Zeus and the Oaks

[sdi]

Once upon a time, Zeus was walking among the oak trees, and they said to Him, "O Zeus, father and progenitor of us all, we are much beset by the farmer and the woodcutter. If we exist only to be chopped down, why did you beget us in the first place?"

Zeus smiled with pity and answered, "But my children, why do you blame me for this? You yourselves are the cause of your misfortune: if you did not supply the farmer and woodcutter with handles, they would not have axes!"

(Babrius, Fables CXLII)

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"Hear the word of Lachesis, the daughter of Necessity: mortal souls, behold a new cycle of life and mortality! Your dæmon will not be allotted to you, but you will choose your dæmon; and let him who draws the first lot have the first choice, and the life which he chooses shall be his destiny. Virtue is free, and as a man honors or dishonors her he will have more or less of her. The responsibility is with the chooser—God is blameless."

(The Prophet of Fate, as quoted by Er, as quoted by Socrates, as quoted by Plato, Republic X, as translated by Thomas Taylor, with minor adaptations by yours truly)

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So then the soul, though it is divine and comes from above, enters into the body and, though it is a god of the lowest rank, comes to this world by a spontaneous inclination, its own power and the setting in order of what comes after it being the cause of its descent. If it escapes quickly it takes no harm by acquiring a knowledge of evil and coming to know the nature of wickedness, and manifesting its powers, making apparent works and activities which if they had remained quiescent in the spiritual world would have been of no use because they would never have come into actuality; and the soul itself would not have known the powers it had if they had not come out and been revealed. Actuality everywhere reveals completely hidden potency, in a way obliterated and non-existent because it does not yet truly exist. As things are, everyone wonders at what is within because of the varied splendor of the outside and admires what the doer is because it does these fine things.

(Plotinus, Enneads IV viii "The Soul's Descent into Body" §5, as translated by Arthur Hilary Armstrong)