of love for all things
living. (9)

(8) "Demiurge."

(9) Passage referred to by Epictetus ap. Stob. "Flor." 121, 29.

Soc. What shall we say of this passion implanted in man to beget
offspring, this passion in the mother to rear her babe, and in the
creature itself, once born, this deep desire of life and fear of death?

Ar. No doubt these do look like the contrivances of some one
deliberately planning the existence of living creatures.

Soc. Well, and doubtless you feel to have a spark of wisdom yourself?

Ar. Put your questions, and I will answer.

Soc. And yet you imagine that elsewhere no spark of wisdom is to be
found? And that, too, when you know that you have in your body a tiny
fragment only of the mighty earth, a little drop of the great waters,
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, (10) 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?

(10) Cf. Plat. "Phileb." 30 B: "Soc. May our body be said to have a
soul? Pro. Clearly. Soc. And whence comes that soul, my dear
Protarchus, unless the body of the universe, which contains
elements similar to our bodies but finer, has also a soul? Can
there be any other source?"--Jowett. Cic. "de N. D." ii. 6; iii.
11.

Ar. It may be, for my eyes fail to see the master agents of these, as
one sees the fabricators of things produced on earth.

Soc. 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 with intelligence, (11) but everything by chance.

(11) Or, "by your wit," {gnome}.

At this point Aristodemus: I assure you, Socrates, that I do not disdain
the Divine power. On the contrary, my belief is that the Divinity is too
grand to need any service which I could render.

Soc. But the grander that power is, which deigns to tend and wait upon
you, the more you are called upon to honour it.

Ar. Be well assured, if I could believe the gods take thought for all
men, I would not neglect them.

Soc. How can you suppose that they do not so take thought? Who, in the
first place, gave to man alone of living creatures his