Memorabilia

to virtue as a theorist, he was incapable of acting as their guide himself.75 It would be well for those who adopt this view to weigh carefully not only what Socrates effected “by way of castig

ide whether he was incapable o

ttle,” as he was called, on the topic of divinity.77 Socrates had observed that Aristodemus neither

are there any human beings who have

Ther

u mention to

er. . . . And as a dithyrambic poet for Melanippides.78 I admire also Sop

ashioner of senseless images devoid of motion or one who could f

ving creatures owed their birth to design

clue as to what it is for, and the other is obviously for some useful pu

produced for some useful

this closing of the delicate orbs of sight with eyelids as with folding doors, which, when there is need to use them for any purpose, can be thrown wide open and firmly closed again in sleep? and, that even the winds of heaven may not visit them too roughly, this planting of the eyelashes as a protecting screen?80 this coping of the region above the eyes with cornice-work of eyebrow so that no drop of sweat fall from the head and injure them? again this readiness of the ear to catch all sounds and yet not to be surcharged? this capacity

would seem to be the handiwork of some wise ar

fspring, this passion in the mother to rear her babe, and in the cr

trivances of some one deliberately plan

s you feel to have a sp

uestions, and

and of the other elements, vast in their extent, you got, I presume, a particle of each towards the compacting of your bodily frame? Mind alone, it would seem, which is nowhere to be found,84 you had the luck

e master agents of these, as one sees the

your body; so that, as far as that goes, you may maintain, if you li

disdain the Divine power. On the contrary, my belief is that th

ch deigns to tend and wait upon you, th

elieve the gods take thought for

iculate speech, and have a code of signals to express our every want to one another. Or consider the pleasures of the sexual appetite; limited in the rest of the animal kingdom to certain seasons, but in the case of man a series prolonged unbroken to old age. Nor did it content the Godhead merely to watch over the interests of man’s body. What is of far higher import, he implanted in man the noblest and most excellent type of soul. For what other creature, to begin with, has a soul to appreciate the existence of the gods who have arranged this grand and beauteous universe? What other tribe of animals save man can render service to the gods? How apt is the spirit of man to take precautions against hunger and thirst, cold and heat, to alleviate disease and foster stren

ou, and send me counsellors to warn me what I am t

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

liness, baseness, and injustice, not only whilst they were seen of men, but even in the solita

(protrepsasthai) in the art of stimulating people to virtue negatively but scarcely the man to guide (proagein) his hearers on the true path himself.” Cf. (

e fellow who never wore any shoes, Aristode

he divine

30 B.C. See Cobet,

mal.” 1. For the “teleologica

sieve” or

ich goeth o

Demi

to by Epictetus ap.

s that soul, my dear Protarchus, unless the body of the universe, which contains elements similar to our b

y your wi

or an attempt t

cal” word. Cf. “Od.”

. “de Part. An

IV. i

ou are wont to do.”