good to them. The good then requires the use of appearances. Does it
require this use only? For if you say that it requires this use
only, say that the good, and that happiness and unhappiness are in
irrational animals also. But you do not say this, and you do right;
for if they possess even in the highest degree the use of appearances,
yet they have not the faculty of understanding the use of appearances;
and there is good reason for this, for they exist for the purpose of
serving others, and they exercise no superiority. For the ass, I
suppose, does not exist for any superiority over others. No; but
because we had need of a back which is able to bear something; and
in truth we had need also of his being able to walk, and for this
reason he received also the faculty of making use of appearances,
for otherwise he would not have been able to walk. And here then
the matter stopped. For if he had also received the faculty of
comprehending the use of appearances, it is plain that consistently
with reason he would not then have been subjected to us, nor would
he have done us these services, but he would have been equal to us and
like to us.
Will you not then seek the nature of good in the rational animal?
for if it is not there, you not choose to say that it exists in any
other thing. "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 conjunction with a
woman, will you not remember who you are who do this thing? 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 does not know his own God: he knows not with whom he sets out.
But can we endure when he says, "I wish I had you 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 broth of yourself and
of the artist, and if you had any understanding you would try to do
nothing unworthy of him who made you or of yourself, and try not to