Book 1
4.7
When I regard them in this light they do look very like the handiwork of a wise and loving creator. What of the natural desire to beget children, the mother’s desire to rear her babe, the child’s strong will to live and strong fear of death? Undoubtedly these, too, look like the contrivances of one who deliberately willed the existence of living creatures.
4.8
Do you think you have any wisdom yourself? Oh! Ask me a question and judge from my answer.And do you suppose that wisdom is nowhere else to be found, although you know that you have a mere speck of all the earth in your body and a mere drop of all the water, and that of all the other mighty elements you received, I suppose, just a scrap towards the fashioning of your body? But as for mind, which alone, it seems, is without mass, do you think that you snapped it up by a lucky accident, and that the orderly ranks of all these huge masses, infinite in number, are due, forsooth, to a sort of absurdity?
4.9
Yes; for I don’t see the master hand, whereas I see the makers of things in this world. Neither do you see your own soul,Cyropaedia VIII. Vii. 17. which has the mastery of the body; so that, as far as that goes, you may say that you do nothing by design, but everything by chance.Here Aristodemus exclaimed:
4.10
Really, Socrates, I don’t despise the godhead. But I think it is too great to need my service. Then the greater the power that deigns to serve you, the more honour it demands of you.
