diff --git "a/json/Second Temple/Philo/On Dreams/English/merged.json" "b/json/Second Temple/Philo/On Dreams/English/merged.json" new file mode 100644--- /dev/null +++ "b/json/Second Temple/Philo/On Dreams/English/merged.json" @@ -0,0 +1,951 @@ +{ + "title": "On Dreams", + "language": "en", + "versionTitle": "merged", + "versionSource": "https://www.sefaria.org/On_Dreams", + "text": { + "Book I": { + "Introduction": [ + "ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION TO BOOK I", + "This treatise, as we learn from its opening section, is really the second of those which deal with dreams. The first, which is lost, treated of dreams in which the dreamer’s own thoughts had no part. This second treatise is concerned with dreams in which the mind is inspired and can thus foresee the future. The two examples of this kind are taken from the history of Jacob. The first is the familiar story of the heavenly ladder at Bethel, and this with introductions and digression occupies §§ 2–188. The second is the dream of Genesis 31 in which he sees the different markings of his flock and is bidden to return to his native land. This takes up the rest of the treatise. The first of these dreams is quoted in § 3, the second in § 189.", + "Philo, after noting the difference of subject between this treatise and the preceding and quoting the substance of the vision (1–3), finds it necessary to discuss the verses which lead up to it. “And Jacob went out from the well of the oath and journeyed to Haran, and he met with a place. For the sun was set, and he took one of the stones of the place and set it at his head and slept in that place” (4–5). The first question is, What is the well? A well is knowledge, which like the well water is hidden and can only be gained by toil (6–8). But from this particular well Isaac did not find water, and this means that full knowledge is beyond us. The more we learn the more we find remains to be learnt (8–11).", + "But why the “well of the oath”? Because this impossibility of obtaining full knowledge is a truth which everyone can safely affirm without fear of perjury (12–13). But we observe that while Isaac digs four wells it is only the fourth which receives this name (14). So too in the universe and in the man we find three things which can be known in a sense and a fourth which cannot. The world has four constituents—earth, air, water, heaven. We can give some account of the first three, but on the fourth all sorts of theories are held. And here he takes the occasion to mention various views as to the nature of the sun, moon, and stars, nearly all of which can be illustrated from earlier writers (15–24). So, too, with man. Here the four are body, senses, speech and mind, and our partial knowledge of the first three, compared with our complete ignorance of the fourth, is treated in the same way (25–32). The thought may be illustrated from the phrase in Leviticus that “the fourth year is holy and for praise,” for heaven with its music of the spheres and the human mind alike have been created to praise their maker (33–38). This meditation concludes with a censure of those who suppose that the story of the four wells can be taken in its literal sense (39–40).", + "Haran, as explained already elsewhere, signifies the land of the senses, and it is only right and natural that the soul should sometimes leave the well of boundless knowledge, the world of mind, and take Haran for its refuge, but not for its lasting home (41–45). That is only for the Laban soul, which is contrasted with Jacob as Terah is with Abraham. For while Abraham came out of Haran, Terah died there (45–48). This leads Philo to further thoughts on the subject of Terah. His name means “observer of scent,” and the second part of the name suggests the thought of those who like the hound scent the distant virtue but do not win it, a condition inferior to the best, yet not without value (48–51). The other part of the name, “observer,” reminds us that Terah dwelt in Chaldea before he came to Haran, i.e. that his observation concerned itself with the vanities of astrology, whereas his migration to Haran shews the conversion of the soul to the Socratic principle of “Know Thyself” (52–58). But Terah goes no further, and it is only Abraham who leaves Haran for the highest quest of all (59–60).", + "And now what is the place which he “lights upon” or “meets”? “Place” apart from the ordinary sense may indicate either the Logos which God fills and in which He stands, or God Himself (61–64). After a short discussion of the text in the story of Abraham’s sacrifice of Isaac, “he came to the place … and saw the place from afar,” in which he finds an inconsistency requiring explanation (64–67), he lays down with confidence that in the Jacob story the place is the Logos (68–71).", + "“The sun was set.” Here the sun is God Himself, whose setting in the mind leaves room for the inferior influence of “words” to take the lead, and some illustration of the symbolism in which the sun or at least light stands for God is given (72–76). But we must note, however, in passing that elsewhere the sun is a figure for other things. Sometimes it stands for the mind (77–78), even for such inferior light as that of the senses, and he reminds us that the sunlight hides the glory of the stars as sense hides the light of true knowledge (79–84). Again it stands sometimes for the Logos (85–86). Yet on the whole the thought of the sun representing God holds the field, and two illustrations of this follow. In the first of these the phrase “expose” (or “hang”) the malefactor “before the sun” is understood to mean that the confession of sin to the all-seeing God is the necessary preliminary to repentance and forgiveness (87–91). The second leads to one of those curious diatribes in which Philo tries to shew that a simple and indeed humane ordinance of the law cannot be accepted literally. The text is that in which the creditor, who has taken the debtor’s cloak as security, is bidden to return it at sunset (92). Various objections to a literal interpretation are raised. Is it worthy of God to legislate on such a trivial matter? (93–94). Why should not the creditor keep the cloak, and what is it a security for? (95–98). Why should it not be restored in the daytime also (99), and even the wording of the ordinance is declared to be absurd if taken literally (99–101). We are therefore driven to the allegorical interpretation that the garment stands for speech or reason, and that those who deprive themselves or others of reason must restore it before the divine sun sets in their hearts (102–114). So then, applying this interpretation to the story, we see the Practiser sometimes illumined by the sun-like rays of God Himself, sometimes left to the less brilliant light of the Logos and finding in that a sufficient blessing (115–117). Before closing this part of the discussion Philo notes that some, while agreeing that the place is the Logos, take the sun to mean mind and sense together, and construe the setting of these as meaning the humble acknowledgement of the inability of human faculties to attain real truth (118–119).", + "“He took of the stones of the place and slept.” Before we consider the allegorical meaning of this we may note how the story in its literal sense inculcates the duty of simple living, and Philo takes the occasion to deliver one of his frequent commonplaces against luxury (120–126). Allegorically, however, the stones of the place are Logoi, here definitely regarded as spiritual beings, and one stone, apparently the divine Logos itself, serves him for the pillow of his mind, the head of his soul (127–128). From this thought he passes for a moment to compare the story of the same Logos as the instructor and rewarder of Jacob in the wrestling story of Genesis 32, and the lesson to be learnt from the incident of his numbed or shrinking thigh. This concludes the commentary on the incidents which lead up to the dream of the ladder (129–132).", + "We now pass on to the interpretation of the vision itself. The ladder from one point of view symbolizes the air, the habitation of unbodied souls, some of whom descend into human bodies and become engrossed in earthly things, while others rise above all such. And again, there are higher spiritual beings, the angels, who act as intermediaries between God and man (133–145). But in another sense, the ladder is the soul on which the divine words move up and down—up to draw it upwards, down to help it in its abasement (146–149). Or again, the ladder may show the life of the Practiser, with its perpetual advancing and back-sliding (150–152), or, once more, the oscillations of fortune as we see them in ordinary life (153–156).", + "“The Lord ‘stood firmly,’ or was established, on the ladder.” These words naturally suggest to Philo his favourite “thought” of the divine “standing” which alone establishes all things (157–159), and he goes on to consider the phrase: “I am the Lord God of Abraham, thy father, and the God of Isaac.” Why “the Lord God” in one case and “God” in the other? Philo, as usual, assuming that Lord represents the sovereign and God the creative and beneficent potency, argues that the Abraham-nature which learns through teaching needs both these, while the Isaac-nature of the self-taught needs only the latter (160–163); and this thought gives him an occasion to extol such allegorical interpretations and to call upon devout souls to seek for them (164–165). Another point in the phrase is that Abraham is called Jacob’s father, while Isaac is not. Again the same principle of the three types, teaching, nature, practice, will help us. While Jacob is still Jacob the supplanter and embodies practice, he is more akin to Abraham. When he becomes Israel who sees God, he will have Isaac for his father (166–172). Other phrases in the divine speech are commented on shortly with devout reflections, of which the most characteristically Philonic are those on the words, “In thee shall all tribes of the earth be blessed,” and “I will turn thee back to this land.” From the first he draws the lesson that the “tribes” in the individual, the senses, are blessed by the virtuous mind within, while the tribes in the wider sense are inevitably influenced for good by the lover of wisdom. On the second he points out that it may refer to the immortality of the soul, which, released from the body, returns to the heaven from which it came.", + "He now turns to Jacob’s waking words and feelings. A difficult and fantastic explanation is given, of which the main points are (1) that his fear is caused by realizing that God is not in any place, (2) that in the words, “This is none other than the House of God,” “this” is the visible world of sense which is also the gate of heaven, because it is only through our experience of it that we get our knowledge of the world of mind (182–188).", + "If Philo’s treatment of the ladder dream may seem in parts a feeble perversion of one of the most familiar and beautiful stories in Genesis, his treatment of the dream which follows brings out his gift for extracting striking ideas from the most unpromising material. After quoting the passage Gen. 31:11–13 in full (189), he begins by pointing out that a vision may be granted to men by the ministers of God, as well as by God Himself (190), and that God speaks in different terms, according as He speaks as a sovereign or a teacher or a friend. That Jacob is a friend appears from His addressing him by name, as Moses and Abraham are addressed (191–196). Passing on to the substance of the dream, the rams and he-goats who mount the sheep and goats are two logoi, here no longer spiritual beings but thoughts or ways of thinking which impregnate tender souls inspiring either repentance or a desire for positive well-doing (197–200). These logoi are described as pure white, speckled or varied, ashy-spotted or sprinkled. At the first of these he glances at present only for a moment, and passes on to a consideration of “variegation” as it is shewn in the pageant of the universe and in the world of learning, where the student gathers from each branch of knowledge its various parts and weaves them into a gaily coloured piece of work such as Bezaleel the “variegator” made (201–207). As for the ashy-spotted, while recognizing that literally this means marked with ash-coloured spots, he turns it for the purpose of his allegory into sprinkled with ashes and water, the ritual of purification, thus signifying the abasement of the humble soul (208–210). He notes how all three are symbolized in the high priest, who must first purify himself with ashes and water, who wears both the varied breastplate and the white linen robe, which represents a higher type of detachment from human aims and deceptions (213–218). In contrast with this is the Joseph soul, with its coat of varied colours, which of the three types has only variegation, and even that in a lower sense (219–224). Let us avoid variegation of this kind, and thus frustrate Laban whose wiles are shewn in the next verse of the text, “I have seen all that Laban does to thee,” and that he will be frustrated is shewn by the continuation, “I am the God Who appeared to thee in God’s place” (224–227). These last words carry Philo away on to the distinction between “the God” and “God” or “a God,” the conclusion of which seems to be that, just as in condescension to human weakness God allows Himself to be spoken of in anthropomorphic terms, so He reveals Himself in the form of angels or “gods” (232–236).", + "The next words are: “Where thou anointedst Me a pillar.” Philo for the moment ignores “anointedst,” and fastens on the word “pillar,” taking it in the sense of a monumental slab. Such a slab is erected or made to stand, is inscribed and is dedicated; and he enlarges on these three ideas, particularly on dedication. The dedication must be to God, and those who dedicate a pillar to themselves are blasphemously affirming the stability of human things, and will, like Lot’s wife, become themselves lifeless “pillars” of salt (244–248). He now deals with the word “anointedst”: since ἀλείφειν means also train for the arena, and the ἀλείπτης is a trainer, he easily gets the thought that to anoint the pillar is spiritually to train in the soul the doctrine which the pillar represents, namely the stability of God. Such a training will also dedicate the soul (249–251), and so also the words “Thou didst vow a vow” is a dedication of the maker of the vow (252–254). The treatise concludes with an exhortation to the soul to learn all these lessons from the Practiser’s story, and thus, as is promised in the last words of the text, return to the land of its nativity (255–end)." + ], + "": [ + [ + "[1] The treatise before this one embraced that first class of heaven-sent dreams, in which, as we said, the Deity of His own motion sends to us the visions which are presented to us in sleep. In the present treatise we shall, to the best of our ability, bring before our readers dreams which find their right place under our second head.", + "[2] The second kind of dreams is that in which our own mind, moving out of itself together with the Mind of the Universe, seems to be possessed and God-inspired, and so capable of receiving some foretaste and foreknowledge of things to come. ", + "The first dream belonging to the class thus indicated is that which appeared to the dreamer on the stairway of Heaven:", + "[3] “And he dreamed, and behold a stairway set up on the earth, of which the top reached to heaven, and the angels of God were ascending and descending upon it. And the Lord stood firmly on it; and He said, ‘I am the God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac; fear not; the land whereon thou sleepest, to thee will I give it, and to thy seed; and thy seed shall be as the sand of the earth, and shall spread abroad to the west and the south and the north and the east; and in thee shall be blessed all the tribes of the earth, and in thy seed. And, behold, I am with thee, guarding thee in every way by which thou goest, and will bring thee back into this land, for I will by no means forsake thee, until I have done all things whatsoever I have spoken unto thee’ ” (Gen. 28:12–15).", + "[4] The vision is introduced by a prefatory passage necessary for its understanding, and if we study this in detail we shall perhaps be able easily to grasp the meaning of the vision. What then is this prefatory passage? It runs thus: “And Jacob went out from the Well of the Oath, and made his journey to Haran; and he met with a place; for the sun set; and he took one from the stones of the place, and put it under his head, and he slept in that place” (ibid. 10 f.); and then at once follows the dream.", + "[5] It is worth while, then, at the outset to investigate these three points, firstly, what “the Well of the Oath” is and why it was so called; secondly, what “Haran” is, and why it is that on coming out from the Well aforesaid he comes at once  to Haran; thirdly, what “the place” is, and why, when he reaches it, the sun sets, and he himself goes to sleep." + ], + [ + "[6] Let us consider the first to begin with. To me, then, the Well seems to be a symbol of knowledge; for the nature of knowledge is to be very deep, not superficial; it does not display itself openly, but loves to hide itself in secrecy; it is discovered not easily but with difficulty and with much labour. And all this may be seen not only in branches of knowledge which contain a whole multitude of important problems, but in the simplest  studies as well.", + "[7] Just choose any art you please, not the best of them I beg of you, but the most ignoble of them all, which perhaps no free man whatever brought up in a city would voluntarily practise, and even in the country a servant who has to grapple with a harsh and ill-conditioned master, who forces him to many a distasteful task, would only undertake reluctantly.", + "[8] For it will be found to be not a simple but a subtle matter, one “which needs both hands to take it,” hard to discover and hard to master, a foe to hesitation and negligence and indifference, demanding abundance of zest and enthusiasm, of hard toil and anxious thought.", + "This is why the diggers of this well say that they found no water in it (Gen. 26:32), inasmuch as the ends pursued in the different branches of knowledge prove to be not only hard to reach, but absolutely beyond finding.", + "[9] That is why one man is a better scholar or geometrician than another, because no limit can be set to the extensions and enlargements of his subject in all directions. For what still remains is always waiting to engage us in fuller force than what we have already learned; so that the man who is supposed to have reached the very end of knowledge, is considered in the judgement of another to have come half way; while if Truth give her verdict, he is pronounced to be just beginning.", + "[10] For “life is short,” said one, “and art is long” ; and he best apprehends its greatness who honestly sounds its depths, and digs it like a well.", + "So there is a story that a grey-haired man of great age shed tears when dying, not in any cowardly fear of death, but by reason of his yearning for education, and the thought that he is now first entering upon it, when he takes his final leave of it.", + "[11] For the soul is just blossoming into knowledge, when the body’s bloom is withering away through the passing of years. So it is a hard fate to be tripped up by the heels before one has attained the prime of youthful strength to apprehend things more accurately. This experience is common to all who love to learn, who see new results of thought and study rise like a shining light in addition to the old. Many of these does the soul, if it be not cursed with barrenness, bring forth; many does Nature of herself shew to those whose understanding is sharp-sighted, without giving any sign beforehand of their coming.", + "So then the well of knowledge, the well without limit or ending, has been shewn to be such as I have described.", + "[12] Why it was named “Oath” I must now tell you. Matters that are in doubt are decided by an oath, insecure things made secure, assurance given to that which lacked it. From this we conclude that there is nothing which can be asserted with  greater certainty than that wisdom is essentially without end or limit.", + "[13] While then it is well to agree with one who discourses on these truths even if he takes no oath, let anyone who is not very prone to assent do so when the speaker is on his oath. And no one need shrink from taking such an oath, for he may rest assured that his name will appear on the register of those who have sworn truly. " + ], + [ + "[14] Enough on these points. The next thing to inquire is why, when four wells are dug by Abraham and Isaac and those about them (Gen. 21:25, 26:19–23), the fourth and last received as its name “Oath.”", + "[15] Probably Moses wishes to shew us allegorically that while both the constituents of which the universe is composed, and those from which we ourselves were moulded and so fashioned into human shape, are four in number, three of them are such as can in one way or another be apprehended, but the fourth is universally held to be beyond our powers of apprehension.", + "[16] In the world, then, we find the constituents that make up the whole to be four, earth, water, air, heaven. To three of these properties have been allotted, the discovery of which may be difficult, but is not wholly impossible.", + "[17] For, as regards earth, we perceive that it is a body, heavy, indissoluble, firm, cut up into mountain-ranges and level plains, divided by rivers and sea, so that parts of it are islands, part continents; that some of it has a light thin soil, some of it a deep soil; some of it rough, stiff, stony, and altogether barren, some level and soft and very fertile. These and a thousand other points we apprehend.", + "[18] As to water again, we perceive that it has several of the properties just enumerated in common with land, and others peculiar to itself; for some of it is sweet, some brackish, other parts marked by other differences; some water is fit to drink, other water unfit. We know too it has not either of these properties alike for all; one kind of water is drinkable by some but not by others, and what is undrinkable by some is quite drinkable by others; and that some is by nature cold, some by nature hot:", + "[19] for there are a thousand springs, in many places giving forth boiling water, and that not only on land, but in the sea. Yes, there have before now appeared veins emitting boiling water in mid ocean, which all the force of the surrounding seas pouring over them from time immemorial has been powerless to quench or even in any measure to check.", + "[20] Again we perceive that the air has a nature which gives way to the pressure of the objects around it; that it is the instrument of life, of breathing, of sight, hearing and the other senses; that it admits of density and rarity, of motion and stillness, that it undergoes all kinds of change; that it is the source of winter and summer, and of the autumn and spring seasons, that is, of the constituent parts that fix the limits of the year’s cycle." + ], + [ + "[21] All these we perceive; but heaven has sent to us no sure indication of its nature, but keeps it beyond our comprehension.  