d so assigning to them their proper portion.

CLEINIAS: In what way do you mean?

ATHENIAN: In a way which may be supposed to make the care of all things
easy to the Gods. If any one were to form or fashion all things without
any regard to the whole--if, for example, he formed a living element of
water out of fire, instead of forming many things out of one or one out
of many in regular order attaining to a first or second or third birth,
the transmutation would have been infinite; but now the ruler of the
world has a wonderfully easy task.

CLEINIAS: How so?

ATHENIAN: I will explain: When the king saw that our actions had life,
and that there was much virtue in them and much vice, and that the soul
and body, although not, like the Gods of popular opinion, eternal, yet
having once come into existence, were indestructible (for if either of
them had been destroyed, there would have been no generation of living
beings); and when he observed that the good of the soul was ever by
nature designed to profit men, and the evil to harm them--he, seeing all
this, contrived so to place each of the parts that their position might
in the easiest and best manner procure the victory of good and the
defeat of evil in the whole. And he contrived a general plan by which
a thing of a certain nature found a certain seat and room. But the
formation of qualities he left to the wills of individuals. For every
one of us is made pretty much what he is by the bent of his desires and
the nature of his soul.

CLEINIAS: Yes, that is probably true.

ATHENIAN: Then all things which have a soul change, and possess in
themselves a principle of change, and in changing move according to
law and to the order of destiny: natures which have undergone a lesser
change move less and on the earth's surface, but those which have
suffered more change and have become more criminal sink into the abyss,
that is to say, into Hades and other places in the world below, of which
the very names terrify men, and which they picture to themselves as in
a dream, both while alive and when released from the body. And whenever
the soul receives more of good or evil from her own energy and the
strong influence of others--when she has communion with divine virtue
and becomes divine, she is carried into another and better place, which
is perfect in holiness; but when she has communion with evil, then she
also changes the place of her life.

'This is the justice of the Gods