json/Second Temple/Philo/On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile/English/merged.json

{
    "title": "On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile",
    "language": "en",
    "versionTitle": "merged",
    "versionSource": "https://www.sefaria.org/On_the_Posterity_of_Cain_and_his_Exile",
    "text": {
        "Introduction": [
            "ON THE POSTERITY OF CAIN AND HIS EXILE (DE POSTERITATE CAINI) <br>ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION",
            "The treatise begins with a denunciation of anthropomorphism and a defence of allegorical interpretation suggested by the statement that “Cain went out <i>from the face</i> of God” (1–7).",
            "What the Lawgiver teaches by these words is that the soul that forfeits with Adam, or forgoes with Cain, the power of seeing God, loses the joy of the quest of Him, experienced by Moses and by Abraham (8–21); and incurs instability, in lieu of the firm standing gained by them through nearness to God (22–32). Moreover, he is ‘wedded’ to the impious view that “man is the measure of all things,” and fails to regard his offspring, as Seth regarded his, as the gift of God (33–48).",
            "The “city builded” by Cain is the creed set up by every impious soul. Its buildings are arguments, its inhabitants the self-conceited, its law lawlessness, its tower of confusion (Babel) the defence of its tenets. Even the lovers of Virtue are forced by the worldly to build such cities for them (49–59).",
            "At this point (§ 60) Philo stops to illustrate, from the instance of Hebron, how names, like ‘Enoch,’ ‘Methuselah,’ ‘Lamech,’ can have two discrepant shades of meaning, as they have when borne by descendants of Cain and when borne by descendants of Seth. He is also led to give examples of that which is later in time being given precedence over what is earlier, as Hebron was placed above Zoan (60–65).",
            "Having now made clear the nature of the creed which the Cain-like soul sets up, Philo turns to its offspring—‘Gaidad’ (or ‘Irad)’ is the “flock” of untended irrational faculties. ‘Maiel’ (or ‘Mehu-jael’) means “away from the Love of God”; ‘Methuselah’ is one “incurring soul death”; and Lamech one “low-cringing”; who “takes to himself” as wives Adah and Zillah (66–74).",
            "Here Philo cannot refrain from pointing out the wrongness of a man <i>taking</i> a wife <i>to himself</i> instead of receiving her as a gift from God. He makes an attempt to account for the fact that the self-same expression is used of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses (75–78).",
            "‘Adah’ = ‘Witness,’ and is like success, leading us to think our actions right because of what they bring. Her son is ‘Jobel’ = “one altering,” the remover of Virtue’s boundaries fixed by right reason, making virtues vices (79–93).",
            "Here follow some subtle remarks on Leviticus 27:32 f. (“both shall be holy”), and on the proofs of holiness, and the number 10, all tending to show that the Law is opposed to ‘altering’ (94–97).",
            "Jobel is also the father of rearers of ‘cattle’; and cattle” are soul-less passions (98 f.).",
            "Jobel’s son is Jubal, the uttered word, “inclining this way and that,” with no sure, firm, speech. He is also the originator of musical instruments, which are inferior to song-birds, but, like articulate speech, capable of such <i>varied</i> utterance, that it is natural that they should be invented by one who knows no abiding, and is son of one who <i>alters</i> all things (100–111).",
            "Adah having been dealt with (79–111), we turn to Zillah, whose name signifies “shadow,” and who is therefore a symbol, of the unsubstantial goods of the body and the outside world. Her son, Tubal, bears a name meaning “all in one,” and represents the “health and wealth” which men deem the sum of human bliss. He is, by trade, a ‘hammerer,’ maker of war and munitions of war, for lusts are the real war-makers and batterers of mankind. Verily is he son of ‘Shadow.’ His sister is Noeman or “fatness,” the product of plenty (112–123).",
            "Lamech, his wives and progeny having been dealt with (73–123), we are brought to Seth, in whom the murdered Abel comes to life. His name signifies “Watering,” for the Mind waters the senses, as the Word of God waters the Virtues, which are symbolized by the four “heads” of the river going out of Eden. The word “heads” is used to indicate the sovereignty conferred by Virtues. The “River” is the Word of God, ever flowing for souls that love God.",
            "“Watering” is so apt a figure of teaching, that Philo is soon showing us Hagar, who represents preliminary education, filling her water-skin from the well of knowledge, to give drink to the boy, who is the soul in its first craving for instruction, that he may grow up to be an ‘archer,’ directing arguments with sure aim. But Philo hastens to give us the picture of Rebecca supplying the water of perfection to the servant of Abraham. Her <i>going down</i> to the well of God’s wisdom shows us that a sense of our own weakness is the beginning of stepping upwards. Her <i>pitcher</i> represents the directness of spiritual teaching, in contrast with the earlier, indirect, instruction through the senses and sensible objects, represented by Hagar’s bulky water-skin.",
            "Every detail of Rebecca’s behaviour to Eliezer brings out a characteristic of the true teacher. She addresses him respectfully. She forgets self in her concern for his need. She says “Drink,” not “<i>I will give</i> thee to drink.” She lets the pitcher down on her left fore-arm and tilts it, suiting her action to the ‘pupil’s’ capacity. She does not forget to water the <i>camels, i.e.</i> to encourage <i>memory</i>, for these animals chew the cud; and they are watered from the <i>well</i>, itself a symbol of memory, from whose depths we draw by the aid of a reminder. The readiness of the camel for <i>toil</i> brings Philo to the Water of Marah, and to the tree by means of which the Israelites, after their toilsome march from Egypt, tasted the sweetness that is essential to fruitful toil. Philo cannot pass over the water which the worshippers of the golden calf were made to drink. His main point is that the grinding down of the calf, the symbol, like Egypt and the animals it worshipped, of the body, shows the inferiority of bodily advantages. Then the ear-rings of which the calf was made show the inferiority of hearing to sight, and the greatness of intuition, implied in the words “<i>See</i> that I AM,” words which are equivalent to “Behold My <i>subsistence</i>,” the essence or quality of God being invisible (138–169).",
            "Returning to Gen. 4:25 Philo deduces from the word “raised up out of” (the earth) the doctrine that God sows nothing futile in our souls. He takes the word “another” (seed) to mean ‘other than Cain’ in one way, ‘other than Abel’ in another way, and goes on to work out Seth’s ‘otherness’ from Abel. Whereas Abel has relinquished all that is mortal, and gone hence to a higher life, Seth, sprung from human excellence, will never relinquish the human race, but be ‘enlarged’ <i>in</i> it. He is ‘enlarged’ in righteous <i>Noah</i>, the tenth from <i>Adam</i>; in faithful <i>Abraham</i>, another tenth; in <i>Moses</i>, wise in all things, seventh from Abraham. The limit of knowledge attained by Seth is Noah’s starting-point; Noah’s limit is Abraham’s starting-point; and Abraham’s limit the starting-point of Moses (170–174).",
            "In the passage with which the treatise closes we have one of the writer’s contrasts. “<i>God hath raised up</i> to me” is contrasted with the folly and impiety of Lot and his daughters, ‘Counsel’ and ‘Consent,’ and with Rachel’s faulty cry to Jacob, “Give me children.” As she learned from Jacob’s rebuke, “Am I in the place of God?” to say “Let God add to me another son,” so let us, if we so err, repent. The gross sin of Onan is rebuked, and the act of Phinehas the “Mouth-muzzle,” is interpreted as meaning that “he put a stop to the revolt within himself, and turned clean away from his own pleasure.” The last words are a reflection, as appropriate to the twentieth as to the first century, that the soul is the theatre of the most dire wars, and that all wars come from disordered souls (175–185)."
        ],
        "": [
            [
                "[1] “And Cain went out from the face of God, and dwelt in the land of Naid, over against Eden” (Gen. 4:16). Let us here raise the question whether in the books in which Moses acts as God’s interpreter we ought to take his statements figuratively, since the impression made by the words in their literal sense is greatly at variance with truth.",
                "[2] For if the Existent Being has a face, and he that wishes to quit its sight can with perfect ease remove elsewhere, what ground have we for rejecting the impious doctrines of Epicurus, or the atheism of the Egyptians, or the mythical plots of play and poem of which the world is full?",
                "[3] For a face is a piece of a living creature, and God is a whole not a part, so that we shall have to assign to Him the other parts of the body as well, neck, breasts, hands, feet, to say nothing of the belly and genital organs, together with the innumerable inner and outer organs.",
                "[4] And if God has human forms and parts, He must needs also have human passions and experiences. For in the case of these organs, as in all other cases, Nature has not made idle superfluities, but aids to the weakness of those furnished with them. And she adjusts to them, according to their several needs. all that enables them to render their own special services and ministries. But the Existent Being is in need of nothing, and so, not needing the benefit that parts bestow, can have no parts at all."
            ],
            [
                "[5] And whence does Cain “go out”? From the palace of the Lord of all? But what dwelling apparent to the senses could God have, save this world, for the quitting of which no power or device avails? For all created things are enclosed and kept within itself by the circle of the sky. Indeed the particles of the deceased break up into their original elements and are again distributed to the various forces of the universe out of which they were constituted, and the loan which was lent to each man is repaid, after longer or shorter terms, to Nature his creditor, at such time as she may choose to recover what she herself had lent.",
                "[6] Again he that goes out from someone is in a different place from him whom he leaves behind. (If, then, Cain goes out from God), it follows that some portions of the universe are bereft of God. Yet God has left nothing empty or destitute of Himself, but has completely filled all things.",
                "[7] Well, if God has not a face, transcending as He does the peculiarities that mark all created things; if He is to be found not in some particular part only, seeing that He contains all and is not Himself contained by anything; if it is impossible for some part of this world to remove from it as from a city, seeing that nothing has been left over outside it; the only thing left for us to do is to make up our minds that none of the propositions put forward is literally intended and to take the path of figurative interpretation so dear to philosophical souls.",
                "[8] Our argument must start in this way. If it is a difficult thing to remove out of sight of a mortal monarch, must it not be a thousandfold more difficult to quit the vision of God and be gone, resolved henceforth to shun the sight of Him; in other words to become incapable of receiving a mental picture of Him through having lost the sight of the soul’s eye?",
                "[9] Men who have suffered this loss under compulsion, overwhelmed by the force of an inexorable power, deserve pity rather than hatred. But those who have of their own free choice turned away and departed from the Existent Being, transcending the utmost limit of wickedness itself—for no evil could be found equivalent to it—these must pay no ordinary penalties, but such as are specially devised and far beyond the ordinary. Now no effort of thought could hit upon a penalty greater and more unheard of than to go forth into banishment from the Ruler of the Universe."
            ],
            [
                "[10] Adam, then, is driven out by God; Cain goes out voluntarily. Moses is showing us each form of moral failure, one of free choice, the other not so. The involuntary act, not owing its existence to our deliberate judgement, is to obtain later on such healing as the case admits of, “for God shall raise up another seed in place of Abel whom Cain slew” (Gen. 4:25). This seed is a male offspring, Seth or “Watering,” raised up to the soul whose fall did not originate in itself.",
                "[11] The voluntary act, inasmuch as it was committed with forethought and of set purpose, must incur woes for ever beyond healing. For even as right actions that spring from previous intention are of greater worth than those that are involuntary, so, too, among sins those which are involuntary are less weighty than those which are voluntary."
