Whene’er He wills to bring a race to naught.
If God is represented as the cause of misfortunes, the poet must say that the misfortunes were good for the sufferers, making them better and happier.[670]
The second canon is that God is not a wizard, appearing now in one form, now in another. Why should He change? External forces are not likely to change Him: He would not change Himself, since it would necessarily be a transition to the less good and less beautiful, since He is perfect. So the lines—
Disguised as human strangers, in many a changing guise,
Gods roam about the cities, to spy iniquities,
and the tales of Proteus and other metamorphoses, are false. Consequently mothers should not tell their children that a god may always be present in disguise, for it is a lie and is also likely to make the children cowardly. Lying is only useful in dealing with enemies, for managing lunatics, and for making a satisfactory explanation where certainty is impossible. God has no such reason for lying or deception.
The character of the Deity having been thus purged of mythological accretions, Plato passes on to the treatment of the future state. This must not be described as in any way terrible, or the children will learn to prefer dishonourable life to honourable death. So reject—
O better be a poor man’s serf, and share his scanty bread,
Than be the crownèd king of all the nations of the dead.
And