Chapter 32

When you consult a diviner, remember that you do not know how things will turn out – that is what you have come to learn from him. But what kind of thing it will be, you knew before you came, if you are a philosopher. For if it is something not up to us, it is necessarily neither good nor evil.

So bring neither desire nor aversion to the diviner, and do not approach him trembling, but having settled this first: everything that turns out is indifferent and nothing to you, and whatever it is, you will be able to use it well, and no one can prevent that. Go confidently, then, to the gods as your advisers. And afterward, when some advice has been given to you, remember whom you took as advisers – and whom you will be disobeying if you ignore them.

Go to divination as Socrates thought you should: only in cases where the entire question hangs on the outcome, and where neither reason nor any other skill gives you the means to see the matter through. So when it is your duty to share a danger with a friend or with your country, do not consult a diviner about whether to share it. Even if the diviner warns you that the omens are bad – meaning, clearly, death, or the maiming of some part of your body, or exile – reason still commands that even at that price you stand by your friend and share your country’s danger. So attend to the greater diviner, Pythian Apollo, who threw a man out of his temple for failing to help his friend while he was being murdered.