json/Second Temple/Philo/That the Worse is wont to Attack the Better/English/merged.json

{
    "title": "That the Worse is wont to Attack the Better",
    "language": "en",
    "versionTitle": "merged",
    "versionSource": "https://www.sefaria.org/That_the_Worse_is_wont_to_Attack_the_Better",
    "text": {
        "Introduction": [
            "THAT THE WORSE IS WONT TO ATTACK THE BETTER (QUOD DETERIUS POTIORI INSIDIARI SOLEAT) <br>ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION",
            "Cain and Abel signify to Philo opposing principles, love of self and love of God (32). The call to Abel to go out into the “plain” is a challenge to a disputation. The opening of the Treatise is mainly occupied in showing that in Genesis “plain” suggests a contest of opposing principles. Why does Jacob call Leah and Rachel to the <i>plain</i>? Because it is there that he “tends his flocks,” <i>i.e.</i> disciplines his lower impulses. The <i>plain</i> is the obvious place for Joseph, the wearer of a many-coloured patchwork of inconsistent tenets, to be sent to by his father that he may be taught better by his brethren, who are there becoming proficients in the work of disciplining their lower nature (their flocks). Even Isaac, going out into the <i>plain</i> to meditate is, in Philo’s eyes, the peerless champion, who finds the field emptied by the retirement of all his adversaries. “The <i>plain</i>,” says Philo in 32, “has now been shown to be a figure of a contest,” and so he passes on to his next point.",
            "Abel was ill-advised to accept Cain’s challenge. Self-love can plead for itself (33 f.) with an eloquence which can be met only by one versed in dialectic, and Abel lacked such training. Moses was wiser in shrinking from meeting the sophists of Egypt, acknowledging himself to be without eloquence, nay, devoid of speech itself, and waiting for “Aaron,” who commonly represents for Philo the uttered word. Thought should ever be wedded to speech. Glib fools are contemptible, but dumb wise men are ineffective (44 ff.). This is a theme to which Philo returns later on (126 ff.), where he enlarges on the joy of speech in interpreting thought.",
            "Yet the seeming victory of the false view is really a defeat (47), as is evident when we consider well what is implied in the words, “the <i>voice</i> of thy brother’s <i>blood.</i>” Here is the great truth, which is plainly stated in Lev. 17:11, that “the Life is in the Blood.” The Life which is Life indeed emerges from seeming death no longer “speechless.” It has now a “voice,” which God hears (47 ff. and 92 f.). This theme is taken up again in 70 ff., where the question put to Cain, “What hast thou done?” is treated as equivalent to “Thou hast effected nothing,” and as signifying the futility of sophism, ‘clothing itself with’ Balaam or anyone else, in contrast with the undying life of virtue.",
            "The seeming victor, moreover, brings on himself a curse which comes to him “from the earth,” <i>i.e.</i> the senses which are his chosen field (98 ff.). He may <i>toil</i> at it, but can never <i>till</i> it (104 ff.). It will never second his efforts (112 f.). He must go “groaning and trembling” (119, 129 f.), never finding <i>rest</i> with ‘Noah,’ or <i>laughter</i> with ‘Isaac,’ or <i>joy in himself</i> with ‘Aaron,’ or <i>hope</i> with ‘Enos’ (120 ff.). He will taste abandonment (141 ff.) and the shame of exposure to the eyes of God (158 ff.).",
            "A few points may be noticed—",
            "(<i>а</i>) Suggestions illustrated by the New Testament.",
            "(α) God asks questions to convict men out of their own mouths, and to elicit an utterance of the heart’s desire (58–60). We are reminded of our Lord’s way with men.",
            "(β) Blood is distinguished, as the essence of our animal vitality, from the inbreathed breath of our reason (79–91). Our thoughts go to the Epistle to the Hebrews and 1 St. John.",
            "(<i>b</i>) Philo’s habit of going off at a word.",
            "(α) The word “keeper” in Cain’s insolent question leads to ‘guardianship’: this to Levites, guardians of the oracles of God. Their active service from the age of twenty-five to that of fifty, when they become guardians, leads to Memory, guarding what it has learned, and assisted in the high task of teaching by Utterance (“His <i>brother</i> shall minister,” Numb. 8:26) (62–68).",
            "(β) The words “God hath made me to laugh” (literally “hath made laughter for me”) leads to the thought of God as “Poet” (“Maker”) whose Poetry produces gladness (123 ff.).",
            "(γ) Joseph is sent <i>from</i> “Hebron,” the place of “hollows,” which at once suggests the differences of level and colour which are a symptom of leprosy, and are therefore suited to mark the unhealthy state which Joseph must be rid of (15 f.).",
            "(δ) Joseph, having lightly started in the right direction, is presently found “<i>wandering.</i>” We may, with a right but superficial intention, go wrong, mistaking forced asceticism for healthy self-control, and outward piety for true religion (17–21).",
            "(ε) The two stages of education are reached by way of the two cakes made of Manna, which is a synonym for the Rock, from which flows the spring of Divine wisdom (117 f.)."
        ],
        "": [
            [
                "[1] “And Cain said to Abel his brother, Let us make our way to the plain. And it came to pass when they were on the plain that Cain rose up against his brother Abel and killed him” (Gen. 4:8). What Cain is aiming at is by means of a challenge to draw Abel into a dispute, and to gain the mastery over him by plausible sophistries that have the appearance of truth. For, drawing our conclusions about things that are obscure from things that are manifest, we say that the plain, the rendezvous to which he summons him, is a figure of contest and desperate battle.",
                "[2] For we see that most contests both in war and peace take place on plains. In peace those who contend in athletic sports look out for race-courses and spacious plains; and in war it is not usual to fight infantry or cavalry battles on hills; for the casualties arising from the unfavourable nature of the ground would outnumber those inflicted on each other by the combatants."
            ],
            [
                "[3] Here is a signal proof of this. The earnest seeker of knowledge, at war with ignorance, the contrary condition, when shepherding (so to speak) with admonition and correction the irrational powers in the soul, is presented to us on a plain: for “Jacob sent and called Leah and Rachel to the plain, where the flocks were” (Gen. 31:4),",
                "[4] making it clear that the plain is a figure for contentiousness. And what is his motive for calling them? “I see your father’s face,” he said, “that it is not toward me as it used to be: but the God of my father has been with me” (Gen. 31:5).",
                "[5] ‘The reason,’ I should be inclined to say, ‘that Laban is not on thy side, is that God is with thee; for in a soul in which the outward object of sense is valued as a supreme good, in that soul excellent reason is not found: but in one in which God walks, the outward object of sense is not regarded as a good thing: and it is to this that the conception and name of Laban corresponds.’ And such men as order themselves by the principle of gradual progress in accordance with their father’s rule, have chosen the plain as a suitable place for their task of teaching the soul’s irrational impulses a better way. For the words addressed to Joseph are: “Do not thy brethren tend their flocks in Sychem? Come let me send thee to them.” And he said “Here am I.” And he said to him “Go see, whether thy brethren are in good health and the sheep, and bring me word.” And he sent him out of the valley of Hebron, and he came to Sychem. And a man found him wandering in the plain: and the man asked him “What seekest thou?” And he said “I seek my brethren, tell me where they feed their flocks.” And the man said to him “They have departed hence, for I heard them saying ‘Let us go to Dothaim.’ ” (Gen. 37:13–17)."
            ],
            [
                "[6] It is evident from these words that they are in the plain, caring for the irrational powers within them. And, because he is unable to bear the too great severity of his father’s knowledge, Joseph is sent to them, that in the hands of more lenient instructors he may learn what he ought to do and what will be beneficial; for the creed he has hitherto followed is one woven of incongruous elements, multifarious and complex in the highest degree. This is why the lawgiver says that a coat of many colours was made for him (Gen. 37:3), indicating by this that he is the promulgator of a doctrine full of mazes and hard to disentangle.",
                "[7] He is one who moulds his theories with an eye to statecraft rather than to truth. This appears in his treatment of the three kinds of good things, those pertaining to the outside world, to the body, and to the soul. These, though separated from each other by complete diversity of nature, he brings together and combines into one, claiming to show that each is in need of each and all of all, and that the aggregate resulting from taking them all together in a body is a perfect and really complete good; but that the constituents out of which this is compacted, though indeed parts or elements of good things, are not good things in perfection.",
                "[8] He points out that neither fire nor earth nor any of the four elements, out of which the universe was formed, is a world, but the coming together and blending of the elements into one; and argues that in precisely the same way happiness is found to be neither a peculiar property of the things of the outside world, nor of the things pertaining to the body, nor of those pertaining to the soul, taken by themselves. He argues that each of the three classes mentioned has the character of a part or element and that it is only when they are all taken together in the aggregate that they produce happiness."
            ],
            [
                "[9] In order, then, that he may be taught better ideas than these, he is sent to men who hold that nothing is a good thing but what has true beauty, and that this is a property belonging to the soul as soul; men who are convinced that advantages pertaining to things outside and to the body are good things in name only, not in reality. For it says “Behold thy brethren tend their flocks,” and govern every irrational element of their being “in Sychem” (Gen. 37:13). “Sychem” means “shoulder,” a symbol of patient toil; for lovers of virtue carry a very great burden, namely resistance to the body and bodily pleasure, and in addition to these resistance to external things and the delights which they afford us.",
                "[10] “Come then let me send thee to them,” (<i>ibid.</i>), that is, ‘submit to be summoned elsewhere, and draw nigh and entertain in thine understanding a ready eagerness for the receiving of better teaching. Up to the present time thou deludest thyself with the idea that thou hast welcomed the true education. For thou professest to be ready to be taught otherwise, though thou hast not yet in thine own heart acknowledged thy need of this. Thy cry “Here am I” seems to me to convict thee of rash and reckless compliance, rather than to indicate readiness to learn. A proof of this is that soon afterwards the real man will find thee wandering in the way (Gen. 37:15), whereas thou never wouldst have lost the way hadst thou with a healthy resolve come to be trained.",
                "[11] And mark, the words in which thy father urges thee to go put no compulsion on thee, in order that thou mayest follow the better course at thine own prompting and by thine own spontaneous action. His words are: “Go see,” contemplate and observe and with perfect exactness consider the matter; for thou must first know that at which thou art about to labour, and then afterwards proceed to attend to it. When however thou hast surveyed it and with comprehensive glance obtained a complete view of it in all its parts,",
                "[12] go on further to examine those who have already applied themselves to it and become its devotees. Thou must find out whether in pursuing this course they are of sound mind, and not mad, as those who love pleasure imagine in their mocking depreciation of them. Consider the matter, I say, and judge whether they be sane who practise this discipline; and yet let not thy judgement be final till thou hast brought word and made a report to thy father: for the judgements of those who are beginning to learn are unsettled and unstable, while in those who have made much progress they are firmly fixed; and the only way is for the others to acquire stedfastness from these.’"
            ],
            [
                "[13] If, O my understanding, thou searchest on this wise into the oracles which are both words of God and laws given by men whom God loves, thou shalt not be compelled to admit anything base or unworthy of their dignity. Why, how could any sensible person admit the very narrative of which we are now speaking? Is it likely that Jacob, who had the wealth of a king, was so badly off for household servants or attendants as to send a son out abroad to bring word about his other children, whether they are in good health, and about the cattle to boot?",
                "[14] His grandfather, apart from the multitude of prisoners of war whom he carried off after defeating nine kings, had over three hundred home-bred servants; and since then there has been no curtailing of his menage, but as time went on it has in every way grown greater. Having then an abundant supply of servants he would never have thought fit to send a son, of whom he was specially fond, on a business which could easily have been carried out quite well even by one of the least valuable of his dependents."
