352 XENOPHON
it would seem, which is nowhere to be found, you had the lucky chance to snatch up and make off with, you cannot tell how. And these things around and about us, enormous in size, infinite in number, owe their orderly arrangement, as you suppose, to some vacuity of wit?
AHstodemus. It may be, for my eyes fail to see the master agents of these, as one sees the fabricators of things produced on earth.
Socrates. No more do you see your own soul, which is the master agent of your body ; so that, as far as that goes, you may maintain, if you like, that you do nothing wath intelligence, but everything by chance.
At this point Aristodemus : I assure you, Socrates, that I do not disdain the Divine power. On the con- trary, my belief is that the Divinity is too grand to need any service which I could render.
Socrates. But the grander that power is, which deigns to tend and wait upon you, the more you are called upon to honor it.
Aristodemus. Be well assured, if I could believe the gods take thought at all for men, I would not neglect them.
Socrates. How can you suppose that they do not so take thought? Who, in the first place, gave to man alone of living creatures his erect posture, ena- bling him to see farther in front of him and to con- template more freely the height above, and to be less subject to distress than other creatures endowed like himself with eyes and ears and mouth. Consider next how they gave to the beast of the field feet as a means of progression only, but to man they gave in addition hands — those hands which have achieved so much to raise us in the scale of happiness above all
