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ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION", + "A Book of Laws, says Philo, is fitly prefaced by a Cosmogony. The theme dealt with by a Cosmogony is, indeed, too lofty for adequate treatment. In Moses’ treatment of it, two salient points at once meet the eye. The world’s origin is ascribed to a Maker, who is Himself unoriginate, and who cares for what He has made.", + "By “six days” Moses does not indicate a space of time in which the world was made, but the principles of order and productivity which governed its making.", + "Before the emergence of the material world there existed, in the Divine Word or Reason, the incorporeal world, as the design of a city exists in the brain of the designer.", + "The efficient cause of the universe (we must remember) is Goodness; and Goodness, to be attained by it as its capacity permits, is its final cause.", + "The incorporeal world may be described as “the Word of God engaged in the act of creating.” And the Word is the Image of God. In that, man (the part), and therefore the universe (the whole) was created.", + "“In the beginning” means for Philo the precedence of the incorporeal heaven and invisible earth. The pre-eminence of Life-breath and Light are shown, he says, by the one being called “the Spirit of God,” and the other pronounced “good” or “beautiful.” He sees darkness severed from light by the barrier of twilight; and the birth of Time on “Day One.” Philo strangely infers that a whole day was devoted to the creation of the visible heaven from the mention of a “second day” after that creation. Land and sea are then formed by the briny water being withdrawn from the sponge-like earth and the fresh water left in it; and the land is bidden to bring forth trees and plants. It is bidden to do so before sun and moon are made, that men may not attribute its fruitfulness to these.", + "Coming now to the work of the fourth day, Philo brings out the significance of the number 4, and points to the boons conferred on body and mind by Light, which has given rise to philosophy by drawing man’s vision upward to the heavenly bodies. He sees the purposes of these in their giving light, foreshowing coming events, marking the seasons, and measuring time.", + "The fifth day is fitly given to the creation of creatures endowed with five senses.", + "In connexion with the creation of man, Philo points out (a) the beauty of the sequence, ascending (in living things) from lowest to highest; (b) the reference, not to body, but to mind, in the words “after our image”; (c) the implication of exactness in the addition “after our likeness”; (d) the cooperation of other agents implied in “let us make,” such co-operation accounting (so Philo suggests) for the possibility of sin; (e) four reasons for man coming last, viz.—", + "(1) that he might find all ready for him;", + "(2) that he might use God’s gifts as such;", + "(3) that Man, a miniature Heaven, might correspond to the Heaven whose creation came first;", + "(4) that his sudden appearance might over-awe the beasts.", + "His place in the series is no sign of inferiority.", + "Turning to the Seventh Day, Philo notes its dignity, and enlarges on the properties of the number 7, (a) in things incorporeal (89–100); (b) in the material creation: (α) the heavenly bodies (101 f.); (β) the stages of man’s growth (103–105); (γ) as 3+4 (106); (δ) in the progressions (107–110); (ε) in all visible existence (111–116); (ζ) in man, and all that he sees (117–121) and experiences (121–125); (η) in grammar and music (126 f.).", + "After speaking of the honour paid by Moses to the number 7, Philo, treating Gen. 2:4 f. as a concluding summary, claims it as a proof that Gen. 1 records a creation of incorporeal ideas. After a disquisition on the subject of fresh water, to which he is led by Gen. 2:6, he goes on to deal with the earth-born man (Gen. 2:7), whom he distinguishes from the man made after God’s image. The being of the former is composite, earthly substance and Divine Breath. Proofs and an illustration are given of his surpassing excellence. The title of “the only world-citizen” is claimed for him, and its significance brought out. His physical excellence can be guessed from the faint traces of it found in his posterity. It is to call out his intelligence that he is required to name the animals. Woman is the occasion of his deterioration.", + "The Garden, the Serpent, the Fall and its consequences are dealt with in §§ 153–169. The Garden, we are told, represents the dominant power of the soul, and the Serpent represents Pleasure, and is eminently fitted to do so. His use of a human voice is considered. The praise of the “snake-fighter” in Lev. 11:22 is referred to. Stress is laid on the fact that Pleasure assails the man through the woman. The effects of the Fall on the woman and on the man are traced.", + "The treatise ends with a short summary of the lessons of the Cosmogony. These are:", + "(1) the eternal existence of God (as against atheism);", + "(2) the unity of God (as against polytheism);", + "(3) the non-eternity of the world;", + "(4) the unity of the world;", + "(5) the Providence of God." + ], + "": [ + [ + "[1] While among other lawgivers some have nakedly and without embellishment drawn up a code of the things held to be right among their people, and others, dressing up their ideas in much irrelevant and cumbersome matter, have befogged the masses and hidden the truth under their fictions,", + "[2] Moses, disdaining either course, the one as devoid of the philosopher’s painstaking effort to explore his subject thoroughly, the other as full of falsehood and imposture, introduced his laws with an admirable and most impressive exordium. He refrained, on the one hand, from stating abruptly what should be practised or avoided, and on the other hand, in face of the necessity of preparing the minds of those who were to live under the laws for their reception, he refrained from inventing myths himself or acquiescing in those composed by others.", + "[3] His exordium, as I have said, is one that excites our admiration in the highest degree. It consists of an account of the creation of the world, implying that the world is in harmony with the Law, and the Law with the world, and that the man who observes the law is constituted thereby a loyal citizen of the world, regulating his doings by the purpose and will of Nature, in accordance with which the entire world itself also is administered.", + "[4] Now it is true that no writer in verse or prose could possibly do justice to the beauty of the ideas embodied in this account of the creation of the kosmos. For they transcend our capacity of speech and of hearing, being too great and august to be adjusted to the tongue or ear of any mortal.", + "[5] Nevertheless they must not on this account be passed over in silence. Nay, for the sake of the God-beloved author we must be venturesome even beyond our power. We shall fetch nothing from our own store, but, with a great array of points before us, we shall mention only a few, such as we may believe to be within reach of the human mind when possessed by love and longing for wisdom.", + "[6] The minutest seal takes in under the graver’s hand the contours of colossal figures. So perchance shall the beauties of the world’s creation recorded in the Laws, transcendent as they are and dazzling as they do by their bright gleams the souls of readers, be indicated by delineations minute and slight. But first we must draw attention to a matter which ought not to be passed over in silence." + ], + [ + "[7] There are some people who, having the world in admiration rather than the Maker of the world, pronounce it to be without beginning and everlasting, while with impious falsehood they postulate in God a vast inactivity; whereas we ought on the contrary to be astonied at His powers as Maker and Father, and not to assign to the world a disproportionate majesty.", + "[8] Moses, both because he had attained the very summit of philosophy, and because he had been divinely instructed in the greater and most essential part of Nature’s lore, could not fail to recognize that the universal must consist of two parts, one part active Cause and the other passive object; and that the active Cause is the perfectly pure and unsullied Mind of the universe, transcending virtue, transcending knowledge, transcending the good itself and the beautiful itself;", + "[9] while the passive part is in itself incapable of life and motion, but, when set in motion and shaped and quickened by Mind, changes into the most perfect masterpiece, namely this world. Those who assert that this world is unoriginate unconsciously eliminate that which of all incentives to piety is the most beneficial and the most indispensable, namely providence.", + "[10] For it stands to reason that what has been brought into existence should be cared for by its Father and Maker. For, as we know, it is a father’s aim in regard of his offspring and an artificer’s in regard of his handiwork to preserve them, and by every means to fend off from them aught that may entail loss or harm. He keenly desires to provide for them in every way all that is beneficial and to their advantage: but between that which has never been brought into being and one who is not its Maker no such tie is formed.", + "[11] It is a worthless and baleful doctrine, setting up anarchy in the well-ordered realm of the world, leaving it without protector, arbitrator, or judge, without anyone whose office it is to administer and direct all its affairs.", + "[12] Not so Moses. That great master, holding the unoriginate to be of a different order from that which is visible, since everything that is an object of sensible perception is subject to becoming and to constant change, never abiding in the same state, assigned to that which is invisible and an object of intellectual apprehension the infinite and undefinable as united with it by closest tie; but on that which is an object of the senses he bestowed “genesis,” “becoming,” as its appropriate name.", + "Seeing then that this world is both visible and perceived by the senses, it follows that it must also have had an origin. Whence it was entirely to the point that he put on record that origin, setting forth in its true grandeur the work of God." + ], + [ + "[13] He says that in six days the world was created, not that its Maker required a length of time for His work, for we must think of God as doing all things simultaneously, remembering that “all” includes with the commands which He issues the thought behind them. Six days are mentioned because for the things coming into existence there was need of order. Order involves number, and among numbers by the laws of nature the most suitable to productivity is 6, for if we start with 1 it is the first perfect number, being equal to the product of its factors (i.e. 1×2×3), as well as made up of the sum of them (i.e. 1+2+3), its half being 3, its third part 2, its sixth part 1. We may say that it is in its nature both male and female, and is a result of the distinctive power of either. For among things that are it is the odd that is male, and the even female. Now of odd numbers 3 is the starting-point, and of even numbers 2, and the product of these two is 6.", + "[14] For it was requisite that the world, being most perfect of all things that have come into existence, should be constituted in accordance with a perfect number, namely six; and, inasmuch as it was to have in itself beings that sprang from a coupling together, should receive the impress of a mixed number, namely the first in which odd and even were combined, one that should contain the essential principle both of the male that sows and of the female that receives the seed.", + "[15] Now to each of the days He assigned some of the portions of the whole, not including, however, the first day, which He does not even call “first,” lest it should be reckoned with the others, but naming it “one” He designates it by a name which precisely hits the mark, for He discerned in it and expressed by the title which He gives it the nature and appellation of the unit, or the “one.”" + ], + [ + "We must recount as many as we can of the elements embraced in it. To recount them all would be impossible. Its pre-eminent element is the intelligible world, as is shown in the treatise dealing with the “One.”", + "[16] For God, being God, assumed that a beautiful copy would never be produced apart from a beautiful pattern, and that no object of perception would be faultless which was not made in the likeness of an original discerned only by the intellect. So when He willed to create this visible world He first fully formed the intelligible world, in order that He might have the use of a pattern wholly God-like and incorporeal in producing the material world, as a later creation, the very image of an earlier, to embrace in itself objects of perception of as many kinds as the other contained objects of intelligence.", + "[17] To speak of or conceive that world which consists of ideas as being in some place is illegitimate; how it consists (of them) we shall know if we carefully attend to some image supplied by the things of our world. When a city is being founded to satisfy the soaring ambition of some king or governor, who lays claim to despotic power and being magnificent in his ideas would fain add a fresh lustre to his good fortune, there comes forward now and again some trained architect who, observing the favourable climate and convenient position of the site, first sketches in his own mind wellnigh all the parts of the city that is to be wrought out, temples, gymnasia, town-halls, market-places, harbours, docks, streets, walls to be built, dwelling-houses as well as public buildings to be set up.", + "[18] Thus after having received in his own soul, as it were in wax, the figures of these objects severally, he carries about the image of a city which is the creation of his mind. Then by his innate power of memory, he recalls the images of the various parts of this city, and imprints their types yet more distinctly in it: and like a good craftsman he begins to build the city of stones and timber, keeping his eye upon his pattern and making the visible and tangible objects correspond in each case to the incorporeal ideas.", + "[19] Just such must be our thoughts about God. We must suppose that, when He was minded to found the one great city, He conceived beforehand the models of its parts, and that out of these He constituted and brought to completion