Note 87 — RETREAT OF THE TEN THOUSAND GREEKS. (continued 2)

"The gods (says Euripidês, in the Sokratic vein) have given us wisdom to understand and appropriate to ourselves the ordinary comforts of life: in obscure or unintelligible cases we are enabled to inform ourselves by looking at the blaze of the fire, or by consulting prophets who understand the livers of sacrificial victims and the flight of birds. When they have thus furnished so excellent a provision for life, who but spoilt children can be discontented and ask for more? Yet still human prudence, full of self-conceit, will struggle to be more powerful, and will presume itself to be wiser, than the gods."

It will be observed that this constant outpouring of special revelations, through prophets, omens, &c., was (in view of these Sokratic thinkers) an essential part of divine government; indispensable to satisfy their ideas of the benevolence of the gods; since rational and scientific prediction was so habitually at fault and unable to fathom the phenomena of the future. (Grote.)