            ],
            [
                "[15] Now you notice that Scripture goes out of its way to record even the place from which he dispatches him, all but giving the reader a plain hint to avoid the literal interpretation. For it says “out of the vale of Hebron” (Gen. 37:14). Now “Hebron,” a “coupling” and “comradeship,” is a figurative title for our body, because it is “coupled” with a soul, and has established a friendship and “comradeship” with it. As “vales” it has organs of sense, great receivers of all objects of sense outside it. These pump over the understanding the countless qualities of things, and pour them in upon it through the receivers, flooding it and totally submerging it.",
                "[16] This is why in the Law of Leprosy, when greenish or reddish depressions show themselves in a house, an injunction is given to remove the stones in which they have appeared and to put others in their place (Lev. 14:57 ff.). That is to say, when diverse qualities, the handiwork of pleasures and desires and passions akin to these, press and weigh down the whole soul, hollowing it out and lowering its level, we are to get rid of the principles which cause the infirmity, and introduce in their place good healthy principles by means of a training under the law or indeed of a good education."
            ],
            [
                "[17] Seeing, therefore, that Joseph has utterly sunk into the hollows of the body and the senses, he challenges him to quit his lurking-place and go forward and draw a free draught of the spirit of stedfastness by resorting to those who were once aspirants after it, and are now teachers of it. But he, though he fancied that he had made a move forward, is found wandering: for he says, “a man found him wandering in the plain” (Gen. 37:15), showing that toil by itself is not good, but toil accompanied by skill.",
                "[18] For just as it is our business not to practise music unmusically or grammar ungrammatically, or, to say it in a word, any art without art or with bad art, but to practise each art in the way which that art requires, so neither is it our business to practise good sense with cunning, or self-mastery with stinginess and meanness, or courage with rashness, or piety in a superstitious way, or any other virtue-governed knowledge in a spirit of ignorance; for everyone knows that these are trackless regions. Accordingly there is a law bidding us “follow what is just in a just way” (Deut. 16:20), that we pursue justice and all virtue by doing the deeds akin to it, but not those that are contrary to it.",
                "[19] If then thou observest anyone not taking food or drink when he should, or refusing to use the bath and oil, or careless about his clothing, or sleeping on the ground, and occupying wretched lodgings, and then on the strength of all this fancying that he is practising self-control, take pity on his mistake, and show him the true method of self-control; for all these practices of his are fruitless and wearisome labours, prostrating soul and body by starving and in other ways maltreating them.",
                "[20] A man may submit to sprinklings with holy water and to purifications, befouling his understanding while cleansing his body; he may, having more money than he knows what to do with, found a temple, providing all its furniture on a scale of lavish magnificence; he may offer up hecatombs, and never cease sacrificing bullocks; he may adorn the sacred building with costly votive offerings, employing on them rich material in abundance, and skilled craftsmanship that is more priceless than silver and gold;",
                "[21] yet shall he not be inscribed on the roll of the pious. No, for this man, like those others, has gone astray from the road that accords with piety, deeming it to be ritual instead of holiness, and offering gifts to Him who cannot be bribed and will not accept such things, and flattering Him who cannot be flattered, who welcomes genuine worship of every kind, but abhors all counterfeit approaches. Genuine worship is that of a soul bringing simple reality as its only sacrifice; all that is mere display, fed by lavish expenditure on externals, is counterfeit."
            ],
            [
                "[22] Some say that the proper name of the man who found him wandering on the plain has not been mentioned (Gen. 37:15). Those who say so are themselves, too, in some sort astray, owing to their inability to see clearly the right way in matters generally. For had they not been smitten with partial blindness of the soul’s eye, they would have recognized that the name which most correctly describes the real man and most thoroughly belongs to him is simply “man,” the most proper title of a mind endowed with reason and articulate utterance.",
                "[23] This “man,” dwelling in the soul of each of us, is discovered at one time as king and governor, at another as judge and umpire of life’s contests. Sometimes he assumes the part of witness or accuser, and, all unseen, convicts us from within, not allowing us so much as to open our mouth, but, holding in and curbing the tongue with the reins of conscience, checks its wilful and rebellious course.",
                "[24] This challenger inquired of the soul when he saw it wandering, “What seekest thou?” (Gen. 37:15). ‘Is it sound sense thou art seeking? Why then dost thou walk upon the path of cunning? Is it self-mastery? But this road leads to stinginess. Is it courage? Rashness meets thee by this way. Is it piety thou art in quest of? This road is that of superstition.’",
                "[25] But if it says that it is seeking the principles of science and longs after them as its brethren nearest of kin, let us not believe it at all; for its inquiry would not have been “where do they feed” (<i>ibid.</i> v. 16), but “where do they tend” their flocks? For those who feed us supply nourishment in the shape of all objects of sense to the irrational and insatiable flock of the senses, nourishment which robs us of self-control and plunges us in misery; whereas those who tend, having the power of rulers and governors, tame what has become wild by repressing the vehemence of the desires.",
                "[26] Had the soul, then, been seeking the real devotees of virtue, it would have looked for them among kings, not among cup-bearers or confectioners or cooks; for whereas these prepare the things that minister to pleasures, those rule over pleasures."
            ],
            [
                "So it is a right answer that the man gives who has seen the deceit: “they have departed hence” (Gen. 37:17).",
                "[27] He points to the material frame, showing that all who maintain a toilsome contest for the winning of virtue quit the earthly region and are resolved to mount the skies, carrying in their train no bodily disabilities. For the man says that he also heard them saying,",
                "[28] “Let us go to Dothaim” (<i>ibid.</i>). Now “Dothaim” means “thorough quitting.” So their words are a guarantee that, not in any half-and-half way but out-and-out, have they set themselves to study how to forsake and quit all that does not contribute to virtue. In like manner we read, “Sarah was quit of her experience of what belongs to women” (Gen. 18:11); and the passions are by nature feminine, and we must practise the quitting of these for the masculine traits that mark the noble affections.",
                "Well, then, it is on a plain, that is, amid a contest of words, that Joseph is found wandering, the advocate of a subtle form of doctrine serving to inculcate statecraft rather than truth.",
                "[29] Among those who contend in the sports there are some whose bodies are in such splendid condition that their opponents withdraw from the contest, and they are crowned without having to fight, winning the prize on the score of their incomparable strength, without so much as having had themselves sprinkled with dust in preparation for the combat. Endowed in mind, the divinest part of us, with a strength such as that of these athletes, Isaac “goeth out into the plain” (Gen. 24:63), not to contend with anyone, for those who would oppose him have cowered before the greatness of his nature, so far beyond them in all ways. No, he goes forth desiring only to be alone with God, the Guide and Fellow-traveller of his path and of his soul, and to have converse with Him.",
                "[30] We have a very plain proof that it was no mortal talking to Isaac. For Rebecca, who is persistence, will presently inquire of the servant as seeing one and receiving an impression of one only, “Who is this man who is coming to meet us?” (<i>ibid.</i> v. 65). For the soul that persists in noble courses is indeed capable of apprehending self-taught wisdom, which is represented by the title “Isaac,” but is unable as yet to see God the Ruler of wisdom.",
                "[31] In keeping with this the servant, confirming her inability to apprehend Him who is unseen and who is invisibly conversing with him, says, “this is my master” (<i>ibid.</i>), pointing at Isaac only; for it is not likely that if two had been visible he would have pointed at one. No, he did not see Him who cannot be pointed at, for He is invisible to all who are but midway on their course."
            ],
            [
                "[32] Well, I think it has been made sufficiently clear that the plain on to which Cain challenges Abel to come is a figure of a contest to be fought out. We must next endeavour to discover what the subjects of their investigations are when they have gone forth. It is evident that they are to investigate opposing views clean contrary to each other. For Abel, referring all things to God, is a God-loving creed; but Cain, referring all to himself—his name means “acquisition”—a self-loving creed. And lovers of self, when they have stripped and prepared for conflict with those who value virtue, keep up the boxing and wrestling until they have either forced their opponents to give in, or have completely destroyed them.",
                "[33] For they leave no stone unturned, as the saying is, while they ply their questions. ‘Is not the body the soul’s house?’ Why, then, should we not take care of a house, that it may not fall into ruins? Are not eyes and ears and the band of the other senses bodyguards and courtiers, as it were, of the soul? Must we not then value allies and friends equally with ourselves? Did nature create pleasures and enjoyments and the delights that meet us all the way through life, for the dead, or for those who have never come into existence, and not for the living? And what is to induce us to forgo the acquisition of wealth and fame and honours and offices and everything else of that sort, things which secure for us a life not merely of safety but of happiness?",
                "[34] The mode of life of these two classes is a witness to the truth of what I say. The so-called lovers of virtue are almost without exception obscure people, looked down upon, of mean estate, destitute of the necessaries of life, not enjoying the privileges of subject peoples or even of slaves, filthy, sallow, reduced to skeletons, with a hungry look from want of food, the prey of disease, in training for dying. Those, on the other hand, who take care of themselves are men of mark and wealth, holding leading positions, praised on all hands, recipients of honours, portly, healthy and robust, revelling in luxurious and riotous living, knowing nothing of labour, conversant with pleasures which carry the sweets of life to the all-welcoming soul by every channel of sense.’"
            ],
            [
                "[35] When they have covered the dreary length of a long-distance course of talk like this, they are held to have defeated men unaccustomed to quibbling arguments. But their victory lies not in the strength of those who have won, but in their opponents’ weakness at this sort of thing. For those who apply themselves to the pursuit of virtue may be placed in two classes. Some, making the soul alone the treasure-house of the good at which they aim, devote themselves to praiseworthy actions, without having so much as dreamt of jugglery with words. The others are doubly successful; their mind is secured by wisdom in counsel and good deeds, their speech by the arts of eloquence.",
                "[36] Now to encounter the wranglings in which some folk delight is eminently fitting for these latter, ready and equipped as they are with the means of withstanding their enemies, but for the former class it is not at all safe to do so. For who are there that unarmed could meet armed men, and fight them on equal terms, seeing that, even were they fully equipped, the combat would be an unequal one?",
                "[37] Now Abel has never learned arts of speech, and knows the beautiful and noble with his mind only. For this reason he should have declined the meeting on the plain, and have paid no regard to the challenge of the man of ill-will: for any shrinking back is better than defeat, and such shrinking back as this, though our enemies call it cowardice, is called caution by our friends; and since they are free from falsehood, we should believe friends in preference to men who have ill-will towards us."
            ],
            [
                "[38] Do you not see that Moses fights shy of the sophists in “Egypt,” that is, in the body? He calls them “magicians,” because good morals are spoiled by the tricks and deceptions of sophistry acting on them like the enchantments of magic. Moses’ plea is that he is not “eloquent” (Exod. 4:10), which is equivalent to saying that he has no gift for the oratory which is but specious guesswork at what seems probable. Afterwards he follows this up by emphatically stating that he is not merely not eloquent but absolutely “speechless” (Exod. 6:12). He calls himself speechless,” not in the sense in which we use the word of animals without reason, but of him who fails to find a fitting instrument in the language uttered by the organs of speech, and prints and impresses on his understanding the lessons of true wisdom, the direct opposite of false sophistry.",
                "[39] And he will not go to Egypt nor engage in conflict with its sophists, until he has been fully trained in the word of utterance, God having shown and perfected all the qualities which are essential to expression of thought by the election of Aaron who is Moses’ brother, and of whom he is wont to speak as his “mouth” and “spokesman” and “prophet” (Exod. 4:16; 7:1);",
                "[40] for all these titles belong to Speech or Word, which is brother of Mind. For mind is the fountain of words and speech is its outlet. For all the thoughts of the heart, like streams from a spring, well up and flow forth into the open through speech; and Speech is the expounder of the plans which Understanding has formed in its own council-chamber. Speech, moreover, is the spokesman and prophet of the oracles which the understanding never ceases to utter from depths unseen and unapproachable."