a world discernible only by the mind, and then, with that for a pattern, the world which our senses can perceive." + ], + [ + "[20] As, then, the city which was fashioned beforehand within the mind of the architect held no place in the outer world, but had been engraved in the soul of the artificer as by a seal; even so the universe that consisted of ideas would have no other location than the Divine Reason, which was the Author of this ordered frame. For what other place could there be for His powers sufficient to receive and contain, I say not all but, any one of them whatever uncompounded and untempered?", + "[21] Now just such a power is that by which the universe was made, one that has as its source nothing less than true goodness. For should one conceive a wish to search for the cause, for the sake of which this whole was created, it seems to me that he would not be wrong in saying, what indeed one of the men of old did say, that the Father and Maker of all is good; and because of this He grudged not a share in his own excellent nature to an existence which has of itself nothing fair and lovely, while it is capable of becoming all things.", + "[22] For of itself it was without order, without quality, without soul, (without likeness); it was full of inconsistency, ill-adjustment, disharmony: but it was capable of turning and undergoing a complete change to the best, the very contrary of all these, to order, quality, life, correspondence, identity, likeness, perfect adjustment, to harmony, to all that is characteristic of the more excellent model." + ], + [ + "[23] Now God, with no counsellor to help Him (who was there beside Him?) determined that it was meet to confer rich and unrestricted benefits upon that nature which apart from Divine bounty could obtain of itself no good thing. But not in proportion to the greatest of His own bounties does He confer benefits—for these are without end or limit—but in proportion to the capacities of the recipients. For it is not the nature of creation to receive good treatment in like manner as it is the nature of God to bestow it, seeing that the powers of God are overwhelmingly vast, whereas creation, being too feeble to entertain their abundance, would have broken down under the effort to do so, had not God with appropriate adjustment dealt out to each his due portion.", + "[24] Should a man desire to use words in a more simple and direct way, he would say that the world discerned only by the intellect is nothing else than the Word of God when He was already engaged in the act of creation. For (to revert to our illustration) the city discernible by the intellect alone is nothing else than the reasoning faculty of the architect in the act of planning to found the city.", + "[25] It is Moses who lays down this, not I. Witness his express acknowledgement in the sequel, when setting on record the creation of man, that he was moulded after the image of God (Gen. 1:27). Now if the part is an image of an image, it is manifest that the whole is so too, and if the whole creation, this entire world perceived by our senses (seeing that it is greater than any human image) is a copy of the Divine image, it is manifest that the archetypal seal also, which we aver to be the world descried by the mind, would be the very Word of God." + ], + [ + "[26] Then he says that “in the beginning God made the heaven and the earth,” taking “beginning” not, as some think, in a chronological sense, for time there was not before there was a world. Time began either simultaneously with the world or after it. For since time is a measured space determined by the world’s movement, and since movement could not be prior to the object moving, but must of necessity arise either after it or simultaneously with it, it follows of necessity that time also is either coeval with or later born than the world. To venture to affirm that it is elder born would be to do violence to philosophic sense.", + "[27] And since the word “beginning” is not here taken as the chronological beginning, it would seem likely that the numerical order is indicated, so that “in the beginning He made” is equivalent to “He made the heaven first”: for it is indeed reasonable that it should come into existence first, being both best of created things and made from the purest of all that is, seeing that it was destined to be the most holy dwelling-place of manifest and visible gods.", + "[28] For, even if the Maker made all things simultaneously, order was none the less an attribute of all that came into existence in fair beauty, for beauty is absent where there is disorder. Now order is a series of things going on before and following after, in due sequence, a sequence which, though not seen in the finished productions, yet exists in the designs of the contrivers; for only so could these things be fashioned with perfect accuracy, and work without leaving their path or clashing with each other.", + "[29] First, then, the Maker made an incorporeal heaven, and an invisible earth, and the essential form of air and void. To the one he gave the name of “Darkness,” since the air when left to itself, is black. The other he named “abyss,” for the void is a region of immensity and vast depths. Next (He made) the incorporeal essence of water and of life-breath and, to crown all, of light. This again, the seventh in order, was an incorporeal pattern, discernible only by the mind, of the sun and of all luminaries which were to come into existence throughout heaven." + ], + [ + "[30] Special distinction is accorded by Moses to life-breath and to light. The one he entitles the “breath” of God, because breath is most life-giving, and of life God is the author, while of light he says that it is beautiful pre-eminently (Gen. 1:4): for the intelligible as far surpasses the visible in the brilliancy of its radiance, as sunlight assuredly surpasses darkness and day night, and mind, the ruler of the entire soul, the bodily eyes.", + "[31] Now that invisible light perceptible only by mind has come into being as an image of the Divine Word Who brought it within our ken: it is a supercelestial constellation, fount of the constellations obvious to sense. It would not be amiss to term it “all-brightness,” to signify that from which sun and moon, as well as fixed stars and planets draw, in proportion to their several capacity, the light befitting each of them: for that pure and undiluted radiance is bedimmed so soon as it begins to undergo the change that is entailed by the passage from the intelligible to the sensibly discerned, for no object of sense is free from dimness." + ], + [ + "[32] Right too is his statement that “darkness was above the abyss” (Gen. 1:2). For in a sense the air is over the void, inasmuch as it has spread over and completely filled the immensity and desolation of the void, of all that reaches from the zone of the moon to us.", + "[33] After the kindling of the intelligible light, which preceded the sun’s creation, darkness its adversary withdrew: for God, in His perfect knowledge of their mutual contrariety and natural conflict, parted them one from another by a wall of separation. In order, therefore, to keep them from the discord arising from perpetual clash, to prevent war in place of peace prevailing and setting up disorder in an ordered universe, He not only separated light and darkness, but also placed in the intervening spaces boundary-marks, by which He held back each of their extremities: for, had they been actual neighbours, they were sure to produce confusion by engaging with intense and never-ceasing rivalry in the struggle for mastery.", + "[34] As it was, their assault on one another was broken and kept back by barriers set up between them. These barriers are evening and dawn. The latter, gently restraining the darkness, anticipates the sunrise with the glad tidings of its approach; while evening, supervening upon sunset, gives a gentle welcome to the oncoming mass of darkness. We must, however, place these, dawn and evening I mean, in the category of the incorporeal and intelligible: for there is in these nothing whatever patent to the senses, but they are simply models and measuring-rules and patterns and seals, all of these being incorporeal and serving for the creation of other bodies.", + "[35] When light had come into being, and darkness had moved out of its way and retired, and evening and dawn had been fixed as barriers in the intervals between them, as a necessary consequence a measure of time was forthwith brought about, which its Maker called Day, and not “first” day but “one,” an expression due to the uniqueness of the intelligible world, and to its having therefore a natural kinship to the number “One.”" + ], + [ + "[36] The incorporeal world, then, was now finished and firmly settled in the Divine Reason, and the world patent to sense was ripe for birth after the pattern of the incorporeal. And first of its parts, best of them all, the Creator proceeded to make the Heaven, which with strict truth he entitled firmament, as being corporeal: for the body is naturally solid, seeing that it has a threefold dimension. What else indeed do we conceive a solid object and a body to be, but that which extends in each direction? Fitly then, in contradistinction to the incorporeal and purely intelligible, did He call this body-like heaven perceived by our senses “the solid firmament.”", + "[37] After so designating it He went on forthwith to speak of it as “heaven.” He did so with unerring propriety, either because it is the “boundary” of all things, or because it came into being first of things “visible.” When the heaven had been created he names a second day, thus assigning to heaven the whole space and interval of a day. He does this by reason of the position of dignity which heaven occupies among the objects of sense." + ], + [ + "[38] At this stage, then, water in all its volume had been poured forth over all the earth, and had found its way through all its parts, as through a sponge saturated with moisture. It had produced swamps and deep mud, earth and water being mingled together and kneaded, like a mass of dough, into a single element without shape or distinction of its parts. So God next bids all the briny water, which would have been the cause of barrenness to crops and trees, to be gathered together by flowing to the same point from the pores of the whole earth, and the dry land to appear. The moisture of the fresh sweet part was left behind to secure its permanence, since, when supplied in fit quantity, this sweet moisture served as a cohesive to the separate parts. This was to prevent it from being entirely dried up, and so becoming unproductive and barren, and enable it like a mother to provide, as for offspring, not one only of the two kinds of nourishment, namely solid food, but both kinds, food and drink. Wherefore the earth had abounding veins like breasts. These when opened would pour forth rivers and springs.", + "[39] No less did He cause the hidden courses of moisture also to penetrate to the rich deep loam with a view to unstinted fertility. Having thus ordered these elements He gave them names. The dry land he called “earth,” and the water separated from it “sea.”" + ], + [ + "[40] He next begins to put the earth in order: for he bids it bear grass and corn, and send forth herbs of all kinds, and rich pastures, and whatsoever would be provender for cattle and food for men. Beside these he caused all kinds of trees to grow, leaving out no tree at all, whether of wild growth or what we call garden trees. And, after a fashion quite contrary to the present order of Nature, all were laden with fruit as soon as ever they came into existence.", + "[41] For now the processes take place in turn, one at one time, one at another, not all of them simultaneously at one season. For everyone knows that sowing and planting come first, the growth of the things sown and planted second, the former causing roots to reach downwards like foundations, the latter taking place as they rise upwards, grow tall, and develop trunks and stems. After this come sproutings and puttings forth of leaves, and then to crown all, bearing of fruit; and here again fruit not full grown, but subject to all manner of changes both in quantity and quality, that is to say, in the matter of size and of ever varying character. For the first shape it takes is that of indivisible flakes so small that they can scarcely be seen, which a man would not be wrong in describing as “first perceptibles.” After this as the result of gradual growth and as the result of nourishment conveyed by irrigation, which waters the tree, and as the result of the well-tempered breezes which are quickened by cold and softened by milder temperature, it develops towards its complete size: and as it becomes larger, it becomes different in appearance as well, as though it were being ever made to take varied hues by a painter’s cunning hand." + ], + [ + "[42] Now in the original creation of all things, as I have said already, God caused all shrubs and plants to spring out of the earth perfect, having fruits not unripe but at their prime, to be perfectly ready for the immediate use and enjoyment of the animals that were forthwith to come into being.", + "[43] God then enjoins the earth to give birth to all these, and the earth, as though it had been long pregnant and in travail, brings forth all kinds of things sown, all kinds of trees, and countless kinds of fruits besides. But not only were the several fruits nourishment for animals, but also a provision for the perpetual reproduction of their kind, containing within them the seed-substances. Hidden and imperceptible in these substances are the principles or nuclei of all things. As the seasons go round these become open and manifest.", + "[44] For God willed that Nature should run a course that brings it back to its starting-point, endowing the species with immortality, and making them sharers of eternal existence. For the sake of this He both led on the beginning speedily towards the end, and made the end to retrace its way to the beginning. For it is the case both that the fruit comes out of the plants, as an end out of a beginning, and that out of the fruit again, containing as it does the seed in itself, there comes the plant, a beginning out of an end." + ], + [ + "[45] On the fourth day, the earth being now finished, he ordered the heaven in varied beauty. Not that He put the heaven in a lower rank than the earth, giving precedence to the inferior creation, and accounting the higher and more divine worthy only of the second place; but to make clear beyond all doubt the mighty sway of His sovereign power. For being aware beforehand of the ways of thinking that would mark the men of future ages, how they would be intent on what looked probable and plausible, with much in it that could be supported by argument, but would not aim at sheer truth; and how they would trust phenomena rather than God, admiring sophistry more than wisdom; and how they would observe in time to come the circuits of sun and moon, on which depend summer and winter and the changes of spring and autumn, and would suppose that the regular movements of the heavenly bodies are the causes of all things that year by year come forth and are produced out of the earth; that there might be none who owing either to shameless audacity or to overwhelming ignorance should venture to ascribe the first place to any created thing,", + "[46] ‘let them,’ said He, ‘go back in thought to the original creation of the universe, when, before sun or moon existed, the earth bore plants of all sorts and fruits of all sorts; and having contemplated this let them form in their minds the expectation that hereafter too shall it bear these at the Father’s bidding, whensoever it may please Him.’ For He has no need of His heavenly offspring on which He bestowed powers but not independence: for, like a charioteer grasping the reins or a pilot the tiller, He guides all things in what direction He pleases as law and right demand, standing in need of no one besides: for all things are possible to God." + ], + [ + "[47] This is the reason why the earth put forth plants and bore herbs before the heaven was furnished. But the heaven was afterwards duly decked in a perfect number, namely four. This number it would be no error to call the base and source of 10, the complete number; for what 10 is actually, this, as is evident, 4 is potentially; that is to say that, if the numbers from 1 to 4 be added together, they will produce 10, and this is the limit set to the otherwise unlimited succession of numbers; round this as a turning-point they wheel and retrace their steps.", + "[48] 4 also contains the ratios of the musical consonances, that produced by an interval of four notes, and that produced by an interval of five, and the octave and double octave as well. And it is out of these that the most perfect concord is produced. Of that produced by an interval of four notes the ratio is 1⅓, of that produced by an interval of five 1½, of the octave 2, of the double octave 4. All these the number 4 embraces in itself, 1⅓ in the ratio 4:3; 1½ in the ratio 6:4; 2 in the ratio 4:2; 4 in the ratio 4:1." + ], + [ + "[49] There is also another property of the number 4 very marvellous to state and to contemplate with the mind. For this number was the first to show the nature of the solid, the numbers before it referring to things without actual substance. For under the head of 1 what is called in geometry a point falls, under that of 2 a line. For if 1 extend itself, 2 is formed, and if a point extend itself, a line is formed: and a line is length without breadth; if breadth be added, there results a surface, which comes under the category of 3: to bring it to a solid surface needs one thing, depth, and the addition of this to 3 produces 4. The result of all this is that this number is a thing of vast importance. It was this number that has led us out of the realm of incorporeal existence patent only to the intellect, and has introduced us to the conception of a body of three dimensions, which by its nature first comes within the range of our senses.", + "[50] Anyone who does not understand what I am saying will catch my meaning if he calls to mind a very familiar game. Players with nuts are in the habit of setting out three nuts all on one level and of adding one to these, thus forming a pyramidal figure. The figure of the triangle on the level only reaches the number 3; the added nut produces, in numbers 4, but in figures a pyramid, a body rendered solid by its accession.", + "[51] In addition to these points we must remember also that first among numbers 4 is a square, made up of equal factors multiplying into one another, a measure of rightness and equality, and that alone among them it is such as to be produced from the same factors whether added or multiplied together, by addition out of 2 and 2, and by multiplication again out of twice 2, thus exhibiting a right fair form of consonance, such as has fallen to none of the other numbers; for example—6, sum as it is of two 3’s, is not (as in the case of 4) produced by their being multiplied together, but a different number, 9, results.", + "[52] There are several other powers of which 4 has the command, which we shall have to point out in fuller detail in the special treatise devoted to it. Suffice it to add just this, that 4 was made the starting-point of the creation of heaven and the world; for the four elements, out of which this universe was fashioned, issued, as it were from a fountain, from the numeral 4; and, beside this, so also did the four seasons of the year, which are responsible for the coming into being of animals and plants, the year having a fourfold division into winter and spring and summer and autumn." + ], + [ + "[53] The aforesaid numeral, then, having been deemed worthy of such high privilege in nature, it was a matter of course that its Maker arrayed the heaven on the fourth day with a most divine adornment of perfect beauty, namely the light-giving heavenly bodies; and, knowing that of all things light is best, He made it the indispensable means of sight, the best of the senses; for what the intellect is in the soul, this the eye is in the body; for each of them sees, one the things of the mind, the other the things of sense; and they have need, the mind of knowledge, that it may become cognisant of incorporeal objects, the eye of light, for the apprehending of bodily forms.", + "Light has proved itself the source of many other boons to mankind, but pre-eminently of philosophy,", + "[54] the greatest boon of all. For man’s faculty of vision, led upwards by light, discerned the nature of the heavenly bodies and their harmonious movement. He saw the well-ordered circuits of fixed stars and planets, how the former moved in unchanging orbit and all alike, while the latter sped round in two revolutions out of harmony with each other. He marked the rhythmic dances of all these, how they were marshalled by the laws of a perfect music, and the sight produced in his soul an ineffable delight and pleasure. Banqueting on sights displayed to it one after another, his soul was insatiate in beholding. And then, as usually happens, it went on to busy itself with questionings, asking What is the essence of these visible objects? Are they in nature unoriginate, or had they a beginning of existence? What is the method of their movement? And what are the principles by which each is governed? It was out of the investigation of these problems that philosophy grew, than which no more perfect good has come into the life of mankind." + ], + [ + "[55] It was with a view to that original intellectual light, which I have mentioned as belonging to the order of the incorporeal world, that He created the heavenly bodies of which our senses are aware. These are images divine and exceeding fair, which He established in heaven as in the purest temple belonging to corporeal being. This He did that they might serve many purposes. One purpose was to give light; another to be signs; a third duly to fix seasons of the year; and lastly for the sake of days, months, years, which (as we all know) have served as measures of time and given birth to number.", + "[56] The kind of useful service rendered by each of the bodies mentioned is self-evident; yet that the truth may be more precisely apprehended it may not be out of place to follow it step by step in a reasoned account.", + "All time having been divided into two portions, day and night, the Father assigned the sovereignty of the day to the sun, as to a great king, and that of the night to the moon and the host of the other stars.", + "[57] The greatness of the sway and government pertaining to the sun finds its clearest proof in what has been already mentioned: one and alone it has by itself separately had day apportioned to it, half of the whole of time; while all the rest with the moon have had allotted to them the other half, which has received the name of night. And when the sun has risen, all that multitude of stars which were visible but now is not merely dimmed but becomes actually invisible through the pouring forth of its light; and upon its setting they begin all of them to shine out in their own true characters." + ], + [ + "[58] The purpose of their existence is, as the Lord Himself pronounced, not only to send forth light upon the earth, but also to give timely signs of coming events. For either by their risings or settings or eclipses, or again by the seasons of their appearance or disappearance, or by other alterations in their movements, men conjecture future issues, good harvests and bad, increase and decay of animal life, fair weather and foul, gales and calms, floodings and shrinkings of rivers, seas smooth and rough, irregularities of the seasons, either wintry summers, or scorching winters, or springs like autumn, or autumns like spring.", + "[59] Indeed it has happened that, by conjecture based on the movements of the heavenly bodies, men have notified in advance a disturbance and shaking of the earth, and countless other unusual occurrences, proving the complete truth of the words, “the stars were made for signs.”", + "It is added, moreover, “and for appointed times” (Gen. 1:14). By “appointed times” Moses understood the four seasons of the year, and surely with good reason. For what idea does “appointed time” convey but “time of achievement”? Now the four seasons of the year bring about achievement by bringing all things to perfection, all sowing and planting of crops, and the birth and growth of animals.", + "[60] The heavenly bodies were created also to furnish measures of time: for it is by regular revolutions of sun, moon, and the other bodies that days and months and years were constituted. This in itself involved the showing of their most useful service of all; I mean number as part of the world’s order, time by its mere lapse indicating it. For out of one day came “one,” out of two “two,” out of three “three,” out of a month “thirty,” out of a year the number equivalent to the days made up of twelve months, and out of infinite time came (the conception of) infinite number.", + "[61] So many and so essential are the benefits within the scope of the constitutions and movements of the heavenly bodies. To how vast a number of other operations of nature, methinks, do they extend! Operations obscure to us—for all things are not within the ken of mortals—yet working together for the permanence of the whole; operations which are invariably carried out under ordinances and laws which God laid down in His universe as unalterable." + ], + [ + "[62] Earth and heaven having been equipped with the array appropriate to either—earth on the third day, heaven, as has been recounted, on the fourth—the Creator took in hand to form the races of mortal creatures, beginning with aquatic creatures on the fifth day, deeming that there is no kinship so close as that between animals and the number 5. For living creatures differ from those without life in nothing more than in ability to apprehend by the senses; and sense has a fivefold division, into sight, hearing, taste, smell, touch; and to each of these their Maker assigned special aspects of matter, and an individual faculty of testing it, with which to assay objects coming under its notice. Colours are tested by sight, sounds by hearing, savours by taste, perfumes by smell, while touch assays the softness and hardness of various substances, their smoothness and roughness, and recognizes things hot or cold.", + "[63] So then he bids all kinds of fish and sea-monsters to take shape, creatures differing in their habitats and their sizes and qualities; for different seas produce to some extent different fish; not everywhere were all kinds formed. This is as we should have expected, for some kinds delight in a lagoon and not in a really deep sea, some in harbours and roadsteads. These can neither crawl up on to the land, nor swim far out from the land; and those that haunt the depths of the open seas avoid jutting headlands or islands or rocks. Some thrive in calm unruffled waters, others in those that are stormy and broken by waves; for, through the exercise of bearing their constant blows and of thrusting back their onset by sheer force, they put on flesh and grow lusty.", + "Directly after these He made all kinds of birds, as sister kinds to those in the waters, both being things that float. And He left incomplete no form of creature that travels in air." + ], + [ + "[64] Water and air having now duly received as a sort of lot of their own the living creatures appropriate to them, He again called upon the earth for the production of the portion that had been left out. When the plants had been created the land-animals had been wanting. So He saith “Let the earth bring forth cattle and wild beasts and creeping things after each kind” (Gen. 1:24). The earth forthwith puts forth, as it was bidden, creatures all differing in build and in the varying strength and capacity to hurt or to serve that was inherent in them.", + "[65] To crown all he made man, in what way I will say presently, when I have first pointed out the exceeding beauty of the chain of sequence which Moses has employed in setting forth the bringing in of life. For of the forms of animal life, the least elaborately wrought has been allotted to the race of fish; that worked out in greatest detail and best in all respects to mankind;", + "[66] that which lies between these two to creatures that tread the earth and travel in the air. For the principle of life in these is endowed with perceptions keener than that in fishes, but less keen than that in men. Wherefore, of the creatures that have life, fishes were the first which he brought into being, creatures in whose being the body predominates over the soul or life-principle. They are in a way animals and not animals; lifeless beings with the power of movement. The seed of the principle of life has been sown in them adventitiously, with a view only to the perpetuation of their bodies, just as salt (we are told) is added to