soul is eternal, and prior to the body, and the
ruler of all bodies, and does not perceive also that there is mind
in the stars; or who has not heard the connexion of these things with
music, and has not harmonized them with manners and laws, giving a
reason of things which are matters of reason. He who is unable to
acquire this knowledge, as well as the ordinary virtues of a citizen,
can only be a servant, and not a ruler in the state.