            ],
            [
                "[41] It will be well for us to counter in this manner those who are pugnacious over the tenets which they maintain; for when we have been exercised in the forms which words take, we shall no more sink to the ground through inexperience of the tricks of the sophistic wrestling, but we shall spring up and carry on the struggle and disentangle ourselves with ease from the grips which their art has taught them. And when we have once found them out, they will be seen to be exhibiting the prowess of men sparring for practice, not that of men engaged in a real combat. For they are boxers who win admiration in a mock encounter among themselves and are thought very little of when they engage in a match.",
                "[42] But if a man, though equipped in soul with all the virtues, has had no practice in rhetoric, so long as he keeps quiet he will win safety, a prize that entails no risk, but, when like Abel he steps out for a contest of wits, he will fall before he has obtained a firm footing.",
                "[43] For, just as in medicine there are some practitioners who know how to treat almost all afflictions and illnesses and cases of impaired health, and yet are unable to render any scientific account either true or plausible of any one of them; and some, on the other hand, who are brilliant as far as theories go, admirable exponents of symptoms and causes and treatment, the subject matter of the science, but no good whatever for the relief of suffering bodies, incapable of making even the smallest contribution to their cure: in just the same way, those who have given themselves to the pursuit of the wisdom that comes through practice and comes out in practice have often neglected expression, while those who have been thoroughly instructed in the arts that deal with speech have failed to store up in soul any grand lesson which they have learned.",
                "[44] It is in no way surprising that these latter should discover an arrogant audacity in the unbridled use of their tongue. They are only displaying the senselessness which has all along been their study. Those others, having been taught, as doctors would be, that part of the art which brings health to the sicknesses and plagues of the soul, must be content to wait, until God shall have equipped in addition the most perfect interpreter, pouring out and making manifest to him the fountains of utterance."
            ],
            [
                "[45] It would have been well, then, for Abel to have exercised the saving virtue of caution, and to have stayed at home taking no notice of the challenge to the contest in wrangling. He should have imitated Rebecca, who represents patient waiting. When Esau, the votary of wickedness, threatens to murder Jacob, the devotee of virtue, she charges him against whom the plot was being hatched to go away, until Esau’s cruel madness against him be allayed.",
                "[46] For it is indeed an insufferable threat that he holds over him, when he says: “Let the days of my father’s mourning draw near, that I may slay Jacob my brother” (Gen. 27:41); for he prays that Isaac, the only example of freedom from passion beneath the sun, who receives the divine warning “not to go down into Egypt” (Gen. 26:2), may become the subject of irrational passion, desiring him, I take it, to be wounded by the darts of pleasure or sorrow or some other passion. By so desiring he makes it clear that the man who falls short of perfection and knows only toilsome progress will be liable not to be wounded only but to be utterly destroyed. God, however, in His loving-kindness will neither cause a being of an inviolable kind to be the victim of a passion, nor will He hand over the pursuit of virtue to a mad murderer for ruin.",
                "[47] So the words that follow “Cain rose up against Abel his brother and slew him” (Gen. 4:8), suggest, so far as superficial appearance goes, that Abel has been done away with, but when examined more carefully, that Cain has been done away with by himself. It must be read in this way, “Cain rose up and slew himself,” not someone else.",
                "[48] And this is just what we should expect to befall him. For the soul that has extirpated from itself the principle of the love of virtue and the love of God, has died to the life of virtue. Abel, therefore, strange as it seems, has both been put to death and lives: he is destroyed or abolished out of the mind of the fool, but he is alive with the happy life in God. To this the declaration of Scripture shall be our witness, where Abel is found quite manifestly using his “voice” and “crying out” (Gen. 4:10) the wrongs which he has suffered at the hands of a wicked brother. For how could one no longer living speak?"
            ],
            [
                "[49] What we arrive at is this: the wise man, when seeming to die to the corruptible life, is alive to the incorruptible; but the worthless man, while alive to the life of wickedness, is dead to the life happy. For, when we are thinking of living beings, or material forms generally, which are separate from one another, it is possible, nay easy, for the active to be one set and the passive another. For, when a father beats a son by way of correction or a teacher a pupil, he that beats is one, and he that is beaten another. But when we are thinking of beings or bodies which are not separate, then action and passivity are found in the same subject. And they are found not at different times and in relation to different subjects, but at the same time and in relation to the same subject. For example, whenever an athlete rubs himself down for purposes of training, there is no question that he is rubbed down; and if a man strikes or wounds himself, he is struck or wounded, for even he who maims and kills himself is maimed and killed.",
                "[50] What am I driving at in saying this? That the soul, not coming under the head of persons or things distinct and separate from each other but under that of those which form a single whole, must needs suffer what it seems to do, as of course in the present instance; for when it seemed to destroy the doctrine most dear to God, it turns out to have destroyed itself. This is proved by Lamech, the offspring of Cain’s impiety, who, addressing his wives, who are two ill-judging judgements, says: “I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my scourging myself” (Gen. 4:23).",
                "[51] For it is clear that if a man slays the principle of courage, he wounds himself with the opposite disease of cowardice, and if a man does away with the strength that is attaining its prime in a training for noble deeds, he inflicts upon himself blows and great indignities with no small shame. Indeed she who represents patient waiting (Rebecca) says that, if training and gradual progress be done away with, she loses not one progeny only but the rest as well, and incurs complete childlessness (Gen. 27:45)."
            ],
            [
                "[52] Just as the man who injures the man of lofty character has been shown to inflict loss on himself, so correspondingly he who recognizes the dignity of his betters gains something good, nominally for them, actually for himself. Nature and the commandments given in harmony with nature testify to what I say. For we have this plain and direct injunction: “Honour thy father and thy mother, that it may be well with thee” (Exod. 20:12): it does not say “with those who are honoured” but “with thee”; for if we hold in honour the mind as father of our complex being, and sense as mother, we ourselves shall receive good treatment at their hands.",
                "[53] Now honour is shown to the mind when it is cared for by the provision not of things that give it pleasure but of things that do it good, and all things that have their source in virtue do it good. To sense honour is shown when it is not left free to be borne with concentrated force towards its objects in the outer world, but is reined in by the mind, which has skill to direct the irrational powers within us like a pilot or a charioteer.",
                "[54] If each, then, sense and mind, obtains such honour as I have described, it must needs be that I to whom they belong derive benefit from it. Let us drop altogether the application to mind and sense. If you accord a father’s honour to Him who created the world, and a mother’s honour to Wisdom, by whose agency the universe was brought to completion, you will yourself be the gainer. For neither God, Who is full, nor supreme and consummate knowledge, need anything. It follows that he, who cares for these, confers benefits not on the objects of his care, since they lack nothing, but on himself chiefly.",
                "[55] Horse-training and dog-fancying, being skill in caring for horses and dogs respectively, provide the animals with the things good for them which they require. Should they fail to provide them they would be held guilty of neglect. But it would be impiety to say that religion, which is a caring for God, is a way of providing what will benefit the Deity; for He gains benefit from nothing, seeing that He is neither in need of anything nor does any exist capable of adding to His superiority in all things. Nay, He constantly and unceasingly benefits the universe.",
                "[56] So that when we say that religion is a caring for God, we mean some such service as slaves render to their masters when they are set on doing promptly what they are told to do. But here again the parallel is not perfect; for the masters are in want of service, but God does not need it. It follows that, while to masters their slaves render services that will benefit them, to God men can bring nothing except a disposition full of love to their Master. For they will find nothing which they can improve, everything that their Master has being perfect to start with; but themselves they will vastly benefit by taking steps to be admitted to intimacy with God."
            ],
            [
                "[57] I think that I have now said enough as to those who seem to do good or evil to others. For we have found that it is to themselves that they do the one or the other. Let us investigate what follows. A question is put thus, “Where is Abel thy brother?” (Gen. 4:9). To this question Cain replies, “I know not. Am I my brother’s keeper?” (<i>ibid.</i>). This requires us to consider the point, whether God can strictly be said to ask a question. For he that makes an inquiry or asks a question does so in regard to matters about which he is ignorant, looking for an answer, as the result of which he will know what now he does not know. But all things are known to God, not only things present and things past, but also things future.",
                "[58] What advantage then does an answer confer, when it is not going to bring about for the inquirer any acquisition of knowledge? The fact is that such expressions cannot be used in their strict sense in the case of the First Cause (<i>i.e.</i> God). Just as it is possible to tell a verbal lie without lying, so it is possible to propound a question or inquiry without either asking or inquiring. What then, someone will perhaps say, is the object of the use of such expressions? That the soul that is to give the answers may be convicted by itself touching its good or evil utterances, with no other, either to accuse it or to plead on its behalf.",
                "[59] When God puts a question to the wise one, “Where is thy virtue?” (Gen. 18:9)—(I refer to the question put to Abraham about Sarah), He asks not because He is ignorant, but because He thinks it necessary that Abraham should answer, with a view to set in bold relief the praise shown by the speaker’s own words to be due. We are told, you see, that he said “Lo, she is in the tent,” that is, in the soul. What matter for praise, then, is it that springs out of the answer? What he says is, “Lo, I have virtue laid up by me as some precious treasure, and this by itself does not make me happy.",
                "[60] For happiness consists in the exercise and enjoyment of virtue, nor in its mere possession. But I could not exercise it, shouldest Thou not send down the seeds from heaven to cause her to be pregnant, and were she not to give birth to Isaac, <i>i.e.</i> happiness in its totality, and I have made up my mind that happiness is the exercise of perfect virtue in a perfect life.” Accordingly God is well pleased with the motive of his answer, and consents to bring to pass in due season what he had requested."
            ],
            [
                "[61] To Abraham, then, his answer brought praise, acknowledging as he did that even virtue, without God’s directing care, is insufficient of itself to do us good: while to Cain, correspondingly, his answer brought blame, since he said that he did not know where his brother was whom he had treacherously slain: for he imagined that he would deceive Him to whom he gave the answer, as though He did not clearly see all things, and had not anticipated the deception to which he was going to resort: but everyone who thinks that anything escapes the eye of God is an outlaw and an outcast.",
                "[62] Cain has the insolence to say, moreover, “Am I my brother’s keeper?” (Gen. 4:9). ‘Wretched indeed was his life likely to be,’ I should say, ‘had nature constituted thee the guardian and keeper of so great a good.’ Or seest thou not that the lawgiver commits the keeping and guardianship of the holy things not to ordinary persons, but to Levites, men fully consecrated in their minds? For these earth and sea and air, yea, moreover, heaven and all the world, was deemed a portion of too little worth. The Creator alone was deemed meet for them, with Whom they have taken refuge as genuine suppliants and become His attendants, discovering their love for their Master by constant service and untiring guardianship of the sacred things committed to their care."
            ],
            [
                "[63] Nor was it to all the suppliants that it fell to become guardians of sacred things, but to such as obtained by lot the number 50, announcing release and complete freedom and return to their portions of old time. For we read “This is that which concerneth the Levites: from twenty and five years old shall he go in to do active service in the Tabernacle of witness; and from (the age of) fifty years shall he cease from the ministry, and shall work no more, but his brother shall minister. He shall keep watch, but shall not work” (Numb. 8:24–26).",
                "[64] Remembering, then, that the number 50 is perfect, and that 25 is half this, and that the beginning as one of the ancients said, is the half of the whole, we note that he charges him who is but half perfect to set to work and do holy actions, showing active obedience; while he charges the perfect one to labour no more, but to keep watch over all that he has acquired as the result of toilsome practice. May I indeed never devote study and pains to anything of which I am not afterwards to be a guardian.",
                "[65] Study or practice is a mean, a half-way stage, not a perfect final achievement. It is seen in souls that are not perfect, but bent on reaching the summit. Watching or guarding is something complete, consisting in entrusting to memory those principles of holy things which were acquired by practice. To do this is to commit a fair deposit of knowledge to a trustworthy guardian, to her who alone makes light of the nets of forgetfulness with all their cunning devices. “Guardian” is therefore the sound and appropriate name which he gives to the man who remembers what he had learnt.",
                "[66] At an earlier stage, when he was in training, this man was a pupil with another to teach him, but when he became capable of watching and guarding, he obtained the power and position of a teacher, and appointed for the subordinate duties under the teacher his own brother, the word of utterance: for it is said “his brother shall minister” (Numb. 8:26). Accordingly the mind of the truly noble man will be guardian and steward of the teachings of virtue, while his brother, utterance, will minister to those who are seeking education, going over with them the doctrines and principles of wisdom.",
                "[67] This is the reason why Moses, in the blessings which he pronounces on Levi, crowns many marvellous eulogies by saying “he guarded Thine oracles, and Thy covenant did he diligently keep”; then immediately afterwards “they shall expound Thy judgements to Jacob and Thy law to Israel” (Deut. 33:9 f.).",
                "[68] So he expressly avouches that the fully accomplished man is guardian of the words and covenant of God. Furthermore he has made it clear that he is the best utterer and setter forth of judgements and laws. For utterance is an operation of the organ of speech which is akin to it, and watchful guardianship is found to be the function of the mind, which was created by nature to be a vast storehouse, and has ample room for the conceptions of all substances and all circumstances. It would have been to the advantage even of Cain, the lover of self, to have guarded Abel; for had he carefully preserved him, he would have been able to lay claim only to a mixed “half and half” life indeed, but would not have drained the cup of sheer unmitigated wickedness."
