Volume 1 - Discourses - Books I - II - College of Stoic Philosophers

BOOK II. VIH. 12-19converse, do you not know that you are nourishingGod, exercising God ? You are bearing God aboutwith you, you poor wretch, and know it not ! Doyou suppose am I speaking of some external God,,made of silver or gold ? It is within yourself thatyou bear Him, and do not perceive that you aredefiling Him with impure thoughts and filthy actions.Yet in the presence of even an image of God youwould not dare to do anything of the things you arenow doing. But when God Himself ispresent withinyou, seeing and hearing everything, are you notashamed to be thinking and doing such things asthese, O insensible of your own nature, and objectof God's wrath !Again, when we send a young man forth from theschool to sundry activities, why are we afraid thathe will do something amiss eat amiss, have intercoursewith women amiss, be abased if dressed in ragsor conceited if he has on fine clothes ? This fellowdoes not know the God within him, this fellow doesnot know the companion with whom he is settingforth. Nay, can we allow him to " say, O God,would that I had Thee here"? Have you not Godthere, where you are? And when you have Him, doyou seek for someone else ? Or will He have othercommands for you than these ?Nay, if you were astatue of Pheidias, his Athena or his Zeus, 1 youwould have remembered both yourself and yourartificer, and ifyou had any power of perceptionyou would have tried to do nothing unworthy ofaim that had fashioned you, nor of yourself, and youwould have tried not to appear in an unbecomingattitude before the eyes of men but as it;is, becauseZeus has made you, do you on that account not care263