Another way he had of dealing with intimate friends was this: if
 there was no room for doubt, he advised them to act as they thought
 best; but if the consequences could not be foreseen, he sent them to
 the oracle to inquire whether the thing ought to be done. Those who intended to control a house or a city, he said, needed the
 help of divination. For the craft of carpenter, smith, farmer or
 ruler, and the theory of such crafts, and arithmetic and economics
 and generalship might be learned and mastered by the application of
 human powers; but the deepest secrets of these matters the gods reserved to
 themselves; they were dark to men. You may plant a field well; but
 you know not who shall gather the fruits: you may build a house
 well; but you know not who shall dwell in it: able to command, you
 cannot know whether it is profitable to command: versed in
 statecraft, you know not whether it is profitable to guide the
 state: though, for your delight, you marry a pretty woman, you
 cannot tell whether she will bring you sorrow: though you form a
 party among men mighty in the state, you know not whether they will
 cause you to be driven from the state. If any man thinks that these matters are wholly within the grasp of
 the human mind and nothing in them is beyond our reason, that man,
 he said, is irrational. But it is no less irrational to seek the
 guidance of heaven in matters which men are permitted by the gods to
 decide for themselves by study: to ask, for instance, Is it better
 to get an experienced coachman to drive my carriage or a man without
 experience? Cyropaedia I. vi. 6. Is it better to
 get an experienced seaman to steer my ship or a man without
 experience? So too with what we may know by reckoning, measurement
 or weighing. To put such questions to the gods seemed to his mind
 profane. In short, what the gods have granted us to do by help of
 learning, we must learn; what is hidden from mortals we should try
 to find out from the gods by divination: for to him that is in their
 grace the gods grant a sign. Moreover, Socrates lived ever
 in the open; for early in the morning he went to the public
 promenades and training-grounds; in the forenoon he was seen in the
 market; and the rest of the day he passed just where most people
 were to be met: he was generally talking, and anyone might listen.
 Yet none ever knew him to offend against piety and religion in deed
 or word.