[381c]
“It must
necessarily,” said he, “be for the worse if he is
changed. For we surely will not say that God is deficient in either beauty
or excellence.” “Most rightly spoken,” said I.
“And if that were his condition, do you think, Adeimantus, that
any one god or man would of his own will worsen himself in any
way?” “Impossible,” he replied. “It
is impossible then,” said I, “even for a god to wish to
alter himself, but, as it appears, each of them being the fairest and best
possible abides1 for ever simply in his own form.”
“An absolutely necessary conclusion to my thinking.”
“No poet then,”
Plato. Plato in Twelve Volumes, Vols. 5 & 6 translated by Paul Shorey. Cambridge, MA, Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann Ltd. 1969.
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