            ],
            [
                "[12] Cain, then, has left the face of God to fall into the hands of Justice who takes vengeance on the impious. But Moses will lay down for his pupils a charge most noble “to love God and hearken to and cleave to Him” (Deut. 30:20); assuring them that this is the life that brings true prosperity and length of days. And his way of inviting them to honour Him Who is the worthy object of strong yearning and devoted love is vivid and expressive. He bids them “cleave to Him,” bringing out by the use of this word how constant and continuous and unbroken is the concord and union that comes through making God our own.",
                "[13] These and other exhortations like these does Moses address to others. But so unceasingly does he himself yearn to see God and to be seen by Him, that he implores Him to reveal clearly His own nature (Exod. 33:13), which is so hard to divine, hoping thus to obtain at length a view free from all falsehood, and to exchange doubt and uncertainty for a most assured confidence. Nor will he abate the intensity of his desire, but although he is aware that he is enamoured of an object which entails a hard quest, nay, which is out of reach, he will nevertheless struggle on with no relaxation of his earnest endeavour, but honestly and resolutely enlisting all his faculties to co-operate for the attainment of his object."
            ],
            [
                "[14] So see him enter into the thick darkness where God was (Exod. 20:21), that is into conceptions regarding the Existent Being that belong to the unapproachable region where there are no material forms. For the Cause of all is not in the thick darkness, nor locally in any place at all, but high above both place and time. For He has placed all creation under His control, and is contained by nothing, but transcends all. But though transcending and being beyond what He has made, none the less has He filled the universe with Himself; for He has caused His powers to extend themselves throughout the Universe to its utmost bounds, and in accordance with the laws of harmony has knit each part to each.",
                "[15] When therefore the God-loving soul probes the question of the essence of the Existent Being, he enters on a quest of that which is beyond matter and beyond sight.",
                "[16] And out of this quest there accrues to him a vast boon, namely to apprehend that the God of real Being is apprehensible by no one, and to see precisely this, that He is incapable of being seen. But the holy Guide seems to me even before he began this search to have discerned its futility. That he did so is evident from his imploring the Existent One to be His own Interpreter and reveal His own Nature. He says, “Manifest Thyself to me” (Exod. 33:13), showing quite clearly by so saying that there is not a single created being capable of attaining by his own efforts the knowledge of the God Who verily exists."
            ],
            [
                "[17] This must be borne in mind if we are to understand what we read about Abraham, how, on reaching the place of which God had told him, he looked up on the third day and “seeth the place from afar” (Gen. 22:3 f.). What place? The one which he had reached? And how can it be far off if he is already there?",
                "[18] It may be that what we are told under a figure is to this effect. The wise man is ever longing to discern the Ruler of the Universe. As he journeys along the path that takes him through knowledge and wisdom, he comes into contact first with divine words, and with these he makes a preliminary stay, and though he had meant to go the remainder of the way, he comes to a stop. For the eyes of his understanding have been opened, and he sees perfectly clearly that he has engaged in the chase of a quarry hard to capture, which always eludes its pursuers and is off to a distance leaving them ever so far behind.",
                "[19] Rightly does he reflect that all the fleetest things under the sky would be seen to be standing still, if their motion were compared with that of the sun and moon and the other heavenly bodies. And yet (he ponders) all heaven is God’s handiwork, and that which makes is ever ahead of the thing made: it follows, then, that not only other things with which we are familiar, but that whose movement surpasses them all in swiftness, the mind, would come short of the apprehension of the First Cause by an immeasurable distance. But the strangest thing of all is, that whereas the heavenly bodies as they go past moving objects are themselves in motion, God who outstrips them all is motionless.",
                "[20] Yea, we aver that remaining the same He is at once close to us and far from us. He takes hold of us by those forming and chastening powers which are so close to each one of us; and yet He has driven created being far away from His essential Nature, so that we cannot touch it even with the pure spiritual contact of the understanding.",
                "[21] With the lovers of God, then, in their quest of the Existent One, even if they never find Him, we rejoice, for the quest of the Good and Beautiful, even if the goal be missed, is sufficient of itself to give a foretaste of gladness. But the self-loving Cain we commiserate, for he has left in the lurch his own soul bereft of any conception of the Existent One, having deliberately blinded the organ by which alone he could have seen Him."
            ],
            [
                "[22] It is worth while to notice the country also into which he betakes himself when he has left the presence of God: it is the country called “Tossing.” In this way the lawgiver indicates that the foolish man, being a creature of wavering and unsettled impulses, is subject to tossing and tumult, like the sea lashed by contrary winds when a storm is raging, and has never even in fancy had experience of quietness and calm. And as at a time when a ship is tossing at the mercy of the sea, it is capable neither of sailing nor of riding at anchor, but pitched about this way and that it rolls in turn to either side and moves uncertainly swaying to and fro; even so the worthless man, with a mind reeling and storm-driven, powerless to direct his course with any steadiness, is always tossing, ready to make shipwreck of his life.",
                "[23] I am greatly struck by the perfect sequence of cause and effect in all this. Proximity to a stable object produces a desire to be like it and a longing for quiescence. Now that which is unwaveringly stable is God, and that which is subject to movement is creation. He therefore that draws nigh to God longs for stability, but he that forsakes Him, inasmuch as he approaches the unresting creation is, as we might expect, carried about."
            ],
            [
                "[24] It is for this reason that it is written in the Curses “He shall not cause thee to rest, and there shall be no standing for the sole of thy feet,” and a little later “thy life shall be hanging before thine eyes” (Deut. 28:65, 66). For it is the nature of the foolish man to be ever moving contrary to right reason, and to be averse to rest and quietness, and never to plant himself firmly and fixedly on any principle. He has one set of views at one time, another set at another, and sometimes holds conflicting views about the same matters, though no fresh element has been introduced into them.",
                "[25] He becomes great and small, foe and friend, and nearly every other pair of opposites in a moment of time. And, as the lawgiver said, his whole life is hanging, with no firm foothold, but always swept off its feet by interests drawing and dragging him in opposite directions.",
                "[26] This is why the lawgiver says in another place that “he that hangeth on a tree is cursed of God” (Deut. 21:23), for, whereas it behoves us to hang upon God, the man of whom we are thinking suspended himself from his body, which is a log-like mass in us. By doing so he gave up hope and took desire in its place, a grievous evil in place of a supreme good. For hope, being an expectation of good things, fastens the mind upon the bountiful God; whereas desire, infusing irrational cravings, fastens it on the body, which Nature wrought as a receptacle and abode of pleasures."
            ],
            [
                "[27] Let such men be hung on desire as from a halter. But Abraham the wise, being one who stands, draws near to God the standing One; for it says “he was standing before the Lord and he drew near and said” (Gen. 18:22 f.). For only a truly unchanging soul has access to the unchanging God, and the soul that is of such a disposition does in very deed stand near to the Divine power.",
                "[28] But what shows in the clearest light the firm steadfastness of the man of worth is the oracle communicated to the all-wise Moses which runs thus: “But as for thee stand thou here by Me” (Deut. 5:31). This oracle proves two things, one that the Existent Being who moves and turns all else is Himself exempt from movement and turning; and secondly that He makes the worthy man sharer of His own Nature, which is repose. For I take it that, just as crooked things are straightened by a correct ruler, so moving things are brought to a stop and made stationary by the force of Him Who stands.",
                "[29] In this case He charges another to stand with Him. Elsewhere He says, “I will go down with thee into Egypt, and will bring thee up at last” (Gen. 46:4). He does not say “thou with Me.” Why is this? Because quiescence and abiding are characteristic of God, but change of place and all movement that makes for such change is characteristic of creation. When then He invites a man to the good peculiar to Him, He says “Do thou stand with Me,” not “I with thee:” for in God’s case standing is not a future but an ever present act.",
                "[30] But when He comes to that which is proper to creation, His words will quite rightly be “I will go down with thee,” for to thee change of place is appropriate. Accordingly with Me no one shall go down—for I know no turning or change—but one shall stand, seeing that quiescence is dear to Me. But with those who go down in the sense of changing their place—for change of place is near of kin to them—I will go down, in all-pervading Presence without any alteration of locality, seeing I have filled the universe with Myself.",
                "[31] I do this in pity for rational nature, that it may be caused to rise out of the nether world of the passions into the upper region of virtue guided step by step by Me, Who have laid down the road that leads to heaven and appointed it as a highway for all suppliant souls, that they might not grow weary as they tread it.”"
            ],
            [
                "[32] Having now shown each side of the picture, calm in a good man, restlessness in a foolish one, let us devote our attention to the sequel. The lawgiver says that Naid, “Tumult,” to which the soul migrated, is over against Eden. “Eden” is a symbolic name for right and divine reason, and so it is literally rendered “luxuriance.” For right reason above all others finds its delight and luxury in the enjoyment of good things pure and undiluted, yea complete and full, while God the Giver of wealth rains down His virgin and deathless boons. And evil is by nature in conflict with good, unjust with just, wise with foolish, and all forms of virtue with all forms of vice. That is the meaning of Naid being over against Eden."
            ],
            [
                "[33] Having said this, he says next: “And Cain knew his wife, and she conceived and bare Enoch; and Cain was building a city, and he called the city after his son’s name Enoch” (Gen. 4:17). Is it not reasonable to inquire, what woman Cain knew? For since Eve, who was formed out of Adam’s side, there has been hitherto no record of the creation of any other woman.",
                "[34] If anyone should suggest that Cain married his sister, his suggestion will be not only unholy but untrue; for Adam’s daughters are mentioned as having been born at a later time.",
                "[35] What then must we say? “Wife” is, I think, the name he gives to the opinion held by an impious man’s reasoning faculty, the opinion which the impious man (habitually) assumes touching (all) matters. So do a host of those who have professed philosophy, some sects agreeing in the rules which they deduce from it for the conduct of life, and some making a variety of deductions. Of what sort then is an impious man’s opinion?",
                "[36] That the human mind is the measure of all things, an opinion held they tell us by an ancient sophist named Protagoras, an offspring of Cain’s madness. I gather that by “wife” this opinion is meant from the fact that when Cain knew her she bore Enoch, and Enoch means “thy gift.” For if man is the measure of all things, all things are a present and gift of the mind. It has bestowed on the eye seeing as a favour, on the ears hearing, on each of the other senses their power of perception, yes and speech on the faculty of thought-utterance.",
                "[37] But if all these are gifts, so too is thinking, including in itself countless products of thought, resolves, counsels, forethought, comprehension, acquisition of knowledge, skill in arts and in organizing, other faculties too many to recount. Why, pray, are you any longer ready to deliver grave and solemn discourses about holiness and honouring God, and to listen to such discourses from others, seeing that you have with you the mind to take the place of God, and forcibly to appropriate all things human both good and bad, sending to some a blend of both, to others one of the two unmixed?",
                "[38] And if someone bring against you an indictment for impiety, you boldly defend yourselves, asserting that you have been trained under an admirable master and instructor, even Cain, who advised you to honour what was near you rather than the far off Cause, and that you are bound to attend to his advice both for other reasons and most of all because he proved the strength of his creed by unmistakable deeds in his victory over Abel, the champion of the opposite opinion, and in getting rid both of him and his opinion.",
                "[39] But, in my judgement and in that of my friends, preferable to life with impious men would be death with pious men; for awaiting those who die in this way there will be undying life, but awaiting those who live in that way there will be eternal death."
            ],
            [
                "[40] Now since Cain is said to have begotten Enoch, and there is afterwards a descendant of Seth with the name of Enoch again (Gen. 4:17, 5:18), we must consider whether they were two different persons or the same person. While we are engaged with these, let us investigate also the difference between others who have the same name. Like Enoch, Methuselah and Lamech appear as descendants of Cain, and descendants no less of Seth (Gen. 4:18, 5:21, 25).",
                "[41] It is important, then, that we should know that each of the names mentioned has a meaning that can be taken in two ways. “Enoch,” as I have already said, means “thy gift,” “Methuselah” “a sending forth of death,” and “Lamech” “humiliation.” Take the first. Thy gift is, on some people’s lips, an address to the mind within us; on the lips of the better kind of men it is addressed to the universal Mind.",
                "[42] Those who assert that everything that is involved in thought or perception or speech is a free gift of their own soul, seeing that they introduce an impious and atheistic opinion, must be assigned to the race of Cain, who, while incapable even of ruling himself, made bold to say that he had full possession of all other things as well. But those who do not claim as their own all that is fair in creation, but acknowledge all as due to the gift of God, being men of real nobility, sprung not from a long line of rich ancestors but from lovers of virtue, must remain enrolled under Seth as the head of their race.",
                "[43] This sort is very hard to find, since they make their escape from a life beset with passions and vices, with its treachery and unscrupulousness, its villainy and dissoluteness. For those who have been wellpleasing to God, and whom God has translated and removed from perishable to immortal races, are no more found among the multitude."
