Miscellanies 5.14.133

Thearidas, in his work On Nature, writes: “The first principle of beings, the truly true principle, is one; for it is in the beginning one and alone.” “Nor is there any other apart from the great King,” says Orpheus. Persuaded by him, the comic poet Diphilus says most sententiously: “Him who is the Father of all, honor him alone continually, the discoverer and creator of so many good things.” Fittingly, then, Plato too trains the best natures to arrive at the study that we said before is the greatest, to see the Good and to make that ascent. “And this, it seems, would not be the turning of a shell, but the turning around of a soul from a day that is a kind of night to the true ascent to being, which we shall say is true philosophy.” And he judges those who share in this to be of the golden race, saying, “You are all brothers,” but that those of the golden race are to judge most accurately and in every respect. All things, then, of every kind, lay hold of the Father and Maker of the universe, innately and untaught: lifeless things by sympathy with the living; of living things, those that are already immortal, working day by day; of those still mortal, some in fear, even while still carried in their mother's womb, and others by free will; and of human beings, all, Greeks and barbarians. And no race anywhere, whether of farmers, or of nomads, or of city-dwellers, can live without being possessed beforehand by faith in the higher power. Therefore every nation of the east, and every nation touching the western shores, the north, and all toward the south, has one and the same preconception about the one who established the rule of the world, since the most universal of his activities have passed equally through all things.