flesh that it may not easily decay.", + "After the fishes He made the birds and land-creatures; for, when we come to these, we find them with keener senses and manifesting by their structure far more clearly all the qualities proper to beings endowed with the life-principle.", + "To crown all, as we have said before, He made man, and bestowed on him mind par excellence, life-principle of the life-principle itself, like the pupil in the eye: for of this too those who investigate more closely than others the nature of things say that it is the eye of the eye." + ], + [ + "[67] At that time, indeed, all things took shape simultaneously. But, though all things took shape together, the fact that living organisms were afterwards to come into existence one out of another rendered necessary an adumbration of the principle of order in the narrative. Now in particular creatures the order we find is this, that they begin at what is lowest in its nature, and end in the best of all; what this best of all is we must go on to show. Now seed is the original starting-point of living creatures. That this is a substance of a very low order, resembling foam, is evident to the eye. But when it has been deposited in the womb and become solid, it acquires movement, and at once enters upon natural growth. But growth is better than seed, since in created things movement is better than quiescence. But nature, or growth, like an artificer, or (to speak more properly) like a consummate art, forms living creatures, by distributing the moist substance to the limbs and different parts of the body, the substance of life-breath to the faculties of the soul, affording them nourishment and endowing them with perception. We must defer for the present the faculty of reasoning, out of consideration for those who maintain that it comes in from without, and is divine and eternal.", + "[68] Well, then, natural growth started from so poor a thing as seed, but it ended in that which is of greatest worth, the formation of the living creature and of man. Now we find that this selfsame thing has occurred in the case of the creation of the universe also. For when the Creator determined to form living creatures, those first in order were inferior, if we may so speak, namely fishes, while those that came last in order were best, namely men; and coming between the two extremes, better than those that preceded them, but inferior to the others, were the rest, namely land creatures and birds of the air." + ], + [ + "[69] After all the rest, as I have said, Moses tells us that man was created after the image of God and after His likeness (Gen. 1:26). Right well does he say this, for nothing earth-born is more like God than man. Let no one represent the likeness as one to a bodily form; for neither is God in human form, nor is the human body God-like. No, it is in respect of the Mind, the sovereign element of the soul, that the word “image” is used; for after the pattern of a single Mind, even the Mind of the Universe as an archetype, the mind in each of those who successively came into being was moulded. It is in a fashion a god to him who carries and enshrines it as an object of reverence; for the human mind evidently occupies a position in men precisely answering to that which the great Ruler occupies in all the world. It is invisible while itself seeing all things, and while comprehending the substances of others, it is as to its own substance unperceived; and while it opens by arts and sciences roads branching in many directions, all of them great highways, it comes through land and sea investigating what either element contains.", + "[70] Again, when on soaring wing it has contemplated the atmosphere and all its phases, it is borne yet higher to the ether and the circuit of heaven, and is whirled round with the dances of planets and fixed stars, in accordance with the laws of perfect music, following that love of wisdom which guides its steps. And so, carrying its gaze beyond the confines of all substance discernible by sense, it comes to a point at which it reaches out after the intelligible world,", + "[71] and on descrying in that world sights of surpassing loveliness, even the patterns and the originals of the things of sense which it saw here, it is seized by a sober intoxication, like those filled with Corybantic frenzy, and is inspired, possessed by a longing far other than theirs and a nobler desire. Wafted by this to the topmost arch of the things perceptible to mind, it seems to be on its way to the Great King Himself; but, amid its longing to see Him, pure and untempered rays of concentrated light stream forth like a torrent, so that by its gleams the eye of the understanding is dazzled.", + "And, since images do not always correspond to their archetype and pattern, but are in many instances unlike it, the writer further brought out his meaning by adding “after the likeness” to the words “after the image,” thus showing that an accurate cast, bearing a clear impression, was intended." + ], + [ + "[72] One may not unfitly raise the question what reason there could be for his ascribing the creation in the case of man only not to one Creator as in the case of the rest but, as the words would suggest, to several. For he represents the Father of the universe as speaking thus, “Let us make man after our image and likeness.” ‘Can it be,’ I would ask, ‘that He to whom all things are subject, is in need of anyone whatever? Or can it be that when He made the heaven and the earth and the seas, he required no one to be his fellow-worker, yet was unable apart from the co-operation of others by His own unaided power to fashion a creature so puny and perishable as man?’ The full truth about the cause of this it must needs be that God alone knows, but the cause which by probable conjecture seems plausible and reasonable we must not conceal.", + "[73] It is this. Among existences some partake neither of virtue nor of vice, like plants and animals devoid of reason; the one sort because they are without animal life and furnished with a nature incapable of consciously receiving impressions; the other sort because from them mind and reason have been eliminated: for mind and reason are as it were the dwelling-place of vice and virtue, which are by nature constituted to make their abode in them. Others again have partnership with virtue only, and have no part or lot in vice. Such are the heavenly bodies; for these are said to be not only living creatures but living creatures endowed with mind, or rather each of them a mind in itself, excellent through and through and unsusceptible of any evil. Others are of mixed nature, as man, who is liable to contraries, wisdom and folly, self-mastery and licentiousness, courage and cowardice, justice and injustice, and (in a word) to things good and evil, fair and foul, to virtue and vice.", + "[74] Now it was most proper to God the universal Father to make those excellent things by Himself alone, because of their kinship to Him. To make those which are neither good nor bad was not alien to Him, since those too are free from vice which is hateful to Him. To make those of mixed nature was in one respect proper to Him, in another not so; proper, so far as the better principle which forms an ingredient in them is concerned, alien, in virtue of the contrary and worse principle.", + "[75] So we see why it is only in the instance of man’s creation that we are told by Moses that God said “Let us make,” an expression which plainly shows the taking with Him of others as fellow-workers. It is to the end that, when man orders his course aright, when his thoughts and deeds are blameless, God the universal Ruler may be owned as their Source; while others from the number of His subordinates are held responsible for thoughts and deeds of a contrary sort: for it could not be that the Father should be the cause of an evil thing to His offspring: and vice and vicious activities are an evil thing.", + "[76] And when Moses had called the genus “man,” quite admirably did he distinguish its species, adding that it had been created “male and female,” and this though its individual members had not yet taken shape. For the primary species are in the genus to begin with, and reveal themselves as in a mirror to those who have the faculty of keen vision." + ], + [ + "[77] It is obvious to inquire why man comes last in the world’s creation; for, as the sacred writings show, he was the last whom the Father and Maker fashioned. Those, then, who have studied more deeply than others the laws of Moses and who examine their contents with all possible minuteness, maintain that God, when He made man partaker of kinship with Himself in mind and reason best of all gifts, did not begrudge him the other gifts either, but made ready for him beforehand all things in the world, as for a living being dearest and closest to Himself, since it was His will that when man came into existence he should be at a loss for none of the means of living and of living well. The means of living are provided by the lavish supplies of all that makes for enjoyment; the means of living well by the contemplation of the heavenly existences, for smitten by their contemplation the mind conceives a love and longing for the knowledge of them. And from this philosophy took its rise, by which man, mortal though he be, is rendered immortal.", + "[78] Just as givers of a banquet, then, do not send out the summonses to supper till they have put everything in readiness for the feast; and those who provide gymnastic and scenic contests, before they gather the spectators into the theatre or the stadium, have in readiness a number of combatants and performers to charm both eye and ear; exactly in the same way the Ruler of all things, like some provider of contests or of a banquet, when about to invite man to the enjoyment of a feast and a great spectacle, made ready beforehand the material for both. He desired that on coming into the world man might at once find both a banquet and a most sacred display, the one full of all things that earth and rivers and sea and air bring forth for use and for enjoyment, the other of all sorts of spectacles, most impressive in their substance, most impressive in their qualities, and circling with most wondrous movements, in an order fitly determined always in accordance with proportion of numbers and harmony of revolutions. In all these one might rightly say that there was the real music, the original and model of all other, from which the men of subsequent ages, when they had painted the images in their own souls, handed down an art most vital and beneficial to human life." + ], + [ + "[79] Such is the first reason for which apparently man was created after all things: but we must mention a second that is not improbable. Directly he came into existence man found there all provisions for life. This was for the instruction of future generations. Nature seemed almost to cry aloud in so many words that like the first father of the race they were to spend their days without toil or trouble surrounded by lavish abundance of all that they needed. And this will be so if irrational pleasures do not get control of the soul, making their assaults upon it through greediness and lust, nor the desires for glory or wealth or power arrogate to themselves the control of the life, nor sorrows lower and depress the mind;", + "[80] and if fear, that evil counsellor, do not dispel high impulses to noble deeds, nor folly and cowardice and injustice and the countless host of other vices assail him. For in sooth as things now are, when all these evils which have been recounted have won the day, and men have flung themselves unrestrainedly into the indulgence of their passions and left uncontrolled their guilty cravings, cravings which it were sinful even to name, a fitting penalty is incurred, due punishment of impious courses. That penalty is difficulty in obtaining the necessaries of life. For men plough the prairie and irrigate it from spring and river; they sow and plant; and through the livelong year unweariedly take up by day and night the ever renewed toil of the tiller of the earth; and yet they are hard put to it to gather in their requisite supplies, and these at times of poor quality and barely sufficient, having suffered injury from many causes: either they were ravaged by recurring rainfalls, or beaten down in masses by the weight of hail that fell on them, or half frozen by snow, or torn up roots and all by violent winds; for water and air can in many ways change the fruitfulness of crops into barrenness.", + "[81] But if the unmeasured impulses of men’s passions were calmed and allayed by self-mastery, and their earnestness and eager striving after the infliction of wrongs were checked by righteousness; if, in a word, the vices and the fruitless practices to which they prompt were to give place to the virtues and their corresponding activities, the warfare in the soul, of all wars veritably the most dire and most grievous, would have been abolished, and peace would prevail and would in quiet and gentle ways provide good order for the exercise of our faculties, and there would be hope that God, being the Lover of virtue and the Lover of what is good and beautiful and also the Lover of man, would provide for our race good things all coming forth spontaneously and all in readiness. For it is clear that it is easier without calling in the husbandman’s art to supply in abundance the yield of growths already existing than to bring into being things that were non-existent." + ], + [ + "[82] Let what has been said suffice for an account of the second reason. A third is this. God, being minded to unite in intimate and loving fellowship the beginning and end of created things, made heaven the beginning and man the end, the one the most perfect of imperishable objects of sense, the other the noblest of things earthborn and perishable, being, in very truth, a miniature heaven. He bears about within himself, like holy images, endowments of nature that correspond to the constellations. He has capacities for science and art, for knowledge, and for the noble lore of the several virtues. For since the corruptible and the incorruptible are by nature contrary the one to the other, God assigned the fairest of each sort to the beginning and the end, heaven (as I have said) to the beginning, and man to the end." + ], + [ + "[83] Finally, this is suggested as a cogent reason. Man was bound to arise after all created things, in order that coming last and suddenly appearing to the other animals he