and blessings from all sides, will you still persist in thinking that you are a creature neglected by the gods? What, I ask, do you expect them to do for you before they shall have any just claim to your regard? I shall expect them, replied Aristodemus, to do for me what you say they do for you, to send me advisers as to what I ought to do and what I ought not to do. Be it so; and do you think that your case is not already provided for, when the gods on being consulted through divination give an answer which concerns all Athenians? or do you imagine when the Greeks, or the whole human race, are warned of coming evil by a portent, that you are specially excluded from the benefit of that divine indication? Do you imagine that the gods would have implanted in all human breasts the feeling that they are able to do us good or evil, if they did not possess this power, or that men constantly being deceived by this notion would not by this time have discovered the delusion? Have you not observed also that the wisest nations and the most stable governments are those which are the most religious, and that individual men are then most piously inclined when their reason is strongest and their passions most under control? Believe me, my dear young friend, that as your soul within you moves and manages the body even as it wills, so we ought {77} to believe that the Intelligence which indwelleth the whole of things makes and designs all things according to its good pleasure, and not to imagine that while our human eye can reach many miles in vision, the Divine eye should not be able to see all things at a glance, nor that, while your soul can manage matters not here in Athens only, but in Egypt and Sicily, the intelligence of the Divine Being (τοῦ Θεοῦ) is not able to exercise a comprehensive care at once over the whole and each individual In the same way therefore as by performing acts of kindness to men you come to learn those who are disposed to show kindness to you in return, and as by conferring with men on important matters you know who are able to give sound advice on such matters, if with this disposition you approach the gods, making trial of them if belike they are willing to reveal to you any of those things which are naturally unknown to men, then you will certainly learn by experience that the Divine nature (τὸ θεῖον) is of such a kind as to be able to see all things, and to hear all things, and to be everywhere present, and to have a providential care of all things.” So concludes this interesting dialogue, and the sympathetic reporter in winding it up adds, “The tendency of such discourses appears to me plainly to induce men to abstain from unholy and unjust and foul deeds, not only when they are seen of men, but also in a lonely wilderness, living constantly under the conviction that whatever men do, and in whatever place, they can in nowise escape the eye of the Omniscient.”