I shall never be Milo, and yet I do not neglect my Body; nor Cræsus, and yet I do not neglect my Property: Nor, in general, do we omit the Care of any thing belonging to us, from a Despair of arriving at the highest Degree of Perfection.
CHAPTER III.
How, from the Doctrine that God is the Father of Mankind, we may proceed to its Consequences.
§. 1.IF a Person could be persuaded of this Principle as he ought, that we are all originally descended from God, and that he is the Father of Gods and Men; I conceive he never would think meanly or degenerately concerning himself. Suppose Cæsar were to adopt you, there would be no bearing your haughty Looks: And will you not be elated on knowing yourself to be the Son of Jupiter? Yet, in Fact, we are not elated. But having two Things in our composition, intimately united, a Body in Common with the Brutes, and Reason and Sentiment in common with the Gods; many incline to this unhappy and mortal Kindred, and only some few to the divine and happy one. And, as of Necessity every one must treat each particular Thing, according to the Notions he forms about it; so those few, who think they are made for Fidelity, Decency, and a well-grounded Use of the Appearances of Things, ne-
ver
times the Stoics considered themselves as not inferior to the Deity. See lib. I. c. xii. §. 2. But neither of these Renderings makes a proper Connexion. I have therefore adventured to suppose, that κρεισσων and χειρων have changed Places; that ουκ hath arisen from a casual Repetition of the two last Letters of Σωκρατου; and that μη ου is the Remainder of some proper Name known: perhaps Μελιτου, as he was one of the Accusers of Socrates: which cannot now be known. This will give the Sense which I have expressed, and it is the only unexceptionable one that I can find.
