ut upon doing them and
atoning for them. When lawgivers profess that they are gentle and not
stern, we think that they should first of all use persuasion to us, and
show us the existence of Gods, if not in a better manner than other men,
at any rate in a truer; and who knows but that we shall hearken to you?
If then our request is a fair one, please to accept our challenge.

CLEINIAS: But is there any difficulty in proving the existence of the
Gods?

ATHENIAN: How would you prove it?

CLEINIAS: How? In the first place, the earth and the sun, and the stars
and the universe, and the fair order of the seasons, and the division of
them into years and months, furnish proofs of their existence, and also
there is the fact that all Hellenes and barbarians believe in them.

ATHENIAN: I fear, my sweet friend, though I will not say that I much
regard, the contempt with which the profane will be likely to assail us.
For you do not understand the nature of their complaint, and you fancy
that they rush into impiety only from a love of sensual pleasure.

CLEINIAS: Why, Stranger, what other reason is there?

ATHENIAN: One which you who live in a different atmosphere would never
guess.

CLEINIAS: What is it?

ATHENIAN: A very grievous sort of ignorance which is imagined to be the
greatest wisdom.

CLEINIAS: What do you mean?

ATHENIAN: At Athens there are tales preserved in writing which the
virtue of your state, as I am informed, refuses to admit. They speak of
the Gods in prose as well as verse, and the oldest of them tell of the
origin of the heavens and of the world, and not far from the beginning
of their story they proceed to narrate the birth of the Gods, and how
after they were born they behaved to one another. Whether these stories
have in other ways a good or a bad influence, I should not like to be
severe upon them, because they are ancient; but, looking at them with
reference to the duties of children to their parents, I cannot praise
them, or think that they are useful, or at all true. Of the words of the
ancients I have nothing more to say; and I should wish to say of them
only what is pleasing to the Gods. But as to our younger generation and
their wisdom, I cannot let them off when they do mischief. For do but
mark the effect of their words: when you and I argue for the existence
of the Gods, and produce the sun, moon, stars, and earth, claiming for
them a divine being, if we would listen to the aforesaid phi