MOREOVER THIS WORLD CONTAINS TRADITIONS OF DIVINITY.
Not only are there here below statues of the divinities, but even the divinities condescend to look on us, leading everything in an orderly manner from beginning to end, and they apportion to each the fate that suits him, and which harmonizes with his antecedents in his successive existences.[349] This is unknown only to persons who are most vulgarly ignorant of divine things. Try therefore to become as good as you can, but do not on that account imagine that you alone are capable of becoming good[350]; for then you would no longer be good. Other men (than you) are good; there are most excellent (ministering spirits called) guardians; further, there are deities who, while inhabiting this world, contemplate the intelligible world,[351] and are still better than the guardians. Further still is the blissful (universal) Soul that manages the universe. Honor therefore the intelligible divinities, and above all the great King of the intelligible world,[352] whose greatness is especially manifested in the multitude of the divinities.