For what can we say? That it is a fixed mass of crystal, as some have thought? Or that it is absolutely pure fire? Or that it is a fifth substance, circular in movement, with no part in the four elements? Again, we ask, has the fixed and outmost sphere upward-reaching depth, or is it nothing but a superficies, without depth, resembling plane geometrical figures?", + "[22] Again: are the stars lumps of earth full of fire? Some people have declared them to be dells and glades and masses of fiery metal, for which they themselves deserve a prison and mill-house, in which such instruments are kept to punish impiety.  Or are the stars an unbroken, and, as one has said, “close” harmony, indissoluble compresses of ether? Are they living and intelligent, or devoid of intelligence and conscious life? Are their motions determined by choice or simply by necessity?", + "[23] Does the moon contribute a light of its own or a borrowed light caused by the rays of the sun shining on it? Or is it neither the one nor the other by itself absolutely, but the combined result of both, a mixture such as we might expect from a fire partly its own, partly borrowed? Yes, all these and suchlike points pertaining to heaven, that fourth and best cosmic substance, are obscure and beyond our apprehension, based on guess-work and conjecture, not on the solid reasoning of truth;", + "[24] so much so that one may confidently take one’s oath that the day will never come when any mortal shall be competent to arrive at a clear solution of any of these problems. This is why the fourth and waterless well was named “Oath,” being the endless and altogether baffling quest of the fourth cosmic region, heaven." + ], + [ + "[25] Let us see in what way that which occupies the fourth place in ourselves too is of such a nature as to be eminently and peculiarly incomprehensible. The factors in us of highest significance are four, body, sense-perception, speech, mind. Three of these are not obscure in all their aspects, but contain in themselves some indications by which they can be understood.", + "[26] What do I mean? We know that the body is threefold in dimensions and sixfold in movements, having three dimensions, length, depth, breadth, and twice as many, namely six, movements, upward, downward, to the right, to the left, forward, backward. Nor are we ignorant that it is a vessel for the soul, and we are perfectly aware that it comes to maturity, wears out, grows old, dies, is dissolved.", + "[27] With respect to sense-perception, also, we are not wholly dim-sighted, and blind, but we are able to say that it is divided into five parts, and that each part has its special organs fashioned by Nature, eyes for seeing, ears for hearing, nostrils for smelling, and for the others the organs in which they find their fit place,  and that they are understanding’s messengers, bringing to it reports of colours, forms, sounds, distinct scents and savours, in a word, of material substances and their qualities, and that they are bodyguards of the soul, making known all that they have seen or heard. And should any hurtful thing approach from without, they are aware of it beforehand, and on their guard against it, lest it should stealthily make its way in and cause incurable damage to their mistress.", + "[28] Sound, too, does not entirely elude our discernment. We know that one sound is shrill, another deep, one tuneful and melodious, another discordant and most unmusical, and again, one louder and another softer. They differ also in countless other respects, in genera, tone colours, intervals, conjunct or disjunct systems, and harmonies of the fourth, the fifth, the octave. ", + "[29] In articulate sound, moreover, an advantage possessed by man alone of all living creatures, there are particulars of which we are aware; as, for example, that it is sent up from the understanding, that it is in the mouth that it acquires articulation, that it is the beat or stroke of the tongue that imparts articulation and speech to the tension of the voice, but does not produce simply just an idle sound and unshapen noise, since it holds to the suggesting mind the office of its herald and interpreter." + ], + [ + "[30] Is, then, the fourth element in ourselves, the dominant mind, capable of being comprehended?  By no means. For what do we suppose it to be essentially? Breath or blood or body in general? Nay, we must pronounce it no body but incorporeal. Do we regard it as boundary-line, or form, or number, or continuity, or harmony, or what amongst all that exists?", + "[31] At our birth is it at once introduced into us from without? Or does the air which envelops it impart intense hardness to the warm nature within us, such as the red-hot iron receives when plunged at the smithy into cold water? The name of “soul” would seem to have been given to it owing to the “cooling” which it thus undergoes. Again: when we die, is it quenched and does it share the decay of our bodies, or live on for a considerable time, or is it wholly imperishable?", + "[32] And where in the body has the mind made its lair? Has it had a dwelling assigned to it? Some have regarded the head, our body’s citadel, as its hallowed shrine, since it is about the head that the senses have their station, and it seems natural to them that they should be posted there, like bodyguards to some mighty monarch. Others contend pertinaciously for their conviction that the heart is the shrine in which it is carried.", + "[33] So in every case it is the fourth of the series that is beyond comprehension. In the universe it is the heaven in contrast with the nature of air and earth and water; in man it is mind over against the body, and sense-preception, and the speech which gives expression to thought. It may well be that it is for this reason that the fourth year is designated in the sacred documents “holy and for praise ” (Lev. 19:24);", + "[34] for among created things, that which is holy is, in the universe, the heavens, in which natures imperishable and enduring through long ages have their orbits; in man it is mind, a fragment of the Deity, as the words of Moses in particular bear witness, “He breathed into his face a breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7).", + "[35] And each of these appears to me to be correctly spoken of as “for praise.” For it is in the heaven and in the mind that capacity resides to set forth in solemn strains hymns of praise and blessing in honour of the Father who is the author of our being. For man is the recipient of a privilege which gives him distinction beyond other living creatures, that, namely, of worshipping Him that IS; while the heaven is ever melodious,", + "[36] producing, as the heavenly bodies go through their movements, the full and perfect harmony. If the sound of it ever reached our ears, there would be produced irrepressible yearnings, frantic longings, wild ceaseless passionate desires, compelling to abstain even from necessary food, for no longer should we take in nourishment from meat and drink through the throat after the fashion of mortals, but, as beings awaiting immortality, from inspired strains of perfect melody coming to us through our ears. To such strains it is said that Moses was listening, when, having laid aside his body, for forty days and as many nights he touched neither bread nor water at all (Ex. 24:18)." + ], + [ + "[37] It seems, then, that the heaven, the original archetype of all musical instruments, was tuned with consummate skill for no other purpose than that the hymns sung in honour of the Universal Father may have a musical accompaniment.", + "And further we hear of Leah or Virtue being no longer capable of bearing children after the birth of her fourth son. She stayed, or rather was stayed, from childbirth, for she found, I imagine, all giving birth on her part dried up and unproductive, when she had put forth the bloom of “Judah,” or Confession of thankfulness, which is the perfect fruit.", + "[38] To say that she “stood still from bearing” (Gen. 29:35) differs not at all from saying that the servants of Isaac found no water in the fourth well (Gen. 26:32), since what is brought out by each of the figures is that all things are athirst for God, through Whom the birth of things, and their food when born, is watered into fruitfulness.", + "[39] It may be that men of narrow citizenship will suppose that the lawgiver delivers this very full discourse about digging wells, but those who are on the roll of a greater country, even this whole world, men of higher thought and feeling, will be quite sure that the four things propounded as a subject of inquiry to the open-eyed lovers of contemplation are not four wells, but the four parts of this universe, land, water, air, heavens.", + "[40] On each of these they bring to bear powers of thought of finest perfection, and find in three of them certain things within their comprehension, and to these discoveries of theirs they give three names, “injustice,” “enmity,” “spaciousness”  (Gen. 26:20 ff.). In the fourth, the heavens, as we pointed out not long ago, they find nothing whatever comprehensible. For the fourth well is found to be dry and waterless, and is entitled “oath” for the reason which has been mentioned." + ], + [ + "[41] Let us now examine the following context, and inquire what Haran is and why one who goes away from the well comes to it (Gen. 28:10). Haran is, then, as it seems to me, a sort of mother-city of the senses. For it is rendered sometimes “dug,” sometimes “holes,” one thing being signified by both words.", + "[42] For our body has after a fashion been dug out to make places for the organs of the senses, and each of the organs has been constituted a kind of “dug-out” of each sense, which nature provides for its lair. Whenever, therefore, a man has put out from the well which is called “Oath,” as it were from a port, of necessity he forthwith arrives  at Haran. For the man who sets forth on a journey from the place of knowledge, boundless and illimitable in its vastness, needs no escorting guides, but is without fail received by the senses.", + "[43] For our soul moves often by itself, stripping itself of the entire encumbrance of the body and escaping from the noisy pack of the senses, and often again when clad in these wrappings. What is apprehensible by intellect only is the lot of its unclad movement, while to that accompanied by the body fall the objects of sense-perception.", + "[44] If therefore a man is absolutely incapable of holding intercourse with the understanding by itself, he wins in sense-perception a second-best refuge, and a man who has been balked of the things of the intellect is forthwith swept down to those of sense-perception. For those who have failed to make a good voyage under the sails of the sovereign mind can always fall back upon the oars of sense-perception. ", + "[45] But it is an excellent course even when you have fallen into this plight not to grow old and live your life in it, but feeling that you are spending your days in a foreign country as sojourners to be ever seeking for removal and return to the land of your fathers. For it is Laban, a man without knowledge of species or genus or archetypal form, or conception or of any whatever of the objects of solely intellectual apprehension, but dependent wholly on things patent and palpable, which are cognizable by seeing and hearing and the powers akin to them,—he it is that has been deemed worthy of having Haran for his country, in which Jacob the lover of virtue dwells as in a foreign land for a little while, with his mind ever set on the return to his home.", + "[46] We recognize this in the words spoken to him by Rebecca, or Patience, his mother: “Be up and off,” she says, “to Haran to my brother Laban, and dwell with him for some days” (Gen. 27:43 f.). Do you mark, then, that the Practiser does not brook to spend a lifetime in the territory of the senses, but a few days and a short time in compliance with the necessities of the body to which he is tied, but that it is in the city discerned by the intellect that a life-long enduring is in store for him?" + ], + [ + "[47] Owing to this, as it seems to me, the grandfather also of his knowledge,  called Abraham, did not brook a prolonged stay in Haran. For we read “Abraham was seventy-five years old when he went forth from Haran” (Gen. 12:4), although his father lived there until his death. His father’s name was “Terah,” which means “scent-exploring.”", + "[48] Thus it is expressed in plain words in the sacred records that “Terah died in Haran” (Gen. 11:32): for he was there as a spy or explorer of virtue, not as a holder of its franchise, and he had recourse to scents, not to enjoyment of nourishing foods, not being capable as yet of being filled with sound sense, nay, not even of tasting it, but simply and solely of smelling it.", + "[49] For just as we are told that hounds used in the chase have by nature the sense of smell especially keen, so that by following the scent they can track out and find the dead bodies of wild animals at the greatest distance, in the same way does the man who is enamoured of discipline follow the path of the sweet effluvium given forth by justice and other virtues. Fain would he reach them, so wondrously delicious is the fragrance they give forth, but since he cannot, he turns his baffled  head this way and that, and snuffs, for he can do no more, at the exhalation of nobility, the holiest of meats : for he does not deny that he is greedy of knowledge and sound sense.", + "[50] Blessed indeed are those to whom it is granted to have joy of the love-charms of wisdom, and to banquet on the truths she has discovered, and after revelling in these delights still to be athirst, bringing a craving for knowledge which knows no fullness nor satiety.", + "[51] But those will carry off the second prize, to whom it was given not indeed to win enjoyment of the holy table but to fill their souls with the steam of its viands: for these will be quickened and enkindled with breaths of virtue, even as invalids, who are enfeebled because they cannot take nourishment, inhale the reviving preparations which the schools of physicians make up and have ready as effective remedies for faintness." + ], + [ + "[52] The information that Terah left the land of Chaldaea and migrated to Haran, taking with him his son Abraham and his kindred, is given us not with the object that we may learn as from a writer of history, that certain people became emigrants, leaving the land of their ancestors, and making a foreign land their home and country, but that a lesson well suited to man and of great service to human life may not be neglected.", + "[53] What is this lesson? The Chaldaeans are astronomers, while the citizens of Haran busy themselves with the place  of the senses. Accordingly Holy Writ addresses to the explorer of the facts of nature certain questions—“Why do you carry on investigations about the sun, as to whether it is a foot indiameter,  whether it is larger than the whole earth, whether it is many times its size ? And about the illuminations of the moon, whether it has a borrowed light, or whether it employs one entirely its own? And why do you search into the nature of the other heavenly bodies, or into their revolutions or the ways in which they affect each other and affect earthly things?", + "[54] And why, treading as you do on earth, do you leap over the clouds? And why do you say that you are able to lay hold of what is in the upper air, when you are rooted to the ground? Why do you venture to determine the indeterminate? And why are you so busy with what you ought to leave alone, the things above? And why do you extend even to the heavens your learned ingenuity? Why do you take up astronomy and pay such full and minute attention to the higher regions? Mark, my friend, not what is above and beyond your reach but what is close to yourself,  or rather make yourself the object of your impartial scrutiny.", + "[55] What form, then, will your scrutiny take? Go in spirit to Haran, ‘excavated’ land, the openings and cavities of the body, and hold an inspection of eyes, ears, nostrils, and the other organs of sense, and engage in a course of philosophy most vital and most fitting to a human being. Try to find out what sight is, what hearing is, what taste, smell, touch are: in a word what sense-perception is. Next, ask what it is to see and how you see, what it is to hear and how you hear, what it is to smell or taste or handle, and how each function is habitually performed.", + "[56] But before you have made a thorough investigation into your own tenement, is it not an excess of madness to examine that of the universe? And there is a weightier charge which I do not as yet lay upon you,  namely to see your own soul and the mind of which you think so proudly: I say ‘see,’ for to comprehend it you will never be able.", + "[57] Go to! Mount to heaven and brag of what you see there, you who have not yet attained to the knowledge of that of which the poet speaks in the line", + "All that existeth of good and of ill in the halls of thy homestead.”  But bring the explorer down from heaven and away from these researches draw the “Know thyself,”  and then lavish the same careful toil on this too, in order that you may enjoy the happiness proper to man.", + "[58] This character Hebrews call “Terah,” Greeks “Socrates.” For they say that “Know thyself” was likewise the theme of life-long pondering to Socrates, and that his philosophy was concerned exclusively with his own self. Socrates, however, was a human being, while Terah was self-knowledge itself, a way of thinking set before us as a tree of great luxuriance, to the end that lovers of virtue might find it easy, as they pluck the fruit of moral knowledge, to take their fill of nourishment saving and most sweet.", + "[59] Such do we find those to be whose part it is to explore good sense: but more perfect than theirs is the nature with which those are endowed who train themselves to engage in the contest for it. These, when they have thoroughly learned in all its details the whole study of the sense-perceptions, claim it as their prerogative to advance to some other greater object of contemplation, leaving behind them those lurking-places of sense-perception, to which the name of Haran is given.", + "[60] Among these is Abraham who gained much progress and improvement towards the acquisition of the highest knowledge: for when most he knew himself, then most did he despair  of himself, in order that he might attain to an exact knowledge of Him Who in reality IS. And this is nature’s law: he who has thoroughly comprehended himself, thoroughly despairs of himself self, having as a step to this ascertained the nothingness in all respects of created being. And the man who has despaired of himself is beginning to know Him that IS." + ], + [ + "[61] What Haran is and why the man who leaves the Well of the Oath comes to it, has been made evident. We must consider the point which naturally comes next, our third point, namely what the place is which he lights upon or meets, for we read “he met a place” (Gen. 28:11).", + "[62] Now “place” has a threefold meaning, firstly that of a space filled by a material form, secondly that of the Divine Word, which God Himself has completely filled throughout with incorporeal potencies; for “they saw,” says Moses, “the place where the God of Israel stood” (Ex. 24:10).  