            ],
            [
                "[69] “And God said, ‘What hast thou done? The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to Me out of the ground’ ” (Gen. 4:10). The words “What hast thou done?” express as well indignation at an unrighteous act, as mockery of the man who thought that his treachery had accomplished his brother’s death. Indignation is kindled by the intention of the doer of the deed, at his having purposed to destroy that which was noble; the mockery is occasioned by his thinking that his evil design was against him who was better than he, whereas it had been against himself rather than his brother:",
                "[70] for, as I said before, he that seems to be dead is alive, since he is found acting as God’s suppliant and using His voice; whereas he who is supposed to survive has died the death of the soul, being debarred from virtue, the only worthy rule of life. Hence the question, “What hast thou done?” is tantamount to “You have done nothing, accomplished nothing.”",
                "[71] It was so with Balaam also. He was a sophist, an empty conglomeration of incompatible and discordant notions. It was his desire to do harm to the goodly one by laying curses upon him. But he could not, for God turned his curses into a blessing (Numb. 23:8), in order that He might at once convict the unrighteous one of his villainy, and at the same time make good his own love of virtue."
            ],
            [
                "[72] Sophists are bound to find the powers within them at strife, words running counter to ideas and wishes to words, in absolute and utter discord. They make our ears ache with their demonstrations of the social character of righteousness, the advantageous nature of moderation, the nobility of self-control, the great benefits conferred by piety, the power of every kind of virtue to bring health and safety. On the other hand they dwell at great length on the unsociability of injustice, on the loss of health entailed by a licentious life, and prove <i>ad nauseam</i> that irreligion makes you a pariah, and that serious harm is occasioned by all other forms of wickedness.",
                "[73] And nevertheless they entertain all the time sentiments quite at variance with the things which they say. At the very moment when they are singing the praises of good sense and moderation and righteousness and piety, they are found to be more than ever practising foolishness, licentiousness, injustice, and impiety, to be confounding and overturning, you may wellnigh say, every ordinance of God or man.",
                "[74] To these men one might rightly put the question put to Cain in the sacred record, “What have you done?” What have you wrought that has done you good,? What benefit have all these harangues on the subject of virtue conferred on your own souls? What portion, great or small, of life have you set right? Nay, have you not done the reverse? Have you not furnished true charges against yourselves, in that, while you have shown yourselves lecturers of the highest order as far as understanding of beautiful things and philosophical discourses are concerned, you are invariably caught cherishing sentiments and indulging in practices that are utterly base? May we not go further and say that in your souls all noble qualities have died, while evil qualities have been quickened? It is because of this that not one of you is really still alive.",
                "[75] When a musician or a scholar has died, the music or scholarship, that has its abode in individual masters, has indeed perished with him, but the original patterns of these remain, and may be said to live as long as the world lasts; and by conforming to these the men of this generation, and those of all future generations in perpetual succession, will attain to being musicians or scholars. In exactly the same way, if what is sensible or modest or brave or just or, to say it in one word, wise, be destroyed, none the less does there stand, inscribed on the undying tablets of the universe, good sense with a life that dies not, and all virtue exempt from decay; and it is by having part in this excellence that men are truly wise to-day, and will be so in days to come.",
                "[76] It must be so, unless we are to say that the death of some individual man has wrought destruction on mankind. What “mankind” is, whether a class, or an original pattern, or a conception, or whatever we may call it, is a matter for the decision of those who make exactness in the use of terms their study. A single seal has often left its impress on innumerable substances, and it has sometimes happened that all the impressions have vanished with the very substances on which they were made, while the seal has in its own nature taken no hurt but remains just as it was to begin with.",
                "[77] In the face of a fact like this, must we not believe that the virtues will retain for ever their own nature, incapable of damage or decay, even if all the characters which they have stamped on the souls of those who have come under their influence have become faint, owing to a bad life or from some other cause? We see, then, that those who are devoid of culture being uninitiated into the difference between wholes and parts and between classes and species, and know not how, though different, they may bear the same name, completely mix up and confound all things.",
                "[78] Wherefore let every lover of self, surnamed “Cain,” be taught that he has slain that which shares Abel’s name, the specimen, the part, the impression stamped to resemble him, not the original, not the class, not the pattern, though he fancies that these, which are imperishable, have perished together with the living beings. Let some one say, taunting and ridiculing him: What have you done, poor wretch? Does not the God-loving creed, which you imagine you have annihilated, live with God? You have proved to be your own murderer, having slain by guile that which alone had the power to enable you to live a guiltless life."
            ],
            [
                "[79] The words which follow are an utterance of great richness, whether we look at the beauty of expression or at the thoughts conceived. The words are: “The voice of thy brother’s blood crieth to Me from out of the ground” (Gen. 4:10). The loftiness of the phrasing is patent to all who are conversant with literature. Let us examine, according to our ability, the ideas expressed. And first, as to the blood.",
                "[80] In many passages of the Law Moses pronounces the blood to be the essence of the life, saying in plain words, “for the life of all flesh is the blood” (Lev. 17:11 etc.). Yet, when first after the creation of heaven and earth and of what lies between them, the Framer of living beings fashioned man, we read, “He breathed into his face the breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7), showing hereby, on the contrary, that the essence of life is breath.",
                "[81] Now we must notice that it is the writer’s invariable habit never to forget for a moment the principles which he has laid down at the outset; he is scrupulously careful to let his later statements be such as follow from and agree with what he has said before. He would not therefore, having already said that the essence of life is breath, have said further on that it is some different substance, namely blood, had he not been bringing the matter under some most vital and essential principle.",
                "[82] What then are we to say? Each one of us, according to the primary analysis, is two in number, an animal and a man. To either of these has been allotted an inner power akin to the qualities of their respective life-principles, to one the power of vitality, in virtue of which we are alive, to the other the power of reasoning, in virtue of which we are reasoning beings. Of the power of vitality the irrational creatures partake with us; of the power of reasoning God is, not indeed partaker, but originator, being the Fountain of archetypal reason."
            ],
            [
                "[83] To the faculty which we have in common with the irrational creatures blood has been given as its essence; but to the faculty which streams forth from the fountain of reason breath has been assigned; not moving air, but, as it were, an impression stamped by the divine power, to which Moses gives the appropriate title of “image,” thus indicating that God is the Archetype of rational existence, while man is a copy and likeness. By “man” I mean not the living creature with two natures, but the highest form in which the life shows itself; and this has received the title of “mind” and “reason.”",
                "[84] This is why he says that the blood is the life of the flesh, being aware that the fleshly nature has received no share of mind, but partakes of vitality just as the whole of our body does; but man’s life he names “breath,” giving the title of “man” not to the composite mass, as I have said, but to that God-like creation with which we reason, whose roots He caused to reach even to heaven and come forth from the outmost circles of the so-called fixed stars.",
                "[85] For God made man, alone of things on the earth, a heavenly growth, fixing on the ground the heads of all others; for they all have the head bending downwards; but raising man’s upward, that his nourishment may be celestial and imperishable, not perishable and earthly. In accordance with this He attached our feet to the earth, thus removing as far as possible from the reasoning faculty that part of our body which is least capable of feeling, but our senses, which are satellites of the mind, and our mind itself he set at the greatest distance from the ground, linking them with the circuits of air and heaven, which are imperishable."
            ],
            [
                "[86] Let not us then, the pupils of Moses, be any longer at a loss as to how man came to have a conception of the invisible God. For Moses himself learnt it by a divine communication, and has taught us how it was. He stated it thus. The Creator wrought for the body no soul capable by itself of seeing its Maker, but, accounting that it would be greatly to the advantage of the thing wrought should it obtain a conception of Him who wrought it, since this is what determines happiness and blessedness, He breathed into him from above of His own Deity. The invisible Deity stamped on the invisible soul the impress of Itself, to the end that not even the terrestrial region should be without a share in the image of God.",
                "[87] But the Archetype is, of course, so devoid of visible form that even His image could not be seen. Having been struck in accord with the Pattern, it entertained ideas not now mortal but immortal. For how could a mortal nature at one and the same time have stayed at home and been abroad, or have seen what is here and what is elsewhere, or have sailed round every sea and traversed earth to its furthest bounds, or have grasped laws and customs, or, to say all in one word, circumstances and substances? Or, going beyond earthly things, how could it have apprehended also things on high, air and its changes, characteristics of special times, and all that is brought to pass by the seasons of the year, whether unexpectedly or in keeping with the usual course of things? How, again, would it have been possible for him to fly up from the earth through the air into the sky and to examine the condition and movement of the heavenly bodies, discovering how the beginning of their movement and its cessation is determined, in what manner they are, in accordance with some law of congruity, adjusted both to one another and to the universe?",
                "[88] How would it have been possible for him to devise arts and sciences, which produce material objects, or deal with the betterment of soul and body, and to do a thousand other things, the number and nature of which are almost beyond telling?",
                "[89] For the mind, alone of all our endowments, being swifter than all things, outruns and leaves behind the time in which it seems to find itself, and, by virtue of invisible faculties, comes timelessly into contact with both the whole and its parts, and with the causes which give rise to both. And now, having come not only as far as the bounds of earth and sea but of air and sky also, not even there did it stay its steps, deeming the limit of the universe to be too narrow for its constant and unceasing course, and aiming at proceeding further, and at apprehending if possible the nature of God, which, beyond the bare fact that He is, is inapprehensible.",
                "[90] How, then, was it likely that the mind of man being so small, contained in such small bulks as a brain or a heart, should have room for all the vastness of sky and universe, had it not been an inseparable portion of that divine and blessed soul? For no part of that which is divine cuts itself off and becomes separate, but does but extend itself. The mind, then, having obtained a share of the perfection which is in the whole, when it conceives of the universe, reaches out as widely as the bounds of the whole, and undergoes no severance; for its force is expansive."
            ],
            [
                "[91] Regarding the essence of life these few remarks may suffice. In due sequence we must go on to interpret “the voice of blood crieth” in this way. One part of our life or soul is dumb, another part has a voice. The irrational part is dumb; the rational part has a voice, it only having attained to the conception of God; for with the other parts we can apprehend neither God nor any other mental object.",
                "[92] In the vital faculty, then, whose essence is blood, a portion has obtained, as a special prize, voice and speech; I do not mean the stream flowing through the mouth and over the tongue, but the fountain-head from which, by nature’s ordering, the cisterns of uttered speech are filled. This fountain-head is the mind, through which, partly voluntarily, partly involuntarily, we utter aloud entreaties and outcries to Him that is.",
                "[93] He, in His goodness and graciousness, does not disregard His suppliants, above all when they cry out without pretence or falsehood, groaning over their tasks and sufferings in Egypt: for then, says Moses, their words go up to God (Exod. 2:23), and He listens to them and delivers them from evils that are upon them.",
                "[94] All this comes to pass upon the death of the king of Egypt. Here is a thing clean contrary to expectation; for one would expect, when a tyrant dies, those over whom he has tyrannized to be glad and rejoice; yet it is then that they are said to lament, for we are told “after those many days the king of Egypt died, and the children of Israel lamented sorely” (<i>ibid.</i>).",
                "[95] Taken literally the sentence is contradictory to reason: If it apply to the powers that sway the soul, the statement of the second clause is seen to be consequent upon that in the first. Pharaoh is the power that scatters to the winds and flings away all ideas of what is noble. When this power is quick and active in us and seems to be strong and healthy, if indeed any evil power may be said to be healthy, we drive self-control far from us, and welcome pleasure. But, when the author of our foul and licentious life weakens and, so to speak, dies, we are brought all at once to a clear view of the life of self-mastery, and turn to lamenting and bewailing ourselves for our old mode of living, seeing that, preferring pleasure to virtue, we overlaid immortal with mortal life. But He Who alone is gracious, taking pity on our ceaseless mourning, accepts our suppliant souls, and without effort dispels the Egyptian tornado of passions which had burst upon us."
