Then said she: “Seeing that such is thy belief, it will cost me little trouble, I think, to enable thee to win happiness, and return in safety to thy own country. But let us give our attention to the task that we have set before ourselves. Have we not counted independence in the category of happiness, and agreed that God is absolute happiness?”
“Truly, we have.”
“Then, He will need no external assistance for the ruling of the world. Otherwise, if He stands in need of aught, He will not possess complete independence.”
“That is necessarily so,” said I.
“Then, by His own power alone He disposes all things.”
“It cannot be denied.”
“Now, God was proved to be absolute good.”
“Yes; I remember.”
“Then, He disposes all things by the agency of good, if it be true that He rules all things by His own power whom we have agreed to be good; and He is, as it were, the rudder and helm by which the world’s mechanism is kept steady and in order.”
“Heartily do I agree; and, indeed, I anticipated what thou wouldst say, though it may be in feeble surmise only.”
“I well believe it,” said she; “for, as I think, thou now bringest to the search eyes quicker in discerning truth; but what I shall say next is no less plain and easy to see.”
“What is it?” said I.
“Why,” said she, “since God is rightly believed to govern all things with the rudder of goodness, and since all things do likewise, as I have taught, haste towards good by the very aim of nature, can it be doubted that His governance is willingly accepted, and that all submit themselves to the sway of the Disposer as conformed and attempered to His rule?”
“Necessarily so,” said I; “no rule would seem happy if it were a yoke imposed on reluctant wills, and not the safekeeping of obedient subjects.”
“There is nothing, then, which, while it follows nature, endeavours to resist good.”
“No; nothing.”
“But if anything should, will it have the least success against Him whom we rightly agreed to be supreme Lord of happiness?”
“It would be utterly impotent.”
“There is nothing, then, which has either the will or the power to oppose this supreme good.”
“No; I think not.”
“So, then,” said she, “it is the supreme good which rules in strength, and graciously disposes all things.”
Then said I: “How delighted am I at thy reasonings, and the conclusion to which thou hast brought them, but most of all at these very words which thou usest! I am now at last ashamed of the folly that so sorely vexed me.”
“Thou hast heard the story of the giants assailing heaven; but a beneficent strength disposed of them also, as they deserved. But shall we submit our arguments to the shock of mutual collision?—it may be from the impact some fair spark of truth may be struck out.”
“If it be thy good pleasure,” said I.
“No one can doubt that God is all-powerful.”
“No one at all can question it who thinks consistently.”
“Now, there is nothing which One who is all-powerful cannot do.”
“Nothing.”
“But can God do evil, then?”
“Nay; by no means.”
“Then, evil is nothing,” said she, “since He to whom nothing is impossible is unable to do evil.”
“Art thou mocking me,” said I, “weaving a labyrinth of tangled arguments, now seeming to begin where thou didst end, and now to end where thou didst begin, or dost thou build up some wondrous circle of Divine simplicity? For, truly, a little before thou didst begin with happiness, and say it was the supreme good, and didst declare it to be seated in the supreme Godhead. God Himself, too, thou didst affirm to be supreme good and all-complete happiness; and from this thou didst go on to add, as by the way, the proof that no one would be happy unless he were likewise God. Again, thou didst say that the very form of good was the essence both of God and of happiness, and didst teach that the absolute One was the absolute good which was sought by universal nature. Thou didst maintain, also, that God rules the universe by the governance of goodness, that all things obey Him willingly, and that evil has no existence in nature. And all this thou didst unfold without the help of assumptions from without, but by inherent and proper proofs, drawing credence one from the other.”
Then answered she: “Far is it from me to mock thee; nay, by the blessing of God, whom we lately addressed in prayer, we have achieved the most important of all objects. For such is the form of the Divine essence, that neither can it pass into things external, nor take up anything external into itself; but, as Parmenides says of it,
“ ‘In body like to a sphere on all sides perfectly rounded,’20
it rolls the restless orb of the universe, keeping itself motionless the while. And if I have also employed reasonings not drawn from without, but lying within the compass of our subject, there is no cause for thee to marvel, since thou hast learnt on Plato’s authority21 that words ought to be akin to the matter of which they treat.”
Song XII
Orpheus and Eurydice
Blest he whose feet have stood
Beside the fount of good;
Blest he whose will could break
Earth’s chains for wisdom’s sake!
The Thracian bard, ’tis said,
Mourned his dear consort dead;
To hear the plaintive strain
The woods moved in his train,
And the stream ceased to flow,
Held by so soft a woe;
The deer without dismay
Beside the lion lay;
The hound, by song subdued,
No more the hare pursued,
But the pang unassuaged
In his own bosom raged.
The music that could calm
All else brought him no balm.
Chiding the powers immortal,
He came unto Hell’s portal;
There breathed all tender things
Upon his sounding strings,
Each rhapsody high-wrought
His goddess-mother taught—
All he from grief could borrow
And love redoubling sorrow,
Till, as the echoes waken,
All Taenarus is shaken;
Whilst