Only in this place did he permit them to sacrifice, forbidding them to do so elsewhere: for they were expressly bidden to go up “to the place which the Lord God shall choose” (Deut. 12:5), and there to sacrifice “the whole burnt offerings and the peace offerings” (Ex. 20:24) and to offer the other pure sacrifices.", + "[63] There is a third signification, in keeping with which God Himself is called a place, by reason of His containing things, and being contained by nothing whatever, and being a place for all to flee into, and because He is Himself the space which holds Him; for He is that which He Himself has occupied, and naught encloses Him but Himself.", + "[64] I, mark you, am not a place, but in a place; and each thing likewise that exists; for that which is contained is different from that which contains it, and the Deity, being contained by nothing, is of necessity Itself Its own place.", + "Witness is borne to what I am saying by this oracle delivered in Abraham’s case: “He came to the place of which God had told him: and lifting up his eyes he saw the place from afar” (Gen. 22:3 f.). ", + "[65] Tell me, pray, did he who had come to the place see it from afar? Nay, it would seem that one and the same word is used of two different things: one of these is a divine Word, the other God Who was before the Word.", + "[66] One who has come from abroad under Wisdom’s guidance arrives at the former place, thus attaining in the divine word the sum and consummation of service. But when he has his place in the divine Word he does not actually reach Him Who is in very essence God, but sees Him from afar: or rather, not even from a distance is he capable of contemplating Him; all he sees is the bare fact that God is far away from all Creation, and that the apprehension of Him is removed to a very great distance from all human power of thought.", + "[67] Nay, it may be that neither in this part of the text  does the lawgiver use “place” as a figurative description of the First Cause, but that what is signified is something like this: “he came to the place and looked up and saw with his eyes” the place itself to which he had come, that it was a long way off from God for Whom no name nor utterance nor conception of any sort is adequate." + ], + [ + "[68] Having laid down these preliminary definitions, we resume our story. When the Practiser comes to Haran, or Sense-perception, he “meets a place.” This “place” is not that filled by a mortal body, for of that all earth-born men have their share, for they have filled a space and occupy of necessity some place. Nor is it that best one, the third named above, of which it would hardly have been possible for him to form a conception by dwelling at the well called “Oath,” where Isaac has his abode, the self-taught nature that never desists from faith toward God and dim conception of Him.  No: the “place” on which he “lights” is the place in the middle sense, the Word of God, shewing, as it does, the way to the things that are best, teaching, as it does, such lessons as the varying occasions require.", + "[69] For God, not deeming it meet that sense should perceive Him, sends forth His Words to succour the lovers of virtue, and they act as physicians of the soul and completely heal its infirmities, giving holy exhortations with all the force of irreversible enactments, and calling to the exercise and practice of these and like trainers implanting strength and power and vigour that no adversary can withstand.", + "[70] Meet and right then is it that Jacob, having come to Sense-perception, meets not now God but a word of God, even as did Abraham, the grandfather of his wisdom.  For we are told that “the Lord departed, when He ceased speaking to Abraham, and Abraham returned to his place” (Gen. 18:33). By “returning to his place” is implied the meeting with sacred Words of a kind from which the God Who is prior to all things has withdrawn, ceasing to extend visions that proceed from Himself, but only those that proceed from the potencies inferior to Him.", + "[71] There is an extraordinary fitness in saying not that he came to the place, but that he met with a place; for coming is a matter of choice, but there is often no exercise of choice in meeting. Thus should the divine Word, by manifesting Itself suddenly and offering Itself as a fellow-traveller to a lonely soul, hold out to it an unlooked-for joy—which is greater than hope.  For Moses too, when he “leads out the people to meet God” (Ex. 19:17), knows full well that He comes all unseen to the souls that yearn to come into His presence." + ], + [ + "[72] The lawgiver further states the reason why Jacob “meta” a place: “for the sun was set,” it says (Gen. 28:11), not this sun which shews itself to our eyes, but the light of the supreme and invisible God most brilliant and most radiant. When this shines upon the understanding, it causes those lesser luminaries of words  to set, and in a far higher degree casts into shade all the places of sense-perception; but when it has gone elsewhither, all these at once have their dawn and rising.", + "[73] And marvel not if the sun, in accordance with the rules of allegory, is likened to the Father and Ruler of the universe: for although in reality nothing is like God, there have been accounted so in human opinion two things only, one invisible, one visible, the soul invisible, the sun visible.", + "[74] The soul’s likeness to God the lawgiver has shewn elsewhere, by saying “God made man, after the image of God made He him” (Gen. 1:27),  and again, in the law enacted against murderers, “he that sheddeth man’s blood, in requital for his blood shall there blood be shed, because in the image of God made I man” (Gen. 9:6); while the sun’s likeness to God he has indicated by figures.", + "[75] In other ways also it is easy to discern this by a process of reasoning.  In the first place: God is light, for there is a verse in one of the psalms, “the Lord is my illumination and my Saviour” (Ps. 27[28]:1). And He is not only light, but the archetype of every other light, nay, prior to and high above every archetype, holding the position of the model of a model. For the model or pattern was the Word which contained all His fullness—light, in fact ; for, as the lawgiver tells us, “God said, ‘let light come into being’ ” (Gen. 1:3), whereas He Himself resembles none of the things which have come into being.", + "[76] Secondly: as the sun makes day and night distinct, so Moses says that God kept apart light and darkness; for “God,” he tells us, “separated between the light and between the darkness (Gen. 1:4). And above all, as the sun when it rises makes visible objects which had been hidden, so God when He gave birth to all things, not only brought them into sight, but also made things which before were not, not just handling material as an artificer, but being Himself its creator." + ], + [ + "[77] In the course of sacred revelation “Sun” is used in several figurative senses. To begin with, it is used of the human mind, which is erected and set up as a city by those who under compulsion serve creation in preference to the uncreated One. Of them we read that “they built strong cities for Pharaoh, namely Peitho,” speech, to which persuading is dedicated, “and Raamses,” sense-perception, by which the soul is eaten through as though by moths: the name means “moth-shock”;—“and On,” the mind, which Moses called Sun-city (Ex. 1:11), since the mind, like a sun, has assumed the leadership of our entire frame and bulk, and makes its forces reach, like the sun’s rays, to every part of it.", + "[78] And everyone who has accepted the citizenship of the body, and the name of such is Joseph, chooses for his father-in-law the priest and devotee of Mind.  For Moses says that Pharaoh “gave him Asenath, daughter of Potiphera, priest of Heliopolis” (Gen. 41:45).", + "[79] Secondly, Moses uses “sun” figuratively for sense-perception, inasmuch as it shews all objects of sense to the understanding. It is of sense-perception that Moses has spoken on this wise: “the sun arose upon him when he passed by the appearance of God” (Gen. 32:31); for in truth, when we are no longer able to remain in company with holiest forms, which are as it were incorporeal images, but turn in a different direction and go elsewhere, we are led by another light, even that which answers to sense-perception, a light, as compared with sound reason, differing no whit from darkness.", + "[80] When this sun has risen it wakes up sight and hearing, yea taste and smell and touch, from their seeming sleep, but sound sense and justice and knowledge and wisdom, which it finds awake, it plunges in sleep.", + "[81] This is why the sacred word says that no one can be clean until the even (Lev. 11 passim), the understanding being till then at the mercy of the movements of sense-perception.", + "For the priests too he lays down an inexorable law, in the form of a prediction,  in the words: “He will not eat of the holy things unless he have washed his body with water, and the sun be set, and he have become clean” (Lev. 22:6 f.).", + "[82] For he makes it perfectly evident by this declaration that no one is absolutely free from pollution, so as to celebrate the holy and reverend mysteries, by whom the splendours of this mortal life, objects as they are of sense-perception, are still held in honour. But if a man disdains them, the consequence is that he is shone upon by the light of sound sense, and by means of it he will be able completely to purge and wash out of himself the defilements of vain opinions.", + "[83] Or look at the sun itself. Do you not see that the effect of its rising is the reverse of that of its setting? When it has risen, all things on earth are lit up, while those in the heavens are obscured: on the contrary, when it has set the stars appear, and earthly objects are hidden.", + "[84] It is precisely the same with us. When the light of our senses has risen like a sun, the various forms of knowledge, so truly heavenly and celestial, disappear from sight: when it reaches its setting, radiances most divine and most star-like sent forth from virtues come into view: and it is then that the mind also becomes pure because it is darkened by no object of sense." + ], + [ + "[85] The third meaning in which he employs the title sun is that of the divine Word, the pattern, as has been already mentioned, of the sun which makes its circuit in the sky. It is of the divine Word that it is said, “The sun went forth upon the earth, and Lot entered into Zoar, and the Lord rained on Sodom and Gomorrah brimstone and fire” (Gen. 19:23 f.).", + "[86] For the Word of God, when it arrives at our earthy composition, in the case of those who are akin to virtue and turn away  to her, gives help and succour, thus affording them a refuge and perfect safety, but sends upon her adversaries irreparable ruin.", + "[87] In a fourth sense, as I have already said, the title of “Sun” is applied to the Ruler of the Universe Himself, through Whose agency irremediable sins, when apparently concealed, are disclosed. For to God all things are known, even as all things are possible.", + "[88] In accordance with this we see Him bringing to the sun to be laid bare those energies of the soul that have been unstrung by lewd and licentious intercourse with Mind’s daughters, the senses, as though they were common strumpets.", + "[89] For he says “and the people abode in Shittim”—the meaning of this name is “thorns,” a symbol of passions pricking and wounding the soul—“and was defiled to commit whoredom with the daughters of Moab”—these are the senses, entitled daughters of Mind; for the translation of “Moab” is “from a father.” The lawgiver adds the command given him: “Take all the chiefs of the people and set them up publicly  unto the Lord before the sun, and the anger of the Lord shall be turned away from Israel” (Num. 25:1, 4).", + "[90] It was not only that, in his desire that the hidden deeds of unrighteousness should be made manifest, he caused the rays of the sun to shine about them. More than this, he gave the figurative title of “Sun” to the universal Father, to Whose sight all things are open, even those which are perpetrated invisibly in the recesses of the understanding. He says that when they have been made manifest, the One gracious Being will be found gracious.", + "[91] Why so? Because, if the understanding imagining that its wrongdoing will escape the notice of God as though He were not able to see all things, sin secretly in deep recesses; if subsequently, whether of itself or by the leading of another, it come to realize that it is impossible that anything should be otherwise than clear to God; if it unfold itself and all its doings, and bringing them out into the open expose them as it were in the sunlight to Him Whose eye is upon all things; if it say that it repents of the evil opinions which it formerly held in reliance upon an ill-judging judgement; if it acknowledge that nothing is withdrawn from His sight, but that all things are ever known and manifest to Him, not only those which have been done already, but the far greater body of those which are but contemplated in the future;—then has it gained cleansing and benefit and has appeased the just wrath of the convicting wielder of the lash who was standing over it. So is it with the soul if it embraces repentance, younger brother of complete guiltlessness." + ], + [ + "[92] There are other cases in which the lawgiver evidently takes the sun figuratively as applying to the First Cause, as in the Law enacted with reference to those who lend money on security. Read the Law: “If thou take thy neighbour’s garment to pledge thou shalt restore it to him before the setting of the sun; for this is his only covering, it is the garment of his shame. Wherein shall he sleep? If then he cry unto Me, I will hear him, for I am compassionate” (Ex. 22:26 f.).", + "[93] Do not those who suppose that the lawgiver feels all this concern about a cloak deserve, if not reproach, at least a reminder, in such terms as, “What are you saying, good sirs? Does the Creator and Ruler of the universe speak of Himself as compassionate in regard to so trifling a matter, a garment not returned to a debtor by a lender of money?", + "[94] To entertain such ideas is a mark of men who have utterly failed to see the greatness of the excellence of the infinitely great God, and against every principle human or divine attribute human pettiness to the Being Who is un-originate", + "[95] and incorruptible and full of all blessedness and happiness. What is there outrageous in money-lenders keeping the securities in their own hands, until they have got back their own? Someone will say perhaps that the debtors are poor men, and deserve pity. In that case would it not be better to make a law for contributing to the needs of such people instead of making them debtors, or for prohibiting lending upon security? But the legislator who has permitted this cannot reasonably be indignant with those who do not give up before the time what they have received,", + "[96] and treat them as devoid of piety. And does a man who has reached practically the extreme limit of poverty, and is clothed with a single rag, endeavour to attract fresh money-lenders, while he lets pass unheeded the compassion, which goes forth abundantly from all beholders, indoors, at temples,", + "[97] in the market-place, everywhere, to those who experience such misfortunes? But in this case he is supposed to bring and offer the sole covering of his shame, with which he veiled nature’s secret parts. And security for what? tell me that. Is it for a better garment to take its place? For no one is at a loss for the bare necessities of food, so long as springs gush forth, and rivers run down in winter, and earth yields her fruits in their season.", + "[98] And is the creditor either so swallowed up in riches or so exceedingly cruel as to be unwilling to afford a tetradrachm (or less it may be) to anybody, or make a loan rather than a free gift to one so poor, or to take as security the man’s only garment, an act which might well be given another name and called coat-snatching? For that is the coat-snatcher’s way; when they remove people’s apparel they carry it off, and leave the owners naked.", + "[99] And why did he take thought for night and that no one should sleep without clothing,  but shewed no such care for the day and that a man should not be indecent in his waking hours? Or is it not the case that by night and darkness all things are hidden, so that nakedness causes less shame or none at all, whereas by the light of day all things are uncovered, so that then one is more obliged to blush?", + "[100] And why did he enjoin not the giving but the returning of the garment? For we return what belongs to another, whereas the securities belong to the lenders rather than to the borrowers. And do you not notice that he has given no direction to the debtor, after taking the garment to use as a blanket, when day has come to get up and remove it and carry it to the money-lender?", + "[101] And indeed the peculiarities of the wording might well lead even the slowest-witted reader to perceive the presence of something other than the literal meaning of the passage: for the ordinance bears the marks of an explanatory statement rather than of an exhortation. A man giving an exhortation would have said, “If the garment given as security be the only one the borrower has, return it before evening, that he may have it to wrap round him at night.” But if he makes a statement  he would put as it stands: “thou shalt give it back to him, for this is the only wrapper he has, this is the garment without which he is not decent; what is he to sleep in?” (Ex. 22:27)." + ], + [ + "[102] Let what has been said and other considerations of the same kind suffice for the self-satisfied pedantic professors of literalism, and let us in accordance with the rules of allegory make such remarks on this passage as are appropriate. Well, then, we say that a garment is a figure for rational speech.  