think that he is a great man, but in a short time he pays a penalty which justice cannot but approve, and is utterly destroyed, and his family and city with him. Wherefore, seeing that human things are thus ordered, what should a wise man do or think, or not do or think?"—J.
The perfection of man's existence, according to Plato, is to bring his nature as far as is possible into harmony with God; and this can only be done by cultivating the soul, which is the divinest part of us, and came to us from heaven long before our earth-born body.[1] "Honour the soul, then," he says, in one of his homilies in the "Laws," "as being second only to the gods; and the best way of honouring it is to make it better. A man should not prefer beauty to virtue, nor sell his word for gold, nor heap up riches for his children; since the best inheritance he can leave them is the spirit of reverence. Truth is the beginning of all good; and the greatest of all evils is self-love; and the worst penalty of evil-doing is to grow into likeness with the bad: for each man's soul changes, according to the nature of his deeds, for better or for worse."[2]
In more than one passage Plato combats the objection always raised against every system of Optimism—the existence of evil, which implies, according to the atheist, either a want of goodness in the Deity to allow it, or a want of power to prevent it. Practically, Plato refutes this argument in much the same language
