Excellent Souls

Excellent souls are the causes of all of:

• the stars
• the moon
• the years and months and seasons

Those souls are Gods, whether they are living beings and reside in bodies.

In this way, they order the whole heaven, or whatever be the place and mode of their existence.

All things are full of Gods.

Megillus and Cleinias, let us offer terms to those who have denied the existence of the Gods, and leave him.

Either he shall teach us that we were wrong in saying that the soul is the original of all things or he must yield to us and believe that there are Gods.

Some believe that there are Gods but they take no heed of human affairs.

Perhaps you have seen corrupt men growing old and leaving their children’s children in high offices.

Their prosperity shakes your faith.

So from some lack of reasoning power, and also from an unwillingness to find fault with them, you have come to believe that Gods exist but have no thought or care of human things.

Now, that your present evil opinion may not grow to still greater impiety, and that we may if possible use arguments which may conjure away the evil before it arrives, we will add another argument to that originally addressed to him who utterly denied the existence of the Gods.

Do you, Megillus and Cleinias, answer for the young man as you did before; and if any impediment comes in our way, I will take the word out of your mouths, and carry you over the river as I did just now.

There will probably be no difficulty in proving to him that the Gods care about the small as well as about the great. For he was present and heard what was said, that they are perfectly good, and that the care of all things is most entirely natural to them.

What is this virtue of the Gods?

Surely God does not have a nature which He Himself hates?

Should we not on any principle be entirely mistaken in praising any one who has some special business entrusted to him, if he have a mind which takes care of great matters and no care of small ones?

Reflect; he who acts in this way, whether he be God or man, must act from one of two principles.

Either he must think that the neglect of the small matters is of no consequence to the whole, or if he knows that they are of consequence, and he neglects them, his neglect must be attributed to carelessness and indolence. Is there any other way in which his neglect can be explained? For surely, when it is impossible for him to take care of all, he is not negligent if he fails to attend to these things great or small, which a God or some inferior being might be wanting in strength or capacity to manage?

Some say that Gods exist but do not care for small matters.

The Gods have all power which mortals and immortals can have and are good and perfect.

So how can the Gods ever act in carelessly and indolently?

Then the alternative which remains is, that if the

It follows that Gods neglect the lighter and lesser concerns of the universe.

They neglect them because they know that they should not care about such matters.

Does it mean that the Gods are careless because they are ignorant, and do not know that they should care?

Do not all human things partake of the nature of soul? And is not man the most religious of all animals?

We acknowledge that all mortal creatures are the property of the Gods, to whom also the whole of heaven belongs?

Therefore, whether a person says that these things are to the Gods great or small—in either case it would not be natural for the Gods who own us, and who are the most careful and the best of owners, to neglect us. There is also a further consideration.

Sensation and power are in an inverse ratio to each other in respect to their ease and difficulty.

I mean that there is greater difficulty in seeing and hearing the small than the great, but more facility in moving and controlling and taking care of small and unimportant things than of their opposites.

Suppose the case of a physician who is willing and able to cure some living thing as a whole—how will the whole fare at his hands if he takes care only of the greater and neglects the parts which are lesser?

No better would be the result with pilots or generals, or householders or statesmen, or any other such class, if they neglected the small and regarded only the great—as the builders say, the larger stones do not lie well without the lesser.

Let us not, then, deem God inferior to human workmen, who, in proportion to their skill, finish and perfect their works, small as well as great, by one and the same art; or that God, the wisest of beings, who is both willing and able to take care, is like a lazy good-for-nothing, or a coward, who turns his back upon labour and gives no thought to smaller and easier matters, but to the greater only.