For clothing keeps off the mischiefs that are wont to befall the body from frost and heat; it conceals nature’s secret parts; and the raiment is a fitting adornment to the person.", + "[103] In like manner, rational speech was bestowed on man by God as the best of gifts. First of all, it is a weapon of defence against those who threaten him with violence. For as nature has fortified other living creatures each with appropriate means of guarding themselves whereby they may beat off those who attempt to do them an injury, so has she given to man a most strong redoubt and impregnable fort in rational speech. Grasping this with all his might as a soldier does his weapons, he will have a body-guard meeting his every need. Having this to fight before him, he will be able to ward off the hurts which his enemies would fain inflict upon him.", + "[104] In the second place, rational speech is a most necessary covering for matters of shame and reproach; it has great ability to conceal and hide up men’s sins. Thirdly, it serves as an adornment of the whole life: for this it is that makes each one of us better and leads every man to something higher.", + "[105] But there are some men who—mischievous pests that they are —actually hold rational speech in pawn, and rob its possessors of it, and, when they ought to foster its growth, cut it utterly down, like those who ravage the fields of their enemies and endeavour to destroy both the wheat and the other crops, which if left alone would have been a great boon to the consumers.", + "[106] What I mean is that there are some who wage an unrelenting war against the rational nature, men who cut down to the ground its first shoots, and squeeze the life out of its earliest growths, so rendering it to all intents and purposes barren and unproductive of noble doings.", + "[107] For there are times when, seeing it bent with irresistible impulse on education and smitten with a passionate love of the truths which philosophy has discovered, they conceive a jealous and malicious fear lest, grandly inspired and highly exalted, it should sweep like a torrent over their hair-splittings and plausible inventions for the overthrow of truth, and by their perversions of art  change the direction of its current, providing a channel leading to low and illiberal arts and sciences. Not infrequently they sterilize and block it up, and leave its natural greatness fallow and unfruitful, like bad guardians of orphans who let a rich and fertile farm become a wilderness. In fact, void of pity beyond all men, they are not ashamed to strip a man of his only garment, reason; for it says “this is all he has to put round him” (Ex. 22:27).", + "[108] What is this save reason? For as neighing is peculiar to a horse, and barking to a dog, and lowing to a cow, and roaring to a lion, so is speech and reason itself to man. For with this has man, the dearest to God of all living creatures, been dowered as specially his own, to be his stronghold, protection, armour, wall." + ], + [ + "[109] This is why he adds “this garment is the only cover of his unseemliness” (Ex. 22:27). For who is there that in so fair a fashion removes from sight what might cause shame or entail reproach in man’s life, as does reason? For ignorance, the kin of the irrational nature, is a matter of shame, while culture, near akin to reason, is his proper adornment:", + "[110] “In what, then, shall he sleep?” or, in other words, wherein shall a man find calmness and complete repose, save in reason? For reason brings relief to those of us whose fate is the most grievous. Even, then, as the kindliness and companionship and courtesy of friends has many a time healed and comforted those who were oppressed by sorrows or fears or some other ills, so not often but always is it mischief-averting reason that alone dislodges the overwhelming burden laid upon us by the distresses incident to our yokefellow the body, or by the unforeseen disasters that swoop down on us from without.", + "[111] For reason is our friend, familiar, associate, comrade, bound up with us, or rather cemented and united with us by an invisible and indissoluble natural glue. That is why it both foretells what will be expedient, and, when something undesirable has occurred, is at hand with unsolicited aid, bringing not only one or other of the two kinds of help, that of the adviser who does not act, or that of the fellow-combatant who does not speak, but both of these.", + "[112] For the power which reason exercises does not work by half measures, but is thoroughgoing on every side, and if it fails in its plans or in its execution of them, it has recourse to the third mode of help-giving, namely consolation.  For as there are healing applications for wounds, so are the disorders of the soul healed by reason, of which the lawgiver says that it must be restored “before the setting of the sun” (Ex. 22:26), which means before the going down of those all-illuminating rays of the God who is greatest and most present to help, who by reason of His compassion for our race sends them forth from heaven into the mind of man.", + "[113] For while there is abiding in the soul that most God-like and incorporeal light, we shall restore the reason which had been given in pledge, as a garment is given, in order that he, who has received back the possession which is man’s peculiar prerogative, may have opportunity to cover over all that is a shame to human life, to get the full benefit of the divine gift, and to enjoy calm repose through the presence of a counsellor and defender so true, so sure never to abandon the post in which he has been stationed.", + "[114] While, then, God still pours upon you the rays of His sacred light, hasten while it is day to restore to its owner the pledge you have seized. For when that light has set, you, like “all Egypt” (Ex. 10:21), will experience for ever a darkness that may be felt, and smitten with sightlessness and ignorance will be deprived of the possessions of all of which you deemed yourself master, and be perforce enslaved by Israel, the Seeing One, whom, though by nature immune from bondage, you seized as your chattel." + ], + [ + "[115] This long course  we have run to no other end than to shew how it fares with the Practiser’s mind. Its movements are uneven, sometimes towards fruitfulness, sometimes to the reverse; it is continually, as it were, ascending and descending. In the time of fruitfulness and uplifting, there shine upon it the archetypal and incorporeal rays of the fountain of reason, God the consummator, but when it sinks low and fails to yield, its light is the images of these rays, immortal “words” which it is customary to call angels. ", + "[116] That is why, in this passage, he says “he met a place; for the sun was set” (Gen. 28:11). For when the soul is forsaken by the rays of God, by means of which apprehensions of things are gained in greatest distinctness, there rises the secondary feebler light, not as before of facts but of words,  just as is the case in this material world; for the moon, ranking second to the sun when that has set, sends forth upon the earth a dimmer light.", + "[117] And further, to meet a “place” or “word” is an all-sufficient gift to those who are unable to see God Who is prior to “place” and “word,” inasmuch as they did not find their soul entirely bereft of illumination, but when that glorious undiluted light sank out of their sky, they obtained that which has been diluted. For we read in Exodus (10:23), “For the children of Israel there was light in all their dwellings,” so that night and darkness are for ever banished, with which they live whose blindness is not of the body, but of the soul, who know not virtue’s rays.", + "[118] Some, supposing that in this passage “sun” is a figurative expression for sense and mind, our own accepted standards of judgement, and “place” for the divine word, have understood the passage in this way: “the Practiser met a divine word when the mortal and human light had gone down.”", + "[119] For so long as mind and sense-perception imagine that they get a firm grasp, mind of the objects of mind and sense of the objects of sense, and thus move aloft in the sky,  the divine Word is far away. But when each of them acknowledges its weakness, and going through a kind of setting passes out of sight, right reason is forward to meet and greet at once the practising soul, whose willing champion he is when it despairs of itself and waits for him who invisibly comes from without to its succour." + ], + [ + "[120] We read next that “he took one of the stones of the place and set it under his head, and slept in that place” (Gen. 28:11). Our admiration is extorted not only by the lawgiver’s allegorical and philosophical teaching, but by the way in which the literal narrative inculcates the practice of toil and endurance.", + "[121] For he does not deem it worthy of one whose heart is set upon virtue to fare sumptuously and live a life of luxury affecting the tastes and ambitions of people who are called fortunate but are in reality laden with ill-fortune, whose whole life in the eyes of the most holy lawgiver is a sleep and a dream.", + "[122] In the daytime these people, when they have got through their outrages upon other men in law-courts, and council-chambers, and theatres, and everywhere, come home, poor wretches, to ruin their own abode, not that which consists of buildings, but the abode which is bound up by nature with the soul, I mean the body. Into it they convey an unlimited supply of eatables one after another, and steep it in quantities of strong drink, until the reasoning faculty is drowned, and the sensual  passions born of excess are aroused and raging with a fury that brooks no check, after falling upon and entangling themselves with all whom they meet, have disgorged their great frenzy and have abated.", + "[123] At night, when it is time to retire to bed, they recline exceedingly delicately on costly couches and gaily-coloured bedding with which they have provided themselves, aping the luxury of women to whom nature allows an easier mode of life, agreeable to the body of softer stamp  which the Creator Artificer has wrought for them.", + "[124] None such is a disciple of the holy Word, but only those who are really men, enamoured of moderation, propriety, and self-respect: men who have laid down as the foundation, so to speak, of their whole life self-control, abstemiousness, endurance, which are safe roadsteads of the soul, in which it can lie firmly moored and out of danger; men superior to the temptations of money, pleasure, popularity, regardless of meat and drink and of the actual necessaries of life, so long as lack of food does not begin to threaten their health; men perfectly ready for the sake of acquiring virtue to submit to hunger and thirst and heat and cold and all else that is hard to put up with; men keen to get things most easily procured, who are never ashamed of an inexpensive cloak, but on the contrary regard those which cost much as matter for reproach and a great waste of their living.", + "[125] To these men a soft bit of ground is a costly couch; bushes, grass, shrubs, a heap of leaves, their bedding; their pillow some stones or mounds rising a little above the general level. Such a mode of life as this the luxurious call hard faring, but those who live for what is good and noble describe it as most pleasant; for it is suited to those who are not merely called but really are men.", + "[126] Do you not see how, in the passage before us, the lawgiver represents the athlete of noble pursuits, in enjoyment of a princely abundance of materials  for comfort, as sleeping on the ground, and using a stone as his pillow, and a little later in his prayers asking for nature’s wealth, bread and raiment (Gen. 28:20)? For he  ever held up to ridicule the wealth which depends on the vain opinions of men, and scoffed at those who regarded it with reverence. In him we have the original pattern of the practiser’s soul, one at war with every man that is effeminate and emasculated." + ], + [ + "[127] So much, then, for the praise of the lover of toil and virtue in the literal sense of the passage. We have still to explore its symbolic teaching. In doing so it is of importance to know that the divine “place” and the holy land is full of incorporeal “words”; and these words are immortal souls.", + "[128] Of these words he takes one, choosing as the best the topmost one, occupying the place which the head does in the whole  body, and sets it up close to his understanding (Gen. 28:11); for the understanding is, we may say, the soul’s head. He does so professedly  to sleep upon it, but in reality to repose on the divine word, and lay his whole life, lightest of burdens, thereon.", + "[129] The divine word readily listens to and accepts the athlete to be first of all a pupil, then when he has been satisfied of his fitness of nature, he fastens on the gloves as a trainer does and summons him to the exercises, then closes with him and forces him to wrestle until he has developed in him an irresistible strength, and by the breath of divine inspiration he changes ears into eyes, and gives him when remodelled in a new form the name of Israel—He who sees.", + "[130] It is then too that he confers on him the crown of victory. Now the crown has a strange and outlandish and perhaps ill-sounding name; for the name given it by the president of the contest is “numbness”; for we read that “the broad part grew numb” (Gen. 32:25), a guerdon the most wondrous of all awards ever announced in honour of a victor.", + "[131] For if the soul which had been made partaker of indomitable power, and has attained perfection in contests for the winning of virtues, and has reached the very limit of the good and beautiful, instead of being lifted up in arrogance and stepping high in vaunting mood, conscious of power to take long strides on sound feet, should turn numb and shrink in the broad limb enlarged by conceit, and then after thus voluntarily disabling itself go with limping gait, that so it might fall behind the incorporeal beings—though seemingly worsted it will be the victor.", + "[132] For to give up prizes to one’s betters of free choice and not under compulsion is accounted highly profitable, since even the second prizes offered in this contest immeasurably transcend in greatness of honour the first prizes in all other contests." + ], + [ + "[133] Such, then, is the prelude of the God-sent vision, and it is now time to turn to the vision itself, and to examine in detail its several points. “He dreamed,” it runs, “and behold a stairway set up on the earth, and the top of it reached to heaven: and the angels of God were ascending and descending on it; and the Lord stood firmly upon it” (Gen. 28:12).", + "[134] “Stairway” when applied to the universe is a figurative name for the air; whose foot is earth and its head heaven. For the air extends in all directions to the ends of the earth from the sphere of the moon which is described by meteorologists as last of the heavenly zones, and first of those which are related to us. ", + "[135] The air is the abode of incorporeal souls, since it seemed good to their Maker to fill all parts of the universe with living beings. He set land-animals on the earth, aquatic creatures in the seas and rivers, and in heaven the stars, each of which is said to be not a living creature only but mind of the purest kind through and through; and therefore in air also, the remaining section of the universe, living creatures exist. If they are not to be apprehended by sense, what of that?", + "[136] The soul too is a thing invisible. Indeed it is more to be expected that air should be the nurse of living creatures than that land and water should, seeing that it is air that has given vitality to the creatures of land and water, for the Great Artificer made air the principle of coherence in motionless bodies, the principle of growth in bodies which move but receive no sense-impressions, while in bodies that are susceptible of impulse and sense-impression He made it the principle of life.", + "[137] Is it not then inconsistent that the element through which other things obtained vitality should be empty of living souls? Accordingly let no one take away nature at its best, as it is in living creatures, from the best of earth’s elements, air: for so far is air from being alone of all things untenanted, that like a city it has a goodly population, its citizens being imperishable and immortal souls equal in number to the stars.", + "[138] Of these souls some, such as have earthward tendencies and material tastes, descend  to be fast bound in mortal bodies, while others ascend,  being selected for return according to the numbers and periods determined by nature.", + "[139] Of these last some, longing for the familiar and accustomed ways of mortal life, again retrace their steps, while others pronouncing that life great foolery call the body a prison and a tomb, and escaping as though from a dungeon or a grave, are lifted up on light wings to the upper air and range the heights for ever.", + "[140] Others there are of perfect purity and excellence, gifted with a higher and diviner temper, that have never felt any craving after the things of earth, but are viceroys of the Ruler of the universe, ears and eyes, so to speak, of the great king,  beholding and hearing all things.", + "[141] These are called “demons” by the other philosophers, but the sacred record is wont to call them “angels” or messengers, employing an apter title, for they both convey the biddings of the Father to His children and report the children’s need to their Father. ", + "[142] In accordance with this they are represented by the lawgiver as ascending and descending: not that God, who is already present in all directions, needs informants, but that it was a boon to us in our sad case to avail ourselves of the services of “words” acting on our behalf as mediators, so great is our awe and shuddering dread of the universal Monarch and the exceeding might of His sovereignty.", + "[143] It was our attainment of a conception of this that once made us address to one of those mediators the entreaty: “Speak thou to us, and let not God speak to us, lest haply we die” (Ex. 20:19). For should He, without employing ministers, hold out to us with His own hand, I do not say chastisements, but even benefits unmixed and exceeding great, we are incapable of receiving them.", + "[144] It is a fine thought that the dreamer sees the air symbolized by a stairway as firmly set on the earth; for the exhalations given forth out of the earth are rarefied and so turned into air, so that earth is air’s foot and root and heaven its head.", + "[145] Do they not tell us that the moon is not an unmixed mass of ether, as each of the other heavenly bodies is, but a blend of ethereal and aerial substance; and that the black which appears in it, which some call a face, is nothing else than the commingled air which is naturally black and extends all the way to heaven ?" + ], + [ + "[146] Such then is that which in the universe is figuratively called stairway. If we consider that which is so called in human beings we shall find it to be soul. Its foot is sense-perception, which is as it were the earthly element in it, and its head, the mind which is wholly unalloyed, the heavenly element, as it may be called.", + "[147] Up and down throughout its whole extent are moving incessantly the “words” of God, drawing it up with them when they ascend and disconnecting it with what is mortal, and exhibiting to it the spectacle of the only objects worthy of our gaze; and when they descend not casting it down, for neither does God nor does a divine Word cause harm, but condescending out of love for man and compassion for our race, to be helpers and comrades, that with the healing of their breath they may quicken into new life the soul which is still borne along in the body as in a river. ", + "[148] In the understandings of those who have been purified to the utmost the Ruler of the universe walks noiselessly, alone, invisibly, for verily there is an oracle once vouchsafed to the Sage, in which it is said: “I will walk in you, and will be your God” (Lev. 26:12): but in the understandings of those who are still undergoing cleansing and have not yet fully washed their life defiled and stained by the body’s weight there walk angels, divine words, making them bright and clean with the doctrines of all that is good and beautiful.", + "[149] It is quite manifest what troups of evil tenants are ejected, in order that One, the good one, may enter and occupy. Be zealous therefore, O soul, to become a house of God, a holy temple, a most beauteous abiding-place; for perchance, perchance the Master of the whole world’s household shall be thine too and keep thee under His care as His special house, to preserve thee evermore strongly guarded and unharmed.", + "[150] It may be too that the Practiser has his own life presented to him in his vision as resembling a stairway; for practising is by nature an uneven business, at one moment going onward to a height, at another returning in the opposite direction, and at one time like a ship making life’s voyage with fair winds, at another with ill winds. For the life of practisers is, as one has said, a life “of alternate days,”  sometimes alive and wakeful, sometimes dead or asleep.", + "[151] And this suggestion is not perhaps wide of the mark. For while it is the portion of the wise to dwell in the heavenly region of Olympus, since they have ever learned to make the heights their resort, and the depths of Hades are the abode allotted to the bad, who from first to last have made dying their occupation, and from the cradle to old age are accustomed to corruption,", + "[152] the practisers—midway between those extremes—are often stepping up and down as upon a stairway, either being drawn upwards by the better portion or dragged in the opposite direction by the worse, until God, the umpire of this strife and conflict, bestows the prizes on the better order, and brings its opposite to perdition." + ], + [ + "[153] I must not fail to mention another idea which is present in the vision. The affairs of men are naturally likened to a ladder owing to their uneven course.", + "[154] For one day, as the poet says,  brings one man down from on high, and lifts another up, and nothing relating to man is of a nature to remain as it is, but all such things are liable to changes of every kind.", + "[155] Are not private citizens continually becoming officials, and officials private citizens, rich men becoming poor men and poor men men of ample means, nobodies becoming celebrated, obscure people becoming distinguished, weak men strong, insignificant men powerful, foolish men men of understanding, witless men sound reasoners?", + "[156] Such is the road on which human affairs go up and