when they send portents to forewarn the states of Hellas? or to all
mankind? Are you not a man? a Hellene? Are not these intended for you
also? Can it be that you alone are excepted as a signal instance of
Divine neglect? Again, do you suppose that the gods could have
implanted in the heart of man the belief in their capacity to work him
weal or woe had they not the power? Would not men have discovered the
imposture in all this lapse of time? Do you not perceive that the
wisest and most perdurable of human institutions--be they cities or
tribes of men--are ever the most God-fearing; and in the individual
man the riper his age and judgment, the deeper his religousness? Ay,
my good sir (he broke forth), lay to heart and understand that even as
your own mind within you can turn and dispose of your body as it
lists, so ought we to think that the wisdom which abides within the
universal frame does so dispose of all things as it finds agreeable to
itself; for hardly may it be that your eye is able to range over many
a league, but that the eye of God is powerless to embrace all things
at a glance; or that to your soul it is given to dwell in thought on
matters here or far away in Egypt or in Sicily, but that the wisdom
and thought of God is not sufficient to include all things at one
instant under His care. If only you would copy your own behaviour[16]
where human beings are concerned. It is by acts of service and of
kindness that you discover which of your fellows are willing to
requite you in kind. It is by taking another into your counsel that
you arrive at the secret of his wisdom. If, on like principle, you
will but make trial of the gods by acts of service, whether they will
choose to give you counsel in matters obscure to mortal vision, you
shall discover the nature and the greatness of Godhead to be such that
they are able at once to see all things and to hear all things and to
be present everywhere, nor does the least thing escape their watchful
care.