            ],
            [
                "[44] Having now distinguished between the things signified by Enoch’s name, we will pass on next to Methuselah. His name, as we saw, means “a sending forth of death,” and these words call up two pictures to the mind. In one of them death is being sent to fall upon somebody; in the other death is being dismissed from somebody. The man on whom it is sent to fall, dies without fail, while he from whom it is dismissed lives and survives.",
                "[45] He who receives death is an intimate of Cain, who is ever dying to the way of life directed by virtue; to Seth he is close of kin from whom dying is dismissed and debarred; for the good man has reaped true life as his crop.",
                "[46] “Low estate” again, which is the meaning of “Lamech,” has a twofold bearing. We are brought low either when the energies of the soul are let down owing to sicknesses and infirmities produced in us as the result of irrational passions, or when in our eager quest of virtue we check in ourselves the swelling of self-conceit.",
                "[47] The former kind of being brought low is due to weakness, and is a species of leprosy, that changeful disease which assumes so many different forms. For when the uniform and healthy appearance of the flesh is impaired and the mischief is visible below the surface, the lawgiver says that the cruel disease of leprosy has set in (Lev. 13:3).",
                "[48] The other form of being brought low results from the exercise of hardy strength, and this has for its sequel propitiation, determined by 10, the perfect number: for there is a command to bring low our souls on the tenth day of the month (Lev. 23:27), and this signifies to put away boasting, a putting away which leads to an imploring of pardon for sins voluntary and involuntary. So the Lamech lowly in this way is a descendant of Seth, and father of righteous Noah; but the Lamech brought low in the former way is sprung from Cain."
            ],
            [
                "[49] The next thing for us to consider is why Cain, all alone as he is, appears in the narrative as founding and building a city; for a multitude of men needs a good-sized city to dwell in, whereas for the three that then existed some foot-hill or small cave would have been a quite adequate habitation. I said “for three,” but most likely it was for one, Cain himself only: for the parents of the murdered Abel would not have brooked dwelling in the same city with his slayer, seeing he had incurred a more defiling guilt than that of a man-slayer by slaying his brother.",
                "[50] Everyone can see how the building of a city by a single man runs counter not only to all our ideas but to our reason itself. How is such a thing possible? Why, he could not have built even the most insignificant part of a house without employing others to work under him. Could the same man at the same moment do a stone-mason’s work, hew timber, work iron and brass, surround the city with a great circuit of walls, construct great gateways and fortifications, temples and sacred enclosures, porticoes, arsenals, houses, and all other public and private buildings that are customary? Could he in addition to these construct drains, open up streets, provide fountains and conduits and all else that a city needs?",
                "[51] It would seem, then, since all this is at variance with reality, that it is better to take the words figuratively, as meaning that Cain resolves to set up his own creed, just as one might set up a city."
            ],
            [
                "[52] Now, every city needs for its existence buildings, and inhabitants, and laws. Cain’s buildings are demonstrative arguments. With these, as though fighting from a city-wall, he repels the assaults of his adversaries, by forging plausible inventions contrary to the truth. His inhabitants are the wise in their own conceit, devotees of impiety, godlessness, self-love, arrogance, false opinion, men ignorant of real wisdom, who have reduced to an organized system ignorance, lack of learning and of culture, and other pestilential things akin to these. His laws are various forms of lawlessness and injustice, unfairness, licentiousness, audacity, senselessness, self-will, immoderate indulgence in pleasures, unnatural lusts that may not be named.",
                "[53] Of such a city every impious man is found to be an architect in his own miserable soul, until such time as God takes counsel (Gen. 11:6), and brings upon their sophistic devices a great and complete confusion. This time will come when they are building, not a city only, but a tower as well, whose top shall reach to heaven (Gen. 11:4). By a “tower” is meant a discourse working up each (immoral) doctrine which they introduce. The discourse has for a head its own proper point, which is figuratively spoken of as “heaven.” For every discourse must needs have as its head and aim the thought brought out by it; and it is to bring this out that men of eloquence are in the habit of delivering their lengthy expositions and perorations."
            ],
            [
                "[54] To such a pitch of impiety have they gone that they think fit not only to raise such cities with their own hands, but they force the virtue-loving host of Israel to do the like, appointing over them taskmasters and instructors in wicked works. For it is said that under the maltreatment of their taskmasters they built for the king of the country three cities, Peitho, Rameses, and On, which is Heliopolis (Exod. 1:11).",
                "[55] These signify, when taken as figures, our properties of mind, sense, and speech. Peitho is our speech, because persuasion is its function, and the word means “harassing mouth,” for the speech of the worthless man makes a study of harassing and overturning all that is good and worthy. Rameses is sense-perception [for it means a “moth’s troubling”],since the mind is eaten out and gnawed through by each of the senses,",
                "[56] just as though the moth were at work loosening and tearing it. For when ideas enter the mind such as cannot give it pleasure they fill our life with pain and toil.",
                "[57] “On” is by name “Heap” but symbolically it is the mind, for to it as to a treasure-heap all men’s words are brought. The lawgiver is evidence of this by calling On “Heliopolis” or “Sun-city.” For as the sun, when it has risen, shows clearly the objects which night hides, so the mind sending forth its proper light causes all forms and conditions to be clearly apprehended.",
                "[58] It would therefore not be amiss to speak of the mind as the sun of our complex system. For if it does not rise and let its peculiar light shine forth in man, the microcosm, it sheds a deep darkness on all things and prevents anything from being visible."
            ],
            [
                "[59] This “Heap” is called to witness by Jacob, the man of earnest effort, in his controversy with Laban (Gen. 31:46 f.). This conveys the deep truth that the mind is for each man the witness of his secret purposes, and the conscience an impartial scrutineer unequalled in veracity. [But the city of Witness]was built before these cities. [60] For we are told that the spies came to Hebron, and that Ahiman, Sheshai, and Talmai, the children of Anak, were there; then it is added: “and Hebron was built seven years before Zoan in Egypt” (Numb. 13:22). It is a thoroughly philosophical proceeding to show how one and the same name has different shades of meaning. “Hebron,” for instance, means “union,” but union may be of two kinds, the soul being either made the body’s yokefellow, or being brought into fellowship with virtue.",
                "[61] The soul, then, that submits to bodily couplings has as its inhabitants those mentioned just now. “Ahiman” means “my brother”; “Sheshai” “outside me”; “Talmai” “one hanging”: for it is a necessity to souls that love the body that the body should be looked upon as a brother, and that external good things should be valued pre-eminently: and all souls in this condition depend on and hang from lifeless things, for, like men crucified and nailed to a tree, they are affixed to perishable materials till they die.",
                "[62] But the soul wedded to goodness obtained inhabitants excelling in the virtues, whom the double cave (Gen. 23:9) received in pairs, Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, Leah and Jacob, these being virtues and their possessors. This Hebron, a treasure-house guarding personal monuments of knowledge and wisdom, is earlier than Zoan and all Egypt. For nature wrought soul elder than body (or Egypt), and virtue elder than vice (or Zoan). for “Zoan” means “Command of evacuation”; and nature determines precedence not by length of time but by worth."
            ],
            [
                "[63] Accordingly he calls Israel, though younger in age, his “firstborn” son in dignity (Exod. 4:22), making it evident that he who sees God, the original Cause of being, is the recipient of honour, as earliest offspring of the Uncreated One, conceived by Virtue the object of the hatred of mortals, and as he to whom there is a law that a double portion, the right of the first-born, should be given as being the eldest (Deut. 21:17).",
                "[64] For this reason also the seventh day, although in order it is the number born after 6, yet in value takes precedence of every number, in nothing differing from 1. This will be made clear by the law-giver himself, who in his epilogue to the narrative of the creation says: “And God rested on the seventh day from all His works which He had made; and God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it, because in it God rested from all his works which God had begun to make” (Gen. 2:2 f.).",
                "[65] After this he adds: “This is the book of the creation of heaven and earth, when it was created, in the day in which God made the heaven and the earth” (Gen. 2:4). Now these things were created on the first day, so that the seventh day is referred back to 1, the first and starting-point of all. I have written thus fully with the object of showing the more clearly the opinion which Cain deems it necessary to set up as though he were building a city."
            ],
            [
                "[66] The son of Enoch is named Gaidad (Gen. 4:18), which means “a flock.” Such a name follows naturally upon his father’s name. For it was fitting that the man who deems himself beholden to mind, which is incapable of comprehending its own nature, should beget irrational faculties, collected into a flock; for men endowed with reason do not profess that creed.",
                "[67] Now every flock that has no shepherd over it necessarily meets with great disasters, owing to its inability by itself to keep hurtful things away and to choose things that will be good for it. Accordingly Moses says in his Prayer “Let the Lord, the God of the spirits and of all flesh, appoint a man over this congregation, which shall go out before their face and which shall come in, and which shall lead them out and which shall lead them in, and the congregation of the Lord shall not be as sheep that have no shepherd” (Numb. 27:16 f.).",
                "[68] For when the protector, or governor, or father, or whatever we like to call him, of our complex being, namely right reason, has gone off leaving to itself the flock within us, the flock itself being left unheeded perishes, and great loss is entailed upon its owner, while the irrational and unprotected creature, bereft of a guardian of the herd to admonish and discipline it, finds itself banished to a great distance from rational and immortal life."
            ],
            [
                "[69] This is why Gaidad is said to have a son Maiel (Gen. 4:18), whose name translated is “away from the life of God.” For since the flock is without reason, and God is the Fountain of reason, it follows that he that lives an irrational life has been cut off from the life of God. Now Moses defines living in accordance with God as consisting in loving Him, for he says “thy life is to love Him that IS” (Deut. 30:19 f.).",
                "[70] As an example of the opposite life he gives the goat on which the lot fell, for he says, “he shall set him alive before the Lord, to make atonement over him, so as to send him forth for dismissal afar” (Lev. 16:10).",
                "[71] A well considered direction. No one of sound sense would applaud old men for abstaining from indulgences, for old age, that long and incurable illness, renders the vehemence of their cravings far less intense. He would deem praiseworthy young men in their prime, because when appetite was a-flame within them owing to the keenness that belongs to their time of life, they nevertheless fully availed themselves of engines for quenching these fires in the shape of the lessons supplied by a sound education, and so checked the raging flame and assuaged the boiling heat of the passions. On these principles fainter praise is accorded to those who have no disease, such as commonly arises from an evil mode of life, because nature bestowed on them an easy lot, and without any effort of will they simply enjoyed good fortune, whereas those who have developed such a disease and against whom it is doing battle, are more loudly praised, if they set themselves stoutly to combat it and show both the will and the power to master it.",
                "[72] For the strength put forth in overcoming by a severe effort the seductive baits of pleasure receives the praise which is accorded to moral victories, won by will-power. If, then, not one of the qualities that have won the happy lot (live in us), but there be alive in us noxious diseases and sicknesses, banes to be rid of, let us be in earnest to overthrow and cast them down; for this is “to make atonement over them,” to acknowledge, that though we have them still living in our soul we refuse to give in, but facing them all we persist in repelling them with vigour, until we shall have fully ensured their complete removal."
