the deity in this respect no wiser than Hesiod, who exhorts
and advises, "not to beget children on our return from a sad funeral,
but after a banquet with the gods,"[860] as though not vice or virtue
only, but sorrow or joy and all other propensities, came from
generation, to which the poet bids us come gay and agreeable and
sprightly. But it is not Hesiod's function, or the work of human wisdom,
but it belongs to the deity, to discern and accurately distinguish
similarities and differences of character, before they become obvious by
resulting in crime through the influence of the passions. For the young
of bears and wolves and apes manifest from their birth the nature innate
in them in all its naked simplicity; whereas mankind, under the
influence of customs and opinions and laws, frequently conceal their bad
qualities and imitate what is good, so as altogether to obliterate and
escape from the innate taint of vice, or to be undetected for a long
time, throwing the veil of craft round their real nature, so that we are
scarce conscious of their villainy till we feel the blow or smart of
some unjust action, so that we are in fact only aware that there is such
a thing as injustice when men act unjustly, or as vice when men act
viciously, or as cowardice when men run away, just as if one were to
suppose that scorpions had a sting only when they stung us, or that
vipers were venomous only when they bit us, which would be a very silly
idea. For every bad man is not bad only when he breaks out into crime,
but he has the seeds of vice in his nature, and is only vicious in act
when he has opportunity and means, as opportunity makes the thief
steal,[861] and the tyrant violate the laws. But the deity is not
ignorant of the nature and disposition of every man, inasmuch as by his
very nature he can read the soul better than the body, and does not wait
to punish violence in the act, or shamelessness in the tongue, or
lasciviousness in the members. For he does not retaliate upon the
wrong-doer as having been ill-treated by him, nor is he angry with the
robber as having been plundered by him, nor does he hate the adulterer
as having himself suffered from his licentiousness, but it is to cure
him that he often punishes the adulterous or avaricious or unjust man in
embryo, before he has had time to work out all his villainy, as we try
to stop epileptic fits before they come on.

Sec. XXI. Just now we were dissatisfied that the wicked w