upon us.

Will you not then seek the nature of good in the rational animal? for if
it is not there, you will not choose to say that it exists in any other
thing (plant or animal). What then? are not plants and animals also the
works of God? They are; but they are not superior things, nor yet parts
of the gods. But you are a superior thing; you are a portion separated
from the Deity; you have in yourself a certain portion of him. Why then
are you ignorant of your own noble descent? Why do you not know whence
you came? will you not remember when you are eating who you are who eat
and whom you feed? When you are in social intercourse, when you are
exercising yourself, when you are engaged in discussion, know you not
that you are nourishing a god, that you are exercising a god? Wretch,
you are carrying about a god with you, and you know it not. Do you think
that I mean some god of silver or of gold, and external? You carry him
within yourself, and you perceive not that you are polluting him by
impure thoughts and dirty deeds. And if an image of God were present,
you would not dare to do any of the things which you are doing; but when
God himself is present within and sees all and hears all, you are not
ashamed of thinking such things and doing such things, ignorant as you
are of your own nature and subject to the anger of God. Then why do we
fear when we are sending a young man from the school into active life,
lest he should do anything improperly, eat improperly, have improper
intercourse with women; and lest the rags in which he is wrapped should
debase him, lest fine garments should make him proud. This youth (if he
acts thus) does not know his own God; he knows not with whom he sets out
(into the world). But can we endure when he says, "I wish I had you
(God) with me." Have you not God with you? and do you seek for any other
when you have him? or will God tell you anything else than this? If you
were a statue of Phidias, either Athena or Zeus, you would think both of
yourself and of the artist, and if you had any understanding (power of
perception) you would try to do nothing unworthy of him who made you or
of yourself, and try not to appear in an unbecoming dress (attitude) to
those who look upon you. But now because Zeus has made you, for this
reason do you care not how you shall appear? And yet is the artist (in
the one case) like the artist in the other? or the work in the one case
like the other? And what work of