            ],
            [
                "[96] On Cain, who rejects repentance, He proceeds, owing to the enormity of his guilt, to lay curses most appropriate to the murder of a brother. And first He says to him “Now also art thou accursed from the earth” (Gen. 4:11), showing that it is not now for the first time, when he has perpetrated the treacherous deed, that he is abominable and accurst, but that he was so before also when he plotted the murder, since the purpose is as important as the completed act.",
                "[97] For so long as we only conceive disgraceful actions with the bare imagination of the mind, so long we are not guilty of the intent, for the soul may even against our will move amiss. But when the deeds planned have also been carried out, the very planning involves guilt, for the deliberateness of the offence is the chief point made evident by its execution.",
                "[98] Now He says that the mind will be accurst not from anything else than from the earth; for the earthly part of each one of us is discovered to be accountable for our most dire misfortunes. For instance, the body either suffers from illness and inflicts on its owner the maladies that arise from itself, filling him with nausea and distress, or, having become outrageously gross through indulgence in pleasures, blunts his keenness of perception.",
                "[99] And, as we all know, every one of the senses is an avenue for the entrance of harm. A man sees beauty, and is wounded by the darts of the dread passion of love; or he hears of the death of a kinsman and is bowed down with grief. Frequently too his palate brings about his downfall, upsetting him with disagreeable viands, or oppressing him with a surfeit of delicacies. I need hardly refer to the incitements to sexual indulgence. These have ruined entire cities and countries and vast regions of the earth, as wellnigh all the poets and historians of the world testify."
            ],
            [
                "[100] The manner in which the mind becomes accurst from the earth is next indicated by the words, “which opened its mouth to receive thy brother’s blood” (Gen. 4:11). It is a cruel thing that the inlets of the senses should be opened wide for the torrent of the objects of sense to be poured, like a river in spate, into their gaping orifices, with nothing to stay their violent rush. For then the mind, swallowed up by the huge inpouring, is found at the bottom, unable so much as to rise to the surface and look out.",
                "[101] We ought to employ each one of these faculties, not on all that it is capable of doing but rather on the objects of greatest value. The eye is capable of seeing all colours and all forms, but let it see those that are meet for light not for darkness. The ear too is capable of apprehending all uttered words, but some let it refuse to hear, for countless things that are said are disgraceful. And because nature has given you taste, as she has to us all, do not, O senseless one, be like a cormorant and greedily devour all things. For maladies causing acute pain have been brought on in many cases by food that was not nourishing only but rare and expensive.",
                "[102] And because, with a view to the persistence of the race, you were endowed with generative organs, do not run after rapes and adulteries and other unhallowed forms of intercourse, but only those which are the lawful means of propagating the human race. And because a tongue and a mouth and organs of speech have been allotted to you, do not blurt out all things, even those which are secrets; for there are places where it is good to refrain from speech; and it seems to me that those who have learned to speak have learned also to be silent, since the same faculty renders us capable both of exercising speech and of refraining from its exercise; and those who talk about things they should not, appear to me to display not power of speech but weakness in keeping silent.",
                "[103] So let us make it our earnest endeavour to bind up each of the openings which we have mentioned with the adamantine chains of self-control. For Moses says elsewhere (Numb. 19:15) that “every open vessel which hath no covering bound upon it, is unclean,” implying that wretchedness is due to the different parts of the soul having been left loose and gaping and unfastened, while proper ordering of life and speech is the result of these being kept close and tight. So we see that God cannot but curse the godless and impious Cain, because, opening wide the inner chambers of his complex being, he stood agape for all outward things, praying in his greed to be able both to take them in, and to find room for them for the destruction of Abel, or the teaching devoted to God."
            ],
            [
                "[104] For this reason he shall “work” the earth (Gen. 4:12), not “till” it: for every tiller of the soil is a skilled workman, since tilling, too, is a matter of skill, but plenty of untrained men are workers on the soil, plying the task of unskilled labourers to procure the necessaries of life. These people do much mischief in their agricultural operations from not having found anyone to direct them; and if they do anything well, they succeed by accident, not with the aid of reason; but the scientific labours of the tillers of the soil are all of necessity beneficial.",
                "[105] This explains why the lawgiver ascribed to righteous Noah the skilled trade of a tiller of the soil (Gen. 9:20), wishing to bring out the truth that, just as a good husbandman does, the man of sound character in dealing with trees in a wild state cuts away all harmful shoots grown from passions or vices, leaving such as, though not fruit-bearing, can serve as a wall and be a most firm fence of the soul: while, on the other hand, he tends all the cultivated trees, not by the same but by different methods, taking away from some, making additions to others, making some larger, and reducing others in size.",
                "[106] And now I come to an illustration that particularly interests me. Noticing a luxuriant vine he will bend down its tendrils to the ground, dig trenches, throw the soil back to cover them. In a short time these become wholes instead of parts, mothers instead of daughters. Not only so, but they relieve the mother who bore them of the burden of old age. For, released from a task which used to impoverish and weaken her, that of dividing up her sustenance and distributing it to her numerous progeny, these having now become capable of drawing sustenance from themselves, after many a set-back she gets the nourishment she needs, and enriched by it renews her youth.",
                "[107] I have watched another man dealing with cultivated trees. He would cut away all that was above ground of a poor one among these, leaving a very small portion of it close to the roots projecting. Then, taking a well-grown branch from another tree of good stock, he would pare this away at one end as far as the pith, make an incision in the shoot which he had docked near the roots, not of any great depth but just sufficient to make an opening for insertion. Then he would bring the branch which he had pared and fit it into the opening.",
                "[108] The result is a single tree grown out of these two into one, each portion reciprocally benefiting the other. For the roots feed the branch grafted on them and save it from withering, and the branch, as a requital for its nourishment, bestows fruitfulness on the roots.",
                "There are in agriculture countless other operations requiring skill, which it would be out of place to mention just now. I have written at such length merely for the sake of making clear the difference between a labourer and a (skilled) agriculturalist."
            ],
            [
                "[109] The worthless man never ceases spending unskilled labour on his earthly body and the senses akin to it and all external objects of sense, and he goes on doing harm to his utterly miserable soul, doing harm also to that which he imagines he is chiefly benefiting, his own body. But in the case of the worthy man, since he is expert in the skilled work of agriculture, everything that comes under his hands is managed with skill and as reason requires. Whenever the senses run riot and are borne forth with irresistible rush towards their outward objects, they are easily checked by one of the contrivances of science.",
                "[110] Whenever throbbing passion in the soul rages savagely, producing there itchings and ticklings arising from lust and indulgence, or again gnawing pains and scared flutterings, the result of fear and grief, it is assuaged by a curative medicine prepared beforehand. Once again, if some vice is spreading itself more and more widely, sister to that bodily disease which creeps and runs over the skin, it is lanced by reason’s knife under the guidance of science.",
                "[111] After this manner, then, the growths of the wild wood are subdued, but all plants of the cultivated and fruit-bearing virtues have men’s endeavours for sprouts, and for fruit their noble actions. Each of these the skilled husbanding of the soul fosters, and, so far as in it lies, brings to immortality by the care bestowed upon them."
            ],
            [
                "[112] The man of parts, therefore, has been clearly shown to be a tiller of the soil, and the worthless man a mere worker on it. And would that the earthly part of him had lent its strength to him as he worked on the soil, instead of actually diminishing the strength he has; for it is said, “it shall not add its strength, to give it thee” (Gen. 4:12).",
                "[113] His plight is that to which a man would come, if he were always eating and drinking, and never being filled, or indulging perpetually in sexual pleasures with his cravings after sexual intercourse continuing in full force. For weakness is brought about by emptiness, and strength by fullness; and insatiability is the hunger that is experienced when an abundant supply of food is combined with dire intemperance: and those are in wretched case whose carcases are full, while their appetites are empty and still athirst.",
                "[114] But of the lovers of knowledge he says in the Great Song that “He caused them to mount over the strength of the earth, and fed them with the products of the fields” (Deut. 32:13), showing that the godless man misses his goal, to the end that he may suffer the greater pain through strength not being added to, but on the contrary taken away by, his activities, while those who follow after virtue, raised high above all that is earthly and mortal, are abundantly able to disregard the power wielded by these things, seeing that they have God to guide their ascent, who extends to them for use and enjoyment and highest benefit the very products of the fields. He likens virtues to fields, and what they yield to products. He chooses the word “products” because he is thinking of production: for out of good sense is produced sensible conduct, out of moderation modest behaviour, out of piety pious demeanour, and from each of the other virtues, the activity that corresponds to it."
            ],
            [
                "[115] These “products” are nourishment in the strict meaning of the word, supplied by the soul that is able, as the lawgiver says, to “suck honey out of the rock and oil out of the hard rock” (<i>ibid.</i>). He uses the word “rock” to express the solid and indestructible wisdom of God, which feeds and nurses and rears to sturdiness all who yearn after imperishable sustenance.",
                "[116] For this divine wisdom has appeared as mother of all that are in the world, affording to her offspring, as soon as they are born, the nourishment which they require from her own breasts. But not all her offspring are deemed meet for divine food, but such as are found worthy of their parents; for many of them fall victims to the famine of virtue, a famine more cruel than that of eatables and drinkables.",
                "[117] The fountain of the divine wisdom runs sometimes with a gentler and more quiet stream, at other times more swiftly and with a fuller and stronger current. When it runs down gently, it sweetens much as honey does; when it runs swiftly down, it comes in full volume as material for lighting up the soul, even as oil does a lamp.",
                "[118] In another place he uses a synonym for this rock and calls it “manna.” Manna is the divine word, eldest of all existences, which bears the most comprehensive name of “Somewhat.” Out of it are made two cakes, the one of honey, the other of oil. These are two inseparable and all-important stages in education, at the outset causing a sweetness to flow from what knowledge opens, and afterwards causing a most brilliant light to flash from them on those who handle in no fickle and perfunctory way the subjects which they love, but lay hold of them strongly and firmly with a persistence that knows no slackness or intermission. These, as I have said, “are caused to rise up over the strength of the earth” (Deut. 32:13)."
            ],
            [
                "[119] To the godless Cain, on the other hand, the earth affords nothing that contributes to healthy vigour, in spite of his being occupied with nothing beyond the concerns of earth. It is a natural consequence of this that he is found “groaning and trembling upon the earth” (Gen. 4:12), that is to say, a victim to fear and grief. Such is the sorry life of the wretched man, a life to which have been allotted the more grievous of the four passions, fear and grief, the one identical with groaning, the other with trembling. For such a life some evil thing must either be present or on its way. The expectation of that which is on its way begets fear, the experience of that which is present begets grief.",
                "[120] But the man that follows after virtue is sure to be in corresponding states of blessedness; he has either won the prize or is on the way to win it; then to have it produces joy, fairest of possessions; to be expecting that you will reach it produces that food of souls that love virtue, hope, which makes us cast away hesitation, and essay with hearty alacrity all noble deeds.",
                "[121] When righteousness has, for some soul, given birth to a male progeny in the shape of righteous reasoning, from that soul all painful things are forthwith banished. Our witness for this shall be the birth of Noah. “Noah” means righteous, and it is said of him, “This man shall cause us to rest from our works and from the pains of our hands and from the earth which the Lord God hath cursed” (Gen. 5:29).",
                "[122] For it is the nature of justice in the first place to create rest in the place of toil, owing to its complete indifference to objects on the border-land between vice and virtue, such as wealth, fame, official posts, honours, and everything of that sort, with which the majority of mankind are busy. It is its nature, in the next place, to abolish griefs which take shape under the action of things that we do entirely of our own motion. For Moses does not, as some impious people do, say that God is the author of ills. Nay, he says that “our own hands” cause them, figuratively describing in this way our own undertakings, and the spontaneous movement of our minds to what is wrong."
