第792页 / 共1391页

I agree with you, he replied, and am ready to give my assent to

the law.

Let this then be one of our rules and principles concerning the

gods, to which our poets and reciters will be expected to

conform,-that God is not the author of all things, but of good

only.

That will do, he said.

And what do you think of a second principle? Shall I ask you

whether God is a magician, and of a nature to appear insidiously

now in one shape, and now in another-sometimes himself changing

and passing into many forms, sometimes deceiving us with the

semblance of such transformations; or is he one and the same

immutably fixed in his own proper image?

I cannot answer you, he said, without more thought.

Well, I said; but if we suppose a change in anything, that change

must be effected either by the thing itself, or by some other

thing?

Most certainly.