might produce consternation in them; for they were sure, as soon as they saw him, to be amazed and do homage to him as to a born ruler or master: and so on beholding him they were all tamed through all their kinds, those who were most savage in their natures at the first sight of him becoming at once most manageable, displaying their untamed pugnacity one against another, but to man and man alone showing gentleness and docility.", + "[84] On this account too the Father, when he had brought him into existence as a living being naturally adapted for sovereignty, not only in fact but by express mandate appointed him king of all creatures under the moon, those that move on land and swim in the sea and fly in the air. For all things mortal in the three elements of land and water and air did He make subject to men, but exempted the heavenly beings as having obtained a portion more divine. The clearest proof of man’s rule is afforded by what goes on before our eyes. Sometimes vast numbers of cattle are led by one quite ordinary man neither wearing armour nor carrying an iron weapon nor anything with which to defend himself, with nothing but a sheepskin to cover him and a staff wherewith to show them which way to go and to lean on should he grow weary on his journeys.", + "[85] See, there is a shepherd, a goatherd, a cowherd leading flocks of sheep and goats, and herds of kine. They are men not even strong and lusty in body, unlikely, so far as healthy vigour goes, to create consternation in those who see them. And all the prowess and strength of all those well-armed animals, who possess the equipment which nature provides and use it in self-defence, cower before him like slaves before a master, and do his bidding. Bulls are harnessed to plough the land, and cutting deep furrows all day long, sometimes all night as well, accomplish a long bout with some farm-hand to direct them: rams laden with thick fleeces of wool, when spring-time comes, stand peacefully or even lie down quietly at the shepherd’s bidding, and offer their wool to the shears, growing accustomed, just as cities do, to render their yearly tribute to him whom nature has given them for king.", + "[86] Nay, even the horse, most spirited of all animals, is easily controlled by the bit to prevent his growing restive and running away. He hollows his back, making it a convenient seat, takes his rider on it and bearing him aloft gallops at a great pace intent on bringing himself and his rider to the destination which the latter is eager to reach. As for his rider, firmly seated on him, without trouble and in much composure, he gets through his journey using the body and feet of another." + ], + [ + "[87] Anyone who wished to enlarge on the subject would have plenty more to say tending to prove that nothing whatever has been emancipated and withdrawn from the domination of men: this is sufficiently indicated by what has been said. There is a point, however, as to which ignorance must be avoided. The fact of having been the last to come into existence does not involve an inferiority corresponding to his place in the series. Drivers and pilots are evidence of this.", + "[88] The former, though they come after their team and have their appointed place behind them, keep hold of the reins and drive them just as they wish, now letting them fall into a sharp trot, now pulling them up should they go with more speed than is necessary. Pilots again, taking their way to the stern, the hindmost place in the ship, are, one may say, superior to all on board, for they hold in their hands the safety of the ship and those on board it. So the Creator made man after all things, as a sort of driver and pilot, to drive and steer the things on earth, and charged him with the care of animals and plants, like a governor subordinate to the chief and great King." + ], + [ + "[89] Now when the whole world had been brought to completion in accordance with the properties of six, a perfect number, the Father invested with dignity the seventh day which comes next, extolling it and pronouncing it holy; for it is the festival, not of a single city or country, but of the universe, and it alone strictly deserves to be called “public” as belonging to all people and the birthday of the world.", + "[90] I doubt whether anyone could adequately celebrate the properties of the number 7, for they are beyond all words. Yet the fact that it is more wondrous than all that is said about it is no reason for maintaining silence regarding it. Nay, we must make a brave attempt to bring out at least all that is within the compass of our understandings, even if it be impossible to bring out all or even the most essential points. Now, 7 or 7th is a term used in two different senses. There is the 7 inside the number 10. This consists of 7 units, and is determined by the sevenfold repetition of the unit. There is the 7 outside the number 10.", + "[91] This is a number starting throughout from the number 1 and formed by doubling it and going on doubling (7 times) or trebling, or multiplying by any other number in regular progression; as, for example, the number 64 is the product of doubling from 1 onwards, and the number 729 that of trebling. Each of these forms claims more than casual notice. The second form, clearly has a very manifest superiority.", + "[92] For invariably the 7th term of any regular progression, starting from unity and with a ratio of 2, 3, or any other number, is both a cube and a square, embracing both forms, that of the incorporeal and that of the corporeal substance, the form of the incorporeal answering to the surface which is formed by squares, that of the corporeal answering to the solid which is formed by cubes.", + "[93] The plainest evidence of this are the numbers already mentioned: for instance, the 7th from 1 reached by going on doubling, i.e. 64, is a square, being 8 times 8, and a cube, being 4 times 4, again multiplied by 4: and again the 7th from 1 reached by progressive trebling, 729, is a square, being the product of 27 multiplied by itself, and the cube of 9, i.e. 9 times 9, again multiplied by 9.", + "[94] And invariably if one takes the 7th number for his starting-point instead of the unit, and multiplies in corresponding fashion up to a (fresh) 7th, he is sure to find the product both a cube and a square: for instance starting from 64 the number formed by continuous doubling will give us seventh 4096. This is at once a square and a cube—a square with 64 as its side and a cube with 16." + ], + [ + "[95] We must pass on to the other kind of 7th, that which is contained within the decade. It exhibits a marvellous nature, not at all inferior to that of the former kind. For instance 7 consists of 1 and 2 and 4, which have two relations making specially for harmony, the twofold and the fourfold, the one producing the diapason harmony, while the fourfold relation produces double diapason. 7 admits of other divisions besides these, in pairs like animals under a yoke. It is divided first into 1 and 6, then into 2 and 5, and last of all into 3 and 4.", + "[96] Most musical is the proportion of these numbers also: for 6 to 1 is a sixfold proportion, but the sixfold proportion makes the greatest distance that there is (in music), the distance from the highest to the lowest note, as we shall prove, when we pass from numbers to the proportion in harmonies. 5:2 exhibits the fullest power in harmonies, all but rivalling the diapason, a fact which is most clearly established in theoretical music. 4:3 yields the first harmony, the sesquitertian or diatessaron." + ], + [ + "[97] 7 (or “7th”) exhibits yet another beauty belonging to it, a most sacred object for our mind to ponder. Being made up as it is of 3 and 4 it is a presentation of all that is naturally steadfast and upright in the universe. How it is this, we must point out. The right-angled triangle, the starting-point of figures of a definite shape, is made up of certain numbers, namely 3 and 4 and 5:3 and 4, the constituent parts of 7, produce the right angle: for the obtuse and acute angle are manifestations of irregularity and disorder and inequality: for one such angle can be more obtuse or more acute than another: whereas one right angle does not admit of comparison with another, nor can it be more “right” than another, but remains as it is, never changing its proper nature. Now if the right-angled triangle is the starting-point of figures of a definite kind, and the essential factor in this triangle, namely the right angle, is supplied by the numbers which constitute 7, namely 3 and 4 together, 7 would reasonably be regarded as the fountain-head of every figure and every definite shape.", + "[98] In addition to what we have already said we are bound to mention this further point, namely that 3 is the number belonging to a superficies—for a point falls under the head of 1, a line under that of 2, and a superficies of 3—while 4 belongs to a solid, by means of the addition of 1, depth being added to superficies. From this it is manifest that 7 is so constituted as to be the starting-point of all plane and solid geometry, or (to put it concisely) alike of things corporeal and incorporeal." + ], + [ + "[99] So august is the dignity inherent by nature in the number 7, that it has a unique relation distinguishing it from all the other numbers within the decade: for of these some beget without being begotten, some are begotten but do not beget, some do both these, both beget and are begotten: 7 alone is found in no such category. We must establish this assertion by giving proof of it. Well then, 1 begets all the subsequent numbers while it is begotten by none whatever: 8 is begotten by twice 4, but begets no number within the decade: 4 again holds the place of both, both of parents and of offspring; for it begets 8 by being doubled, and is begotten by twice 2.", + "[100] It is the nature of 7 alone, as I have said, neither to beget nor to be begotten. For this reason other philosophers liken this number to the motherless and virgin Nikè, who is said to have appeared out of the head of Zeus, while the Pythagoreans liken it to the chief of all things: for that which neither begets nor is begotten remains motionless; for creation takes place in movement, since there is movement both in that which begets and in that which is begotten, in the one that it may beget, in the other that it may be begotten. There is only one thing that neither causes motion nor experiences it, the original Ruler and Sovereign. Of Him 7 may be fitly said to be a symbol. Evidence of what I say is supplied by Philolaus in these words: “There is, he says, a supreme Ruler of all things, God, ever One, abiding, without motion, Himself (alone) like unto Himself, different from all others.”" + ], + [ + "[101] In the region, then, of things discerned by the intellect only, 7 exhibits that which is exempt from movement and from passion; but in that of sensible things a most essential force [in the movements of the planets] from which all earthly things derive advantage, and in the circuits of the moon. How this is we must consider. Begin at 1 and add each number up to 7 and it produces 28. This is a perfect number and equal to the sum of its own factors. And the number produced is the number which brings the moon back to her original form, as she retraces her course by lessening till she reaches the shape from which she began to make perceptible increase; for she increases from her first shining as a crescent till she becomes a half-moon in seven days, then in as many more she becomes full-moon, and again returns the same way like a runner in the double race-course, from the full to the half-moon in seven days as before, then from the half to the crescent in an equal number of days: these four sets of days complete the aforesaid number.", + "[102] Now by those who are in the habit of giving words their proper force seven is called also “perfection-bringing,” because by this all things in the material universe are brought to perfection. Proof of this may be derived from the circumstance that every organic body has three dimensions, length, breadth, and depth, and four limits, point, line, surface, and solid; by adding which together we get seven. It would have been impossible that bodies should be measured by seven in accordance with their formation out of the three dimensions and the four limits, had it not been that the forms of the first numbers (1, 2, 3, and 4), the foundation of 10, already contained the nature of 7, for the numbers named have three intervals, that from 1 to 2, that from 2 to 3, and that from 3 to 4; and the four limits between which these intervals lie, 1, 2, 3, and 4." + ], + [ + "[103] Beside the proofs already mentioned, the perfecting power of the number 7 is also shown by the stages of men’s growth, measured from infancy to old age in the following manner: during the first period of seven years the growth of the teeth begins; during the second the capacity for emitting seed; in the third the growing of the beard; and in the fourth increase of strength; in the fifth again ripeness for marriage; in the sixth the understanding reaches its bloom; in the seventh progressive improvement and development of mind and reason; in the eighth the perfecting of both these; during the ninth forbearance and gentleness emerge, owing to the more complete taming of the passions; during the tenth comes the desirable end of life, while the bodily organs are still compact and firm; for prolonged old age is wont to abate and break down the force of each of them.", + "[104] These ages of men’s life were described by Solon the lawgiver of the Athenians among others in the following lines:", + "In seven years the Boy, an infant yet unfledged,
Both grows and sheds the teeth with which his tongue is hedged.
When heaven has made complete a second week of years,
Of coming prime of youth full many a sign appears.
In life’s third term, while still his limbs grow big apace,
His chin shows down; its early bloom now quits his face.
In the fourth heptad each one full of strength doth seem—
Strength, which of manly worth best earnest all men deem.
Let him in his fifth week of years a bride bespeak,
Offspring to bear his name hereafter let him seek.
The sixth beholds the man good sense all round attain;
Not now can reckless deeds as once his fancy gain.
Now see him seventh and eighth, fresh heptads, duly reach
In insight strongest now, strongest in power of speech.
In his ninth week of years, strong still but softer far
For high achievement’s venture speech and wisdom are.