            ],
            [
                "But the crowning purport of righteousness is to give us full rest “from the earth which the Lord God hath cursed.”",
                "[123] By this is meant wickedness, which has set up its abode in the souls of the unwise, like some fell disease. Yet we may find in the righteous man a safeguard against it, for he has in his righteousness a sovereign remedy.",
                "So when he has thus routed evil things, he is filled with joy, as Sarah was; for she says, “the Lord hath made for me laughter,” and goes on, “for whosoever shall hear, will rejoice with me” (Gen. 21:6).",
                "[124] For God is the Creator of laughter that is good, and of joy, so that we must hold Isaac to be not a product of created beings, but a work of the uncreated One. For if “Isaac” means “laughter,” and according to Sarah’s unerring witness God is the Maker of laughter, God may with perfect truth be said to be Isaac’s father. But he gives to Abraham, the wise one, a share in His own title, and by the excision of grief He has bestowed on him gladness, the offspring of wisdom.",
                "[125] If, therefore, a man be capable of hearing the poetry which God makes, he is of necessity glad himself, and he rejoices with those who had an ear for it already. God is an author in whose works you will find no myth or fiction, but truth’s inexorable rules all observed as though graven on stone. You will find no metres and rhythms and tuneful verses charming the ear with their music, but nature’s own consummate works, which possess a harmony all their own. And even as the mind, with its ear tuned to the poems of God, is glad, so the speech, being in tune with the conceptions of the understanding, and, if we may so speak, lending its ear to them, cannot but rejoice."
            ],
            [
                "[126] This will be made clear by the divine communication to Moses, the man of large wisdom. It contains these words: “Lo, is not Aaron thy brother, the Levite? I know that he will speak for thee; and lo! he shall come forth to meet thee, and on seeing thee he shall rejoice in himself” (Exod. 4:14). The Creator says that He knows that the uttered word, brother as it is of the mind, can speak; for He has made it, as it were, an instrument of music, to be an articulate utterance of our whole complex being.",
                "[127] This “speech,” both for me and for thee and for all men, sounds and speaks and interprets our thoughts, and more than this, goes out to meet the reasonings of the understanding. For when the mind bestirs itself and receives an impulse towards some object belonging to its own sphere, either moved from within itself or experiencing marked impressions from external objects, it becomes pregnant and is in travail with its thoughts. It wishes to be delivered of them and cannot, until the sound produced by the tongue and the other organs of speech takes the thoughts into its hands like a midwife, and brings them forth to the light.",
                "[128] And such sound is a most far-shining utterance of our thoughts. For just as things laid up in darkness are hidden, until a light shine on them and show them, in the same way conceptions are stored in the understanding, a place that is out of sight, until the voice illumine them like a light and uncover them all."
            ],
            [
                "[129] Right finely then is it said that speech goes forth to meet the thoughts, yea runs toward them in its anxiety to grasp them, owing to its desire to interpret them. For to each one his proper work is most an object of desire, and speaking is the proper work of speech, and so it hastens to it, taught by nature to treat it as its own. And it rejoices and is glad, when, as though illumined, it sees and fully apprehends the sense of the matter shown to it; for then it lays hands upon it, and gets hold of it, and becomes a perfect interpreter of it.",
                "[130] At all events, we avoid people who, in their verbal expositions, show a lack of complete mastery of the ideas to be expressed. We regard them as prating fellows who never cease talking, stringing together idle, long, and (what is worse) soulless harangues—to give them the epithet they deserve. The speech of such people, disgracing itself as it does, might rightly groan, and so, on the other hand, the speech of that man needs must rejoice, who, after consideration of the mental conceptions, has come adequately equipped to the setting forth of things which he has seen, and of thoughts which he has effectively grasped. Almost all of us are familiar with this from everyday experience.",
                "[131] When we perfectly know the thing we are saying, our speech is glad and joyous, and is rich in words of the utmost vividness and fitness, and using these in ample measure it runs along without hitch or stumbling; and it succeeds, moreover, in presenting the theme which it is expounding clearly and to good purpose. But when apprehension of the thought to be expressed lacks definiteness, eur speech suffers from a grievous dearth of apt terms, strikes a false note, and uses words in an improper sense. The result is that not only is our speech itself plunged into distress and discomfort, as it flounders about not knowing where it is, but also instead of convincing the audience it makes their ears ache."
            ],
            [
                "[132] But neither must all speech without exception meet thoughts, nor must it meet all thoughts without exception, but the perfect Aaron must meet the thoughts of the most perfect Moses. With what other object, pray, did he add “the Levite” to the words “lo! Aaron thy brother,” save with that of teaching that only to the Levite, and priest, and speech that is in deep earnest, is it fitting to reveal the thoughts, seeing that they are blooms of a perfect mind?",
                "[133] Never may the speech of a worthless man essay to interpret Divine ordinances. He disgraces their beauty by his own pollutions. On the other hand, let base and licentious ideas never be set forth by the lips of a man of worth, but let holy things always be expounded by sacred and holy speech.",
                "[134] It is said that in a certain unusually well governed city the following custom prevails. When one of those who have not led a respectable life takes in hand to introduce a proposal to senate or people, he is not allowed to do so in his own person, but is required by the magistrates to impart the substance of his motion to some man of unblemished character. Thereupon this man rises and reproduces what has been said to him. Appearing as pupil, for the nonce, of the man who instructed him, this gentleman’s mouth having been sewn up, he exhibits what another has devised, and does not regard the man who hit upon the idea as fit to occupy even the position of listener or looker-on. So far do some carry their unwillingness even to derive benefit from bad men, holding the harm arising from the shame entailed to be greater than the advantage that would accrue to them."
            ],
            [
                "[135] This lesson would seem to have been taught by the most holy prophet Moses. It is taught by the fact of Aaron the Levite meeting his brother Moses and on seeing him rejoicing in himself (Exod. 4:14). The words “rejoicing in himself,” apart from what I have already remarked about them, bring out a truth of yet greater importance for unselfish service. The lawgiver is directing attention to the kind of joy that is genuine and most fully proper to man.",
                "[136] For strictly speaking there is no ground for rejoicing over abundance of wealth and possessions, or over brilliant position, or, generally, over anything outside us, since all these things are soulless, and insecure, and have the germs of decay in themselves. Nor indeed is there ground for rejoicing over strength and robust health and other bodily advantages. Not only have we these in common with the most worthless of men, but many a time they bring inexorable ruin on those who have them.",
                "[137] Since, then, joy that is free from all sham and counterfeit is found only in the good things of the soul, it is “in himself,” not in the accidents of his position, that every wise man rejoices; for the things that are “in himself” are excellences of mind, on which we have a right to pride ourselves, but the accidents of our position are either bodily well-being or plenty of external advantages, and of these we must not boast."
            ],
            [
                "[138] Having shown, then, as far as in us lay, citing in the person of Moses a most truthful witness, that joy is peculiar to the wise man, let us show in the next place that hope is so also, calling in the same witness as before. For the son of Seth named Enos, which means “man” [was distinguished by] hope. “This man,” it says, “first hoped to call on the name of the Lord God” (Gen. 4:26). It is a sound statement. For what could be found more in keeping with one who is truly a man than a hope and expectation of obtaining good things from the only bountiful God? This is, to tell the truth, men’s only birth in the strict sense, since those who do not set their hope on God have no part in a rational nature.",
                "[139] Accordingly having first said of Enos “this man hoped (and ventured) to call on the name of the Lord God,” he adds expressly, “this is the book of the nativity of men” (Gen. 5:1.). In saying this he utters an important truth, for an entry is hereby made in the book of God to the effect that man only is hopeful. The converse therefore is true, that he that is despondent is not man. The definition, then, of our complex being is “a living creature endowed with reason subject to death,” but that of man as Moses portrays him “a soul so constituted as to hope on the God that really IS.” Well, then, let goodly men, having obtained joy and hope as their happy portion, either enjoy or at all events expect good things:",
                "[140] but let worthless men, of whose company Cain is a member, living in constant pains and terrors, gather in a most grievous harvest, in the experience or expectation of evils, groaning over the painful case in which they are already, and trembling and shuddering at the fearful things which they expect (<i>cf.</i> Gen. 4:12)."
            ],
            [
                "[141] Let what we have said on this passage suffice: let us investigate the words that follow. They are these: “And Cain said to the Lord, The charge to which abandonment exposes me is too great” (Gen. 4:13). The character of this cry will appear from a comparison of like cases. If the helmsman should abandon a ship at sea, must not all arrangements for sailing the ship go wrong? Again, if a charioteer quit a horse-chariot during a race, does it not necessarily follow that the chariot’s course will lose all order and direction? And again, when a city has been abandoned by rulers or laws—and of course rulers are living tables on which laws are inscribed—does not that city become a prey to two very great evils, anarchy and lawlessness?",
                "[142] Need I add that it is a law of nature that the body perishes if the soul quit it, and the soul if reason quit it, and reason if it be deprived of virtue? Now if each presence that I have named becomes an occasion of loss and damage to those abandoned by it, how great a disaster must we infer that those will experience who have been forsaken by God; men whom He rejects as deserters, false to the most sacred ordinances, and sends into banishment, having tested them and found them unworthy of His rule and governance? For, to say all in a word, it is certain that he who is left by a benefactor far greater than himself is involved in charges and accusations of the most serious kind. For when would you say that the unskilled man suffers the greatest harm? Would it not be when he is entirely let alone by science?",
                "[143] When would you say it of the man that is unlearned and utterly uneducated? Would it not be when instruction and pupilage have executed a deed of abandonment in his case? And when do we pronounce foolish people more than usually unhappy? Is it not when sound sense rejects them for good and all? When do we so regard the licentious or the unjust? Is it not when self-mastery and justice issue against them a sentence of eternal banishment? When the irreligious? Is it not when religion excludes them from her own sacred rites?",
                "[144] This being so, it seems to me that those who are not utterly beyond cleansing would pray to be punished rather than be let go; for dismissal will most easily overturn them like vessels without ballast or helmsman, while punishment will set them up again.",
                "[145] Are not boys who are rebuked by their slave-tutors when they do wrong better than those who are without tutors? Are not apprentices who are found fault with by their masters when they do not succeed in the craft they are learning better than those who have no one to chide them? Are not youths without someone to direct them inferior to, and less well off than, those who, best of all, have been vouchsafed the natural direction and guidance which has been assigned to parents over their children, or, failing that, have been placed under the next-best sort of guides, whom pity for fatherless children so often appoints to fill the place of parents in all that is for their good?"
            ],
            [
                "[146] Let us then, who are convicted by consciousness of our own acts of unrighteousness, beseech God to punish us rather than let us alone. For if He lets us alone, He will make us servants, not as before, of Himself the gracious One, but of the creation that has no pity; but if He punishes us, He will of His gracious goodness gently and kindly correct our faults, by sending forth into our mind His own word, that reproves and chastens, by means of which He will upbraid it, and make it ashamed of its errors, and so will heal it. It is for this reason that the lawgiver says that “whatever one widowed and ejected shall have vowed against her soul” shall stand for her (Numb. 30:10).",
                "[147] For we may justly say that God is husband and father of the universe, supplying, as He does, the germs of life and well-being to all; and that a mind has been cast forth and widowed of God, which has either failed to welcome divinely-bestowed power to bear children, or, after welcoming it, has subsequently chosen to bring about abortion.",
                "[148] Accordingly, whatever she shall have determined, against herself shall she determine, and the things determined shall stand absolutely incurable. For how can it be anything but a deplorable evil that an unstable creature never continuing in one stay should determine and fix by announcing it aught concerning itself, thus arrogating to itself the prerogatives of the Creator? One of these prerogatives is that in virtue of which He decisively and unswervingly determines all things.",
                "[149] So it comes about that the mind shall not only be widowed of knowledge, but shall also be cast out from it. Let me explain. The soul that is widowed but not yet cast out of the good and beautiful, may still by steadfast persistence find a means of reconciliation and agreement with right reason, her lawful husband. But the soul that has once been dismissed from hearth and home as irreconcilable, has been expelled for all eternity, and can never return to her ancient abode."