            ],
            [
                "[73] What issue awaits him who does not live according to the will of God, save death of the soul? And to this is given the name Methuselah, which means (as we saw) “a dispatch of death.” Wherefore he is son of Mahujael (Gen. 4:18), of the man who relinquished his own life, to whom dying is sent, yea soul-death, which is the change of soul under the impetus of irrational passion.",
                "[74] When the soul has conceived this passion, it brings forth with sore travail-pangs incurable sicknesses and debilities, and by the contortion brought on by these it is bowed down and brought low; for each one of them lays on it an intolerable burden, so that it is unable even to look up. To all this the name “Lamech” has been given, which means “humiliation,” that Lamech may prove himself son of Methuselah (Gen. 4:18), with entire fitness, a low and cringing passion being offspring of the soul’s death, a sore debility child of irrational impulse."
            ],
            [
                "[75] “And Lamech took to himself two wives, the name of the one was Ada, the name of the second Sella” (Gen. 4:19). All that a worthless man takes to himself is in every case reprehensible, polluted as it is by an intent wellnigh past cleansing, while on the other hand the voluntary actions of good men are all praiseworthy. So in this instance Lamech in choosing wives for himself, chooses very great evils, while Abraham on the other hand and Jacob and Aaron in taking wives for themselves become associated with good things appropriate to them.",
                "[76] For we read in the case of Abraham as follows: “and Abram and Nahor took to themselves wives; and the name of Abram’s wife was Sarai” (Gen. 11:29) and in the case of Jacob “arise and escape to Mesopotamia, to the family of Bethuel thy mother’s father, and take to thyself from thence a wife from the daughters of Laban thy mother’s brother (Gen. 28:2). and in the case of Aaron, “and Aaron took to himself Elizabeth, daughter of Aminadab, sister of Naasson, as his wife” (Exod. 6:23).",
                "[77] Isaac and Moses take wives indeed, but they do not take them purely of themselves, but Isaac is said to have taken one when he entered into his mother’s dwelling (Gen. 24:67), and to Moses the man with whom he abode gives in marriage his daughter Zipporah (Exod. 2:21)."
            ],
            [
                "[78] Not without purpose have the differences between these cases been recorded in the lawgiver’s pages. For to those who welcome training, who make progress, and improve, witness is borne of their deliberate choice of the good, that their very endeavour may not be left unrewarded. But the fitting lot of those who have been held worthy of a wisdom that needs no other teaching and no other learning is, apart from any agency of their own, to accept from God’s hands Reason as their plighted spouse, and to receive Knowledge, which is partner in the life of the wise.",
                "[79] But he that has been cast away from things human, the low and grovelling Lamech, marries as his first wife Ada, which means “Witness.” He has arranged the marriage for himself, for he fancies that the prime good for a man is the smooth movement and passage of the mind along the line of well-aimed projects, with nothing to hinder its working towards easy attainment.",
                "[80] “For what,” says he, “could be better than that one’s ideas, purposes, conjectures, aims, in a word one’s plans, should go, as the saying is, without a limp, so as to reach their goal without stumbling, understanding being evidenced in all the particulars mentioned? Now, if a man brings a correct and unerring judgement to bear only on ends that are good, I for my part set this man down as happy. And in doing so I have the Law for my teacher, for the Law itself pronounced Joseph a successful man. It did not say “in all things” but in those in which God vouchsafed success (Gen. 39:2). and God’s gifts are all good.",
                "[81] But if a man has used a natural aptness and readiness not only for good and worthy ends, but also for their opposites, treating as alike things widely different, let him be deemed unhappy. Certainly the words in the Babel passage are of the nature of a curse, where we read “nothing shall be wanting to them, which they purpose to do” (Gen. 11:6). for verily it is a desperate misfortune for the soul to succeed in all things which it attempts, although they be utterly base.",
                "[82] I for my part would pray, that if ever I should have made up my mind to do a wrong, the wrongdoing might fail me, and if to live in a way unworthy of a man, the undisciplined life might fail me, and if with impudence and rascality, that there might be no impudence and rascality to be found. For assuredly ’tis better for those who have resolved to steal or commit adultery or murder to behold each of these purposes brought to failure and ruin."
            ],
            [
                "[83] Therefore, O mind, have nothing to do with Ada, who bears witness to (the success of) worthless things, and is borne witness to (as helping) in the attempts to accomplish each of them. But if you shall think well to have her for a partner, she will bear to you a very great mischief, even Jobel (Gen. 4:20), which signifies “one altering.” For if you delight in the witness borne to (the goodness of) everything that may present itself, you will desire to twist everything and turn it round, shifting the boundaries fixed for things by nature.",
                "[84] Moses, full of indignation at such people, pronounces a curse on them saying, “Cursed is he that shifteth his neighbour’s boundaries” (Deut. 27:17). What he describes as “near” and “hard by” like a neighbour is the thing that is good. For it is not necessary, he says, to fly up into heaven, nor to get beyond the sea in searching for what is good; for that it stands hard by and is near to each man.",
                "[85] And in a thoroughly philosophic way he makes a threefold division of it: saying “It is in thy mouth and in thy heart and in thine hand” (Deut. 30:11–14), that is, in words, in plans, in actions. For these are the parts of the good thing, and of these it is compacted, and the lack of but one not only renders it imperfect but absolutely destroys it.",
                "[86] For what good is it to say the best things but to plan and carry out the most shameful things? This is the way of the sophists, for as they spin out their discourses on sound sense and endurance they grate on the ears of those most thirsting to listen, but in the choices that they make and the actions of their lives we find them going very far wrong.",
                "[87] And what is the good of having right intentions, and yet resorting to unfitting deeds and words, by the words inflicting loss on those who hear them, and by the deeds on those who are their victims? Again, it is blameworthy to practise the things that are excellent without understanding and explicit speech.",
                "[88] For what is done apart from these comes under the head of involuntary action, and in no way whatever merits praise. But if a man succeeded, as if handling a lyre, in bringing all the notes of the thing that is good into tune, bringing speech into harmony with intent, and intent with deed, such an one would be considered perfect and of a truly harmonious character. Thus the man who removes the boundaries of the good and beautiful both is accursed and is pronounced to be so with justice."
            ],
            [
                "[89] These boundaries were fixed not by the creation to which we belong, but on principles which are divine and are older than we and all that belongs to earth. This has been made clear by the Law, where it solemnly enjoins upon each one of us not to adulterate the coinage of virtue, using these words: “thou shalt not remove thy neighbour’s boundaries, which thy fathers set up” (Deut. 19:14), and again in other words: “Ask thy father and he will show thee; thine elders and they will tell thee. When the Most High distributed nations, when He dispersed the sons of Adam, He set boundaries of nations according to the number of the angels of God, and Jacob His people became the Lord’s portion, Israel became the lot of His inheritance” (Deut. 32:7–9).",
                "[90] If, then, I inquire of the father who begat me and brought me up, or of those of the same age with him but my elders, in what way God distributed or dispersed or settled the nations, will they answer me with steady certainty, as though they had followed that process of distribution step by step? Assuredly not. They will say “We too when we were young made diligent inquiry from our parents and persons still older than they, and we ascertained nothing definite; for they had nothing to teach us, seeing that they in their time had applied to others, whom they regarded as knowing, to enlighten their ignorance.”"
            ],
            [
                "[91] Probably, then, the lawgiver gives the title of father of our soul to right reason, and of elders to the associates and friends of right reason. These were the first to fix the boundaries of virtue. To the school of these it is advisable to go, to learn by their teaching the essential matters. The essential matters are these. When God divided and partitioned off the nations of the soul, separating those of one common speech from those of another tongue, and causing them to dwell apart; when He dispersed and put away from Himself the children of earth, whom the lawgiver calls “sons of Adam,” then did He fix the boundaries of the offspring of virtue corresponding to the number of the angels; for there are as many forms or “nations” of virtue as there are words of God.",
                "[92] But what are the portions of His angels, and what is the allotted share of the All-sovereign Ruler? The particular virtues belong to the servants, to the Ruler the chosen race of Israel. For he that sees God, drawn to Him by surpassing beauty, has been allotted as His portion to Him Whom he sees.",
                "[93] How, then, should Jobel escape rebuke, whose name when turned into Greek is “altering” the natures of things or making them other than they are? For he changed the forms of wisdom and endurance and justice and virtue in general, forms of Godlike beauty, substituting contrary shapes of folly, intemperance, injustice, and all wickedness, obliterating the shapes that had been impressed before."
            ],
            [
                "[94] For it is always the case that the application of a second seal destroys the impressions made by the first. The Law is so far from allowing what is evil to be substituted for what is good, that it does not even allow that which is beautiful to take the place of what is troublesome. By “troublesome” it does not mean worthless, for it would be folly not to give up bad things for the sake of getting better ones. It means all that involves toil and trouble, for which Attic writers provide a name by changing the accent of their word for “wicked.”",
                "[95] The ordinance is this: “Everything that cometh under the rod in the count, the tenth shall be holy to the Lord. Thou shalt not exchange a good with a bad one: and if thou shalt have changed it both it and that for which it is changed shall be holy” (Lev. 27:32 f.). And yet how could the bad one be holy? Nay, as I have just said, what is troublesome, not what is worthless, is meant, so that the thing signified is to this effect; while what is beautiful is a perfect good, toil is an imperfect boon. If then thou shalt win that which is complete, leave off seeking that which is defective. But if in thy excessive zeal thou shalt choose to go on toiling, know this that thou shalt seem to be exchanging one for another, but that in reality thou shalt acquire both; for each by itself, though of no less value, is not the absolutely holy thing."
            ],
            [
                "[96] Now a thing is proved holy by three lines of evidence—ordinary number, discipline, perfect number. Wherefore it is said “everything that cometh in the count under the rod, the tenth is holy.” For that which is not deemed worthy of counting is profane, not holy, but that which is counted, being included in the reckoning, is <i>ipso facto</i> approved. For instance, the Law says that the corn collected by Joseph in Egypt could not be counted, and adds “for there was not count” (Gen. 41:49), since the food that sustains the body and the Egyptian passions is absolutely unworthy to be counted.",
                "[97] The rod is a symbol of discipline, for there is no way of taking to heart warning and correction, unless for some offences one is chastised and brought to a sense of shame. 10 is the token and pledge of a perfecting by the way of gradual progress. Of that perfecting it is meet and right to offer the first-fruits to Him who marshalled, brought up and disciplined us, and crowned our hopes with fulfilment."
            ],
            [
                "[98] Let what has been said suffice on the subject of the man who alters and adulterates the original coinage. The lawgiver calls him besides the father of dwellers in tents rearing cattle (Gen. 4:20). Cattle are the irrational senses, and rearers of cattle the lovers of pleasure and lovers of the passions who provide them with food in the shape of external objects of sense. These differ widely from shepherds, for, whereas the latter after the manner of governors punish the creatures that live amiss, the former after the manner of entertainers supply them with unlimited food and let them feel security in doing wrong; for insolence, the daughter of satiety and greediness, never fails to be immediately engendered.",
                "[99] As we might expect, then, the man who alters the make and character of all good things is father of those whose interest is concentrated on everything that is soul-less and an object only of the senses. For, had he taken as the object of his quest the incorporeal natures that come under the cognizance of the mind, he would have kept to the limits laid down by the men of old, which they laid down in the cause of virtue, stamping each form of it with the impress belonging to it."
