18. This, then is one argument which establishes the providence of God and at the same time the immortality of the soul, and it is not possible to reject the one and accept the other. Now if the soul survives after the death of the body, it is also quite reasonable that it shares the rewards and punishments (of the latter). For in this life it is engaged in a contest, like an athlete, and when the contest is ended it receives its deserts. To the rewards and punishments meted out when existing there by itself (separate from the body) for the deeds of the previous life, the living attach no importance; they are concealed from our knowledge, and discredited. But those that are transmitted to children and through successive generations, being plainly evident to all who live here, turn many bad men from their ways and hold them in check. There is no more grievous chastisement, and none that reaches more to the quick, than for men to see their descendants in misfortune on their account; and when the soul of an impious and unjust man beholds, after death, not statues overturned and honors annulled, but children and friends and his own household overwhelmed with calamities and paying the penalty for crimes that he has himself committed,—there is no one who would again be unjust, or who would yield to his unbridled passion, for the honors of Zeus. I have also a story to tell that I recently heard, but I hesitate to do so lest you think it a fable, I will therefore keep to what is probable. “By no means,” said Olympichus, “but repeat it entire.” When the others also joined in the request, I said, “Permit me to repeat what is probable in the story and afterward, if you like, we will take up the fable, granting, of course, that it is a fable.”
19. Now Bion says for a god to punish the children of bad men would be more ridiculous than if a physician were to administer medicine to the son or grandson, for the disease of the grandfather, or the father. In one respect the conditions are unlike, in another they are alike, or similar. Administering medicine to one man for the disease of another does not, it is true, cure the patient, and a person who is suffering from a disease of the eyes, or a fever, does not get better when he sees another annointed or having a plaster put on him; but the punishments of the wicked make it evident to all men that it is the purpose of wisely-directed justice to restrain some by the correction of others. In what respect the comparison made by Bion is pertinent to the inquiry, he himself failed to notice; for suppose, now, a man falls sick of a painful but by no means incurable disease, then gives himself up to intemperance and effeminate habits, and dies; and suppose, again, that his son does not have the same disease but only a predisposition to it,—would not a physician, or a trainer, or even a careful master, on learning this fact, put him on a frugal diet, and keep him from dainties and pastry, from drink and women, and by enjoining the continuous use of remedies and the exercise of the body in gymnastics, scatter and eradicate the little germ of a big disorder, before it had reached the serious stage? Forsooth, do not we admonish those who are born of diseased fathers or mothers, to take heed to themselves, and to be on their guard against neglecting themselves, and forthwith to expel the inbred evil while its germ is yet undeveloped, and thus take the danger by the forelock? “Most assuredly,” said they. “Then,” replied I, “we are not doing an absurd but a necessary thing; not something ridiculous but something useful, when we recommend to the children of epileptics and hypochondriacs and gouty persons, physical exercise and wholesome diet and medicaments, not because they are sick, but to the end that they may not become sick. The body that is born of an unsound body does not need chastisement but medical treatment and good regimen. If anybody calls the interdiction of pleasures and the imposition of toil and labor, punishment, he does so because he is inept and effeminate, and no attention need be paid to him. Shall we say, then, that a body born of an unsound body is worthy of care and attention, but the congenital seeds of vice that germinate and spring up in the young character, we are to let alone and wait and dally, until the evil passions break forth openly,—‘show forth the malignant fruit of the heart,’ as Pindar says?