1.Injustice is impiety.For in that the Nature of the Universe has f ashioned rational creatures for the sake of one another with a view to m utual benefit based upon worth,but by no means for harm,the transgress or of her will acts with obvious impiety against the most venerable of D eities.
And the liar too acts impiously with respect to the same Goddess.Fo r the Nature of the Universe is the Nature of the things that are.And t he things that are have an intimate connexion with all the things that h ave ever been.Moreover this Nature is named Truth,and is the primary c ause of all that is true.The willing liar then is impious in so far as his deceit is a wrong-doing;and the unwilling liar too,for he is out o f tune with the Nature of the Whole,and an element of disorder by being in conflict with the Nature of an orderly Universe;for he is in conflic t who allows himself,as far as his conduct goes,to be carried into opp osition to what is true.And whereas he had previously been endowed by n ature with the means of distinguishing false from true,by neglecting to use them he has lost the power.
Again he acts impiously who seeks after pleasure as a good thing and eschews pain as an evil.For such a man must inevitably find frequent fa ult with the Universal Nature as unfair in its apportionments to the wor thless and the worthy,since the worthless are often lapped in pleasures and possess the things that make for pleasure,while the worthy meet wit h pain and the things that make for pain.Moreover he that dreads pain w ill some day be in dread of something that must be in the world.And ther e we have impiety at once.And he that hunts after pleasures will not ho ld his hand from injustice.And this is palpable impiety.
But those,who are of one mind with Nature and would walk in her way s,must hold a neutral attitude towards those things towards which the U niversal Nature is neutral-for she would not be the Maker of both were she not neutral towards both.So he clearly acts with impiety who is not himself neutral towards pain and pleasure,death and life,good report a nd ill report,things which the Nature of the Universe treats with neutr ality.And by the Universal Nature treating these with neutrality I mean that all things happen neutrally in a chain of sequence to things that c ome into being and their after products by some primeval impulse of Prov idence,in accordance with which She was impelled by some primal impulse to this making of an ordered Universe,when she had conceived certain pr inciples for all that was to be,and allocated the powers generative of substances and changes and successions such as we see.