Dialogues

are Gods, and that they are too good to be bribed. Poets, priests, prophets, rhetoricians, even the best of them, speak to us of atoning for evil, and not of avoiding it. From legislators who profess to be gentle we ask for instruction, which may, at least, have the persuasive power of truth, if no other.” What have you to say? “Well, there is no difficulty in proving the being of the Gods. The sun, and earth, and stars, moving in their courses, the recurring seasons, furnish proofs of their existence; and there is the general opinion of mankind.” I fear that the unbelievers⁠—not that I care for their opinion⁠—will despise us. You are not aware that their impiety proceeds, not from sensuality, but from ignorance taking the garb of wisdom. “What do you mean?” At Athens there are tales current both in prose and verse of a kind which are not tolerated in a well-regulated state like yours. The oldest of them relate the origin of the world, and the birth and life of the Gods. These narratives have a bad influence on family relations; but as they are old we will let them pass, and consider another kind of tales, invented by the wisdom of a younger generation, who, if anyone argues for the existence of the Gods and claims that the stars have a divine being, insist that these are mere earth and stones, which can have no care of human things, and that all theology is a cooking up of words. Now what course ought we to take? Shall we suppose some impious man to charge us with assuming the existence of the Gods, and make a defence? Or shall we leave the preamble and go on to the laws? “There is no hurry, and we have often said that the shorter and worse method should not be preferred to the longer and better. The proof that there are Gods who are good, and the friends of justice, is the best preamble of all our laws.” Come, let us talk with the impious, who have been brought up from their infancy in the belief of religion, and have heard their own fathers and mothers praying for them and talking with the Gods as if they were absolutely convinced of their existence; who have seen mankind prostrate in prayer at the rising and setting of the sun and moon and at every turn of fortune, and have dared to despise and disbelieve all this. Can we keep our temper with them, when they compel us to argue on such a theme? We must; or like them we shall go mad, though with more reason. Let us select one of them and address him as follows:

O my son, you are young; time and experience will make you change many of your opinions. Do not be hasty in forming a conclusion about the divine nature; and let me mention to you a fact which I know. You and your friends are not the first or the only persons who have had these notions about the Gods. There are always a considerable number who are infected by them: I have known many myself, and can assure you that no one who was an unbeliever in his youth ever persisted till he was old in denying the existence of the Gods. The two other opinions, first, that the Gods exist and have no care of men, secondly, that they care for men, but may be propitiated by sacrifices and prayers, may indeed last through life in a few instances, but even this is not common. I would beg of you to be patient, and learn the truth of the legislator and others; in the meantime abstain from impiety. “So far, our discourse has gone well.”

I will now speak of a strange doctrine, which is regarded by many as the crown of philosophy. They affirm that all things come into being either by art or nature or chance, and that the greater things are done by nature and chance, and the lesser things by art, which receiving from nature the greater creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are termed works of art. Their meaning is that fire, water, earth, and air all exist by nature and chance, and not by art; and that out of these, according to certain chance affinities of opposites, the sun, the moon, the stars, and the earth have been framed, not by any action of mind, but by nature and chance only. Thus, in their opinion, the heaven and earth were created, as well as the animals and plants. Art came later, and is of mortal birth; by her power were invented certain images and very partial imitations of the truth, of which kind are the creations of musicians and painters: but they say that there are other arts which combine with nature, and have a deeper truth, such as medicine, husbandry, gymnastic. Also the greater part of politics they imagine to cooperate with nature, but in a less degree, having more of art, while legislation is declared by them to be wholly a work of art. “How do you mean?” In the first place, they say that the Gods exist neither by nature nor by art, but by the laws of states, which are different in different countries; and that virtue is one thing by nature and another by convention; and that justice is altogether conventional, made by law, and having authority for the moment only. This is repeated to young men by sages and poets, and leads to impiety, and the pretended life according to nature and in disobedience to law; for nobody believes the Gods to be such as the law affirms. “How true! and oh! how injurious to states and to families!” But then, what should the lawgiver do? Should he stand up in the state and threaten mankind with the severest penalties if they persist in their unbelief, while