llors to warn me what I am to do and what abstain from doing, (15)
I will believe.

(15) See IV. iii. 12.

Soc. Send you counsellors! Come now, what when the people of Athens make
inquiry by oracle, and the gods' answer comes? Are you not an Athenian?
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 signal 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-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 not sufficient to include all
things at one instant under His care. If only you would copy your
own behaviour (16) where human beings are concerned. 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 by taking another into your
counsel that you arrive at the secret of his wisdom. If, on like
principle, you will but make trial of the gods by acts of service,
whether they will choose to give you counsel in matters obscure to
mortal vision, you shall discover the nature and the greatness of
Godhead to be such that they are able at once to see all things and to
hear all things and to be present everywhere, nor does the least thing
escape their watchful care.

(16) Or, "reason as you are wont to do."

To my mind the effect of words like these was to cause those about him
to hold aloof from unholiness, baseness, and