down, a road liable to shifting and unstable happenings, their uneven tenor manifestly laid bare by time’s unerring test." + ], + [ + "[157] The dream shewed the Ruler of the angels set fast upon the stairway, even the Lord: for high up like a charioteer high over his chariot or a helmsman high over his ship must we conceive of Him that IS standing over bodies, over souls, over doings, over words, over angels, over earth, over air, over sky, over powers descried by our senses, over invisible beings, yea all things seen and unseen: for having made the whole universe to depend on and cling to Himself, He is the Charioteer of all that vast creation.", + "[158] Let nobody, when he hears of His being set fast, think that anything co-operates with God to help Him to stand firmly. Let him account the truth signified by it to be equivalent to the statement that the sure God is the support and stay, the firmness and stability of all things, imparting as with the impress of a seal to whom He will the power of remaining unshaken. For it is because He stablishes and holds it together that the system of created things remains strongly and mightily free from destruction.", + "[159] He, then, that stands upon the stairway of heaven says to him who beholds the dream-vision, “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac: fear not” (Gen. 28:13). This oracle was the fort and most firm buttress of the practising soul. It clearly taught him that He Who is Lord and God of the universe is both Lord and God of his family, registered under both titles as held by father and grandfather, to the end that the world at large and the lover of virtue may have the same inheritance: for it has been said, “the Lord Himself is his inheritance”  (Deut. 10:9)." + ], + [ + "[160] Do not think that it is without special point that in this passage the divine relationship to Abraham is expressed by the words “Lord and God,” that to Isaac by the word “God” only. For Isaac is a figure of knowledge gained by nature, knowledge which listens to and learns from no other teacher but itself, while Abraham is a figure of knowledge gained by instruction; and Isaac is a dweller on his native soil, while Abraham is an emigrant and a stranger in the land.", + "[161] For, abandoning the foreign alien tongue of Chaldaea, the tongue of sky-prating astrology, he betook him to the language that befits a living creature endowed with reason, even the worship of the First Cause of all things.", + "[162] This character stands in need of two tending powers, governance and kindness, in order that by the authority of the ruler it may be led to give heed to his ordinances, and by his graciousness be greatly benefited. The other character needs the power of kindness only, for, having obtained by nature goodness and beauty of character, he was not one who had been improved by the admonishments of a governor, but as the result of the gifts showered upon him from above he shewed himself good and perfect from the outset.", + "[163] Now the name denoting the kind and gracious power is “God,” and that denoting the kingly ruling power is “Lord.” What good thing, then, would a man say was of the first rank, but the meeting with unmixed untempered kindness? And to what would he assign the second place, save to kindness which was a blend of governing and giving? It seems to me that it was by discerning this that the Practiser was led to pray a prayer worthy of the utmost admiration, that the Lord would become to him God (Gen. 28:21): for he wished no longer to be in dread of Him as ruler, but lovingly to honour Him as bestower of kindness.", + "[164] Might it not have been expected, I ask, that these and like lessons would cause even those who were blind in their understanding to grow keen-sighted, receiving from the most sacred oracles the gift of eyesight, enabling them to judge of the real nature of things, and not merely rely on the literal sense? But even if we do close the eye of our soul and either will not take the trouble or have not the power to regain our sight, do thou thyself, O Sacred Guide, be our prompter  and preside over our steps and never tire of anointing  our eyes, until conducting us to the hidden light of hallowed words thou display to us the fast-locked lovelinesses invisible to the uninitiate.", + "[165] Thee it beseems to do this; but all ye souls which have tasted divine loves, rising up as it were out of a deep sleep and dispelling the mist, hasten towards the sight to which all eyes are drawn; put away the heavy-footed lingering of hesitation, that you may take in all that the Master of the contests has prepared in your behoof, for you to see and hear." + ], + [ + "[166] The notable examples which may be used to shew these are countless. The text just quoted is one of them. For the oracle spoke of the man, who in kin was the Practiser’s grandfather, as his father; but did not, when mentioning his actual father, give him the title of parent. The words are: “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father”—and yet he was his grandfather—and again, “the God of Isaac” (Gen. 28:13), without the addition of “thy father.”", + "[167] Now, is it not worth while to investigate the cause of this? Assuredly it is. So let us carefully inquire what it is. The lawgiver says that virtue is gained either by nature or by practice or by learning, and has accordingly recorded the patriarchs of the nation as three in number, all wise men.  They had not at the start the same form of character, but they were all bent on reaching the same goal.", + "[168] Abraham, the earliest of them, had teaching as his guide on the way that leads to the good and beautiful, as we shall shew to the best of our ability in another treatise. Isaac who comes between him and Jacob had as his guide a nature which listens to and learns from itself alone. Jacob, the third of them, relied on exercises and practisings preparatory for the strenuous toil of the arena.", + "[169] There being, then, three methods by which virtue accrues, it is the first and third that are most intimately connected; for what comes by practice is the offspring and product of that which comes by learning; whereas that which comes by nature is, to be sure, of kin with them, being like a root at the bottom of all three, but the prerogative allotted to it is one which none contests and which needs no effort.", + "[170] Thus it is quite natural to say that Abraham, who owed his improvement to teaching, was father of Jacob, who was shaped and drilled by exercises, meaning not so much that the man Abraham was father of the man Jacob, as that the faculty of hearing which is a most ready instrument for learning begets and produces the faculty of exercise and practice so serviceable in contest.", + "[171] If, however, our practiser exert himself and run to the end of the course, and come to see clearly what he formerly saw dimly as in a dream, and receives the impress of a nobler character and the name of “Israel,” “he that seeth God,” in place of “Jacob,” “the supplanter,” he no longer claims as his father Abraham, the man who learned, but Isaac the man who was born good by nature.", + "[172] This is not a story invented by me, but an oracle inscribed upon the sacred tables. For we read that “Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to the well of the oath, and offered a sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac” (Gen. 46:1). Do you by this time perceive that the discourse before us is not about mortal men, but, as already stated, about the facts of nature? For you observe that the same subject is at one time named Jacob, with Abraham as his father, and at another is styled Israel with Isaac as his father, the reason for this being that which has been set forth in detail." + ], + [ + "[173] So, after saying “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father and the God of Isaac,” he adds “fear not” (Gen. 28:13). The words come naturally after the others; for how shall we any longer be afraid, when we have Thee our Defender, a weapon that brings deliverance from fear and every passion? Moreover, it was Thou that didst bring out of obscurity into distinctness the original patterns of our education, Abraham whose teacher, and Isaac whose parent  Thou wast: for Thou didst condescend to be named instructor of the one and father of the other, giving one the position of pupil, the other that of son.", + "[174] It is because Thou art this that Thou dost promise that Thou wilt give him the land also, virtue I mean abounding in all manner of fruits, whereon the Practiser slumbers, asleep to the life of sense, but awake to that of the soul and therefore at rest. Thou graciously approvest his peaceful repose, which he won not without war and war’s hardships, a war in which he bore no arms and destroyed no men (away with the thought!) but overthrew the troop of passions and vices that oppose virtue.", + "[175] Wisdom’s race is likened to the sand of the earth (ibid. 14), both because its number is without limit and because the sand-bank forces back the inroads of the sea, as those of sinful and unjust deeds are kept back by trained reason. And this, in accordance with the Divine promises, is broadening out to the very bounds of the universe, and renders its possessor inheritor of the four quarters of the world, reaching to them all, to East, and West, and South and North: for it is said, “It shall spread abroad, to the West and to the South and to the North and to the East?” (ibid. 14).", + "[176] The man of worth is not just a good to himself but a common good to all men. From his ready store he proffers the boon which is his to give. For as the sun is a light to all who have eyes, so is the wise man to such as are partakers of a rational nature," + ], + [ + "for he says “in thee shall all tribes be blessed” (ibid. 14).", + "[177] Now this divine utterance has its application to a man both in his relation to his own separate being, and as a social being related to others. For if the mind which is in me have been rendered pure by perfect virtue, then the “tribes” of that which is earthly in me are sharers of its purifying, those I mean which pertain to the senses and to that chiefest container, the body. Again, if one belonging to a household or city or country or nation become a lover of sound sense, it must be that that household and city and country and nation has a better mode of life.", + "[178] For just as the exhalations from aromatic herbs fill those who come near them with a sweet fragrance, in the same way those who belong to the circle and neighbourhood of a wise man, drinking in the atmosphere which spreads far and wide around him, are improved in character." + ], + [ + "[179] It is a vast boon to a toiling and striving soul to have as a Fellow-traveller God whose presence reaches everywhere: for we read, “Behold, I am with thee” (ibid. 15). Of what riches can we any longer stand in need, when we have Thee Who art alone the true riches, “keeping us on the way” which leads to virtue, along all its sections?  For there is not one part only of the life according to reason which tends to righteousness and virtue generally, but an infinite number of them, each a fresh starting-point on the road to wisdom." + ], + [ + "[180] Right good too are the words “I will bring thee again into this land” (ibid.). For excellent would it have been for the reasoning faculty to have remained in its own keeping and not have left its home for that of sense-perception; but, failing that, it is well that it should return to itself again.", + "[181] Perhaps, too, in these words he hints at the doctrine of the immortality of the soul: for, as was said a little before, it forsook its heavenly abode and came into the body as into a foreign land. But the Father who gave it birth says that He will not permanently disregard it in its imprisonment, but will take pity on it and loose its chains, and escort it in freedom and safety to its mother-city, and will not stay his hand until the promises given by words have been made good by actual deeds: for it is the special attribute of God and of Him alone to say what will surely come to pass.", + "[182] And yet what need to say this? For His words are in no way different from deeds.", + "So, then, the practising soul, now fully roused and ready for the inquiry into what concerns Him that IS, at first made the conjecture that He is in a place, but after a little while, it is seized with fear at the unscrutable nature of the quest and begins to change its mind. ", + "[183] For we read “Jacob rose up and said, that the Lord is in this place, but I knew it not” (ibid. 16). And it would have been better, I should say, to be ignorant than to suppose that God is in some place Who Himself contains and encompasses all things." + ], + [ + "[184] Rightly, therefore, was he afraid and said in an awestruck tone, “How dreadful is this place” (ibid. 17). For indeed most difficult of the “places” in the study of nature’s verities is that in which men inquire as to where, and whether at all in any thing the Existent Being is. Some say that everything that subsists occupies some space, and of these one allots to the Existent One this space, another that, whether inside the world or a space outside it in the interval between worlds.  Others maintain that the Unoriginate resembles nothing among created things, but so completely transcends them, that even the swiftest understanding falls far short of apprehending Him and acknowledges its failure.", + "[185] Wherefore he straightway cried aloud “This is not” (ibid. 17); this that I supposed, “that the Lord is in some place” (ibid. 16), is not so; for according to the true reckoning He contains, but is not contained. But this that we can point out and see, this world discerned by sense, is, as I now know, nothing but a house of “God,” that is, of one of the Potencies of the Existent, that is, the Potency which expresses His goodness.", + "[186] The world which he named a “house,” he also described as “gate of” the real “heaven” (ibid. 17). Now what is this? The world which only intellect can perceive, framed from the eternal forms in Him  Who was appointed in accordance with Divine bounties, cannot be apprehended otherwise than by passing on to it from this world which we see and perceive by our senses.", + "[187] For neither indeed is it possible to get an idea of any other incorporeal thing among existences except by making material objects our starting-point. The conception of place was gained when they were at rest: that of time from their motion, and points and lines and superficies, in a word extremities from the robe-like exterior which covers them.", + "[188] Correspondingly, then, the conception of the intelligible world was gained from the one which our senses perceive: it is therefore a kind of gate into the former. For as those who desire to see our cities go in through gates, so all who wish to apprehend the unseen world are introduced to it by receiving the impression of the visible world. The world whose substance is discernible only by intellect apart from any sight whatever of shapes or figures, but only by means of the archetypal eternal form present in the world which was fashioned in accordance with the image beheld by him with no intervening shadow,—that world shall change its title, when all its walls and every gate has been removed and men may not catch sight of it from some outside point, but behold the unchanging beauty, as it actually is, and that sight no words can tell or express." + ], + [ + "[189] On this matter enough has been said. There is another dream of the same type as the one we have been studying. It is the one concerning the flock whose markings varied. When he to whom it appeared has risen up  he relates it in these words: “The angel of God said unto me in sleep, ‘Jacob,’ and I said, ‘What is it?’ and he said, ‘Look up with thine eyes and see the he-goats and the rams leaping upon the sheep and the goats how they are pure white and speckled and ashy-sprinkled. For I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee. I am God that appeared unto thee in God’s Place, where thou anointedst unto Me a pillar and vowedst unto Me a vow. Now therefore arise and go forth out of this land and depart into the land of thy nativity, and I will be with thee�� ” (Gen. 31:11–13).", + "[190] You see that the Divine word proclaims as dreams sent from God not only those which appear before the mind under the direct action of the Highest of Causes, but those also which are revealed through the agency of His interpreters and attendant messengers who have been held meet to receive from the Father to Whom they owe their being a divine and happy portion.", + "[191] Observe also what follows. The sacred word deals with some as a king, enjoining on them authoritatively what they are to do, with some as a teacher indicating to pupils what will be for their good, with some as a counsellor suggesting the best decisions, and greatly benefiting them since of themselves they do not know the advantageous course to take. Towards others it acts as a friend with winning condescension imparting to them even many secret truths which are not allowed to reach the ears of the uninitiated.", + "[192] Sometimes it addresses an inquiry to this or that one, as it does to Adam, asking “Where art thou?” (Gen. 3:9), an inquiry to which one might with fitness make the reply “Nowhere,”  seeing that nothing pertaining to man remains as it is, but all things are in motion, and this is true of soul, and of body, and of things external. For instability characterizes our reasonings, receiving as they do from the same objects not the same but contrary impressions. It characterizes also our body, as is shewn by the changes that occur in every period of life from infancy to old age. It characterizes too matters affecting us from without, tossed about as they are on the current of ever restless chance." + ], + [ + "[193] When, however, God  has come to the company  of His friends, He does not begin to say His say before He has addressed each such friend calling him by name, in order that they may prick up their ears, and with stillness and attention so listen to the sacred precepts as to remember them for ever; for it is also said in another place, “Keep silence, and hearken” (Deut. 27:9).", + "[194] It is on this wise that Moses is addressed at the Bush, for we read “When He saw that he drew nigh to look, the Lord called him from out of the bush saying, ‘Moses, Moses.’ And he said, ‘What is it?’ ” (Ex. 3:4).", + "And Abraham, at the offering up of his beloved and only son as a burnt offering, is so addressed, both when he was beginning  to offer the sacrifice, and when, after giving proof of his piety, he was prevented from causing to disappear from among men the nature which learns untaught, called Isaac.", + "[195] For when he was at the beginning we are told “God did prove Abraham, and said unto him, ‘Abraham, Abraham’; and he said ‘Here am I.’ And He said, ‘Take thy beloved son, whom thou lovedst, even Isaac, and offer him up.’ ” And when he had now brought the victim to the altar, then “an angel of the Lord called to him out of heaven, saying ‘Abraham, Abraham.’ And he said, ‘Here am I.’ And he said, ‘Lay not thine hand upon the lad, neither do thou anything unto him’ ” (Gen. 22:1, 2, 9–12).", + "[196] The Practiser being one of the band of friends of God is, as we might expect, accorded the same prerogative and addressed by name; for we read “The angel of God said to me in sleep, ‘Jacob.’ And I said, ‘What is it?’ ” (Gen. 31:11).", + "[197] And having been addressed by name he pays attention, endeavouring to note precisely the signs which appeared: and the signs are the couplings and breedings of thoughts in the guise of animals; for we read: “He lifted up his eyes and saw the he-goats and the rams mounting upon the sheep and the goats” (cf. Gen. 31:12).", + "[198] A he-goat is leader of a herd of goats, a ram of a flock of sheep; and these animals are figures of two perfect ways of thinking, of which the one cleanses and purges a soul from sin, and the other nourishes it and renders it full of high achievements. Such are the leading thoughts at the head of the herds within us; and the herds, possessed of dispositions answering to the names of sheep and goats  which represent them, dart and go forward towards righteousness with earnestness.", + "[199] Having therefore opened the hitherto closed eye of the understanding, Jacob saw the perfect thoughts which correspond to he-goats and rams brought to the sharpest edge both for the diminishing of sins and the increase of all that we ought to do,—saw how they mount the sheep and the goats, that is to say the souls that are still young and tender, just fresh and in the very prime and flower of youth,—saw that they do so, not in the pursuit of irrational pleasure, but using the invisible seed of the doctrines of sound sense.", + "[200] For rich in offspring is this wedlock, seeing that it does not bring one body to the embraces of another but mates well-endowed souls with perfect virtues. Mount then, all ye right thoughts and reasonings of wisdom, impregnate, impart seed, and whenever you catch sight of a soul of deep rich virgin soil, pass it not by, but inviting it to union and intercourse with yourselves, render it pregnant and so effect its consummation; for all that it brings forth shall be goodly, male offspring “consisting of pure white, speckled and ashy-sprinkled”  (Gen. 31:10)." + ], + [ + "[201] We must search for the force and meaning of each of these births. Thoroughly-white, then, are the brightest and most conspicuous, “thorough” being often applied to what is great, whence has come the custom of calling what is largely evident and largely notable “thoroughly-evident” and “thoroughly-notable.”", + "[202] His wish then is that the firstborn progeny of the soul which has received the holy seed should be “thoroughly-white,” resembling not a dim light, but a brilliant shining, such as a cloudless ray coming from the sun’s beams would appear in a clear atmosphere at noontide.", + "It is his wish that they be also variegated, not after the fashion of foul leprosy the changeful disease, which assumes so many different forms, nor destined, owing to lack of firmness of judgement, to lead an unstable agitated life, but engraved with inscriptions, and stamped with seals differing one from another but all of them genuine,  the blending and combination of their proper marks producing a harmony like that of music.", + "[203] For the art of variegation has been looked upon by some as so obscure and paltry a matter that they have relegated it to weavers. I on the contrary regard with awe not only the art itself but its very name, and most of all when I fix my eyes upon the sections of the earth, upon the spheres of heaven, the many different kinds of animals and plants, and that vast variegated piece of embroidery, this world of ours.", + "[204] For I am straightway compelled to think of the artificer of all this texture as the inventor of the variegator’s science, and I do homage to the inventor, I prize the invention, I am dumbfounded at the result, and that though I am incapable of seeing even the smallest part of it, but from the part brought within the range of my vision, if indeed it has been brought, I form in detail a conjecture about the whole on the strength of what analogy leads me to expect.", + "[205] Further-more, I admire the lover of wisdom, for having taken up this same art, in that he sees fit, when he finds a multitude of different things, to bring them together out of difference into oneness and to weave them together. For instance, he takes from the “grammar” taught to children the two first subjects, writing and reading; from the more advanced “grammar” acquaintance with the poets and a learning of ancient history ; from arithmetic and geometry absolute accuracy in matters which require a making of calculations and noting of proportion; from music rhythms and metres and melodies enharmonic, chromatic, diatonic, conjunct too and disjunct; from rhetoric, conception, expression, arrangement, treatment, memory, delivery ; from philosophy everything that has been omitted in the items given already, and all things else that constitute the whole life of men,—and from these combined he frames a single work gay and bright to a degree, blending wide learning with readiness to learn still more.", + "[206] The artificer of this fabric was called by the holy word Bezaleel (Ex. 31:2 ff.), which is when interpreted “in the shadow of God.” For it is the copies of which he is chief builder, whereas Moses builds the patterns; for this reason the one drew an outline as it were of shadows, while the other fashioned no shadows, but the existences themselves that served as archetypes.", + "[207] Now if the holy tabernacle was built by the variegator’s art, and the name of “variegator” or embroiderer is reserved for the sage in the oracles of revelation, " + ], + [ + "and the beautiful variegated fabric of God, even this world of ours, has been wrought in its completeness by a knowledge full of all wisdom, how can we do otherwise than welcome variegation as a tool for the making of knowledge?", + "[208] Its most holy image shall be enshrined in all the house of Wisdom both in heaven and on earth. And from it are derived the varieties of thinking which the Practiser’s labour creates, for after those of thorough-white he straightway saw those that were variegated, bearing the impress of the stamp of training. ", + "[209] Third come the ashy-sprinkled. And yet what man of sound sense would not say that these also are of the variegated kind? The fact is that it is not about the difference between beasts that the lawgiver shews this deep concern, but rather about the way that leads to nobility of life. ", + "[210] For he wishes the man who goes in quest of this to besprinkle himself with ashes and lustral water, inasmuch as it is recorded that earth and water mixed together and shaped were by the power of the Moulder of men set apart to form this body of ours, wrought as no handiwork, but a product of nature working all unseen.", + "[211] It is, then, the beginning of wisdom not to be forgetful of one’s own self, but ever to set before one’s eyes the elements of which one consists; for in this way a man would purge out of himself high vaunting, the most God-abhorred of evil things. For who, when he lays to heart that ashes and water are for him the beginnings of existence, will be puffed up by conceit and raised aloft?", + "[212] That is why the lawgiver required those who were about to sacrifice to besprinkle themselves with the materials I have mentioned. He held no one worthy of offering sacrifices who has not first come to know himself and comprehended human nothingness, inferring from the elements of which he is composed that he is nothing worth." + ], + [ + "[213] These three signs, the thorough-white, the variegated, the ashy-sprinkled, are seen to be imperfect in the Practiser inasmuch as he is not yet perfect, whereas in the perfect man they too are perfect.", + "[214] Let us see in what way this is true. When the great High-priest was about to perform the public services enjoined by law, the holy word required that he should in the first place sprinkle himself with water and ashes (Ex. 29:4)  as a reminder to him of himself—for even that wise one, Abraham, when he was on his way to intercede with God, spoke of himself as earth and ashes (Gen. 18:27)—in the next place that he should put on the tunic reaching to the feet, and over it that which he has entitled the embroidered or variegated breastplate (Ex. 29:5), a representation and copy of the shining constellations. ", + "[215] For there are, as is evident, two temples of God: one of them this universe, in which there is also as High Priest His First-born, the divine Word, and the other the rational soul, whose Priest is the real Man; the outward and visible image of whom is he who offers the prayers and sacrifices handed down from our fathers, to whom it has been committed to wear the aforesaid tunic, which is a copy and replica of the whole heaven, the intention of this being that the universe may join with man in the holy rites and man with the universe.", + "[216] The High Priest has now been exhibited as having two characteristic marks, the sprinkled and the variegated: the third and most perfect, which is styled thorough-white, we will now proceed at once to indicate. When this same High Priest goes into the inmost part of the Holy Place, he divests himself of the variegated robe, and puts on another one of linen made from the purest kind (Lev. 16:4),", + "[217] a figure of strong fibre, imperishableness, most radiant light: for fine linen is hard to tear, and is made from no mortal creature,  and moreover when carefully cleaned has a very brilliant and luminous colour.", + "[218] What is symbolically intimated by these figures is, that among those who worship Him that IS with guileless purity, there is not one that does not, in the first place, exercise strength of will and judgement by a contempt for human interests which ensnare and hurt and enfeeble us; and, in the second place, laugh to scorn all the unsubstantial aims of mortal men, and set his heart on immortality; and, last of all, live irradiated by the cloudless splendour of truth, no longer entertaining any of the creations of false opinion so dear to darkness." + ], + [ + "[219] Let this stand as my description of the great High Priest marked with the three seals aforesaid, the thorough-white, the variegated, and the ashy-sprinkled. The man whose desires are set on human statecraft, Joseph by name, lays claim, as we can see, neither to the first nor to the third of these marks, but to the intervening one, the variegated, only.", + "[220] For we are told that he had a coat of varied colours (Gen. 37:3). He did not besprinkle himself with lustral rites, from which he would have learned that he was an amalgam of ashes and water, and was incapable of touching the all-white and gleaming vestment, which is virtue, but arrayed himself in the woven robe of statecraft, a robe richly variegated, containing but a most meagre admixture of truth, but many large portions of false, probable, plausible, conjectural matter, out of which sprang up all the sophists of Egypt, augurs, ventriloquists, soothsayers, proficients in decoying, charming, and bewitching, whose insidious artifices it is no easy task to escape.", + "[221] So Moses shews the insight of a philosopher in introducing this coat all blood-stained (Gen. 37:31), since the whole life of the statesman is stained, warring and being warred upon, receiving blows and shots from the mishaps which befall it.", + "[222] Search then the man who is thoroughly immersed in public business, the man on whom the interests of the state depend, and do not be daunted by those who hold him in admiration. You will find many a disease lurking in him, many a baneful thing fastened upon him, each one of them violently gripping his soul and invisibly wrestling with it, striving to overthrow it and cast it down, either because the multitude are dissatisfied with his leadership, or because a more powerful rival is attacking him.", + "[223] Envy again is a grievous foe, difficult to shake off, a growth which always settles on what men call “doing well,” and hard it is to escape from." + ], + [ + "[224] Why then do we invest ourselves with the gauds of political importance, as with some costly garment, and bear ourselves proudly in it, deceived by the fairness of what meets the eye, and not perceiving its insidious and dangerous ugliness which is out of sight and hidden from observation?", + "[225] Come, let us cast off this showy tunic, and put on the sacred one inwoven with the varied embroidery of virtues. So shall we escape also the ambushments, which unskilfulness, ignorance and indiscipline set for our ruin, to which company Laban belongs.", + "[226] For when the holy word had cleansed us with the water of sprinkling made ready for our sanctification, and bringing us to the test had decked us with the varied richness of the secrets of true philosophy, and had made us clear and distinct and bright, it censures the evil-designing character stirred up to spoil the effects of the said treatment.", + "[227] For he says, “I have seen all that Laban doeth unto thee” (Gen. 31:12), the reverse, that is, of all that I bestowed upon thee, even sore foulness and spuriousness and darkness in every part.", + "Yet there can be no cowering fear for the man who relies on the hope of the divine comradeship, to whom are addressed the words “I am the God who appeared to thee in the place of God” (Gen. 31:13).", + "[228] Surely a right noble cause of vaunting it is for a soul, that God deigns to shew Himself to and converse with it. And do not fail to mark the language used, but carefully inquire whether there are two Gods; for we read “I am the God that appeared to thee,” not “in my place” but “in the place of God,” as though it were another’s. ", + "[229] What, then, are we to say? He that is truly God is One, but those that are improperly so called are more than one. Accordingly the holy word in the present instance has indicated Him Who is truly God by means of the articles saying “I am the God,” while it omits the article when mentioning him who is improperly so called, saying “Who appeared to thee in the place” not “of the God,” but simply “of God.”", + "[230] Here it gives the title of “God” to His chief Word, not from any superstitious nicety in applying names, but with one aim before him, to use words to express facts.  Thus in another place, when he had inquired whether He that IS has any name, he came to know full well that He has no proper name,  and that whatever name anyone may use of Him he will use by licence of language; for it is not the nature of Him that IS to be spoken of, but simply to be." + ], + [ + "[231] Testimony to this is afforded also by the divine response made to Moses’ question whether He has a name, even “I am He that is” (Ex. 3:14). It was given in order that, since there are not in God things which man can comprehend, man may recognize His subsistence.", + "[232] To the souls indeed which are incorporeal and are occupied in His worship it is likely that He should reveal Himself as He is, conversing with them as friend with friends; but to souls which are still in a body, giving Himself the likeness of angels, not altering His own nature, for He is unchangeable, but conveying to those which receive the impression of His presence a semblance in a different form, such that they take the image to be not a copy, but that original form itself.", + "[233] Indeed an old saying is still current that the deity goes the round of the cities, in the likeness now of this man now of that man, taking note of wrongs and transgressions.  The current story may not be a true one, but it is at all events good and profitable for us that it should be current.", + "[234] And the sacred word ever entertaining holier and more august conceptions of Him that IS, yet at the same time longing to provide instruction and teaching for the life of those who lack wisdom, likened God to man, not, however, to any particular man. ", + "[235] For this reason it has ascribed to Him face, hands, feet, mouth, voice, wrath and indignation, and, over and beyond these, weapons, entrances and exits, movements up and down and all ways, and in following this general principle  in its language it is concerned not with truth, but with the profit accruing to its pupils.", + "[236] For some there are altogether dull in their natures, incapable of forming any conception whatever of God as without a body, people whom it is impossible to instruct otherwise than in this way, saying that as a man does so God arrives and departs, goes down and comes up, makes use of a voice, is displeased at wrongdoings, is inexorable in His anger, and in addition to all this has provided Himself with shafts and swords and all other instruments of vengeance against the unrighteous.", + "[237] For it is something to be thankful for if they can be taught self-control by the terror held over them by these means. Broadly speaking the lines taken throughout the Law are these two only, one that which keeps truth in view and so provides the thought “God is not as man” (Num. 23:19), the other that which keeps in view the ways of thinking of the duller folk, of whom it is said “the Lord God will chasten thee, as if a man should chasten his son” (Deut. 8:5)." + ], + [ + "[238] Why, then, do we wonder any longer at His assuming the likeness of angels, seeing that for the succour of those that are in need He assumes that of men? Accordingly, when He says “I am the God who was seen of thee in the place of God” (Gen. 31:13), understand that He occupied the place of an angel only so far as appeared, without changing, with a view to the profit of him who was not yet capable of seeing the true God.", + "[239] For just as those who are unable to see the sun itself see the gleam of the parhelion and take it for the sun, and take the halo round the moon for that luminary itself, so some regard the image of God, His angel the Word, as His very self.", + "[240] Do you not see how Hagar, who is the education of the schools, says to the angel “Thou art the God that didst look upon me”? (Gen. 16:13); for being Egyptian by descent she was not qualified to see the supreme Cause. But in the passage upon which we are occupied,  the mind is beginning, as the result of improvement, to form a mental image of the sovereign Ruler of all such Potencies.", + "[241] Hence it is that He Himself says “I am the God,” whose image thou didst aforetime behold deeming it to be I Myself, and didst dedicate a pillar engraved with a most holy inscription  (Gen. 31:13); and the purport of the inscription was that I alone am standing (Ex. 17:6) and that it was I alone that established the being of all things, bringing confusion and disorder into order and array, and sustained the universe to rest firm and sure upon the mighty Word, who is My viceroy." + ], + [ + "[242] For “pillar” is a symbol of three things, of standing, of dedicating, of inscription. The standing and inscription have been made clear, but the dedicating demands explanation.", + "[243] The whole heaven and the whole world is an offering dedicated to God, and He it is who has created the offering; and all God-beloved souls, citizens of the world, consecrate themselves, allowing no mortal attraction to draw them in the opposite direction, and they never grow weary of devoting and sanctifying their own imperishable life.", + "[244] Foolish is the man who dedicates a pillar not to God but to himself, erecting  what pertains to creation with its tossing this way and that, and holding worthy of laudatory inscriptions things which, richly deserving to be denounced and reproved, had better never have been made subjects for inscriptions at all, or if once so made have been forthwith erased.", + "[245] This is why the holy word says expressly “Thou shalt not erect a pillar to thyself” (Deut. 16:22); for in reality nothing human does stand, even though some falsely say so till they burst. ", + "[246] Nay, they do not only think that they are firmly established but also that they deserve honours and inscriptions, being oblivious of Him Who is alone deserving of honour and really stands. For when they turn away and stray out of the course which leads to virtue, sense-perception, the woman inherent in their nature, makes them stray still more, and forces them to run aground.", + "[247] Wherefore shattered to pieces like a ship, the whole soul is set up  after the fashion of a pillar. For the sacred records say that Lot’s wife having turned to what was behind her became a pillar of salt (Gen. 19:26).", + "[248] And that is fit and natural, for if one has not a clear view of what is farther on, of what is worth seeing and hearing, of virtues, that is to say, and virtuous actions, but turns round to look at  what is behind and at his back; if he pursues the deafness of glory, the blindness of wealth, the stupidity of bodily robustness, and the empty-mindedness of external beauty, and all that is akin to these, he will be set up as a soulless pillar, with its substance streaming down from it; for salt has no firmness." + ], + [ + "[249] Right well, then, does the Practiser, having learned by continuous exercises that creation is of itself a thing of movement, whereas the Unoriginate is free from alteration and from movement, raise a pillar to God, and having raised it anoints it: for we read “Thou anointedst unto Me a pillar” (Gen. 31:13).", + "[250] But imagine not that here we have a stone anointed with oil; rather that the doctrine of God as the only Being that stands is exercised and practised in a soul with the trainer’s science, not that by which bodies are made stout and brawny, but that by which understanding acquires a vigour and strength which no opponent can overcome.", + "[251] For he that has set out for the pursuit of noble practices is a lover of contest and a lover of exercises. Hence having thoroughly mastered the sister art to that of the physician, namely that of the trainer, having put all thoughts of virtue and piety through a course of training and drill, he will dedicate to God an offering most beauteous and firmly established.", + "[252] Accordingly after the dedication of the pillar he goes on to say, “Thou didst vow to me a vow” (ibid.). Now a vow is in the fullest sense a dedication, seeing that a man is said to give a gift to God when he renders to Him not only his possessions but himself the possessor of them.", + "[253] For the lawgiver says, “He shall be holy that letteth the locks of the