Then should the man, ten bouts complete, attain life’s end
Fate, no untimely gift, death’s call may fitly send." + ], + [ + "[105] Solon, then, reckons the life of man by the aforesaid ten weeks of years. And Hippocrates the physician, says that there are seven ages, those of the little boy, the boy, the lad, the young man, the man, the elderly man, the old man, and that these ages are measured by multiples of seven though not in regular succession. His words are: “In man’s life there are seven seasons, which they call ages, little boy, boy, lad, young man, man, elderly man, old man. He is a little boy until he reaches seven years, the time of the shedding of his teeth; a boy until he reaches puberty, i.e. up to twice seven years; a lad until his chin grows downy, i.e. up to thrice seven years; a young man until his whole body has grown, till four times seven; a man till forty-nine, till seven times seven; an elderly man till fifty-six, up to seven times eight; after that an old man.”", + "[106] The following is also mentioned to commend the number 7 as occupying a wonderful place in nature, since it consists of 3+4: if we multiply by 2, we shall find that the third number, counted from 1, is a square, and the fourth a cube, while the seventh (and 7 is made up of 3 and 4), is at once a square and a cube: for the third number in this multiplication by 2, namely 4, is a square, the fourth, 8, is a cube; the seventh, 64, is at once a cube and a square. Thus the seventh number does indeed bring with it perfection, claiming both correspondences, that with the superficies by means of the square, in virtue of its kinship with 3, and that with the solid body by means of the cube, in virtue of its relationship with 4; and 3 and 4 make 7." + ], + [ + "[107] It is however not only a bringer of perfection, but, one may say, absolutely harmonious, and in a certain sense the source of the most beautiful scale, which contains all the harmonies, that yielded by the interval of four, by the interval of five, by the octave; and all the progressions, the arithmetic, the geometric, and the harmonic as well. The scheme is formed out of the following numbers: 6, 8, 9, 12. 8 stands to 6 in the proportion 4:3, which regulates the harmony of 4; 9 stands to 6 in the proportion 3:2, which regulates the harmony of 5; 12 stands to 6 in the proportion 2:1, which regulates the octave.", + "[108] And, as I said, it contains also all the progressions, the arithmetic made up of 6 and 9 and 12—for as the middle number exceeds the first by 3, so it in its turn is exceeded to the same amount by the last; the geometric, made up of the four numbers (6, 8, 9, 12); for 12 bears the same proportion to 9 that 8 does to 6, and the proportion is 4:3; the harmonic, made up of three numbers (6, 8, and 12).", + "[109] There are two modes of testing harmonic progression. One is this. (Harmonic progression is present) whenever the relation in which the last term stands to the first is identical with that in which the excess of the last over the middle term stands to the excess of the middle term over the first. A very clear proof may be obtained from the numbers before us, 6 and 8 and 12: for the last is double the first, and the difference or excess is also double; for 12 exceeds 8 by 4, and 8 exceeds 6 by 2, and 4 is twice 2.", + "[110] Another way of detecting the presence of harmonic proportion is this. (It is present) whenever the middle term exceeds the one extreme and is itself exceeded by the other by the same fraction; for 8 being the middle term exceeds the first by one-third of the latter, for when we subtract 6 (from 8) the remainder, 2, is one-third of the first number, and 8 is exceeded by the last number by the same fraction, for if 8 be subtracted from 12, the remainder 4 is one-third of the last number." + ], + [ + "[111] Let what has been said suffice as a bare outline of the dignity pertaining to the figure or scheme or whatever we ought to call it: all these qualities and more still does 7 discover in the incorporeal and intellectual sphere. But its nature reaches further, extending to all visible existence, to heaven and earth, to the utmost bounds of the universe. For what part of the world’s contents is not a lover of seven, overcome by passion and desire for it? Let us give some instances.", + "[112] They tell us that heaven is girdled by seven zones, whose names are these: arctic, antarctic, that of the summer solstice, that of the winter solstice, equinox, zodiac, and beside these the milky way. The horizon is not one of these, for it is a thing of subjective observation, our eyesight, as it is keen or the reverse, cutting off, now a smaller, now a larger, circumference.", + "[113] Moreover, the planets, the heavenly host that moves counter to the fixed stars, are marshalled in seven ranks, and manifest large sympathy with air and earth. The one (the air) they turn and shift for the so-called annual seasons, producing in each of these seasons a thousand changes by times of calm, or fair weather, of cloudy skies, of unusually violent storms: they flood rivers and shrink them; they turn plains into marshes, and dry them up again: they produce tides in the sea, as it ebbs and flows: for at times broad gulfs, through the sea’s being withdrawn by ebbing, suddenly become a far-reaching stretch of sand, and a little later, as it is poured back, they become deep seas navigable not merely by small barges but by ships of many tons burden. Yes, and the planets cause all things on earth, living creatures and fruit-yielding plants, to grow and come to perfection, enabling, as they do, the natural power in each of them to run its full round, new fruits blossoming and ripening on old trees, to supply abundantly those who need them." + ], + [ + "[114] The Great Bear, moreover, which is called the mariners’ escort, consists of seven stars. Fixing their eyes on this, pilots cut those countless paths in the sea, undertaking an enterprise surpassing belief and human powers. For by keeping their eyes on the stars we have named they discovered countries hitherto unknown, dwellers on the continents discovering islands, and islanders continents. For it was meet that by heaven, purest of all things existing, should be revealed to the living creature best loved by God, even the human race, the secret recesses both of land and sea.", + "[115] Beside the cases already mentioned, the full tale of the band of Pleiades is made up of seven stars, whose appearances and disappearances are fraught with vast benefits to all men: for when they are setting, furrows are opened for sowing, and when they are about to rise, they announce reaping-time; and when they have risen, they make glad the workers on the land and rouse them to gather in the crops that meet their needs; and they blithely store up their food for daily use.", + "[116] The sun, too, the great lord of day, bringing about two equinoxes each year, in Spring and Autumn, the Spring equinox in the constellation of the Ram, and the Autumn equinox in that of the Scales, supplies very clear evidence of the sacred dignity of the 7th number, for each of the equinoxes occurs in a 7th month, and during them there is enjoined by law the keeping of the greatest national festivals, since at both of them all fruits of the earth ripen, in the Spring the wheat and all else that is sown, and in Autumn the fruit of the vine and most of the other fruit-trees." + ], + [ + "[117] As, however, in accordance with a certain natural sympathy the things of the earth depend on the things of heaven, the principle of the number 7, after having begun from above, descended also to us and visited the races of mortals. For instance, if we leave the understanding out of sight, the remainder of our soul is divided into seven parts, namely five senses, the faculty of speech, last that of generation. All these, as in marionette shows, are drawn with strings by the understanding, now resting, now moving, each in the attitudes and with the movements appropriate to it.", + "[118] In like manner, should a man go on to examine the outer and inner parts of the body, he will find seven under each head. The visible parts are head, breast, belly, two hands, two feet. The inward parts, called entrails, are stomach, heart, lung, spleen, liver, two kidneys.", + "[119] Once more, the head, the most princely part in an animal, employs seven most essential parts, two eyes, as many ears, two nostrils, seventhly a mouth. Through this, as Plato says, mortal things have their entrance, immortal their exit; for foods and drinks enter it, perishable nourishment of a perishable body, but words issue from it, undying laws of an undying soul, by means of which the life of reason is guided." + ], + [ + "[120] The objects which are distinguished by sight, the noblest of the senses, participate in the number of which we are speaking, if classified by their kinds: for the kinds which are seen are seven—body, extension, shape, size, colour, movement, quiescence, and beside these there is no other.", + "[121] The varieties of the voice too are seven in all, the acute, the grave, the circumflex, and fourthly the rough (or “aspirated”), and fifthly the thin (or “unaspirated”) utterance, and sixthly the long, and seventhly the short sound.", + "[122] Likewise there are seven movements, upward, downward, to the right, to the left, forward, backward, in a circle. These come out most distinctly in an exhibition of dancing.", + "[123] The discharges from the body also (it has been pointed out) are limited to the number named: for through the eyes tears pour out, through the nostrils purgings from the head, through the mouth expectorations of phlegm: there are also two receptacles for excretion of superfluities, one in front, one behind; and in the sixth place there is perspiration exuding through the whole body, and in the seventh place the natural normal emission of seed through the genital organs.", + "[124] Further Hippocrates, that expert in the processes of nature, says that in seven days both the solidifying of the seed and the formation of the embryo take place. Once again, for women the duration of the monthly cleansing is at the most seven days. Moreover the fruit of the womb is brought by nature to full ripeness in seven months, with a most strange result, namely that seven months’ children come to the birth, whereas eight months’ children as a rule fail to do so alive.", + "[125] Severe bodily sicknesses too, especially persistent attacks of fever due to internal disorder, generally reach the crisis on the seventh day; for this day decides the struggle for life, bringing to some recovery, to others death." + ], + [ + "[126] The number 7 exerts its influence not only in the spheres that have been mentioned, but also in those noblest of sciences, grammar and music. For the seven-stringed lyre, corresponding to the choir of the Planets, produces the notable melodies, and it is not going too far to say that the lyre is the rule to which the making of all musical instruments conforms. And among the letters in grammar there are seven properly called vowels or “vocals,” since as is obvious they can be sounded by themselves, and when joined with the others can produce articulate sounds; for on the one hand they fill up what is lacking to the “semi-vowels,” rendering the sounds full and complete, and on the other hand they change the nature of the “voiceless” (the consonants) by breathing into them something of their own power, that it may now be possible to pronounce letters before incapable of pronunciation.", + "[127] On these grounds I hold that those who originally fitted names to things, being wise men, called this number “seven” because of the “reverence” (σεβασμός) which it deserves, and the heavenly “dignity” (σεμνότης) pertaining to it. The Romans, who add the letter σ left out by the Greeks, make this appear still more clearly, since they, with greater accuracy, call the number septem, owing to its derivation, as I have said, from σεμνός (reverend) and σεβασμός (“reverence”)." + ], + [ + "[128] These and yet more than these are the statements and reflections of men on the number 7, showing the reasons for the very high honour which that number has attained in Nature, the honour in which it is held by the most approved investigators of the science of Mathematics and Astronomy among Greeks and other peoples, and the special honour accorded to it by that lover of virtue, Moses. He inscribed its beauty on the most holy tables of the Law, and impressed it on the minds of all who were set under him, by bidding them at intervals of six days to keep a seventh day holy, abstaining from other work that has to do with seeking and gaining a livelihood, and giving their time to the one sole object of philosophy with a view to the improvement of character and submission to the scrutiny of conscience. Conscience, established in the soul like a judge, is never abashed in administering reproofs, sometimes employing sharper threats, sometimes gentler admonitions; threats, where the wrongdoing appeared to be deliberate; admonitions, to guard against a like lapse in the future, when the misconduct seemed unintentional and the result of want of caution." + ], + [ + "[129] In his concluding summary of the story of creation he says: “This is the book of the genesis of heaven and earth, when they came into being, in the day in which God made the heaven and the earth and every herb of the field before it appeared upon the earth, and all grass of the field before it sprang up” (Gen. 2:4, 5). Is he not manifestly describing the incorporeal ideas present only to the mind, by which, as by seals, the finished objects that meet our senses were moulded? For before the earth put forth its young green shoots, young verdure was present, he tells us, in the nature of things without material shape, and before grass sprang up in the field, there was in existence an invisible grass.", + "[130] We must suppose that in the case of all other objects also, on which the senses pronounce judgement, the original forms and measures, to which all things that come into being owe shape and size, subsisted before them; for even if he has not dealt with everything in detail but in the mass, aiming as he does at brevity in a high degree, nevertheless what he does say gives us a few indications of universal Nature, which brings forth no finished product in the world of sense without using an incorporeal pattern." + ], + [ + "[131] Keeping to the sequence of the creation and carefully observing the connexion between what follows and what has gone before, he next says: “and a spring went up out of the earth and watered all the face of the earth” (Gen. 2:6). Other philosophers say that all water is one of the four elements out of which the world was made. But Moses, wont as he is with keener vision to observe and apprehend amazingly well even distant objects, does indeed regard the great sea as an element, a fourth part of the whole, which his successors, reckoning the seas we sail to be in size mere harbours compared to it, call Ocean; but he distinguished sweet drinkable water from the salt water, assigning the former to the land and looking on it as part of this, not of the sea. It is such a part, for the purpose already mentioned, that by the sweet quality of the water as by a uniting glue the earth may be bound and held together: for had it been left dry, with no moisture making its way in and spreading by many channels through the pores, it would have actually fallen to pieces. It is held together and lasts, partly by virtue of the life-breath that makes it one, partly because it is saved from drying up and breaking off in small or big bits by the moisture.", + "[132] This is one reason, and I must mention another which is a guess at the truth. It is of the nature of nothing earth-born to take form apart from wet substance. This is shown by the depositing of seeds, which either are moist, as those of animals, or do not grow without moisture: such are those of plants. From this it is clear that the wet substance we have mentioned must be a part of the earth which gives birth to all things, just as with women the running of the monthly cleansings; for these too