Discourses - Book I   

such reasons, and strut before us elated and inflated, not enduring
that any man should reprove him and remind him of what he has
neglected and to what he has turned aside?
"What, then, was not Plato a philosopher?" I reply, "And was not
Hippocrates a physician? but you see how Hippocrates speaks." Does
Hippocrates, then, speak thus in respect of being a physician? Why
do you mingle things which have been accidentally united in the same
men? And if Plato was handsome and strong, ought I also to set to work
and endeavor to become handsome or strong, as if this was necessary
for philosophy, because a certain philosopher was at the same time
handsome and a philosopher? Will you not choose to see and to
distinguish in respect to what men become philosophers, and what
things belong to belong to them in other respects? And if I were a
philosopher, ought you also to be made lame? What then? Do I take away
these faculties which you possess? By no means; for neither do I
take away the faculty of seeing. But if you ask me what is the good of
man, I cannot mention to you anything else than that it is a certain
disposition of the will with respect to appearances.

CHAPTER 9

How from the fact that we are akin to God a man may proceed to the
consequences

If the things are true which are said by the philosophers about
the kinship between God and man, what else remains for men to do
then what Socrates did? Never in reply to the question, to what
country you belong, say that you are an Athenian or a Corinthian,
but that you are a citizen of the world. For why do you say that you
are an Athenian, and why do you not say that you belong to the small
nook only into which your poor body was cast at birth? Is it not plain
that you call yourself an Athenian or Corinthian from the place
which has a greater authority and comprises not only that small nook
itself and all your family, but even the whole country from which
the stock of your progenitors is derived down to you? He then who
has observed with intelligence the administration of the world, and
has learned that the greatest and supreme and the most comprehensive
community is that which is composed of men and God, and that from
God have descended the seeds not only to my father and grandfather,
but to all beings which are generated on the earth and are produced,
and particularly to rational beings- for these only are by their
nature formed to have communion with God, being by means of reason
conjoined with Him- why should not such a man call himself a citizen
of the world, why not a son of God, and why should he be afraid of
anything which happens among men? Is kinship with Caesar or with any
other of the powerful in Rome sufficient to enable us to live in
safety, and above contempt and without any fear at all? and to have
God for your maker and father and guardian, shall not this release
us from sorrows and fears?
But a man may say, "Whence shall I get bread to eat when I have