hair of his head grow long” (Num. 6:5), that is, the man who has made the vow; and if he is holy, he is nothing else than a dedicated offering, seeing that he no more comes in contact with anything unhallowed and profane.", + "[254] What I say is vouched for by that prophetess and mother of a prophet, Hannah, whose name is in our tongue “Grace.” For she says that she is giving as a gift to the Holy One her son Samuel (1 Sam. 1:11),  not meaning a human being but rather an inspired temper possessed by a God-sent frenzy. And “Samuel” means “appointed for God.”", + "[255] Why then, O soul, dost thou any longer trifle and engage in profitless labours, and not rather become a pupil of the Practiser, and learn to use weapons and engage in wrestlings against passion and vainglory? For haply, when thou hast learned, thou shalt be a herdsman, not of a herd without mark, without reason, without discipline, but of one bearing the stamp of genuineness, endowed with reason, and with varied markings.", + "[256] Shouldst thou become its leader, thou wilt bewail the pitiable race of men, but wilt never cease to approach the Deity with supplications; thou wilt never tire of proclaiming the blessedness of God, nay, wilt grave on pillars holy hymns, that thou mayest not only tell in eloquent language but also sing in sweet melody the excellences of Him that IS. For so shalt thou be able also to return to thy father’s house, and be quit of that long endless distress which besets thee in a foreign land." + ] + ], + "Appendix": [ + "APPENDIX TO DE SOMNIIS, I", + "§§ 1–2. Wendland calls attention to the resemblance between these sections coupled with De Som. ii. 1–2, and the classification ascribed to Posidonius in Cic. De Div. i. 64: “Tribus modis censet (sc. Posidonius) deorum adpulsu homines somniare, uno, quod provideat animus ipse per sese, quippe qui deorum cognatione teneatur, altero, quod plenus aer sit inmortalium animorum, in quibus tamquam insignitae notae veritatis appareant, tertio, quod ipsi di cum hominibus colloquantur.” Of these the first agrees fairly well with Philo’s third: “When the soul, setting itself in motion and agitation of its own accord, becomes frenzied, and with the prescient power due to such inspiration foretells the future.”", + "There are also distinct points of contact between Posidonius’ second kind and the dreams of this book. In the first vision it is the Logos which Jacob “meets,” and the Logoi are described in § 127 in words which recall the “animi immortales” of Posidonius. Also the point is made in § 241 that it was God’s “image,” not God Himself, which the dreamer beheld. In the second vision it is the Angel who speaks, and the point that God uses His ministers for this purpose is stressed in § 190. Whether any such connexion can have been made between Posidonius’s third kind and Philo’s first, i.e. the dreams treated in the lost book, seems to me more doubtful. If, as Wendland supposes, these were the warnings sent to Abimelech (Gen. 20:3–7), and to Laban (Gen. 31:24), it is true that in both these cases “God” is said to have come and spoken, but would Philo have admitted that these were real visions of the Self-existent? Moreover the main ideas underlying the two classifications are different. With Posidonius it is the distinction between the natures of the divine monitors, with Philo the presence or absence of human volition. The conclusion seems to be that while he probably had the Stoic classification in mind, he has put it into a very different shape.", + "§§ 21–23. The illustrations which follow are mostly drawn primarily from Wendland’s article in Sitzungsberichte der Königlich preussischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, 1897, pp. 1074–1079. Wendland refers usually to Diels’s Doxographi, to which I subjoin the references as well as to the sources from which Diels took them.", + "§ 21. Crystal (or ice?). Empedocles said στερέμνιον εἶναι τὸν οὐρανὸν ἐξ ἀέρος παγέντος ὑπὸ πυρὸς κρυσταλλοειδῶς (Stobaeus, Ecl. i. 23, p. 500 H., Diels p. 339).", + "Pure fire. Parmenides, Heracleitus, Strato, Zeno, said πύρινον εἶναι τὸν οὐρανόν (Stob. ib., Diels p. 340).", + "Fifth substance. Aristotle ἐκ πέμπτου σώματος (οὐρανόν) (Stob. i. 23, p. 502 H., Diels ib.).", + "§ 22. Lumps of earth. Thales γεώδη μέν, ἔμπυρα δὲ τὰ ἄστρα (Stob. i. 24, p. 506 H., Diels p. 342).", + "Dells and glades. Wendland quotes from Diels p. 356 (Stob. i. 26, p. 552 H.) that Anaxagoras and Democritus said that the moon was στερέωμα διάπυρον ἔχον ἐν ἐαυτῷ πέδια καὶ ὄρη καὶ φάραγγας. But a better illustration would be that Democritus called its face an ἀποσκίασμα τῶν ὑψηλῶν ἐν αὐτῇ μερῶν. ἄγκη γὰρ αὐτὴν ἔχειν καὶ νάπας (Stob. ib. p. 564 H., not in Diels). But apart from both these being said of the moon and not of the stars, the statement that they were “dells and glades” is totally different from saying that they have them. I should suggest that Philo misunderstood Democritus and supposed him to mean that the stars were fiery hollows in the plain of heaven.", + "Masses of fiery metal. Archelaus said that they were μύδρους διαπύρους δέ (Stob. i. 24, p. 508 H., Diels p. 342). The same was said by Anaxagoras and Democritus of the sun (Stob. i. 25, pp. 528 and 532 H., Diels p. 349). See footnote.", + "Unbroken and close harmony. No illustration is forthcoming for this, and I can make no clear suggestion as to the meaning. πυκνός (Lat. spissus) is a term used in music with compounds ἄ-, βαρύ-, ὀξύ-, μεσό-πυκνός, and applied to φθόγγος. Whether there can be any connexion with this, I must leave to others. Stephanus also quotes from Pollux, as epithets of a flute-player, εὕστομος, πυκνός, ξυνεχής. That the stars produced a harmony is of course a well-known Pythagorean belief.", + "Indissoluble compresses of ether. Anaximander called them πιλήματα ἀέρος τροχοειδῆ, πυρὸς ἔμπλεα (Stob. i. 24, p. 510 H., Diels p. 342). As there seems little connexion between this view and that of the “harmony” one is tempted to insert ἢ before πιλήματα.", + "Living and intelligent. Zeno said that each of the stars is νοερὸν καὶ φρόνιμον (Stob. i. 25, p. 538 H., Diels p. 467).", + "§ 23. Borrowed light. Ascribed to Thales in the first instance and held by Pythagoras, Parmenides, Empedocles, Anaxagoras and Metrodorus (Stob. i. 26, p. 558 H.). A light of its own to Anaximander, Xenophanes, Berosus (Stob. i. 26, p. 556, Diels p. 358).", + "§ 28. Genera … systems. On this section I have consulted two high musical authorities, Professor Percy Buck and Dr. Rootham, though neither of them must be considered responsible for the choice of words in these two cases. As γένη is the technical term in Greek music for the three “modifications,” enharmonic, diatonic and chromatic (see Aristides Quintilianus i. 9), I have followed the Dictionary of Antiquities in translating it “genera.” Other words suggested are “groupings” or “scales.” Again��as to στάσεσι (or τάσεσι) as applied to conjunct and disjunct tetrachords the same authorities shew that the regular term is συστήματα (A. Q. i. 8), and I have sought safety in adhering to this. Professor Buck suggests “relationships (of tetrachords).” As to the reading, while στάσις is certainly not a full equivalent for σύστημα, it seems possible here in the sense of “placing” or “setting.” τάσις is a “pitch.” Professor Buck notes that the word is so far appropriate that conjunct and disjunct tetrachords can be placed at any “pitch” you like, but could we say that the συνημμένον in general is one τάσις and διεζευγμένον another? I am inclined to suggest συστάσεσι. In σύστασις we have a fairly near synonym for σύστημα, easily corrupted into στάσις or τάσις, and perhaps preferred by Philo as avoiding the jingle with διαστήμασι. (Or again τάξεσι might be possible, though textually less satisfactory.)", + "§§ 30–32. Illustrations mostly drawn, as those on §§ 21–23, from Diels are as follows. It should be noted that, properly speaking, they apply to the ψυχή rather than to the νοῦς.", + "§ 30. Breath. “Zeno concretum corpori spiritum (dixit animam)” (Cicero, Somn. Scip. i. 14. 19, Diels p. 213). Much the same is said of Hippocrates and Democritus, ibid.", + "Blood. “Empedocles et Critias sanguinem,” ibid.", + "Boundary-line. Or “limit”? Wendland cites Iamblichus quoted in Stob. Ecl. i. 41, p. 858 H. to the effect that Aristotle reduced the properties of the soul to three, thus πέρας τῶν ἀπείρων ἀνευρών. But does this mean more than that the properties of the soul are really infinite? I should imagine the opinion to be Pythagorean and to embody to some extent the idea of πέρας as it appears in Philolaus’s dictum that all things are composed ἐξ ἀπείρων τε καὶ περαινόντων, cf. Plato, Philebus, 16 and 23.", + "Form. “Posidonius ideam (animam dicit)” (Cic. ibid.). Perhaps more to the point ὡς δὲ τῶν Ἀριστοτελικῶν τινες ὑφηγοῦνται, εἶδός ἐστι τὸ (ἐπὶ?) περὶ τοῖς σώμασι (Stob. i. 41 from Iamblichus). See also definition of ἐντελέχεια.", + "Number. Pythagoras ἀριθμὸν αὐτὸν κινοῦντα (Stob. i. 41, p. 794 H., Diels p. 386); Cicero, Somn. Scip. i. 14. 19, Diels p. 213, “Xenocrates numerum se moventem.”", + "Continuity. I have retained ἐνδελέχειαν in the text, as Wendland, with grave doubt. The somewhat slight arguments in its favour are (1) the unanimous authority of the MSS., (2) Cic. Tusc. i. 22 “Aristoteles … animum ἐνδελέχειαν appellat novo nomine quasi quandam continuatam motionem et perennem.” And if this is as it seems a mistake of Cicero’s it is one which Philo may easily have made. On the other hand Diog. Laert. v. 32 of Aristotle is clear for ἐντελέχεια. The soul is incorporeal, ἐντελέχειαν οὖσαν τὴν πρώτην σώματος φυσικοῦ καὶ ὀργανικοῦ δυνάμει ζωὴν ἔχοντος. λέγει δʼ ἐντελέχειαν, ἦς ἐστιν εἶδός τι ἀσώματον. And so also Stob. i. 41, p. 796 H., Diels p. 387. If ἐντ- has to be translated I should prefer to keep “entelechy” rather than “realization” (Hicks), or “actuality” (L. & S.).", + "Harmony. Pythagoras and Philolaus, Cic. ibid., Diels ibid.", + "§ 31. Introduced … from without. Pythagoras, Anaxagoras, Plato, Xenocrates, Cleanthes, θύραθεν εἰσκρίνεσθαι τὸν νοῦν (Stob. i. 40, p. 790 H., Diels p. 392).", + "The air … impart hardness, etc. Cf. S. V. F. ii. 804–808, where this theory is mentioned with the use of the same verb στομοῦται and the same derivation of ψυχή from ψῦξις (originally given by Plato. Crat. 399 E).", + "§ 32. Head … heart. See note on De Sac. 136. “Citadel” from Timaeus 70 A, where Archer-Hind quotes from Galen, De Plac. Hipp. et Plat. ii. 230 καθάπερ ἐν ἀκροπόλει τῇ κεφαλῇ δίκην μεγάλου βασιλέως ὁ ἐγκέφαλος ἵδρυται.", + "§ 44. Sails of the sovereign mind … oars of sense-perception. I have retained Mr. Whitaker’s translation which brings out the original meaning of the proverbial δεύτερος πλοῦς (see L. & S.). Philo’s insistence on the nautical idea, as shewn in ��ὐπλοῆσαι, suggests that he is not using the phrase casually, as no doubt it often was used. But since πρός suggests the goal of the sailor rather than the means he employs, it may perhaps be thought better to translate “those voyagers who have failed to reach the sovereign mind can always take the ‘second-best voyage’ to sense.” Philo again uses the phrase, which Plato had made familiar to him, in § 180 below and De Dec. 84, but with no special emphasis on the metaphor.", + "§ 47. Grandfather … of his knowledge. I take this opportunity of making good an omission in earlier volumes. The Oxyrhynchus Papyrus of Philo (P. Oxy. ix. 1173, xi. 1356), to which my attention has been called by a paper by Mr. W. G. Waddell (Etudes de Papyrologie, tom. i., Le Caire, 1932), had entirely escaped our notice, though published some twenty years ago. Though of about the same date as the Paris Papyrus (see Introductions to De Sac. and Quis Rerum), it appears to be exceedingly fragmentary, and I doubt whether it would have influenced our text, with the possible exception to be now mentioned. One of the pieces (Fr. 3) contains fragments of that part of De Sac. (§ 43) in which the parallel phrase πάππῳ τῆς ἑαυτοῦ παιδείας occurs, and on which, following Cohn, we threw some suspicion. It now appears from Mr. Waddell’s analysis of this Papyrus that in a lacuna between μεμάθηκε δὲ ταῦτα and ἑαυτοῦ παιδείας there is room for about seven letters more than what appears in the other authorities, viz. παρὰ τῷ πάππῳ τῆς, and he suggests παρὰ τῷ πάππῳ <τῷ πατρὶ> τῆς. The fact is noticeable, and standing by itself would certainly increase the natural suspicion of this odd phrase. But, on the other hand, the recurrence here of an almost identical expression applied to the same two persons, Abraham and Jacob, points to the conclusion that “grandfather of his education” (or “knowledge”) is right, and that some other explanation is needed for the phenomena of the Papyrus. Cohn himself (Hermes, 1897, p. 140) cast doubt on his own suspicions, basing himself on Quod Deus 92. But the far more conclusive evidence of this phrase in De Som. i. seems still to have escaped his notice; unless indeed, which I can hardly think possible, he took ἐπιστήμης as dependent on ὄνομα, as Mangey does.", + "§ 53. Whether it is a foot in diameter. So Heraclitus εὖρος ποδὸς ἀνθρώπου (Stob. i. 25, p. 526 H., Diels p. 351).", + "Many times its size. Perhaps referring to Anaximander’s opinion that the circle of the sun is 28 times that of the earth, though the visible portion which we call the sun is equal to the earth (Stob. i. 25, p. 524, Diels ibid.). Cf. Cic. Acad. ii. 82 “quem mathematici amplius duodeviginti (? duodetriginta) partibus confirmant maiorem esse quam terram. Mihi quidem pedalis videtur.” For other opinions which Philo may have in mind see Reid’s note in loc.", + "§ 54. What is above … close to yourself. Wendland compares with this the words ascribed by Tertullian to Epicurus (Usener, Epicurea, p. 229). Other writers assign the saying to Socrates.", + "§ 57. All that existeth, etc. This quotation, which has already been made by Philo in a similar context, De Mig. 195, has special appropriateness because it was said to have been applied by Socrates himself to his own inquiries (Diog. Laert. ii. 21).", + "Ibid. The exact meaning of § 57 is not very clear. The thought suggested in the translation is that the meteorologist is ironically told that he may mount to heaven if he will, but the only good he can do by this is to get hold of the “explorer” and bring him down to earth. Philo seems to forget that the whole speech is addressed to the κατάσκοπος, see § 53.", + "Again, if γνῶθι σαυτόν, or, as we should certainly expect, <τὸ> γ. σ., is the object of ἀντισπάσας, the passage has a curious resemblance to the “e caelo descendit γνῶθι σεαυτόν” of Juv. xi. 27. This phrase receives no illustration from the commentators on Juvenal, and I suspect may be founded on some proverbial line, which Philo also makes use of. If on the other hand γ. σ. is the principal verb and ἀντισπάσας governs τὸν κατάσκοπον, it will be almost necessary to omit εἶτα, as Mangey and indeed the majority of the MSS. do.", + "§ 99. ἀνείμονα. The only quotation given for this word either in Stephanus or the revised L. & S. is Od. iii. 348:", + "ἀνείμονος ἠὲ πενιχροῦ,", + "ᾧ οὔ τι χλαῖναι καὶ ��ήγεα πόλλʼ ἐνὶ οἴκῳ,", + "οὔτʼ αὐτῷ μαλακῶς οὔτε ξείνοισιν ἐνεύδειν.", + "The fact that in both passages the word is used of sleeping with inadequate covering suggests that we have here a distinct reminiscence of Homer. Note also the appearance of πενιχρός, a rare word in Philo, just above. But he also uses the word in De Spec. i. 83 of the priests when clad ἐν μόνοις τοῖς χιτωνίσκοις, and perhaps in De Gig. 53, where I have suggested ἀνείμονι for the MSS. ἀνειμένῃ.", + "§ 101. Explanatory statement. L. & S. 1927 give this passage as an example of ἀφορισμός = “a pithy sentence,” “aphorism.” I do not see anything pithy in it, or, if there is, how it bears on Philo’s view that the form of the passage favours an allegorical rather than a literal interpretation. The argument is clearly very similar to, and I believe identical with, that of 82 above, De Fuga 171 and De Ebr. 138, where stress is laid on the use of the future indicative instead of the imperative. In all these cases the thought was that the words indicated not a personal prohibition but a fact in spiritual life. I suggest that here it is the same, though it is true that it is not a universal fact that the “taker” of “reason” will restore it before the spiritual sunset.", + "In the other cases the verb used is ἀποφαίνεται or ἀποφαίνεται γνωμήν. That here we have ἀφορισμός and ἀφοριζόμενος will cause little difficulty if it is remembered that ἀποφαντική and ὁριστική are convertible terms for the indicative mood. The latter word is generally used by Apollonius Dyscolus (see index to Grk. Gramm. voi. i.). Thus after mentioning that both terms are used he adds ἰδίας μέντοι ἐννοίας ἔχεται ἡ ὀριστική, διὰ γὰρ ταῦτης ἀποφαίνομενοι ὁριζόμεθα (Syn. 25 b), i.e. the name ὁριστική carries with it the idea not only of a fact stated, but of a particular fact parted off from others. So too the statement itself is regularly called ὁρισμός. That we have here the prefix ἀφ- cannot weigh, I think, against the otherwise overwhelming evidence that the words are used in this grammatical sense.", + "I have followed Wendland’s suggestion of inserting ἀποδώσεις αὐτῷ because it seems almost impossible that Philo would have failed to make the point. But the continuation of the quotation is by no means otiose. The verbs are all in the indicative and (except the last) state facts, while in the hortatory form we have the subjunctive expressing purpose. It is a possible conjecture that in some grammatical terminology, otherwise unknown, a sentence containing several indicatives was called an ἀφορισμός instead of an ὁρισμός.", + "§ 126. Princely abundance of materials. As the text stands the sense is presumably that the conditions described are as good as those of royal state. But a comparison with Quod Det. 13, where Jacob is spoken of as possessing βασίλεως περιουσίαν, leaves the possibility that Philo is contrasting his simple living with the patriarchal wealth. If this is the meaning we might conjecture that καίτοι has fallen out after καὶ νῦν.", + "§ 134. First of those which are related to us (or near to us?). I do not understand what this expression, which implies two sets of κύκλοι, means, or know of any cosmological theory which would justify them. As τῶν for MSS. τοῖς or τῆς is purely conjectural, I should prefer to omit it or substitute τό. We should then get the natural statement that the moon-sphere is the last of the Eight, taking them down from the top, but first if they are taken up from the earth.", + "§ 138. The numbers and periods determined by nature. What is the reference in these words, called in De Plant. 14 “certain fixed periods”? Have we an allusion to the three περίοδοι χιλιετεῖς of Phaedrus 248 E ff., assigned to the philosophical souls, while the unjust remain on earth for 10,000 years? Compare also Rep. x. 617, and the proem of Empedocles quoted by Thompson on the Phaedrus passage.", + "§ 145. Aristotle speaks of the moon as ἐν μεθορίοις ἀέρος τεταγμένην καὶ τῆς πέμπτης οὐσίας μετέχουσαν (Stob. i. 26, p. 564 H., Diels p. 356). Also μὴ εἶναι αὐτῆς ἀκήρατον τὸ σύγκριμα διὰ τὰ πρόσγεια ἁερώματα τοῦ αἰθέρος, ὃν προσαγορεύει σῶμα πέμπτον (Stob. 16, Diels p. 361). For the last part compare the Stoic opinion, τοῦ ἀέρος διαμελαίνοντος ἔμφασιν γίνεσθαι μορφοειδῆ <προσώπου> S. V. F. ii. 673.", + "§ 153. εἴδωλον. This use of the word is very strange. The nearest parallel for its use as an “idea” or “mental conception” is Xen. Symp. 4. 21 οὕτω σαφὲς ἔχω εἴδωλον αὐτοῦ ἐν τῇ ψυχῇ, ὡς, εἰ πλαστικὸς ἢ ζωγραφικὸς ἦν, οὐδὲν ἄν ἧττον ἐκ τοῦ εἰδώλου ἢ πρὸς αὐτὸν ὁρῶν ὁμοῖον αὐτῷ ἀπειργασάμην. But both the genitive following and the context put this on a different footing. Wendland suggests ἐμφαίνει δʼ ἔτι καὶ τοιοῦτον <τὸ> or ἐμφαίνεται … τῷ εἰδώλῳ. Both these assume that εἴδωλον can be used for a dream in general. If the word is to stand I should prefer to read τοιούτου εἴδωλον, “an image or picture of the following idea.”", + "§ 158. ἐπερείδοντος. The MSS. have this word in the active here and § 241, and De Plant. 7 in the sense of “support” or “establish.” In each case editors have suggested ὑπερείδω (Mr. Whitaker in De Plant. 