            ],
            [
                "[100] Jubal, the lawgiver tells us, was the brother of Jobel (Gen. 4:21). “Jubal” is akin in meaning to “Jobel,” for it means “inclining now this way now that,” and it is a figure for the uttered word, which is in its nature brother to mind. It is a most appropriate name for the utterance of a mind that alters the make of things, for its way is to halt between two courses, swaying up and down as if on a pair of scales, or like a boat at sea, struck by huge waves and rolling towards either side. For the foolish man has never learned to say anything sure or well-grounded.",
                "[101] Moses thinks that none ought to turn away either to the right or to the left or to the parts of the earthly Edom at all, but to go by along the central road, to which he gives the most proper title of the king’s highway or royal road; for since God is the first and sole King of the universe, the road leading to Him, being a King’s road, is also naturally called royal. This road you must take to be philosophy, not the philosophy which is pursued by the sophistic group of present-day people, who, having practised arts of speech to use against the truth, have given the name of wisdom to their rascality, conferring on a sorry work a divine title. No, the philosophy which the ancient band of aspirants pursued in hard-fought contest, eschewing the soft enchantments of pleasure, engaged with a fine severity in the study of what is good and fair.",
                "[102] This royal road then, which we have just said to be true and genuine philosophy, is called in the Law the utterance and word of God. For it is written “Thou shalt not swerve aside from the word which I command thee this day to the right hand nor to the left hand” (Deut. 28:14). Thus it is clearly proved that the word of God is identical with the royal road. He treats the two as synonymous, and bids us decline from neither, but with upright mind tread the track that leads straight on, a central highway."
            ],
            [
                "[103] “This Jubal,” he says, “is a father who invented psaltery and harp” (Gen. 4:21). Most appropriately does he give to sounding speech the title of father of music and of all musical instruments. For nature, when she had wrought for living creatures the organ or instrument of sound as chief and most perfect of all instruments, went on at once to bestow upon it the concords and the various kinds of melodies to the end that it might be a pattern made ready beforehand for the instruments that were to be fashioned artificially. So too with the ear.",
                "[104] Nature turned it with her lathe and made it spherical, drawing circles within circles, lesser within larger, in order that the sound that approached it might not escape and be dispersed outside of it, but that the thing heard might be collected and enclosed within by the circles, and being as it were poured through them, be conveyed into the receptacles of the mind. We see here at once a model for the theatres seen in thriving cities, for theatres are constructed in exact imitation of the shape of the ear. So Nature, who fashioned living creatures, stretched the windpipe as though a musical scale, combining in it the enharmonic and chromatic and diatonic modes, answering to the vast variety of melodies with their shorter or longer intervals, and in this way set up a pattern of every musical instrument."
            ],
            [
                "[105] To show how true this is, I may mention that all the melodious sounds produced by wind- and stringed-instruments fall as far short of the music that comes from nightingales and swans, as a copy and imitation falls short of an original, or a perishable species of an imperishable genus.",
                "[106] For we cannot compare the music produced by the human voice with that produced in any other way, since it has the pre-eminent gift of articulation, for which it is prized. For whereas the other kinds by use of the modulation of the voice and the successive changes of the notes can do no more than produce sounds pleasing to the ear, man, having been endowed by nature with articulate utterance equally for speaking and for singing, attracts alike both ear and mind, charming the one by the tune, and gaining the attention of the other by the thoughts expressed.",
                "[107] For just as an instrument put into the hands of an unmusical person is tuneless, but in the hands of a musician answers to the skill which he possesses and becomes tuneful, in exactly the same way speech set in motion by a worthless mind is without tune, but when set going by a worthy one is discovered to be in perfect tune.",
                "[108] Moreover, a lyre or anything of that kind, unless struck by someone, is still: speech too, if not struck by the ruling faculty, of necessity maintains silence. Moreover, just as instruments are tuned to vary in accordance with the infinite number of combinations of the music which they have to give forth, so speech proves itself an harmonious interpreter of the matters dealt with and admits of endless variations.",
                "[109] For who would talk in the same way to parents and children, being slave of the former by nature, and master of the latter in virtue of the same cause? Who would speak in the same way to brothers, cousins, near relatives generally, and to those only distantly connected with him? to those associated with him, and to those with whom he has nothing to do; to fellow-citizens and foreigners; to people differing in no slight or ordinary degree in nature or age? For we have to talk in one way to an old man, in another to a young one, and again in one way to a man of importance and in another to an insignificant person, and so with rich and poor, official and non-official, servant and master, woman and man, skilled and unskilled.",
                "[110] What need to make a list of the innumerable sorts of persons, in our conversation with whom our talk varies, taking one shape at one time, another at another? For indeed the same thing is true of subjects of thought. Their several peculiarities mould our language in conformity with their characteristic aspects; for it would not set forth great things and little, many and few, private and public, sacred and profane, ancient and modern, in the same style, but in the style suited to their respective number or importance or greatness; at one time rising to a lofty tone, at another restraining and holding itself in.",
                "[111] Nor is it only persons and matters dealt with that occasion our speech to vary its form, but the causes too of the things that happen, and the ways in which they happen, and besides these, times and places which enter into all things. Right well then is Jubal, the man who alters the tone and trend of speech, spoken of as the father of psaltery and harp, that is of music, the part being used for the whole, as has been made evident."
            ],
            [
                "[112] We have now described the progeny of Ada and who she herself is. Let us contemplate Lamech’s other wife Sella (Zillah) and her offspring. Well, “Sella” means “a shadow,” and is a figure of bodily and external goods, which in reality differ not a whit from a shadow. Is not beauty a shadow, which after a short-lived bloom withers away? What else is strength and vigour of body, which any chance illness breaks up? What else are the organs of sense with all their accuracy, which a noisome rheum can impair, or old age, the disease to which all of us in common must submit, reduces to inefficiency? And, to look further, are not large incomes and high reputations, and magistracies, and honours, and whatever external things are reckoned advantages, a shadow one and all?",
                "[113] It behoves us to lead our mind by easy stages to the principle from which the whole matter starts. Men belonging to the number of those who are called distinguished have in former times gone up to Delphi and dedicated there records of their prosperous lives. These then, like evanescent paintings, have not only faded away by lapse of time, but have even breathed their last amid sharp reverses of fortune, or some of them have been swept away suddenly as by the rush of a torrent in spate and have been seen no more.",
                "[114] Of this shadow and its fleeting dreams a son is born, to whom was given the name of Thobel (Gen. 4:22), meaning “all together.” For it is a fact that those who have obtained health and wealth, the compound which is proverbial, think that they have secured absolutely all things. And should a governorship conferring independent authority fall to their lot, puffed up by self-conceit and treading air, they forget themselves and the perishable stuff out of which they were made.",
                "[115] They imagine that they have received a nature whose constitution is something more than human, and boastfully exalting themselves on their honours they deify themselves outright. An instance of this attitude is afforded by certain persons who have dared before now to say that they did not know the true God (Exod. 5:2), forgetting in their excessive enjoyment of bodily and outward things that they were but men."
            ],
            [
                "[116] Accurately characterizing each one of these he goes on to say: “This man was a wielder of the hammer, a smith in brass and iron work” (Gen. 4:22). For the soul that is vehemently concerned about bodily pleasures or the materials of outward things, is being ever hammered on an anvil, beaten out by the blows of his desires with their long swoop and reach. Always and everywhere you may see those who care for their bodies more than anything else setting lines and snares to catch the things they long for. You may see lovers of money and fame dispatching on expeditions to the ends of the earth and beyond the sea the frenzied craving for these things. They draw to them the produce of every region of the globe, using their unlimited lusts as nets for the purpose, until at last the violence of their excessive effort makes them give way, and the counter pull throws down headlong those who are tugging.",
                "[117] All these people are war-makers, and that is why they are said to be workers in iron and bronze, and these are the instruments with which wars are waged. For any who are looking into the matter would find, that the greatest quarrels both of men individually and of states corporately, have arisen in the past, and are going on now, and will take place in the future, either for a woman’s beauty, or for money, or glory or honour or dominion, or to acquire something, or, in a word, to gain advantages pertaining to the body and outward things.",
                "[118] But for the sake of culture and virtue, which are goods of the mind, the noblest part of our being, no war either foreign or civil has ever yet broken out; for these things are by nature peaceful; and when they prevail, a settled condition of society, and the reign of law, and all things fairest to behold, meet, not the body’s dimeyed vision, but the keen sight of the soul. For while the bodily eyes see only the outward surface, the eye of the mind penetrates within, and going deep gets a clear view of all that is hidden up in the very heart.",
                "[119] It is an invariable rule that broils and factions arise among men scarcely ever about anything else than what is in reality a shadow. For the lawgiver named the manufacturer of weapons of war, of brass and iron, Thobel son of Sella the shadow, and his philosophy depends not on verbal artifices, but on surpassing beauty of conception. For he was aware that every naval or land force chooses the greatest dangers for the sake of bodily pleasures or to gain a superabundance of things outward, no one of which is proved sure and stable by all-testing time; for those things resemble pictures that are mere superficial delineations of solid objects, and fade away of themselves."
            ],
            [
                "[120] We are told that the sister of Thobel was Noeman (Gen. 4:22), meaning “fatness”; for when those, who make bodily comfort and the material things of which I have spoken their object, succeed in getting something which they crave after, the consequence is that they grow fat. Such fatness I for my part set down not as strength but as weakness, for it teaches us to neglect to pay honour to God, which is the chiefest and best power of the soul.",
                "[121] The Law testifies to this by what it says in the greater song, “he became sleek, he grew thick, he broadened out, and forsook God which made him, and was unmindful of God his Saviour” (Deut. 32:15). For indeed those for whom life has burst into bloom in the sunshine of the moment, no longer remember the Eternal, taking the lucky moment to be a god.",
                "[122] Wherefore Moses also bears his witness by exhorting to warfare against opposing doctrines; for he says “the fair moment has departed from them, but the Lord is among us” (Numb. 14:9). From this we see that the Divine word dwells and walks among those for whom the soul’s life is an object of honour, while those who value the life given to its pleasures, experience good times that are transient and fictitious. These, suffering from the effects of fatness and enjoyment spreading increasingly, swell out and become distended till they burst; but those who are fattened by wisdom which feeds souls that are lovers of virtue, acquire a firm and settled vigour, of which the fat taken from every sacrifice to be offered with the whole burnt offering is a sign.",
                "[123] For Moses says “all the fat is a due for ever to the Lord” (Lev. 3:16 f.), showing that richness of mind is recognized as God’s gift and appropriated to Him, and thus attains to immortality; while that of the body and outward things is ascribed to the fair moment that usurps the place of God, and for this reason quickly has passed its prime."
            ],
            [
                "[124] The subject of Lamech and his wives and progeny has, I think, been adequately dealt with. Let us consider what may be called the new birth of the murdered Abel. “Adam,” it says, “knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bare a son, and called his name Seth (saying): God hath raised up to me another seed in the place of Abel, whom Cain slew” (Gen. 4:25). “Seth” means “watering.”",
                "[125] As, then, the seeds and plants in the earth, when watered, grow and sprout and are prolific in producing fruit, but, if no water be poured on them, wither away, so the soul, as is evident, when it is fostered with a fresh sweet stream of wisdom shoots up and improves.",
                "[126] Watering is either the act of one watering, or the experience of one being watered. Would not everyone say that each of the senses is watered from the mind as from a spring, and that it broadens and extends their powers as water does channels? For instance, nobody of sound sense would say that eyes see, but mind by means of eyes, nor that ears hear, but mind by their agency, nor that noses smell, but the ruling faculty by using them."
            ],
            [
                "[127] This is the reason for what is said in Genesis, “A spring went up out of the earth and watered all the face of the earth” (Gen. 2:6). For since Nature allotted the face to the senses as the choicest portion of the whole body, the spring that rises from the dominant faculty, dividing itself in many directions, sends up conduits, so to speak, as far as the face, and by them conveys the powers they need to each of the organs of sense. It is in this way that the word of God waters the virtues; for the word of God is the source and spring of noble conduct.",
                "[128] The lawgiver intimates as much by the words: “A river goeth out of Eden to water the garden. From thence it is parted into four heads” (Gen. 2:10). For there are four main virtues, wisdom, courage, temperance, justice. Each one of these is a sovereign wielding authority, and the man that has acquired them is by the mere fact of doing so a ruling monarch, even if he be destitute of material resources.",
                "[129] For the phrase “is parted into four heads” is not meant to indicate a dividing asunder, but a sway and sovereignty belonging to virtues. These have sprung from the Divine word as from a single root; and that word is likened to a river by reason of the unbroken flow of the constant stream of words and doctrines ever sweet and fresh, by which it brings nourishment and growth to souls that love God."