            ],
            [
                "[150] What has been said about the words, “The charge to which abandonment exposes me is too great,” must suffice, and we must consider the words that follow. “If” he says “Thou castest me out to-day from the face of the earth, from Thy face also shall I be hidden” (Gen. 4:14). What are you saying, good sir? If you shall have been cast out of all the earth, will you still hide yourself? How?",
                "[151] Could you live? Or did you not know that nature has not given to all living creatures the same abiding-place, but different ones, the sea to fish and all the watery tribe, and earth to all land creatures? And man, so far at all events as the constituents of his body go, is a land creature. For this reason, each living creature, when he leaves his proper abode and enters so to speak a foreign one, dies without more ado, the land creatures on going under water, the aquatic animals on making their way to dry land.",
                "[152] If, therefore, being a man, you should be cast out from earth, whither will you turn? Will you take on the nature of aquatic creatures and swim under water? Nay, under water you will be dead in a moment. But perhaps you will take wings and raise yourself aloft and elect to traverse the air, transforming land-kind into bird-kind? Aye, change if you can the moulding and stamp of the Divine coinage. You will never be able to do that: for the further you lift yourself aloft, so much the more swiftly will you be borne from a higher region with greater impetus to earth, your proper quarter."
            ],
            [
                "[153] But could you, being a man, or any other created thing, hide yourself from God? Where? From Him who is there before us whichever way we go; from Him Whose sight reaches to the ends of earth; from Him Who has filled the universe; from Him of Whom the least thing that exists is not void? And can this surprise you, that no created thing can manage to hide itself from that which is, seeing that we cannot get out of the first elements of material things, but, having made our escape from one, must ever pass thence into another?",
                "[154] If the existent One had willed to employ the skill, by which He made amphibious creatures, in making a new kind of creature capable of living in all elements, this creature, if it had sped away from the heavy elements of the earth and water, would have arrived at the elements that are naturally light, namely air and fire; and again, after making acquaintance with the regions on high, if it had wanted to remove from them, it would have merely exchanged them for the opposite region.",
                "[155] It would have been necessary for it in any case to show itself in some one quarter of the universe, since it was impossible for it to speed away outside it. And, besides this, the Creator had left nothing remaining outside, having entirely used up all the four elements to constitute the world, that out of perfect parts He might make the whole most perfect. Seeing then that it is in all cases out of the question to escape beyond the handiwork of God, must it not be still more impossible to flee from its Maker and Ruler? Let no one therefore accept without examining it the way of understanding the language that first suggests itself, and by so doing make the Law guilty of his own foolishness. Let him carefully note the sense which it conveys in a figure through deeper meanings underlying the expressions employed, and so attain to certain knowledge."
            ],
            [
                "[156] Probably, then, what is expressed by the words “if Thou art casting me out this day from the face of the earth, from Thy face also shall I be hidden” is this: “if Thou art ceasing to supply me with the good things of earth, neither do I accept those of heaven; and if I am being cut off from the experience and enjoyment of pleasure, I decline virtue also; and if Thou art giving me no part in what is human, keep back also what is divine.",
                "[157] For the good things that are, in our judgement, necessary and of value and really genuine are these, eating, drinking; delighting in variety of colours by the use of sight; being charmed through hearing by all kinds of melodious sounds, and through the joy of fragrant scents which our nostrils inhale; indulging to the full in all the pleasures arising from digestive and other organs; unceasing attention to the acquisition of gold and silver; being adorned with honours and public offices, and all else that tends to make us distinguished. But let us have nothing to do with sound sense, or hardy endurance, or righteousness with her stern disposition filling life with labour and travail. But if these prove to be a necessary part of our experience, they must be treated not as good things to be sought for their own sake, but as means to and productive of good.”",
                "[158] Oh! ridiculous man! Do you assert that, when stript of bodily and outward advantages, you will be out of sight of God? I tell you that, if you be stripped of them, you will be more than ever in sight of Him: for when set free from bonds that cannot be broken, imposed by the body and bodily requirements, you will have a clear vision of the Uncreated."
            ],
            [
                "[159] Do you not see that Abraham, when he had “forsaken land and kindred and his father’s house,” <i>i.e.</i> the body, sense, and speech (Gen. 12:1), begins to meet with the powers of Him that IS? For when he has gone out from all his house, the Law says that “God appeared to him” (Gen. 12:7), showing that He clearly manifests Himself to him that escapes from things mortal and mounts up into a soul free from the encumbrance of this body of ours.",
                "[160] So Moses “taking his tent sets it up outside the camp” (Exod. 33:7), and places its abode far from the bodily encampment, expecting that only thus might he become a perfect suppliant and worshipper of God.",
                "Of this tent he says that it has received the title of “Tent of Testimony,” using his words quite advisedly, to show that the Tent of the Existent One really IS, and does not merely receive the title. For, among the virtues, that of God really IS, actually existing, inasmuch as God alone has veritable being. This is why Moses will say of Him as best he may in human speech, “I AM He that IS” (Exod. 3:14), implying that others lesser than He have not being, as being indeed is, but exist in semblance only, and are conventionally said to exist. To Moses’ Tent, however, which figuratively represents human virtue, must be accorded not existence but only a title, seeing that it is a copy and likeness of that divine virtue. It follows as a consequence of this that, when Moses is appointed “a god unto Pharaoh,” he did not become such in reality, but only by a convention is supposed to be such; for I do indeed know God as granting favours and giving,",
                "[161] but I am unable to conceive of Him as being given; yet it is said in the sacred books, “I give thee as a god to Pharaoh” (Exod. 7:1), that which is given being passive not active; but He that really IS must needs be active not passive.",
                "[162] What then do we gather from these words? That the wise man is said to be a god to the foolish man, but that in reality he is not God, just as the counterfeit four-drachma piece is not a tetradrachm. But when the wise man is compared with Him that is, he will be found to be a man of God; but when with a foolish man, he will turn out to be one conceived of as a god, in men’s ideas and imagination, not in view of truth and actuality."
            ],
            [
                "[163] Why then do you talk idly saying, “If Thou art casting me out of the earth, Thee also shall I hide from myself” (Gen. 4:14)? For, on the contrary, were He to expel you from the earthly sphere, He will show you His own image clearly manifested. This can be proved. You are going to remove out of the presence of God, and having so removed you will none the less inhabit your earthly body; for he says afterwards, “and Cain went out from the presence of God and dwelt in the earth” (Gen. 4:16); so that, instead of having been cast out of the earth and having hidden from yourself Him that IS, you have turned away from Him and have taken refuge in earth, <i>i.e.</i> the mortal region.",
                "[164] Moreover, it is not really true that “everyone that findeth you shall kill you,” as you dishonestly argued (Gen. 4:14). For the thing that is found is assuredly found by one of two, either by one like it or by one unlike it. He that is like it and akin to it finds it because of their congruity and fellowship in all respects; he that is unlike it, owing to their opposition and incongruity. That which is like is prone to guard and keep what is so nearly related to it: that which is unlike is on its part ready to destroy what differs from it.",
                "[165] Let Cain and every other scoundrel know assuredly that he will not be killed by everyone that meets with him, but whereas unscrupulous people, given to vices closely akin to his, will prove his guards and keepers, all who have engaged in the toilsome quest of sound sense and other virtues, will regard him as an enemy with whom there can be no truce, and destroy him if they can.",
                "[166] For it is an almost invariable rule that both persons and causes are cherished by those who are friendly and attached to them, but brought to ruin by those who have nothing in common with them, and look on them with no favour. For this cause the sacred utterance, testifying in opposition to the feigned simplicity of Cain, says ‘ “Not so” are you minded as your words run’ (Gen. 4:15); for you say that everyone that has found your artifices in the wrestling-bout of words will kill you, but you know that not everyone will do so, since countless numbers have been enrolled on your side, and only he will do so who is a friend of virtue, but to you an irreconcilable enemy."
            ],
            [
                "[167] “He” it continues, “that slayeth Cain shall loosen seven punishable objects” (Gen. 4:15). What meaning this conveys to those who interpret literally, I do not know. For there is nothing to show what the seven objects are, nor how they are punishable, nor in what way they become loose and unstrung. We must make up our minds that all such language is figurative and involves deeper meanings. It would seem, then, that the thought which Moses desires to convey is of this nature.",
                "[168] The irrational side of the soul is divided into seven parts, seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, touching, speaking, begetting. Were a man to do away with the eighth, mind, which is the ruler of these, and here called Cain, he will paralyse the seven also. For they are all strong by sharing the strength and vigour of the mind, and with its weakness they wax feeble, and by the complete corruption brought on them by wickedness they incur a weakening and slackening.",
                "[169] These seven in a wise man’s soul are found to be pure and undefiled, and herein deserving of honour, but in the soul of a foolish man unclean and polluted, and, just as Moses said, exposed to punishment which is equivalent to “deserving of penalty and retribution.” Let me give an illustration.",
                "[170] When the Creator was minded to purge the earth by water, and determined that the soul should receive a cleansing from its unutterable wrongdoings by washing away and purging out its defilements after the fashion of a sacred purification, He charges the man who proved righteous, who was not swept away by the oncoming of the deluge, to bring into the ark, which was the body or the vessel that contains the soul, “from among the clean beasts seven, male and female” (Gen. 7:2), for He deemed it right that the goodly reasoning faculty should find all parts of the irrational side clean for its use."
            ],
            [
                "[171] And this that the lawgiver prescribed is an unfailing characteristic of all wise men: they have sight purged and cleansed, hearing and every sense severely tested; yes, and they have utterance unsullied, and the impulses of sex under control.",
                "[172] Each of the seven faculties shows itself in one way as male, in another way as female; for since it is either in restraint or in motion, in restraint when at rest in sleep, in motion when now awake and active—when regarded under the aspect of restraint and inaction, it is called female owing to its having been reduced to passivity; when looked at under the aspect of movement and employment of force, being thought of as in action, it is described as male.",
                "[173] Thus in the wise man the seven faculties are evidently clean, but, by the law of contraries, in the worthless man all exposed to punishment. How vast a multitude must we suppose to be betrayed every day by eyes deserting to colours and forms and things that it is wrong to look at? And by ears that go after all sounds? And by the organs of smell and taste led by pleasing odours and an endless variety of other enticements?",
                "[174] Need I, then, go on to remind you of the multitude of those who have been ruined by the stream that there is no stopping, flowing from an unbridled tongue, or by the deadly stimulus to sexual sins which accompanies ungoverned lust? Our cities are full of these evils; all the earth is full of them from one end to another; and out of them springs up for mankind, both as individuals and in communities, the war that is waged in time of peace, the war that has no break or pause, and is the greatest of all wars."