are, so physical scientists tell us, the bodily substance of the fetus.", + "[133] And what I am about to say is in perfect agreement with what has been said already. Nature has bestowed on every mother as a most essential endowment teeming breasts, thus preparing in advance food for the child that is to be born. The earth also, as we all know, is a mother, for which reason the earliest men thought fit to call her ‘Demeter,’ combining the name of ‘mother’ with that of ‘earth’; for, as Plato says, earth does not imitate woman, but woman earth. Poets quite rightly are in the habit of calling earth ‘All-mother,’ and ‘Fruit-bearer’ and ‘Pandora’ or ‘Give-all,’ inasmuch as she is the originating cause of existence and continuance in existence to all animals and plants alike. Fitly therefore on earth also, most ancient and most fertile of mothers, did Nature bestow, by way of breasts, streams of rivers and springs, to the end that both the plants might be watered and all animals might have abundance to drink." + ], + [ + "[134] After this he says that “God formed man by taking clay from the earth, and breathed into his face the breath of life” (Gen. 2:7). By this also he shows very clearly that there is a vast difference between the man thus formed and the man that came into existence earlier after the image of God: for the man so formed is an object of sense-perception, partaking already of such or such quality, consisting of body and soul, man or woman, by nature mortal; while he that was after the (Divine) image was an idea or type or seal, an object of thought (only), incorporeal, neither male nor female, by nature incorruptible.", + "[135] It says, however, that the formation of the individual man, the object of sense, is a composite one made up of earthly substance and of Divine breath: for it says that the body was made through the Artificer taking clay and moulding out of it a human form, but that the soul was originated from nothing created whatever, but from the Father and Ruler of all: for that which He breathed in was nothing else than a Divine breath that migrated hither from that blissful and happy existence for the benefit of our race, to the end that, even if it is mortal in respect of its visible part, it may in respect of the part that is invisible be rendered immortal. Hence it may with propriety be said that man is the borderland between mortal and immortal nature, partaking of each so far as is needful, and that he was created at once mortal and immortal, mortal in respect of the body, but in respect of the mind immortal." + ], + [ + "[136] That first man, earth-born, ancestor of our whole race, was made, as it appears to me, most excellent in each part of his being, in both soul and body, and greatly excelling those who came after him in the transcendent qualities of both alike: for this man really was the one truly “beautiful and good.” The fair form of his body may be gathered from three proofs. The first is this. When, at the severing of the great mass of water, which received the name of “sea,” the newly formed earth appeared, the material of the things to come into existence was, as a result, pure and free from mixture or alloy, and also supple and easy to work, and the things wrought out of it naturally flawless.", + "[137] Secondly, God is not likely to have taken the clay from any part of the earth that might offer, or to have chosen as rapidly as possible to mould this figure in the shape of a man, but selecting the best from it all, out of pure material taking the purest and most subtly refined, such as was best suited for his structure; for a sacred dwelling-place or shrine was being fashioned for the reasonable soul, which man was to carry as a holy image, of all images the most Godlike.", + "[138] The third proof, incomparably stronger than the two that have been given, is this, that the Creator excelled, as well as in all else, in skill to bring it about that each of the bodily parts should have in itself individually its due proportions, and should also be fitted with the most perfect accuracy for the part it was to take in the whole. And together with this symmetry (of the parts) He bestowed on the body goodly flesh, and adorned it with a rich complexion, desiring the first man to be as fair as could be to behold." + ], + [ + "[139] That in soul also he was most excellent is manifest; for the Creator, we know, employed for its making no pattern taken from among created things, but solely, as I have said, His own Word (or Reason). It is on this account that he says that man was made a likeness and imitation of the Word, when the Divine Breath was breathed into his face. The face is the seat of the senses. By the senses the Creator endowed the body with soul. To the senses, when He had installed the sovereign Reason in the princely part of man’s being, He delivered it to be by them escorted to the apprehension of colours and sounds, as well as of flavours and scents and the like. The Reason, apart from perception by the senses, was unable by itself alone to apprehend these. Now the copy of a perfectly beautiful pattern must needs be of perfect beauty. But the Word of God surpasses beauty itself, beauty, that is, as it exists in Nature. He is not only adorned with beauty, but is Himself in very truth beauty’s fairest adornment." + ], + [ + "[140] Such was the first man created, as I think, in body and soul, surpassing all the men that now are, and all that have been before us. For our beginning is from men, whereas God created him, and the more eminent the maker is, so much the better is the work. For as that which is in bloom is always better than that whose bloom is past, be it animal or plant or fruit or aught else in nature, so the man first fashioned was clearly the bloom of our entire race, and never have his descendants attained the like bloom, forms and faculties ever feebler having been bestowed on each succeeding generation.", + "[141] I have observed the same thing happening in the case of sculpture and painting: the copies are inferior to the originals, and what is painted or moulded from the copies still more so, owing to their long distance from the original. Much the same appears in the case of the magnet: for the iron ring which touches it is held most forcibly, but that which touches this one less so. A third hangs on to the second, and a fourth on to the third, and a fifth on to the fourth, and so on in a long series, all held together by one attracting force, only not all alike, for those removed from the starting-point get looser all the time, owing to the attraction being relaxed and losing its power to grip as it did before. Mankind has evidently undergone something of the same kind. As generation follows generation the powers and qualities of body and soul which men receive are feebler.", + "[142] If we call that original forefather of our race not only the first man but also the only citizen of the world we shall be speaking with perfect truth. For the world was his city and dwelling-place. No building made by hand had been wrought out of the material of stones and timbers. The world was his mother country where he dwelt far removed from fear, inasmuch as he had been held worthy of the rule of the denizens of the earth, and all things mortal trembled before him, and had been taught or compelled to obey him as their master. So he lived exposed to no attack amid the comforts of peace unbroken by war." + ], + [ + "[143] Now since every well-ordered State has a constitution, the citizen of the world enjoyed of necessity the same constitution as did the whole world: and this constitution is nature’s right relation, more properly called an “ordinance,” or “dispensation,” seeing it is a divine law, in accordance with which there was duly apportioned to all existences that which rightly falls to them severally. This State and polity must have had citizens before man. These might justly be termed people of the Great City, having had allotted to them as their dwelling-place the greatest compass, and having been enrolled in the greatest and most perfect commonwealth.", + "[144] And who should these be but spiritual and divine natures, some incorporeal and visible to mind only, some not without bodies, such as are the stars? Conversing and consorting with these man could not but live in unalloyed bliss, and being of near kin to the Ruler, since the divine Spirit had flowed into him in full current, he earnestly endeavoured in all his words and actions to please the Father and King, following Him step by step in the highways cut out by virtues, since only for souls who regard it as their goal to be fully conformed to God who begat them is it lawful to draw nigh to Him." + ], + [ + "[145] Of the beauty of the first-made man in each part of his being, in soul and body, we have now said what falls perhaps far short of the reality but yet what for our powers was possible. It could not but be that his descendants, partaking as they did in the original form in which he was formed, should preserve marks, though faint ones, of their kinship with their first father. Now what is this kinship?", + "[146] Every man, in respect of his mind, is allied to the divine Reason, having come into being as a copy or fragment or ray of that blessed nature, but in the structure of his body he is allied to all the world, for he is compounded of the same things, earth, water, air, and fire, each of the elements having contributed the share that falls to each, to complete a material absolutely sufficient in itself for the Creator to take in order to fashion this visible image.", + "[147] Moreover, man is at home in all the elements named, as in places fully congenial and akin to him, ever changing his sphere and haunting now one, now another of them. Thus we can say with strict propriety that man is all four, as being of land and water and air and sky. For in so far as he dwells and moves upon the ground, he is a land-animal; so far as he often dives and swims and often sails, he is a water-creature—merchants and shipmasters and fishers for purple-fish and oyster-dredgers and fishermen generally are the clearest evidence of what I have said—; so far as his body ascends and is raised aloft from the earth, he would justly be said to be an air-walker. He may besides be said to be heavenly, for by means of sight, the most dominant of his senses, he draws near to sun and moon and each of the other planets and fixed stars." + ], + [ + "[148] Quite excellently does Moses ascribe the bestowal of names also to the first man (Gen. 2:19): for this is the business of wisdom and royalty, and the first man was wise with a wisdom learned from and taught by Wisdom’s own lips, for he was made by divine hands; he was, moreover, a king, and it befits a ruler to bestow titles on his several subordinates. And we may guess that the sovereignty with which that first man was invested was a most lofty one, seeing that God had fashioned him with the utmost care and deemed him worthy of the second place, making him His own viceroy and lord of all others. For men born many generations later, when, owing to the lapse of ages, the race had lost its vigour, are none the less still masters of the creatures that are without reason, keeping safe a torch (as it were) of sovereignty and dominion passed down from the first man.", + "[149] So Moses says that God brought all the animals to Adam, wishing to see what appellations he would assign to them severally. Not that he was in any doubt—for to God nothing is unknown—but because He knew that He had formed in mortal man the natural ability to reason of his own motion, that so He Himself might have no share in faulty action. No, He was putting man to the test, as a teacher does a pupil, kindling his innate capacity, and calling on him to put forth some faculty of his own, that by his own ability man might confer titles in no wise incongruous or unsuitable, but bringing out clearly the traits of the creatures who bore them.", + "[150] For the native reasoning power in the soul being still unalloyed, and no infirmity or disease or evil affection having intruded itself, he received the impressions made by bodies and objects in their sheer reality, and the titles he gave were fully apposite, for right well did he divine the character of the creatures he was describing, with the result that their natures were apprehended as soon as their names were uttered. So greatly did he excel in all noble traits, thus attaining the very limit of human happiness." + ], + [ + "[151] But since no created thing is constant, and things mortal are necessarily liable to changes and reverses, it could not but be that the first man too should experience some ill fortune. And woman becomes for him the beginning of blameworthy life. For so long as he was by himself, as accorded with such solitude, he went on growing like to the world and like God, and receiving in his soul the impressions made by the nature of each, not all of these, but as many as one of mortal composition can find room for. But when woman too had been made, beholding a figure like his own and a kindred form, he was gladdened by the sight, and approached and greeted her.", + "[152] She, seeing no living thing more like herself than he, is filled with glee and shamefastly returns his greeting. Love supervenes, brings together and fits into one the divided halves, as it were, of a single living creature, and sets up in each of them a desire for fellowship with the other with a view to the production of their like. And this desire begat likewise bodily pleasure, that pleasure which is the beginning of wrongs and violation of law, the pleasure for the sake of which men bring on themselves the life of mortality and wretchedness in lieu of that of immortality and bliss." + ], + [ + "[153] While the man was still leading a life of solitude, the woman not having been yet formed, a park or pleasaunce, we are told, was planted by God, quite unlike the pleasaunces with which we are familiar (Gen. 2:8 f.): for in them the wood is soulless; they are full of trees of all sorts, some ever-blooming to give uninterrupted joy to the eye, some bursting forth with young life every spring: some again bearing cultivated fruit for man, not only for use by way of necessary nourishment, but also for his superfluities, for the enjoyment of a life of luxury; while others yield a different kind of fruit, supplied to the wild beasts to satisfy their actual needs. But in the divine park or pleasaunce all plants are endowed with soul or reason, bearing the virtues for fruit, and beside these insight and discernment that never fail, by which things fair and ugly are recognized, and life free from disease, and incorruption, and all that is of a like nature.", + "[154] This description is, I think, intended symbolically rather than literally; for never yet have trees of life or of understanding appeared on earth, nor is it likely that they will appear hereafter. No, Moses evidently signifies by the pleasaunce the ruling power of the soul which is full of countless opinions, as it might be of plants; and by the tree of life he signifies reverence toward God, the greatest of the virtues, by means of which the soul attains to immortality; while by the tree that is cognisant of good and evil things he signifies moral prudence, the virtue that occupies the middle position, and enables us to distinguish things by nature contrary the one to the other." + ], + [ + "[155] Having set up these standards in the soul, He watched, as a judge might, to see to which it would tend. And when He saw it inclining to wickedness, and making light of holiness and godly fear, out of which comes the winning of immortal life, He cast it forth, as we might expect, and drove it from the pleasaunce, giving the soul which committed offences that defy the healer’s skill, no hope of a subsequent return, inasmuch as the reason given for their deception was in a high degree blameworthy. This we must not leave unexplained.", + "[156] It is said that in olden time the venomous earthborn crawling thing could send forth a man’s voice, and that one day it approached the wife of the first man and upbraided her for her irresoluteness and excessive scrupulosity