354 XENOPHON
Socrates. Send you counsellors ! Come now, what when the people of Athens make inquiry by oracle, and the Gods' answer comes ? Are you not an Athe- nian ? Think you not that to you also the answer is given? What 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 single 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-fear- ing ; and in the indiΛ'idual man the riper his age and judgment, the deeper his religiousness? Ah, my good sir (he broke forth), lay to heart and under- stand 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 uni- versal 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 behavior where human beings are concerned I 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