            ],
            [
                "[175] And so, to my thinking, those who are not utterly ignorant would choose to be blinded rather than see unfitting things, and to be deprived of hearing rather than listen to harmful words, and to have their tongues cut out to save them from uttering anything that should not be divulged. Such things have been done before now.",
                "[176] Certain wise men, they tell us, while being tortured on the wheel to induce them to reveal secrets have bitten off their tongue, and so contrived a worse torture for their torturers, who found themselves unable to obtain the information which they wanted. It is better to be made a eunuch than to be mad after illicit unions. All these things, seeing that they plunge the soul in disasters for which there is no remedy, would properly incur the most extreme vengeance and punishment.",
                "[177] It goes on to say “the Lord God set a sign upon Cain, that everyone that found him might not kill him” (Gen. 4:15), and what the sign is, he has not pointed out, although he is in the habit of showing the nature of each object by means of a sign, as in the case of events in Egypt when he changed the rod into a serpent, and the hand of Moses into the form of snow, and the river into blood. ",
                "[178] It would seem then that just this is the sign regarding Cain that he should not be killed, namely that on no occasion did he meet with death. For nowhere in the Book of the Law has his death been mentioned. This shows in a figure that, like the Scylla of fable, folly is a deathless evil, never experiencing the end that consists in having died, but subject to all eternity to that which consists in ever dying. Would that the opposite might come to pass, that worthless things should be taken out of sight and abolished, undergoing absolute destruction. As it is, they are continually kindled into flame, and inflict on those who have once been taken captive by them the disease that never dies."
            ]
        ],
        "Appendix": [
            "APPENDIX TO THE WORSE ATTACKS THE BETTER",
            "§ 1. <i>And Cain said … plain.</i> These words are not in the Hebrew text.",
            "§ 7. <i>The three kinds of good things.</i> This classification is frequently used both by Aristotle (<i>e.g</i>. <i>Eth. Nic.</i> i. 1098 b) and by the Stoics (<i>S.V.F.</i> iii. 136). The doctrine of the necessity of all three is found in Aristotle, though not with the implication here made that they are equally important; <i>e.g.</i> “It will not be denied that, as there are three classes, external goods, goods of the body, and goods of the soul, the happy man must possess all these” (<i>Politics</i> 1323 f., Welldon’s translation).",
            "§ 9. <i>Nothing is a good thing</i>, etc. For the Stoic doctrine that τὸ καλόν (“the morally beautiful,” <i>honestum</i> in Cicero) is the only good see Index to <i>S.V.F.</i> No Greek passage, however, seems to reproduce the dogma exactly in this form. <i>Cf</i>. <i>De Post.</i> 133, where it is definitely called Stoic.",
            "§ 16. διʼ ἀγωγῆς νομίμου ἢ καὶ παιδεύσεως ὀρθῆς. In the former clause both noun and adjective suggest practical obedience. For ἀγωγή is a leading along a path, and νόμιμος is one ἀκολουθητικὸς τῷ νόμῳ καὶ πρακτικὸς τῶν ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ προσταττομένων (<i>S.V.F.</i> iii. 613). In the second clause the word παίδευσις takes us into the school-room, the domain of the νομικός, who is ἐξηγητικὸς τοῦ νόμου (<i>ibid.</i>). Philo implies that practical training is the more effective way of instilling “healthy principles.” He can hardly have used the words without thinking of God’s leading of His people by the hand of Moses.",
            "§ 34. <i>Training for dying.</i> This use of the Platonic phrase should be compared with that in <i>De Gig.</i> 14. Here in the mouth of the worldly it connotes the wretchedness of the philosopher’s life. There he is training to die to the life of the body in order to gain the higher life. Philo is probably thinking here of <i>Phaedo</i> 64 A, where, when Socrates uses the equivalent phrase ἐπιτηδεύει ἀποθνήσκειν, Simmias laughs and says “that is exactly what my unphilosophical countrymen would say of the philosophers.” It is a good example of Philo’s intimate knowledge of Plato.",
            "§ 39. <i>All the qualities.</i> ἰδέαι is a technical word in rhetoric for the various qualities of ἑρμηνεία ( = “style” or “expression”). Hermogenes Περὶ ἰδεῶν enumerates and treats of seven of these, the three chief of which are clearness, greatness, beauty.",
            "§ 46. <i>The days of my father’s mourning.</i> Philo to suit his allegorical interpretation takes this to mean “the days when my father will mourn.”",
            "§ 49. <i>Separate … not separate.</i> The Stoics classified material things (σώματα) as (<i>a</i>) διεστῶτα, <i>e.g.</i> an army, (<i>b</i>) συνημμένα, <i>e.g.</i> a house or ship, (<i>c</i>) ἡνωμένα, <i>e.g.</i> animals (<i>S.V.F.</i> ii. 366 f.).",
            "§ 50. <i>Judgements</i>, or “opinions.” In <i>De Post.</i> 79 and 112 the two wives are more or less identified respectively with Epicureanism and the Aristotelian (?) belief in the value of bodily and external things.",
            "§ 57. <i>Inquiry … question.</i> πύσμα or πεῦσις is a question requiring an explanatory answer as “Where is Abel?” ἐρώτημα requires only “yes” or “no.”",
            "§ 64. <i>The number 50 is perfect.</i> Why so? In <i>De Vita Cont.</i> 65 it is said to be the holiest and most “natural” (φυσικώτατος) of numbers because it is formed from the hypotenuse (δύναμις) of the right-angled triangle, which is the beginning of the generation of all things. This reason seems to us absurd. We can dimly see that it applies to 5 (see <i>De Op.</i> 97), but we do not see on what principle it is extended to 50.",
            "§§ 84 f. <i>Whose roots He caused</i>, etc. The thought and much of the diction of the sections is from <i>Timaeus</i> 90 A ff.: “As to the supreme form of soul that is within us, God has given it to each of us as a guiding genius, even that … which dwells in the summit of our body, and raises us from earth towards our celestial affinity, seeing that we are of no earthly, but of heavenly growth (οὐράνιον φυτόν), since to heaven, whence in the beginning was the birth of our soul, the diviner part attaches the head or root (τὴν κεφαλὴν καὶ ῥίζαν ἡμῶν ἀνακρεμαννύν) and makes our whole body upright” (Archer-Hind’s translation). He adds as a note to κεφαλὴν καὶ ῥίζαν “<i>i.e.</i> as a plant draws its sustenance through its roots from its native earth, so does the soul draw her spiritual sustenance from her native heavens.”",
            "§ 91. The point seems to be that <i>physical</i> suffering makes a direct appeal to God. Blood is the principle of our <i>physical</i> life. The <i>physical</i> sufferings of Israel in Egypt cried out to God. In neither case was the complaint conveyed by articulate speech, but in the one case by the blood spilt, in the other by groans. By each of these a meaning (νοῦς) was conveyed, and speech is, after all, only conveyance of a meaning. Why does Philo say that the appeal is sometimes voluntary, sometimes involuntary? Is the stress here on the <i>latter</i>? Does he mean that what we <i>feel</i> reaches God when we are not consciously praying?",
            "§ 118. <i>Two cakes.</i> The idea is obtained by a combination of the descriptions of the Manna in Exod. 16:31 and Numb. 11:8. In the first “its taste was as an ἔγκρις in honey”: in the second “its pleasure was as an ἔγκρις from oil.” The ἔγκρις is defined elsewhere as a sweetmeat made from honey <i>and</i> oil. Philo passes with bewildering rapidity through the different suggestions of oil, (<i>a</i>) as rushing in a stream, (<i>b</i>) as giving light, (<i>c</i>) as an element in food.",
            "§ 120. <i>Corresponding states of blessedness.</i> εὐπάθειαι is used here not exactly in the Stoic sense. With them the three εὐπάθειαι are not the opposites of the πάθη, but reasonable forms of them. Thus χαρά “corresponds” not to λύπη as here, but to ἡδονή (as in <i>L.A.</i> iii. 107), while the εὐπάθεια corresponding to φόβος is not as here ἐλπίς (which is not one of the εὐπάθειαι) but εὐλάβεια (“caution”). So too the εὐπάθεια corresponding to ἐπιθυμία is βούλησις (“wishing”), while λύπη has no corresponding εὐπάθεια.",
            "§ 124. <i>The poetry which God makes.</i> The transition to poetry, which sounds strange in English, is easy enough in Greek, where ποιητής is both “maker” and “poet.”",
            "§ 134. <i>Well governed city.</i> Philo means Sparta. See Plutarch’s <i>Moralia</i> 41 B and 801 B.",
            "§ 135. While the translators have not ventured to correct the text according to their suggestion of πολιτικοῦ (or πολιτικωτέρου) ἕτερον for πολιτικώτερον, they believe it to be very probable, taking it in the sense of another lesson beside the above-mentioned which belongs rather to the civil sphere. The functions of the πολιτικός, though perfectly legitimate and often imperative for the Wise Man, both to Philo and the Stoics, stand to him on a somewhat lower plane than pure philosophy. Compare the contrast of πρὸς πολιτείαν and πρὸς ἀλήθειαν φιλοσοφῶν in § 7. The lesson that only the good man’s advice can benefit the State is essentially “political,” and this which follows is as clearly of the other type.",
            "§ 141. <i>And of course rulers</i>, etc. Or “laws count as rulers.” This would be an odd use of γράφονται (? έγγράφονται), but such a translation is naturally suggested by <i>De Vita Mosis</i> ii. 4, where we are told that “the King is a living law, and the Law a just King.” The thought may have been suggested by Plato, <i>Symposium</i> 196 C πόλεως βασιλῆς νόμοι; <i>cf</i>. <i>Gorgias</i> 484 B, Aristot. <i>Rhet.</i> iii. 3.",
            "§ 145. <i>Apprentices … masters … craft.</i> Or “pupils … schoolmasters … arts,” <i>i.e.</i> the Encyclia, particularly “grammar” and “rhetoric,” regularly called “arts.” The discipline of the “pedagogue,” the school-teacher, and the parent or guardian, form three natural stages in the experience of the growing boy.",
            "<i>Appoints.</i> Perhaps an allusion to the Attic law by which it was the duty of the Archon to appoint guardians, where the father’s will left no instructions. (See <i>Dictionary of Antiquities</i>, <i>s.v.</i> Epitropus.) Philo’s clear allusion to Attic law in 143 makes this the more probable.",
            "§ 154. <i>The Creator had left nothing</i>, etc. Almost a quotation from <i>Timaeus</i> 32 C, where God is said to have used up the whole of the four elements in making the Universe, ἵνα τέλεον ἐκ τελέων τῶν μερῶν εἴη.",
            "§ 157. <i>For the good things that are.</i> The words here put into Cain’s mouth are intended to represent the teaching of the Epicureans, whose view that bodily pleasure was a <i>necessary</i> element in happiness easily lent itself to misrepresentation. See the words of Epicurus given by Diogenes Laertius (x. 6): “I know not how to conceive the good apart from the pleasures of taste, sexual pleasures, the pleasures of sound and the pleasures of beautiful form” (Hicks’s translation). So too in the concluding words of the section we have a hit at the doctrine that we choose the virtues on account of pleasure and not for their own sake, as we use the physician’s art for the sake of health (Diog. Laert. x. 138).",
            "§ 160. ἀναγκαίως. In <i>Timaeus</i> 69 D ἀναγκαίως is used of the way in which the inferior agents in the Creation performed their somewhat baffling tasks. It has been rendered there “as best they might” (L. &amp; S. 1927). Moses is faced with a task more baffling even than theirs. It is to express in human speech the Name of God. He does it “as best he may.”",
            "§ 178. <i>Scylla.</i> The allusion is to <i>Odyssey</i> xii. 118 ἡ δέ τοι οὐ θνητή, ἀλλʼ ἀθάνατον κακόν ἐστι."
        ]
    },
    "versions": [
        [
            "Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1929",
            "https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001216057/NLI"
        ]
    ],
    "heTitle": "על שהרע נוהג לארוב לטוב",
    "categories": [
        "Second Temple",
        "Philo"
    ],
    "schema": {
        "heTitle": "על שהרע נוהג לארוב לטוב",
        "enTitle": "That the Worse is wont to Attack the Better",
        "key": "That the Worse is wont to Attack the Better",
        "nodes": [
            {
                "heTitle": "הקדמה",
                "enTitle": "Introduction"
            },
            {
                "heTitle": "",
                "enTitle": ""
            },
            {
                "heTitle": "הערות",
                "enTitle": "Appendix"
            }
        ]
    }
}