in delaying and hesitating to pluck a fruit most beauteous to behold and most luscious to taste, and most useful into the bargain, since by its means she would have power to recognize things good and evil. It is said that she, without looking into the suggestion, prompted by a mind devoid of steadfastness and firm foundation, gave her consent and ate of the fruit, and gave some of it to her husband; this instantly brought them out of a state of simplicity and innocence into one of wickedness: whereat the Father in anger appointed for them the punishments that were fitting. For their conduct well merited wrath, inasmuch as they had passed by the tree of life immortal, the consummation of virtue, from which they could have gathered an existence long and happy. Yet they chose that fleeting and mortal existence which is not an existence but a period of time full of misery." + ], + [ + "[157] Now these are no mythical fictions, such as poets and sophists delight in, but modes of making ideas visible, bidding us resort to allegorical interpretation guided in our renderings by what lies beneath the surface. Following a probable conjecture one would say that the serpent spoken of is a fit symbol of pleasure, because in the first place he is an animal without feet sunk prone upon his belly; secondly because he takes clods of earth as food; thirdly because he carries in his teeth the venom with which it is his nature to destroy those whom he has bitten.", + "[158] The lover of pleasure is exempt from none of these traits, for he is so weighted and dragged downwards that it is with difficulty that he lifts up his head, thrown down and tripped up by intemperance: he feeds not on heavenly nourishment, which wisdom by discourses and doctrines proffers to lovers of contemplation, but on that which comes up out of the earth with the revolving seasons, and which produces drunkenness, daintiness, and greediness. These, causing the cravings of the belly to burst out and fanning them into flame, make the man a glutton, while they also stimulate and stir up the stings of his sexual lusts. For he licks his lips over the labour of caterers and confectioners, and twisting his head about all round strains to catch some of the steam and savour of the delicacies. Whenever he beholds a richly spread table, he flings down his whole person and tumbles upon the dishes set out, eager to devour all at once. His aim is not to sate his hunger, but to leave nothing that has been set before him undevoured. Hence we see that no less than the serpent he carries his poison in his teeth.", + "[159] These are the agents and ministers of excess, cutting and chewing all eatables, handing them over first to the tongue, the judge of savours, for its decision, then to the gullet. Immoderate eating is by its nature deadly and poisonous, for what is eaten has no chance of being assimilated, owing to the rush of the fresh viands which takes place before those already swallowed have been digested.", + "[160] Again the serpent is said to emit a human voice. This is because pleasure employs ten thousand champions and defenders, who have undertaken to look after her and stand up for her, and who dare to spread the doctrine that she has assumed universal sovereignty over small and great, and that no one whatever is exempt therefrom." + ], + [ + "[161] And certainly the first approaches of the male to the female have pleasure to guide and conduct them, and it is through pleasure that begetting and the coming of life is brought about, and the offspring is naturally at home with nothing sooner than pleasure, delighting in it and feeling distress at pain its contrary. This is why the infant when born actually weeps aloud, chilled most likely by the cold all round it; for when, leaving a place of fiery warmth in the womb, which for a long time it has tenanted, it suddenly issues into the air, a cold and unaccustomed place, it is taken aback and utters cries, a most clear sign of its pain and its annoyance at suffering.", + "[162] And they tell us that every living creature hastens after pleasure as its most necessary and essential end, and man above all: for while other creatures seek pleasure only through taste and the organs of reproduction, man does so through the other senses as well, pursuing with ears and eyes all such sights and sounds as can afford delight.", + "[163] A very great deal more is said in praise of pleasure, and of the great closeness of its connexion and kinship with living creatures." + ], + [ + "But what has now been said is enough to show why the serpent seemed to utter a human voice. It is for this reason, I think, that even in the detailed laws, where the lawgiver writes about animals, laying down which may be eaten and which may not, he especially praises the “snake-fighter” as it is called (Lev. 11:22). This is a reptile with legs above its feet, with which it springs from the ground and lifts itself into the air like a grasshopper.", + "[164] For the snake-fighter is, I think, nothing but a symbolic representation of self-control, waging a fight that never ends and a truceless war against intemperance and pleasure. Self-control welcomes beyond measure simplicity and abstemiousness and so much as is requisite for a severe and lofty mode of life; intemperance gives a like welcome to superfluity and extravagance, which induce softness and voluptuousness in soul and body, and these result in the culpable life, the life that in the view of right-minded people is worse than death." + ], + [ + "[165] Pleasure does not venture to bring her wiles and deceptions to bear on the man, but on the woman, and by her means on him. This is a telling and well-made point: for in us mind corresponds to man, the senses to woman; and pleasure encounters and holds parley with the senses first, and through them cheats with her quackeries the sovereign mind itself: for when each sense has been subjugated to her sorceries, delighting in what she proffers, the sense of sight in variegated colours and shapes, that of hearing in harmonious sounds, that of taste in delicate savours, and that of scent in the fragrance of perfumes which it inhales, then all of them receive the gifts and offer them like handmaids to the Reason as to a master, bringing with them Persuasion to plead that it reject nothing whatever. Reason is forthwith ensnared and becomes a subject instead of a ruler, a slave instead of a master, an alien instead of a citizen, and a mortal instead of an immortal.", + "[166] In a word we must never lose sight of the fact that Pleasure, being a courtesan and a wanton, eagerly desires to meet with a lover, and searches for panders, by whose means she shall get one on her hook. It is the senses that act as panders for her and procure the lover. When she has ensnared these she easily brings the Mind under her control. To it, dwelling within us, the senses convey the things seen without, reporting them fully and making them manifest, impressing on it the forms of the several objects, and producing in it the corresponding affection. For it resembles wax, and receives the images that reach it through the senses, by which it apprehends material substances, being incapable, as I have said before, of doing this by itself." + ], + [ + "[167] Those who were the first to become slaves to a passion grievous and hard to heal at once had experience of the wages paid by Pleasure. The woman incurred the violent woes of travail-pangs, and the griefs which come one after another all through the remainder of life. Chief among them are all those that have to do with children at birth and in their bringing up, in sickness and in health, in good fortune and evil fortune. In the next place she tasted deprivation of liberty, and the authority of the husband at her side, whose commands she must perforce obey. The man, in his turn, incurred labours and distress in the unceasing sweat of his brow to gain the necessaries of life. He was without those good things which the earth had been taught to bear of itself independently of all skill in the husbandman. His life was spent in unbroken toils in the pursuit of food and livelihood to save him from perishing by famine.", + "[168] For I imagine that, just as sun and moon always give their light after once for all being bidden to do so when the universe was first created, and continue to keep the divine ordinance for no other reason than that evil has been sent into exile far away from heaven’s frontiers; even so would earth’s deep and fertile soil, unaided by the skill of agricultural labourers, bear rich abundance as the seasons come round. As it is, when evil began to get the better of the virtues, the ever-flowing springs of the bounties of God were closed, that they might not bring supplies to those felt to be undeserving of them.", + "[169] If the human race had had to undergo the fitting penalty, it must needs have been wiped out by reason of its ingratitude to God its benefactor and preserver. But He being merciful took pity on it and moderated the punishment, suffering the race to continue, but no longer as before supplying it with food ready to its hand, that men might not, by indulging the twin evils of idleness and satiety, wax insolent in wrongdoing." + ], + [ + "[170] Such is the life of those who at the outset are in enjoyment of innocence and simplicity of character, but later on prefer vice to virtue.", + "By his account of the creation of the world of which we have spoken Moses teaches us among many other things five that are fairest and best of all.", + "Firstly that the Deity is and has been from eternity. This with a view to atheists, some of whom have hesitated and have been of two minds about His eternal existence, while the bolder sort have carried their audacity to the point of declaring that the Deity does not exist at all, but that it is a mere assertion of men obscuring the truth with myth and fiction.", + "[171] Secondly, that God is one. This with a view to the propounders of polytheism, who do not blush to transfer from earth to heaven mob-rule, that worst of evil polities.", + "Thirdly, as I have said already, that the world came into being. This because of those who think that it is without beginning and eternal, who thus assign to God no superiority at all.", + "Fourthly, that the world too is one as well as its Maker, who made His work like Himself in its uniqueness, who used up for the creation of the whole all the material that exists; for it would not have been a whole had it not been formed and consisted of parts that were wholes. For there are those who suppose that there are more worlds than one, while some think that they are infinite in number. Such men are themselves in very deed infinitely lacking in knowledge of things which it is right good to know.", + "Fifthly, that God also exercises forethought on the world’s behalf.", + "[172] For that the Maker should care for the thing made is required by the laws and ordinances of Nature, and it is in accordance with these that parents take thought beforehand for children.", + "He that has begun by learning these things with his understanding rather than with his hearing, and has stamped on his soul impressions of truths so marvellous and priceless, both that God is and is from eternity, and that He that really IS is One, and that He has made the world and has made it one world, unique as Himself is unique, and that He ever exercises forethought for His creation, will lead a life of bliss and blessedness, because he has a character moulded by the truths that piety and holiness enforce." + ] + ], + "Appendix": [ + "APPENDIX TO ON THE CREATION", + "(N. B.—S. V. F.= Arnim, Stoicorum Veterum Fragmenta. The references are to sections in Arnim.)", + "§ 3. Philo starts off with two leading Stoic ideas, “living according to nature” and the “world-citizen.” For the former cf. Diogenes Laertius vii. 87, “Zeno was the first to designate a (man’s) end ‘living according to nature.’ ” For the latter see S. V. F. i. 262. The first use of the actual word κοσμοπολίτης is ascribed to Diogenes the Cynic, who, when “asked whence he came, replied ‘I am a citizen of the world’ ” (Diog. Laert. vi. 63).", + "§ 25. The words bracketed by Cohn are left so bracketed in the text but untranslated.", + "§ 26. Time is a measured space, etc. This is the accepted definition of the Stoics. See S. V. F. ii. 509 f. Philo refers to it as Stoic, De Aet. 4, and elsewhere in that treatise.", + "§ 43. Principles or nuclei, or perhaps “seed-powers”; οἱ λόγοι is equivalent to οἱ σπερματικοὶ λόγοι. The Stoics conceived of a single λόγος σπερματικός manifesting itself in innumerable λόγοι σπερματικοί, which give things their form. See S. V. F. Index, p. 93a.", + "§ 54. The thought of this section is based on Timaeus 47 A, B, where Plato says that “God bestowed sight on us that we might observe the orbits of reason which are in heaven, and make use of them for the revolutions of thought which are in our souls” (Archer-Hind’s translation).", + "§§ 72 ff. The idea of these sections is suggested by, or at least receives support from, Timaeus 41, 42, where God creates “young gods” or subordinate ministers to carry on the work for the same reason as is given here, viz. that He might not be responsible for evil.", + "§ 80. And through the livelong year, or, putting the comma after ἐκδεχόμενοι, “at the end of each year (at intervals of a year) they gather in.”", + "§ 101. Equal to the sum of its own factors. Like 6 (see 13), 28 is the sum of its factors (1+2+4+7+14), as are 496 and 8128. The word “perfect” is in strictness applied to such numbers only (Nicomachus i. 10).", + "§ 102. Limits, or “terms.” Ὅρος is the technical word for a “term” in a series. In fact, having been translated into Latin as terminus, it is the progenitor of our own word.", + "§ 117. The remainder of our soul is divided, etc. This classification is Stoic. It is more usually stated in the form that the soul has eight parts, the ἡγεμονικόν being reckoned as one. See S. V. F. ii. 827 ff.", + "§ 142. Citizen of the world. See especially 3 and note. The first man fulfilled the Stoic ideal. This view of the superiority of early mankind, though not confined to the Stoics, was strongly held by them. The Golden Age, said Posidonius, was when “regnum fuit penes sapientes” (Seneca, Epistle 90. 5).", + "§ 148. Torch. The figure of the torch-race is very common. Considering, however, Philo’s love for Plato, it is reasonable to suppose that he is thinking of the mention of it at the beginning of the Republic, 328 A. Cf. Laws 776 B.", + "§ 160. A human voice. Philo is here attacking Epicureanism. For the Epicurean doctrine that pleasure is the end aimed at by every living creature see Diogenes Laertius x. 128. Thus the serpent’s use of a human voice is interpreted as an allegory showing how vocal and popular that School was. Philo, like most of its opponents, ignores the fact that Epicurus expressly refused to identify pleasure with material pleasures.", + "§§ 170, 171. The opinions here assailed are (1) that God’s existence is doubtful, held by the Sceptics; (2) that the world is without beginning (ἀγένητος), held, according to Philo’s own statement in De Aet. 10, by Aristotle; the contrary was maintained by Pythagoras, Plato, and the Stoics (S. V. F. ii. 575); (3) the plurality of worlds, originally held by Democritus (see Timaeus 31 A, and Archer-Hind’s note), and afterwards by the Epicureans; (4) that there is no such thing as Providence. This Epicurean tenet is too familiar from Lucretius and other writers to need illustration, but see Diogenes Laertius x. 77, 113, 139." + ] + }, + "versions": [ + [ + "Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1929", + "https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001216057/NLI" + ] + ], + "heTitle": "על בריאת העולם", + "categories": [ + "Second Temple", + "Philo" + ], + "schema": { + "heTitle": "על בריאת העולם", + "enTitle": "On the Account of the World's Creation", + "key": "On the Account of the World's Creation", + "nodes": [ + { + "heTitle": "הקדמה", + "enTitle": "Introduction" + }, + { + "heTitle": "", + "enTitle": "" + }, + { + "heTitle": "הערות", + "enTitle": "Appendix" + } + ] + } +} \ No newline at end of file