XIV. (63) But those who have received a duller and more sluggish nature, and who have been wrongly brought up as children, and who are unable to see acutely, stand in need of physicians for lawgivers, who may be able to devise an appropriate remedy for the existing complaint, (64) since a severe master is a beneficial thing for untractable and foolish servants; for they, fearing his inflictions and his threats, are chastened by fear, in spite of themselves. Let, therefore, all such men learn false terrors, by which they may be benefited if they cannot be led into the right way by truth. (65) For in the case of men who are afflicted with dangerous illnesses, the most legitimate physicians do not venture to tell them the truth, knowing that by such conduct they will be rendered more desponding, and so that the disease will not be cured; but that by contrary language and comfort, they will bear the disease which presses upon them more easily, and the illness will be more likely to be allayed. (66) For what man is his senses would say to a patient under his care, “My good man, you shall have the knife applied to you, and cautery, and your limbs shall be amputated,” even if such things were absolutely necessary to be endured? No man on earth would say so. For if he did, his patient would sink in his heart before the operations could be performed, and so receiving another disease in his soul, more grievous than that already existing in his body, he would resolutely renounce the cure; but if, on the other hand, through the deceit of the physician he is led to form a contrary expectation, he will submit to everything with a patient spirit, even though the means of his salvation may be most painful. (67) Therefore the lawgiver, being a most admirable physician of the passions and diseases of the soul, has proposed to himself one task and one end, namely, to eradicate the diseases of the mind by the roots, so that there may not be a single one left behind to put forth any shoot of incurable distemper. (68) In this way, then, he hoped to be able to eradicate it, if he were to represent the Cause of all things as indulging in threats and indignation, and implacable anger, and, moreover, as employing defensive arms to ward off attacks, and to chastise the wicked; for the fool alone is corrected by such means: (69) and therefore it is that it appears to me that with these two principal assertions above mentioned, namely, that God is as a man and that God is not as a man, are connected two other principles consequent upon and connected with them, namely, that of fear and that of love; for I see that all the exhortations of the laws to piety, are referred either to the love or to the fear of the living God. To those, therefore, who do not attribute either the parts or the passions of men to the living God, but who, as becomes the majesty of God, honour him in himself, and by himself alone, to love him is most natural; but to the others, it is most appropriate to fear him.
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