            ],
            [
                "[130] The quality of these souls he teaches very fully, leading us on by degrees, using the ordinary arts as the means of instruction. For he shows us Hagar filling a water-skin and giving the child drink. Hagar represents imperfect training, being handmaid of Sarah who represents perfect virtue. The picture shown is perfectly true to principles. For when incomplete education having come to the depths of knowledge, which is called a well, draws from it into the soul as into a vessel the doctrines and speculations of which it is in quest, and thinks fit to feed the child with that on which it has itself been fed.",
                "[131] “Child” is the name he gives to the soul just beginning to crave after instruction, and now become to some extent engaged in learning. It is in accordance with this that the boy, when grown to manhood, becomes a sophist, for which Moses’ name is “archer.” For whatever points he sets forth as a target, at this he discharges proofs like arrows, with sure aim."
            ],
            [
                "[132] Rebecca is discovered watering her pupil not with gradual progress, like Hagar, but with perfection. How, the Law itself shall show. “The damsel,” it says, “was very fair to look upon: she was a virgin, no man had known her. And she went down to the spring and filled her pitcher and came up. And the servant ran to meet her, and said, Give me to drink, I pray thee, a little water out of thy pitcher. And she said, Drink, sir. And she hasted and let down her pitcher on to her arm, and gave him drink, until he ceased drinking. And she said, I will draw water for thy camels also, until they all have drunk. And she hasted and emptied her pitcher into the trough and ran to the well and drew water for the camels” (Gen. 24:16–20).",
                "[133] Who would not admire the lawgiver’s accuracy in every detail? For he tells us that Rebecca was a virgin and a very beautiful virgin, because virtue is essentially free from alloy and false semblance and defilement, and alone among created things both beautiful and good. Indeed it was from virtue that the Stoic canon sprang that the morally beautiful alone is good."
            ],
            [
                "[134] But among the virtues some are ever virgin, some pass from womanhood to virginity, as Sarah did: for “it ceased to be with her after the manner of women” (Gen. 18:11), at the time when she first conceives Isaac, happiness personified. But the ever-virgin is, as he says, absolutely not known by a man. For in reality no mortal has been permitted to defile the incorruptible growth, nay not even to know clearly its nature; if he does gain power to know it, he never ceases to hate it and to be on his guard against it. For this reason, like a true philosopher, he represents Leah as hated (Gen. 29:31);",
                "[135] for Leah, who is above the passions, cannot tolerate those who are attracted by the spells of the pleasures that accord with Rachel, who is sense-perception; wherefore, finding themselves treated with contempt by her they hate her. But for Leah, estrangement on the human side brings about fellowship with God, and from Him she receives the seed of wisdom, and is in birth-throes, and brings forth beautiful ideas worthy of the Father Who begat them. Then if thou too, O soul, follow Leah’s example and turn away from mortal things, thou wilt of necessity turn to the Incorruptible One, Who will cause all the springs of moral beauty to pour their streams upon thee."
            ],
            [
                "[136] Rebecca, it says, went down to the spring to fill her pitcher, and came up again. For whence is it likely that a mind thirsting for sound sense should be filled save from the wisdom of God, that never-failing spring, its descent to which is an ascent in accordance with some innate characteristic of a true learner? For the teaching of virtue awaits those who come down from empty self-conceit, and taking them in its arms carries them to the heights with fair fame. It is with a view to this, as it seems to me, that God says to Moses, “Go, get thee down, and come up” (Exod. 19:24), implying that everyone who rightly gauges his own inferiority becomes more honourable in the estimation of those who can judge of reality.",
                "[137] There is point in Hagar’s bringing a skin to the place of drawing water, whereas Rebecca brings a pitcher. She who belongs to the band of devotees of school-learning needs, as it were, certain bodily vessels of sense-perception—eyes, ears—for the acquirement of the results of study; for by those who love to learn the benefit of knowledge is gained from seeing much and hearing much. She who is filled with unalloyed wisdom has absolutely no need of any bulky leathern vessel: she that is enamoured of spiritual objects has learned by use of reason to rid herself completely of the body, which the water-skin represents. All she needs is just a pitcher, which is a figure of a vessel containing the ruling faculty as it pours forth like water its copious streams. Whether this faculty be brain or heart,",
                "[138] we will leave experts in these matters to discuss. The keen scholar on seeing that from wisdom, that Divine spring, she has drawn knowledge in its various forms, runs towards her, and, when he meets her, beseeches her to satisfy his thirst for instruction. She has been taught the chief of all lessons, ungrudging generosity, and at once holds out to him the water of wisdom, and bids him take a deep draught, calling the servant as she does this “Sir” or “Master.” Here we have that highest of truths that only the wise man is free and a ruler, albeit he may have ten thousand masters of his body."
            ],
            [
                "[139] The man had said “Give me a little water to drink.” She does not put her answer in a form corresponding to his request, and say “I will give thee to drink,” but says “Drink.” And she speaks quite correctly, For her saying “Drink” showed that she was making manifest the Divine abundance which has been poured forth for all to enjoy who are worthy and able to do so. To have said “I will give thee to drink” would have been to profess that she would teach him. And virtue eschews all that smacks of profession.",
                "[140] He goes on to portray with great skill the method followed by the teacher who wants to do her pupils good. “She hastened,” he says, “and let down the pitcher on to her arm.” By the “hastening” her keenness to do a kindness is brought out, a keenness which comes of a disposition from which envy has been utterly expelled. By the “letting down” on to her arm we are shown how the teacher comes down to the learner and attentively studies him as one with whom he is intimately concerned.",
                "[141] For teachers who when they set about giving their lessons keep in view their own great superiority and not the capacity of their pupils, are simpletons, who are not aware how vast is the difference between a lesson and a display. For the man who is giving a display uses to the full the rich yield of the mastery which he possesses, and without let or hindrance brings forward into the open the results of hours spent in labour by himself at home. Such are the works of artists and sculptors. In all this he is trying to gain the praise of the public. The man, on the other hand, who is setting out to teach, is like a good doctor, who with his eyes fixed not on the vastness of his science but on the strength of his patient, applies not all that he has ready for use from the resources of his knowledge—for this is endless—but what the sick man needs, seeking to avoid both defect and excess."
            ],
            [
                "[142] This is why Moses says elsewhere: “Thou shalt lend to him that needs (in quantity) as much as he needs (in kind) suitably to his need” (Deut. 15:8), teaching by the latter clause that we must not grant everything to everybody, but what corresponds (in kind) to the need (or business) of those who wants something. For it is absurd to give an anchor or an oar or a rudder to a farmer, or a plough and a hoe to a pilot, or a lyre to a physician, while giving surgical instruments to a musician. This is as ridiculous as it is to bring costly viands to those who are athirst, and gallons of undiluted wine to those who are hungry, with a view to making known at the same time our wealth and our hatred of our fellow-men, by making sport of others’ mishaps.",
                "With the kind of help to be given has been joined the amount to be given. This is introduced for the sake of maintaining due proportion, a thing which has great advantages. “Do not,” says right principle, “give all you can, but as much as the man in want is capable of receiving.”",
                "[143] Or do you fail to notice that even God imparts divine communications not in a way corresponding to the greatness of His own perfection, but to the ever-varying capacity of those whom He would benefit? Who could possibly have borne the force of the oracles of God which are too great for any power of hearing? This seems to be most truly expressed by those who say to Moses: “Speak thou to us, and let not God speak to us, lest we die” (Exod. 20:19). for they felt that they have in themselves no organ of hearing fit to be employed when God is giving laws to His congregation.",
                "[144] Were He to choose to display His own riches, even the entire earth with the sea turned into dry land would not contain them. One might as well suppose that the rainfall and the supply of Nature’s other boons takes place at seasons recurring at fixed intervals, and not uninterruptedly, owing to some dearth and scarcity of them, and not out of forethought for those who need them, who would be harmed rather than benefited by the unbroken enjoyment of like gifts.",
                "[145] Wherefore God ever causes His earliest gifts to cease before their recipients are glutted and wax insolent; and storing them up for the future gives others in their stead, and a third supply to replace the second, and ever new in place of earlier boons, sometimes different in kind, sometimes the same. For creation is never left destitute of the gifts of God—had it been so left it would assuredly have perished—but it has no power to bear their full and abundant torrent. And so in His desire that we should enjoy benefit from the gifts which He bestows, God proportions the things which He gives to the strength of those who receive them."
            ],
            [
                "[146] Rebecca is therefore to be commended for following the ordinances of the Father (of all) and letting down from a higher position the vessel which contains wisdom, called the pitcher, on to her arm, and for holding out to the learner the teaching which he is able to receive.",
                "[147] Among the other traits before which I stand in amazement is her lavishmess. Asked for a little to drink she gives much, until she has filled the whole soul of the learner with draughts of speculations. For we read, “She gave him to drink until he left off drinking,” a piece of teaching on kindness to our fellow-men well worthy of our admiration. For, if a man chance to be in want of many things, and come to us and owing to shame ask for few things, let us not supply him with the things which he mentioned only, but also with those about which he was silent, of which he is really in need.",
                "[148] But for perfect enjoyment on the pupil’s part, it is not enough that he should simply take in all the instructions given by the teacher. He needs the further boon of memory. Accordingly Rebecca exhibits her generosity by promising, when she gives the servant all he can drink, to water the camels also. These we take to be figures of memory, for the camel is a ruminating animal softening its food by chewing the cud. Moreover, when it has knelt and had a heavy load laid on it, it nimbly raises itself with astonishing agility.",
                "[149] In the same way the soul of the keen learner also, when it has been laden with the mass of speculations,",
                "[150] does not stoop indeed, but springs up rejoicing, and through repetition and (so to speak) rumination of the original deposit of (mental) food, gains power to remember the things contemplated.",
                "[151] When she saw how readily receptive of virtue the servant’s nature was, she emptied all the contents of her pitcher into the drinking-trough, that is to say, she poured all the teacher’s knowledge into the soul of the learner. For, whereas sophists, impelled at once by mercenary motives and by a grudging spirit, stunt the natures of their pupils by withholding much that they ought to tell them, carefully reserving for themselves against another day the opportunity of making money; virtue is an ungrudging thing, fond of making gifts, never hesitating to do good, as the saying is, with hand and foot and all her might. Well, after pouring forth all that she knew into her pupil’s understanding as into a receptacle, she comes again to the well to draw, to the ever-flowing wisdom of God, that her pupil may, by means of memory, fix firmly what he has learned, and drink in draughts of knowledge of yet other fresh subjects;",
                "[152] for the wealth of the wisdom of God is unbounded and puts forth new shoots after the old ones, so as never to leave off renewing its youth and reaching its prime. For this reason all who imagine that they have arrived at the limit of any science whatever are perfect simpletons; for that which seemed to be near the end is very far away from it; for no one that has ever lived has been perfect in any subject of study, but falls as far short of perfection as a very young boy just beginning to learn compared with an instructor now grown grey, both as regards his age and his proficiency in his profession."
