ch the
Gods can confer.

CLEINIAS: Truly, Stranger, you see with the keen vision of age.

ATHENIAN: Why, yes; every man when he is young has that sort of vision
dullest, and when he is old keenest.

CLEINIAS: Very true.

ATHENIAN: And now, what is to be the next step? May we not suppose the
colonists to have arrived, and proceed to make our speech to them?

CLEINIAS: Certainly.

ATHENIAN: 'Friends,' we say to them,--'God, as the old tradition
declares, holding in his hand the beginning, middle, and end of all
that is, travels according to His nature in a straight line towards the
accomplishment of His end. Justice always accompanies Him, and is the
punisher of those who fall short of the divine law. To justice, he who
would be happy holds fast, and follows in her company with all humility
and order; but he who is lifted up with pride, or elated by wealth
or rank, or beauty, who is young and foolish, and has a soul hot with
insolence, and thinks that he has no need of any guide or ruler, but is
able himself to be the guide of others, he, I say, is left deserted
of God; and being thus deserted, he takes to him others who are like
himself, and dances about, throwing all things into confusion, and many
think that he is a great man, but in a short time he pays a penalty
which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly destroyed, and his
family and city with him. Wherefore, seeing that human things are thus
ordered, what should a wise man do or think, or not do or think'?

CLEINIAS: Every man ought to make up his mind that he will be one of the
followers of God; there can be no doubt of that.

ATHENIAN: Then what life is agreeable to God, and becoming in His
followers? One only, expressed once for all in the old saying that
'like agrees with like, with measure measure,' but things which have no
measure agree neither with themselves nor with the things which have.
Now God ought to be to us the measure of all things, and not man
(compare Crat.; Theaet.), as men commonly say (Protagoras): the words
are far more true of Him. And he who would be dear to God must, as far
as is possible, be like Him and such as He is. Wherefore the temperate
man is the friend of God, for he is like Him; and the intemperate man is
unlike Him, and different from Him, and unjust. And the same applies to
other things; and this is the conclusion, which is also the noblest and
truest of all sayings,--that for the good man to offer sacrifice to th