it of that salutary effect which its immediate infliction would have upon the sinner, who regards it as accidental, and not necessarily connected with his crimes. The fault of a horse is corrected if bit and lash be applied at once; but all the beating and backing and shouting in the world at a later time will only injure his physique without improving his character. "So that I am quite unable to see what good is done by those Mills of God[1] which are said to grind so late, since their delay brings justice to naught, and thus deprives vice of its restraining fear."[2]
Plutarch, before replying to these weighty arguments, preaches a short and eloquent sermon on the text, "God moves in a mysterious way." His thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor His ways our ways. We must imitate the philosophic caution of the Academy. Men who never saw a battle may talk of military affairs, or discuss music who never played a note; "but it is a different thing for mere men like ourselves to peer too closely into matters that concern Divine Natures; just as if unskilled laymen were to try to penetrate the intention of an artist, the meaning of a physician's treatment, the inner significance of a legal enactment, by fanciful guesses and surmises. . . . It is easier[3] for a mortal to make no definite assertion about the gods, but just this—that He[4] knows best the proper. </poem> ]after [Greek: rhadion] with Bernardakis. 549 F.].]
