As to the opinion about the Gods which may some day become clear to you, I advise you to wait and consider if it be true or not; ask of others, and above all of the legislator.

In the meantime take care that you do not offend against the Gods.

For the duty of the legislator is and always will be to teach you the truth of these matters.
CLEINIAS: Our address, Stranger, thus far, is excellent.
ATHENIAN: Quite true, Megillus and Cleinias, but I am afraid that we have unconsciously lighted on a strange doctrine.
CLEINIAS: What doctrine do you mean?
ATHENIAN: The wisest of all doctrines, in the opinion of many.
CLEINIAS: I wish that you would speak plainer.
ATHENIAN: The doctrine that all things do become, have become, and will become, some by nature, some by art, and some by chance.
CLEINIAS: Is not that true?
ATHENIAN: Well, philosophers are probably right; at any rate we may as well follow in their track, and examine what is the meaning of them and their disciples.
CLEINIAS: By all means.
ATHENIAN: They say that the greatest and fairest things are the work of nature and of chance, the lesser of art, which, receiving from nature the greater and primeval creations, moulds and fashions all those lesser works which are generally termed artificial.
CLEINIAS: How is that?
ATHENIAN: I will explain my meaning still more clearly.

They say that fire and water, and earth and air, all exist by nature and chance, and none of them by art, and that as to the bodies which come next in order--earth, and sun, and moon, and stars--they have been created by means of these absolutely inanimate existences.

The elements are severally moved by chance and some inherent force according to certain affinities among them--of hot with cold, or of dry with moist, or of soft with hard, and according to all the other accidental admixtures of opposites which have been formed by necessity.