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How we ought to use divination.—­Through an unreasonable regard to divination many of us omit many duties.  For what more can the diviner see than death or danger or disease, or generally things of that kind?  If then I must expose myself to danger for a friend, and if it is my duty even to die for him, what need have I then for divination?  Have I not within me a diviner who has told me the nature of good and of evil, and has explained to me the signs (or marks) of both?  What need have I then to consult the viscera of victims or the flight of birds, and why do I submit when he says, It is for your interest?  For does he know what is for my interest, does he know what is good; and as he has learned the signs of the viscera, has he also learned the signs of good and evil?  For if he knows the signs of these, he knows the signs both of the beautiful and of the ugly, and of the just and of the unjust.  Do you tell me, man, what is the thing which is signified for me:  is it life or death, poverty or wealth?  But whether these things are for my interest or whether they are not, I do not intend to ask you.  Why don’t you give your opinion on matters of grammar, and why do you give it here about things on which we are all in error and disputing with one another?

What then leads us to frequent use of divination?  Cowardice, the dread of what will happen.  This is the reason why we flatter the diviners.  Pray, master, shall I succeed to the property of my father?  Let us see:  let us sacrifice on the occasion.  Yes, master, as fortune chooses.  When he has said, You shall succeed to the inheritance, we thank him as if we received the inheritance from him.  The consequence is that they play upon us.

Will you not then seek the nature of good in the rational animal? for if it is not there, you will not choose to say that it exists in any other thing (plant or animal).  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 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