public revenues or in the army, yet that in all these things the gods
have reserved to themselves the most important events, into which men of
themselves can in no wise penetrate. Thus he who makes a fine plantation
of trees, knows not who shall gather the fruit; he who builds a house
cannot tell who shall inhabit it; a general is not certain that he shall
be successful in his command, nor a Minister of State in his ministry; he
who marries a beautiful woman in hopes of being happy with her knows not
but that even she herself may be the cause of all his uneasinesses; and
he who enters into a grand alliance is uncertain whether they with whom
he allies himself will not at length be the cause of his ruin. This made
him frequently say that it is a great folly to imagine there is not a
Divine Providence that presides over these things, and that they can in
the least depend on human prudence. He likewise held it to be a weakness
to importune the gods with questions which we may resolve ourselves; as
if we should ask them whether it be better to take a coachman who knows
how to drive than one who knows nothing of the matter? whether it be more
eligible to take an experienced pilot than one that is ignorant? In a
word, he counted it a kind of impiety to consult the oracles concerning
what might be numbered or weighed, because we ought to learn the things
which the gods have been pleased to capacitate us to know; but that we
ought to have recourse to the oracles to be instructed in those that
surpass our knowledge, because the gods are wont to discover them to such
men as have rendered them propitious to themselves.

Socrates stayed seldom at home. In the morning he went to the places
appointed for walking and public exercises. He never failed to be at the
hall, or courts of justice, at the usual hour of assembling there, and
the rest of the day he was at the places where the greatest companies
generally met. There it was that he discoursed for the most part, and
whoever would hear him easily might; and yet no man ever observed the