            ],
            [
                "Again we must search for the reason why she gives the servant to drink from the spring, but the camels from the well. We should probably explain it in this way: the water is the same in each case, the sacred word supplying streams of knowledge. But the well is particularly associated with memory; for things which have appeared to be by this time in the depths and out of reach are drawn up as from a well by means of a reminder (from outside). Such men we must cordially approve for the excellent nature which has fallen to their lot. But there are some men of diligence and effort, who at first think the way leading to virtue rough and steep and difficult, but for whom later on the all-bountiful God renders it a highway, transforming the bitterness of their toil into sweetness. In what manner He transformed it we will point out. When He led us forth out of Egypt, that is out of our bodily passions, as we journeyed along the track barren of pleasure, we encamped in Marah, a spot having no water fit to drink, but water wholly bitter (Exod. 15:23). for the delights that come by the way of eyes and ears and that of the appetite and sexual lusts bewitched us with their haunting music, ever ringing in our ears. And whenever we wished wholly to sever ourselves from them, they would pull against us, drawing us on and gripping us, and persistently casting their spells over us, so that, giving in to their unceasing efforts to subdue and tame us, we came to abhor labour as utterly bitter and repugnant, and we planned to retrace our course and return to Egypt, the refuge of a dissolute and licentious life; and, we might have done so had not the Saviour, anticipating us, taken pity on us and cast into our soul a sweetening tree like a syrup, producing love of labour instead of hatred of labour (<i>cf.</i> Exod. 15:25). for being the Creator He knew that it is impossible for us to rise superior to anything whatever,",
                "[157] unless a vehement love of such effort be implanted in us. No pursuit that men engage in, where affection does not draw them, gains its fitting end. For complete success a sense of liking must be added, and the heart must be absorbed in the object of its desire."
            ],
            [
                "[158] This is the food of the soul of an earnest striver, to deem labour not bitter but most sweet. Not for all is it lawful to partake of this food. Those only may do so in whose case the golden calf, the idol of the Egyptians, which is the body, is strewn upon the water, after having been burnt and ground. For it is said in the sacred books that “Moses took the calf and burned it up with fire and ground it fine and sowed it upon the water, and gave the Children of Israel to drink of it”",
                "[159] (Exod. 32:20). For the lover of virtue, set on fire by the brilliant appearance of the beautiful, burns up the pleasures of the body, and then chops and grinds them up, employing the principle of classification, and by this means teaches that health, or beauty, or precision of the senses, or complete soundness, including strength and muscular force, are among the bodily “good things,” and yet all these are shared with others by men abominable and accursed; whereas, had they been good things, no bad man would have had part in any of them.",
                "[160] But these men, even if utterly worthless, still, being human beings and of the same nature, have their share of these things in partnership with good men. As it is, moreover, even the most savage of wild beasts enjoy the advantage of these “good things,” if good things they really are, in greater measure than those who are endowed with reason.",
                "[161] For what athlete would be a match for the power of a bull or the strength of an elephant? What runner could equal the swiftness of a hound or a hare? The man of keenest eyesight is very shortsighted in comparison with the power of vision possessed by hawks or eagles. In hearing and scent the irrational creatures are greatly superior to us, for even an ass, regarded as the dullest among living creatures, were he to be tested with us, would make our hearing appear deafness; while a dog with his great rapidity of scent, reaching as it does to such an enormous distance as to rival the range of the eyes, would prove a nose to be a superfluous part of the human frame."
            ],
            [
                "[162] And what need is there to be diffuse and go into each instance? For this was long ago agreed upon among the most approved of the learned men of former days, who said that nature is the mother of the irrational creatures, but the step-mother of men. They said this when they took note of the bodily weakness of the latter, and of the invariably surpassing bodily strength of the former. It was reasonable, then, that the expert master should grind down the calf, that is to say, should divide it into parts and make it evident that all the advantages pertaining to the body are far removed from that which is really good, and differ in no respect from what was sown upon the water.",
                "[163] And this is why it has been placed on record that the calf when ground down was sown upon the water, as a sign that no genuine growth of good can ever sprout in perishable matter. A seed cast into the flow of a river or of the sea could never manifest its proper powers; for unless it were to use its roots as anchors and fasten firmly on to some fixed spot of ground, and so get settled there, it would be impossible for it either to put forth a shoot, even one hardly rising above the ground, to say nothing of a good tall one, or to bear fruits as the seasons came round; for the full and violent rush of the water washes it away and forestalls all the powers of expansion latent in the seed. Even so, before any of those advantages of the vessel of the soul, on which orators declaim and poets sing, can attain substantial shape, they are destroyed owing to the constant flow of bodily substance.",
                "[164] For how did illnesses and old age and complete dissolution come upon men, if there was not a perpetual draining off of streams brought within our contemplation by reason? Thus, then, the sacred Guide would have us refresh our understanding, namely by burning up our pleasures, by grinding down and breaking up the complex of bodily goods into thin and useless dust, by making up our minds that from none of them did there ever shoot forth and bloom that which is truly beautiful, any more than from seeds sown upon the waters."
            ],
            [
                "[165] Bulls and rams and goats, which Egypt honours, and all other objects of worship of perishable material as well, are held to be gods on hearsay only, not being really such, all falsely so called. For those who deem life a show got up for foolish dotards make counterfeit impressions in the yet tender souls of the young, employing their ears as their ministers, and filling them with the nonsense of myths. They instil it into their very minds, and force those who never become men in lofty spirit but are always womanish to fashion gods for themselves.",
                "[166] The calf, you observe, is not made out of all the things with which women deck themselves, but only their ear-rings (Exod. 32:2), for the lawgiver is teaching us that no manufactured god is a God for sight and in reality, but for the ear to hear of, and vogue and custom to proclaim, and that too a woman’s ear, not a man’s, for to entertain such trash is the work of an effeminate and sinew-less soul. But the Being that in reality is can be perceived and known, not only through the ears, but with the eyes of the understanding,",
                "[167] from the powers that range the universe, and from the constant and ceaseless motion of His ineffable works. Wherefore in the great Song there come these words as from the lips of God, “See, see that I AM” (Deut. 32:39), showing that He that actually IS is apprehended by clear intuition rather than demonstrated by arguments carried on in words. When we say that the Existent One is visible, we are not using words in their literal sense,",
                "[168] but it is an irregular use of the word by which it is referred to each one of His powers. In the passage just quoted He does not say “See Me,” for it is impossible that the God who is should be perceived at all by created beings. What he says is “See that I AM,” that is “Behold My subsistence.” For it is quite enough for a man’s reasoning faculty to advance as far as to learn that the Cause of the Universe is and subsists. To be anxious to continue his course yet further, and inquire about essence or quality in God, is a folly fit for the world’s childhood.",
                "[169] Not even to Moses, the all-wise, did God accord this, albeit he had made countless requests, but a divine communication was issued to him, “Thou shalt behold that which is behind Me, but My Face thou shalt not see” (Exod. 33:23). This meant, that all that follows in the wake of God is within the good man’s apprehension, while He Himself alone is beyond it, beyond, that is, in the line of straight and direct approach, a mode of approach by which (had it been possible) His quality would have been made known; but brought within ken by the powers that follow and attend Him; for these make evident not His essence but His subsistence from the things which He accomplishes."
            ],
            [
                "[170] Well then, the mind, when it begets a beginning of good disposition and a kind of first pattern of virtue in Seth, which means “Watering,” is audacious with a fine and holy audacity. For it says, “God raised up to me another seed in the place of Abel, whom Cain slew” (Gen. 4:25). The statement that none of God’s seeds fall to the ground, but all mount upwards rising from out of earthly surroundings,",
                "[171] and leaving them behind, is a noticeable statement that can stand every test. For the seeds that mortals deposit for the production of living beings or plants do not all come to perfection; and we are well content if those that come to nothing do not outnumber those that hold on. But God sows in souls nothing futile, but seeds so successful and perfect in every case that each one immediately yields the full crop of the fruits appropriate to it."
            ],
            [
                "[172] When he says that Seth has sprung up as another seed, he does not indicate that in respect of which he is “another.” Is it in respect of the murdered Abel, or of Cain who slew him? Probably the new offspring is different from each of them (in different ways). from Cain as one hostile to him, (since thirst for virtue is a thing utterly at war with wickedness that plays the part of a deserter). from Abel, as one that is friendly and akin to him; for it does not say “alien from him,” but “different,”",
                "[173] as that which is but beginning differs from that which is full-grown, and that which is in communion with creation from that which is in communion with the uncreated. For this reason, while Abel has relinquished all that is mortal and removed and gone to the better existence, Seth, inasmuch as he is sprung from human virtue, will never relinquish the race of men, but will obtain enlargement. The first enlargement extends to the perfect number 10, when righteous Noah arises; a second and yet better one from Shem, the son of Noah, up to a second “10,” to which faithful Abraham gives his name; then a third, a “7” now more perfect than “10,” reaching from Abraham to Moses, the man wise in all things. He, the seventh from Abraham, does not, like those before him, haunt the outer court of the Holy Place as one seeking initiation, but as a sacred Guide has his abode in the sanctuary."
            ],
            [
                " [174] Mark the advance to improvement made by the soul that has an insatiable desire to be filled with things that are beautiful, and the unlimited wealth of God, which has given as starting-points to others the goals reached by those before them. For the limit of the knowledge attained by Seth became the starting-point of righteous Noah; while Abraham begins his education with the consummation of Noah’s; and the highest point of wisdom reached by Abraham is the initial course in Moses’ training.",
                "[175] Counsel and Consent, the two daughters of Lot, the man who, after having been impelled upwards, wavered and went downwards through weakness of soul, desire to have children by Mind their father (Gen. 19:32), being at variance with him who says, “God hath raised up for me.” For what He the Existent One did for him, they say that Mind can bring about for them, and so they advocate the doctrine of a drunken and frenzied soul; for it is the act of a sober and well-ordered reason to acknowledge God as the Maker and Father of the universe, but the assertion that he himself is the author of everything that concerns the life of man is that of one who is being ruined by drunkenness and sottishness.",
                "[176] The evil intentions will not attain to intercourse with their father, until they have completely drenched him with the strong drink of folly, and have drowned any sense he had. For it is written “they gave their father wine to drink” (Gen. 19:33). It follows that when they do not give him to drink, he will be sober and they will never receive from him lawful seed, but when he has become fairly soaked, and is under the fumes of his debauch, they will become pregnant, and there will be guilt in their travailing, and a curse upon their offspring."
            ],
            [
                "[177] For this reason Moses shut out their impious and impure progeny from every holy assembly. For he says “Ammonites and Moabites shall not enter into the congregation of the Lord” (Deut. 23:2), and these are descendants of the daughters of Lot. They are people that suppose that sense-perception and mind, a male and a female, act as father and mother for the procreation of all things, and take this process to be in very truth the cause of creation.",
                "[178] Let us, however, should we ever incur such a lapse, as men who have escaped by swimming out of a troubled sea, lay hold of repentance, a strong rock of safety, nor let us quit our hold of it till we have been completely delivered from the tossing sea, that is from the strong current of our lapse.",
                "[179] It was so that Rachel, having before addressed her request to Mind, as though offspring came through its operation, and having received the reply “Am I in the place of God?” (Gen. 30:2), gave heed to what was said, and learned its lesson, and made a recantation breathing true holiness, for Rachel’s recantation stands written in a prayer dear to God “Let God add to me another son” (Gen. 30:24), a prayer which none of those may make who in their folly pursue nothing whatever but their own pleasure, regarding all else as matter for loud laughter and ridicule."
            ],
            [
                "[180] The chief representative of this doctrine is Onan, kinsman of the leathern Er. For it says “this man knowing that the seed should not be for him, when he went in to his brother’s wife, spilled it on the ground” (Gen. 38:9), going beyond all bounds in love of self and love of pleasure.",
                "[181] I should therefore address him thus: “Will you not”—so I would say to him—“by providing only your individual profit, be doing away with all the best things in the world, unless you are to get some advantage from them, honour paid to parents, loving care of a wife, bringing up of children, happy and blameless relations with domestic servants, management of a house, leadership in a city, maintaining of laws, guardianship of usages, reverence towards elders, respect for the memory of the departed, fellowship with the living, piety in words and actions towards the Deity? For you are overturning and wasting all these, by breeding and nursing for yourself pleasure, the glutton and libertine, in whom all evil things have their origin."
