the less the power of action.  For it is harder to see and hear the small than the great, but easier to control them.  Suppose a physician who had to cure a patient—­ would he ever succeed if he attended to the great and neglected the little?  ‘Impossible.’  Is not life made up of littles?—­the pilot, general, householder, statesman, all attend to small matters; and the builder will tell you that large stones do not lie well without small ones.  And God is not inferior to mortal craftsmen, who in proportion to their skill are careful in the details of their work; we must not imagine the best and wisest to be a lazy good-for-nothing, who wearies of his work and hurries over small and easy matters.  ‘Never, never!’ He who charges the Gods with neglect has been forced to admit his error; but I should like further to persuade him that the author of all has made every part for the sake of the whole, and that the smallest part has an appointed state of action or passion, and that the least action or passion of any part has a presiding minister.  You, we say to him, are a minute fraction of this universe, created with a view to the whole; the world is not made for you, but you for the world; for the good artist considers the whole first, and afterwards the parts.  And you are annoyed at not seeing how you and the universe are all working together for the best, so far as the laws of the common creation admit.  The soul undergoes many changes from her contact with bodies; and all that the player does is to put the pieces into their right places.  ‘What do you mean?’ I mean that God acts in the way which is simplest and easiest.  Had each thing been formed without any regard to the rest, the transposition of the Cosmos would have been endless; but now there is not much trouble in the government of the world.  For when the king saw the actions of the living souls and bodies, and the virtue and vice which were in them, and the indestructibility of the soul and body (although they were not eternal), he contrived so to arrange them that virtue might conquer and vice be overcome as far as possible; giving them a seat and room adapted to them, but leaving the direction of their separate actions to men’s own wills, which make our characters to be what they are.  ‘That is very probable.’  All things which have a soul possess in themselves the principle of change, and in changing move according to fate and law; natures which have undergone lesser changes move on the surface; but those which have changed utterly for the worse, sink into Hades and the infernal world.  And in all great changes for good and evil which are produced either by the will of the soul or the influence of others, there is a change of place.  The good soul, which has intercourse with the divine nature, passes into a holier and better place; and the evil soul, as she grows worse, changes her place for the worse.  This,—­as we declare to the youth who fancies that he is neglected of the Gods,—­is