            ],
            [
                "[182] It was in abhorrence of pleasure that there uprose the priest and minister of Him Who alone is Beautiful, Phinehas the controller of the inlets and outlets of the body, who takes care that none of them act amiss and break out in insolence, his very name meaning “Mouth-muzzle.” Seizing his spear, that is exploring and inquiring into the nature of all existence, and discovering nothing more august than virtue, he thrust through and destroyed by reason the creature that hates virtue and loves pleasure, and the parts out of which grew those base counterfeits, softness and voluptuousness.",
                "[183] For the Law says that he thrust the woman through, even through the womb (Numb. 25:7 f.). Having therefore on this wise put a stop to the revolt within himself and turned clean away from his own pleasure, having thus shown his zeal for God, the First and Only One, he was honoured and crowned with the two greatest rewards, peace and priesthood; with peace, because he put an end to the intestine war of lusts in the soul; with the priesthood, because in name and in fact it is akin to peace.",
                "[184] For the consecrated intelligence, being His minister and attendant, must needs do all those things in which her Master delighteth: He delights in the maintenance of a well-ordered state under good laws, in the abolishing of wars and factions, not only those which occur between cities, but also of those that arise in the soul; and these are greater and more serious than those, for they outrage reason, a more divine faculty than others within us. Weapons of war can go so far as to inflict bodily and monetary loss, but a healthy soul they can never harm. From this it appears that states would have done rightly if before bringing against one another arms and engines of war,",
                "[185] with the enslavement and complete overthrow of the enemy in view, they had prevailed on their citizens one by one to put an end to the disorder which abounds within himself, and which is so great and unceasing. For, to be honest, this is the original of all wars. If this be abolished, neither will those occur which still break out in imitation of it, but the human race will attain to the experience and enjoyment of profound peace, taught by the law of nature, namely virtue, to honour God and to be occupied with His service, for this is the source of long life and happiness."
            ]
        ],
        "Appendix": [
            "APPENDIX TO THE POSTERITY AND EXILE OF CAIN",
            "§ 1. <i>Epicurus.</i> Philo as usual treats Epicureanism rather superficially. The Epicurean in Cicero, <i>De Natura Deorum</i> (i. 48), says, “hominis esse specie deos confitendum est,” but continues, “nec tamen ea species corpus est, sed quasi corpus.” For the whole subject see Zeller, <i>Epicureans</i>, Engl. Trans. pp. 440 f.",
            "§ 5. <i>The loan which was lent</i>, etc. <i>Cf</i>. <i>Timaeus</i> 42 E, where the “young gods” in making the human body take from the four elements δανειζόμενοι μόρια ὠς ἀποδοθησόμενα πάλιν.",
            "§ 16. τὸ μέγιστον (see crit. note) may be defended by Thucydides’ use in iv. 70 <i>fin.</i>, ii. 65. 1, iii. 63. 2, viii. 76. 6 and 92. 6, iv. 108. 4. But the defence is shaky.",
            "§ 57. θησαυρίζονται This word is suggested by the “store-cities” of Exod. 1:11, and also perhaps by βουνός = a pile, from which the LXX. coined the verb βουνίζω = “I pile up,” “accumulate.” (See Ruth 2:14, 16.)",
            "<i>Heliopolis.</i> It is not certain whether this was the On, Rameses, or Beth Schemesch of the Hebrew Scriptures, for it has claims to be regarded as any one of them (<i>Dict. of Geography</i>). When Philo was born its ruins had nearly vanished (<i>ibid.</i>).",
            "§ 59. By τὸν βουνὸν τοῦτον Philo means the mind or conscience. The scene of the covenant between Jacob and Laban was Mount Gilead, which signifies in Hebrew “Heap of Witness.”",
            "Some words seem to have dropped out before πρὸ τούτων τῶν πόλεων, such as ὁ δὲ βουνὸς οὗτος or ἡ δὲ πόλις τῆς μαρτυρίας. In 62 some such title is claimed for Hebron by the words μνήμας ἐπιστήμης &lt;καὶ&gt; σοφίας θησαυροφυλακοῦσα. To understand the argument we must note (1) that Zoan carries with it all the cities of Egypt, 62: (2) that Hebron as interpreted in 62 is equated to the βουνός of 59, and therefore a text which states that Hebron was built before Zoan is equivalent to “the city of the good mind is built before (<i>i.e.</i> ranks above) all the cities of the body or foolish mind.”",
            "§ 62. <i>Command of evacuation.</i> For ἀπόκρισις = “discharge” (from the body) see <i>L.A.</i> i. 13. κακία is a thing to be expelled from the social system.",
            "§ 70. <i>He shall set him alive</i>, etc. The allegory is worked out as follows. The ἄλογος βίος is evil tendencies still <i>alive</i> (which they are not in the case of those whose age or circumstances put them outside temptation). We must <i>atone</i> for them by fighting against them, and finally <i>banish</i> them.",
            "§ 79. <i>Ada.</i> That Ada, the “witness,” stands here for, or at least is exemplified by, the Epicurean school is proved beyond doubt by the use of Epicurean terms. λεία κίνησις comes from the Epicurean definition of pleasure (Usener, <i>Epicurea</i>, pp. 279, 280). ἐπιβολή, translated by Lucretius <i>animi iniectus</i>, is a very leading term for “the act of apprehension which the mind or senses must direct to the ἐνάργημα (‘the clear or close view of phenomena’) which may result in the ἐπιμαρτύρησις (‘confirmation’) or ἀντιμαρτύρησις (‘refutation’) of the δοξαζόμενα (‘opinion formed by the mind on the data of sense-perception’)” (C. Bailey). Philo gives an ethical twist to what properly belongs to the Epicurean theory of cognition.",
            "§ 81. <i>Treating as alike things widely different.</i> Or “treating as things indifferent (in the Stoic sense) things which the wise man holds ‘superior’ and worthy of pursuit.”",
            "§§ 95 ff. <i>The ordinance is this.</i> The meaning of these difficult sections is perhaps as follows. Toil is unnecessary, when you have reached perfection; yet if you still continue to toil, you will have both the toil and the perfection and thus attain absolute holiness. Either without the other is not “absolutely holy,” for that is stated in the text to have three necessary elements: (1) number, <i>i.e.</i> the first stage of virtue that can be “counted” as anything; (2) the rod, or discipline, which is toil; (3) the number 10 or perfection. That “exchanging” toil for perfection really means that you have both is not unintelligible; the effort is lost in success, but may be said to remain with us. The words rendered “While what is beautiful is a perfect good, toil is an imperfect boon,” may perhaps be paraphrased “The morally beautiful is a good thing to which it is essential to have attained its end; toil is a beneficial thing, whether it reach the goal or no.” They are “of equal value” as being equally essential to the truest holiness.",
            "§ 97. <i>Marshalled.</i> τάξαντι = “set us in a rank” corresponds with ἀριθμός above, as παιδεύσαντι corresponds with the “rod,” and τελεσφορήσαντι with the “tenth.”",
            "§ 104. <i>So too with the ear.</i> Wendland in <i>Philologus</i> 57, p. 267, calls attention to the resemblance of this description of the ear’s structure to that placed by Cicero in <i>De Nat. Deor.</i> ii. 159 in the mouth of a Stoic.",
            "§ 108. <i>Speech … admits of endless variations.</i> Philo here and in the following sections adopts the rhetorical idea of the περιστάσεις (<i>circumstantiae</i>) which determined the nature of the speech required on each occasion. These, though sometimes made more numerous, were often reduced as here to six, persons, matters or subjects, causes, manners, times, places. In Latin and mediaeval rhetoric the six often appear as <i>quis, quid, cur, quomodo, quando, ubi.</i> As boys were regularly drilled in this classification in their early exercises (<i>progymnasmata</i>) it was very familiar to the general reader. See Ernesti’s <i>Lexicon Rhetoricum, s. v.</i> περίστασις.",
            "§ 109. οὐδὲ τὰς τυχούσας. Wendland would prefer, instead of this correction for the οὐδὲ τύχης of the MSS., to read οὐδὲ &lt;τὰς τυχούσας&gt; τύχης, on the ground that “fortune” is included in the <i>circumstantiae personarum</i> by the rhetoricians with “nature,” “age,” and others.",
            "§ 113. <i>Easy stages.</i> The thought of this sentence evidently comes from Plato, <i>Cratylus</i> 211 c, where the process by which we arrive at first principles is described as using ἐπαναβασμοί. Its application here, however, is obscure. But it is worth noting that in 2 Kings 20:9 ff. σκιά and ἀναβαθμοί (= “steps on the sundial”) are four times repeated in close conjunction. Philo in the preceding section has dwelt on the word σκιά. Does he perchance mean that, as the shadows on the sundial are due to the sun, so all the shadowy goods of life are meant to lift our thoughts to what is substantial? Is Hezekiah’s vainglorious display of his treasures to the envoys of the king of Babylon the link between the sundial of Ahaz and the inscriptions at Delphi?",
            "<i>Delphi.</i> Perhaps Philo is thinking of the inscription set up at Delphi by Pausanias, as related in Thuc. i. 132. As Thucydides traces the fall of Pausanias to some extent to this inscription, the incident might not unnaturally be regarded as a striking example of a great reverse of fortune. Philo may have known of other similar instances, but it would be quite in his manner to assume from Thucydides’ story that other equally boastful inscriptions had been dedicated there.",
            "§ 138. <i>The wise man is free and a ruler.</i> From the famous Stoic paradoxes. See <i>S. V. F.</i> iii. 589 ff., and Philo’s treatise <i>Quod omnis probus liber sit.</i>",
            "§ 139. <i>profession.</i> ἐπαγγέλλεσθαι, which latinized as <i>profiteri</i> has been the parent of our own <i>profession</i>, is the technical word for teaching any form of wisdom for pay. For this reason, and because of its association with the Sophists, Philo dislikes it.",
            "§ 141. <i>His science … he has ready.</i> Or we might take τῆς τέχνης as = “the art of medicine,” and make ἡ τέχνη understood the subject of πεπόρικε. The ἐπιστήμη in that case is the knowledge which the art forms into a compact body. Compare the favourite definition of art as “a system of concepts organized for some useful end.” The doctor has an infinite τέχνη to draw from, but would Philo represent him as knowing it all? 152 suggests that he would not.",
            "§ 149. <i>In the same way the soul</i>, etc. In the soul’s case, there is no stooping to receive the load, nor depression due to its weight; but there is the glad springing up. ἐπιφορεῖσθαι is probably meant to suggest the more familiar ἐμφορεῖσθαι, for the soul’s “burden” is <i>food.</i>",
            "§ 173. <i>When righteous Noah arises.</i> Perhaps we may assign a more mystical meaning to καθʼ ἢν συνίσταται. The Pythagorean numbers, like the Platonic Ideas, are the archetypes by participating in which things become what they are (<i>cf.</i> Aristotle, <i>Met.</i> i. 5)."
        ]
    },
    "versions": [
        [
            "Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1929",
            "https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001216057/NLI"
        ]
    ],
    "heTitle": "על צאצאי קין",
    "categories": [
        "Second Temple",
        "Philo"
    ],
    "schema": {
        "heTitle": "על צאצאי קין",
        "enTitle": "On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile",
        "key": "On the Posterity of Cain and his Exile",
        "nodes": [
            {
                "heTitle": "הקדמה",
                "enTitle": "Introduction"
            },
            {
                "heTitle": "",
                "enTitle": ""
            },
            {
                "heTitle": "הערות",
                "enTitle": "Appendix"
            }
        ]
    }
}