7 ἀπ-). The lexica certainly give no evidence for this meaning for ἐπ-, which would naturally mean “to make to rest upon” (something in the dative), and Philo frequently uses it so in the passive. As, however, stability is generally given in this way, it is not unnatural that the word should get this extended meaning, and it seems hardly wise to overrule the repeated evidence of the MSS.", + "§ 164. Prompter. This is perhaps as near as we can get to the meaning of ὑπήχει. But the word, which is frequently used by Philo, seems to carry with it the thought of a voice heard inwardly and not audible in the ordinary sense. Thus it is sometimes coupled with ἔνδοθεν, and several times (e.g. De Mut. 139) applied to the divine voice which speaks to the prophet, to the memories or echoes of the lecturer’s words which the student carries away with him (De Cong. 67), and to the “haunting” voice of enticing pleasure (De Post. 155). Other examples in this volume are De Som. ii. 2 and 252. This usage is entirely ignored in L. & S. Stephanus quotes some of these passages, but inadequately translates by “succinere.”", + "§ 184. A space outside it in the interval between worlds. An allusion to the Epicurean doctrine that the gods’ habitation was the μετακόσμα (intermundia). Cf. (Ἐπίκουρός φησι) καθῆσθαι τὸν θεὸν ἐν τοῖς μετακοσμίοις οὕτω καλουμένοις ὑπʼ αὐτοῦ, Usener, Epicurea, p. 240 (quoted from Hippolytus); “deos induxit Epicurus … habitantes tamquam inter duos lucos sic inter duos mundos propter metum ruinarum,” Cic. De Div. ii. 40.", + "§§ 186–188. The two chief difficulties are the phrases ἐν τῷ χειροτονηθέντι and ὁ κόσμος μετακληθήσεται. Mr. Whitaker’s theory as to the first, that the “appointed one” is the Logos, may be tenable in so far as there is good evidence for the thought that the intelligible world is in the Logos or is itself the Logos, see De Op. 17 and 20, and it has the great merit that it takes the text as it stands. But the application of “Him who was appointed in accordance with divine bounties” (or “elections,” reading χειροτονίας for χορηγίας as Mr. Whitaker proposed) to the Logos does not seem to me natural, and at any rate it does not lead up to any explanation of the difficulty in § 188.", + "My alternative suggestion cannot, of course, claim to be more than a guess, but I think it has the merit that without any great change of the text it provides an explanation of the whole passage which is consistent throughout and is thoroughly after Philo’s manner.", + "I will take § 188 first. Wendland excludes the whole of the last sentence as a Christian interpolation describing the Celestial City. I see little grounds for this. The New Jerusalem of the Revelation has walls and gates, though it is true that the latter are always open. Possibly Wendland took μετακληθήσεται as meaning “shall receive a new name” in allusion to Rev. 2:17, and though this sense of the word has little evidence recorded in the lexica it is a quite possible and natural meaning, and has been adopted in the translation. But this carries us but a little way to Wendland’s theory of Christian interpolation.", + "On the supposition that the passage is genuine, the general sense is clear enough that while ordinarily we can only know the intelligible world through our experience of the sensible world, there are conditions in which, or persons to whom, it is known directly. As I have said, the only difficulty is the phrase ὁ κόσμος μετακληθήσεται. If μετακ. is taken as “shall change its name” I can see no sense that Philo could have meant. If we give the word its usual sense of “summoned” we expect a person instead of ὁ κόσμος for the subject, and presumably that person will be Moses, and the higher type of soul that Moses represents. This will be quite consistent with other passages, e.g. De Mut. 7, where the darkness which Moses enters is the contemplation of the incorporeal and invisible substance, and there is a very close analogy in Leg. All. iii. 100: “There is a mind more perfect and more thoroughly cleansed which has been initiated into the great mysteries, a mind which gains its knowledge of the first cause not from created things, as one may learn the substance from the shadow, but lifting its eyes above and beyond creation obtains a clear vision of the uncreated. This mind is Moses.” Here there is the difference that the thing directly seen is God Himself, not the world of mind, but otherwise the thought is the same. I propose then to correct κόσμος to κοσμολόγος, “the world explorer,” whose world is that of intelligible substance or reality. That the word is not given in the lexica matters not at all; it is a perfectly natural formation which anyone might make on the analogy of μετεωρολόγος, etc., and the phrase κοσμολόγος νοητῆς ὑποστάσεως is as natural at any rate as κόσμος ν. ὑ. The only other emendation actually needed is ἐν τῷ <νῷ> διαχαραχθεῖσα for ἐν τῷ διαχαραχθέντι, though it is possible that μακρόθεν may have fallen out before or after θεαθέν, cf. Ex. 20:21, “the people stood afar off (μακρόθεν), but Moses entered the darkness.” I should explain the corruption in the first case by supposing that νῷ dropped out and that then -θείσης was altered to -θέντι for grammatical reasons.", + "The translation of the first half of the sentence will then be: “But the world-explorer whose world is intelligible reality will need no sight of outward shapes, but only the archetypal ‘idea’ engraved in the mind, and by this he will be summoned to the Form (or Vision), which he sees not in shadow but in substance” (or “will be summoned with no intervening shadow to the Form which he has beheld from afar”). μετακληθήσεται will be an echo of ἐκάλεσα Κύριος τὸν Μωυσῆν, Ex. 24:16, and εἶδος of εἶδος, ibid. 17.", + "In § 186 the only difficult words are ἐν τῷ χειροτονηθέντι. I suggest that here we have the foreshadowing of the next section, i.e. that they state the exception to the general sense of this section. This can be obtained by correcting ἐν to πλήν, an easy correction in itself, though it is a more serious difficulty that κόσμον νοητόν can hardly stand in that position and some rearrangement is required, the simplest being to transfer the words to after συσταθέντα.", + "§ 205. ῥυθμοὺς καὶ μέτρα κτλ. Wendland puts no comma after μέτρα but one after διατονικά, thus implying that enharmonic, etc., are μέτρα. This, which perhaps is a mere slip, is quite impossible. μέτρα must be used in the sense which it regularly bears in the accepted division of music into melody, rhythm, metre, viz. what we mean by metre, cf. Aristides Quintilianus i. 4, where we have μελῳδία, ῥυθμός, λέξις followed at once by περὶ τὴν λέξιν τὸ μέτρον, and later (i. 10) by a full discussion of μετρική. The triple division is given by Philo in De Cher. 105, De Sob. 36, and De Agr. 137, where the enharmonic, etc., are given as subdivisions of μέλος.", + "Ibid. From rhetoric, etc. Here we have the fundamental divisions of rhetoric which appear in the same form in most of the rhetorical treatises, except that it is perhaps unusual to find both τάξις and οἰκονομία, the latter, which covers the management and organization of the material, either superseding the former, or including it as a subdivision. Synonyms for φράσις are λέξις, ἀπαγγελία, ἑρμήνεια, the last named of which is used by Philo in De Cher. 105, and, I believe, in De Mig. 35. See notes on those two passages.", + "§ 214. Ashes. As the point is essential to Philo’s illustration, one must suppose that he found, or thought he had found, some authority for the statement that ashes were used in purificatory ritual. The nearest evidence I can find is the use of the “ashes of the heifer” in Num. 19:9, alluded to in Hebrews 9:13. Possibly τέφρα, like κονία, may have been a name for some kind of lye or soap, but I know of no evidence for it.", + "§ 230. Not from any superstitious nicety, etc. The explanation I should prefer to give to this passage is that Philo feels that his distinction between θεός and ὁ θεός might subject him to the charge of giving the name of θεός to inferior beings, which would constitute δεισιδαιμονία in the ordinary sense. What then is the meaning of πραγματολογεῖν? Judging from the sequel it is not so much “to use words to express facts” as “to accommodate language to practical needs.” The course of thought seems to be: (1) any name for God is a κατάχρησις permitted for the needs of men (§ 230), a point further illustrated in § 231 (the spacing should perhaps be placed at the end of that section rather than at the beginning); (2) God allows men to think that He has been really seen by them (§ 234), and this is illustrated by the pagan legend (§ 233), and the anthropomorphic language of the law (§§ 234–237); (3) He in the same way speaks here of the Angel or Logos as God, though it really was God’s image which was seen, and thus πραγματολογεῖ, etc., suits His words to the capacity of His hearers.", + "It may be thought that this strains the meaning of πραγματολογεῖν. The fact is that this word, which has been used in De Fug. 54, is rare and of uncertain meaning. Besides these two instances only two others are quoted. In Diog. Laert. ix. 52 it appears to mean “argue,” or make a business of arguing, and so possibly in De Fug. 54 (see note). In Anaximenes, Rhet. ad Alex. 32 (31) ἵνα πραγματολογοῦντες ἁπλοῦν τὸν λόγον καὶ μὴ ποικίλον ποιῶμεν, it seems to mean “speaking plainly and intelligibly,” and this is not far from the sense suggested by the context here.", + "§ 244. Erecting. It is a pity that the impossibility of using the phrase “make to stand” prevents the translator from bringing out fully the insistence with which Philo harps on the thought of “standing” in connexion with στήλη. He finds the idea, no doubt, in the word itself, and repeats it not only in the ἕστηκα of § 241 and στάσις of § 242, but also in ἱστάς § 244, στήσεις § 245, ἀνίστησι, ἀναστήσας § 249.", + "§ 247. Set up. Similarly the thought of ἀνάθεσις is repeated in ἀνετέθη here, and ἀνακείσεται (κεῖμαι as often being treated as the passive of τίθημι, though in these cases the idea of “dedication” seems to be reduced to the literal “set up,” unless, as perhaps is possible, it is used in the sense of “devoted” under a curse, cf. the common use of ἀνάθεμα, or (in the first case) unless there is an allusion to models of wrecked ships or pieces of the actual wreck being dedicated as votive offerings by the saved. For votive pictures of this kind see Mayor on Juv. xii. 27.", + "§ 254. 1 Sam. 1:11.—Wendland erroneously gives the reference as to v. 28 (“I lend him as a loan”), as also in Quod Deus 6, on which passage, carelessly following Wendland, I suggested in a note that Philo in v. 28 had a different version of the text from the LXX. A German reviewer pointed out the mistake." + ] + }, + "Book II": { + "Introduction": [ + "ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION TO BOOK II", + "This long treatise, the conclusion of which has been lost, seems to me to have a poverty of thought which makes it the weakest of the whole series. And though it may be merely a coincidence, it is a curious fact that it is hardly ever quoted or referred to by later writers. Further, it has less manuscript authority than any other, except De Posteritate Caini. Only one MS. used by Wendland contains it, and even this, as the many footnotes to the text will shew, has a quite unusual number of corruptions and lacunas.", + "The treatise follows at once on the preceding and deals with the third kind of dreams, the characteristic of which is that they contain no direct divine message, but something is seen by the dreamer, obscure in itself but explained by the art of dream interpretation. There are three pairs of dreams, one those of Joseph himself as a boy (1–154), another of the chief baker and chief butler in prison (155–214), another of Pharaoh (215 to the end), the two last pairs being interpreted by Joseph himself.", + "After the distinction between the three kinds of dreams has been noted (1–4), the subject of Joseph’s two dreams is introduced (5–7); but, before they are discussed, we must remember what Joseph represents. Here he is not so much the politician as the representative of the ordinary mixed character in whom the claims of the soul are constantly disputed by those of the body and external things; and in such a character vainglory (κένη δόξα) or vanity (τῦφος) is sure to appear (8–16).", + "The first dream begins, “I thought we were binding sheaves.” After noting that “thought” indicates the vagueness of the Joseph-mind (17–20), Philo points out that the dreamer only supposes himself and his brothers to be engaged in the inferior task of binding, not of reaping, which needs, he thinks, the skill to distinguish the good corn from the worthless (21–22). This leads to a further thought on spiritual reaping. We find the phrase, “When you reap your reaping,” which he takes to mean that when the harvest of virtue is reaped there is a further stage where this very reaping is reaped away in the consciousness that it is of God and not of ourselves (23–24). Some similar duplicates are adduced, and the double cave of Machpelah and the two kinds of music are taken to indicate a similar sort of distinction between our acceptance of the good in creation and our acknowledgement of its dependence on the divine, and so “Ye shall not consummate the rest of the reaping” implies that the consummation does not belong to man (25–30).", + "But what are the sheaves? Evidently in some degree drawn by the similarity of sound in δράγματα and πράγματα, Philo interprets them as “doings” used in the sense of chief characteristics. He describes in much the same terms as elsewhere the leading attributes of the eleven brothers (31–41). The leading attribute of Joseph is vainglory, and this is illustrated by a few incidents in Joseph’s life and by the interpretation of his name as “addition,” for vainglory adds luxuries to the simple life (41–47). This leads to a long commonplace against luxury as shewn in food and drink (48–51), clothing (52–53), houses (54–55), beds (56–57), unguents (58–59), drinking-cups (60–61), and golden crowns instead of flower garlands (64). Luxury, in fact, is the beast which was supposed to have devoured Joseph and thus made Jacob mourn for him, a contrast to Nahab and Abihu in whose case Moses forbade all mourning (64–67). At this point the connexion of thought gets difficult. Cutting off the hand of the immodest woman is treated as the duty of cutting ourselves off from absorption in lower aims and contrasted with the full handful which the priest takes and offers (68–74), and we then recur to the thought of 23 ff., though stated in a different way, that the spiritual reaping of virtues must be dedicated to God (75–77).", + "“My sheaf rose up and stood upright and your sheaves turned round and did homage to mine.” This example of the arrogance of vainglory suggests to Philo the ascendancy of the tyrant in ordinary life and the need of caution in dealing with him. In such cases frank speaking is no virtue, any more than sailing in the teeth of a storm or than facing wild beasts when unarmed (78–89). Abraham did homage to the children of Heth for the cave of Machpelah, and so must the weak propitiate the mighty (90–92). The brethren, however, do not take this line, for they reply, “Shalt thou indeed be king and lord over us?” This shews us that their opposition to Joseph represents the resistance of right reason to vainglory in the soul. We may dismiss, therefore, any thoughts of the unbrotherliness of the ten, and see merely the refusal of the better part within us to acknowledge any king but God (93–100). And Philo himself, while confessing his weakness, feels that even when he is most helpless he desires to follow this better judgement (101–104). And perhaps too the Joseph in us will be converted. What else indeed is suggested by the story of Joseph, with its various signs of something higher, crowned by his final acceptance by Moses, when his bones are carried by the liberated people out of Egypt? (105–109).", + "The second dream was that of the sun, moon and stars bowing down to Joseph. It chiefly differs from the first in being concerned with heavenly instead of earthly phenomena (110–112). Philo, after noting apparently without actual disapprobation the theory that the divine natures of the heavenly bodies do actually contend for pre-eminence (113–114), explains the dream from one point of view as describing the arrogance of those who regard themselves as superior not only to men but to nature (115–116). Thus Xerxes turned land into sea by cutting through Mount Athos and shot his arrows at the sun (117–120). The foolish Germans try to repel the tide with armed forces (121–122), and a little before in Alexandria a tyrannous ruler, when trying to coerce the Jews into Sabbath-breaking, had argued with them that, in the event of a deluge or earthquake or thunderstorm, they would not hesitate to forgo their regular customs, and that he himself was as powerful as any of these natural forces (123–129). Such a person, Philo thinks, will consider himself aggrieved if the seasons do not conform to his expectations (130–132). But a more general interpretation is possible. We may regard the sun as right reason, the moon as discipline or education, and the stars as the thoughts engendered by these two in the soul, which the lower Joseph-like thoughts would fain bring into subjection (133–135). Thus while Jacob’s answer, “What is this dream which thou hast dreamt?” implies that Joseph is describing a spiritual conflict of this nature (135–138), the words that follow, “Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren bow down before thee?” are the refusal of right reason to submit to vanity (139–140). At the same time, we are told that his father kept the saying in his heart; and from this Philo diverges to the need for caution and self-distrust. How constantly do we find examples of long success ended by disaster, of good life followed by moral decay in old age (141–149)! And this thought suggests the image of the fountain of peace which we sometimes taste and then find denied to us—a sad condition, yet better than to drink our fill of the fountain of unreason, when the unreasoning powers master the governing element in the soul and produce that anarchy which the experience both of men and animals shews to be fatal to happiness (149–154).", + "In the dreams of the chief butler and baker the two men represent drunkenness and gluttony (155–158). The dream of the butler is then quoted in full (159). We note that its opening words, “In my sleep,” are appropriate to that deep drunken sleep in which all the wicked are plunged (160–162), and also “the vine was before me” shews the love which the wicked feel for the sources of their spiritual drunkenness (162–163). But before going further we must observe that the vine may be also a symbol of gladness of the true kind. Philo describes at some length how convivial meetings shew sometimes good feeling and at other times quarrelsomeness and hatred (164–168). We find this favourable meaning of “vine” in the story of the scouting party of Numbers 13. Those seekers for virtue who are unable to carry the main stalk of wisdom and joy cut off and carry away at least one great cluster (169–171). And how good a thing is this gladness is shewn by the application of the word to God Who is glad when men do well (172–178), and from which we may deduce that our duty is to make Him glad (179–180). But the vine of the cup-bearer is not of this sort. He will indeed plead that it cannot be, seeing that he is cup-bearer to Pharaoh, not to God Whose cup-bearer is the Logos himself (181–183). How different are these two! Pharaoh’s cup-bearer is called an eunuch: the Logos on the other hand is represented by the High Priest: and what is signified spiritually by eunuch and high priest is described at some length in Philo’s usual way (184–190). If we need a further description of the vine of folly we shall find it in the text which speaks of the vine of Sodom and the branch of Gomorrah, for Sodom is blindness and Gomorrah (the measure) typifies the human mind which holds itself and not God to be the measure of all things (191–194). A few more phrases in the dream are then dealt with. As πυθμήν may mean not only stalk but root or extremity, Philo finds a figure of the way in which folly brings the soul down to extreme misery (195–199). Again, “Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand” indicates that our own hands or actions are needed to give passion full scope (199–201); and “I squeezed the grapes into the cup” represents how the fool glories in using every drop of the drink of folly (202–204).", + "The dream of the chief baker is dismissed very shortly. The three baskets which he carries are the pleasures of the past, the present and the future, while the birds which descend and devour the baked meats are the divine retributions which overtake the pleasure-seeker and leave him headless and crucified (205–214).", + "We now pass on to the two parallel dreams of Pharaoh in which the seven lean devour the seven fat kine, and the seven bad the seven good ears. But in what has been preserved at any rate no notice is taken of the substance of these dreams, and the discussion is confined with digressions to the opening phrases of the first dream: “I thought I stood upon the edge of the river.” After quoting the two dreams (215–218), Philo takes the words “I thought I stood.” Here we have the Pharaoh-mind profanely claiming the standing which belongs only to God, and this thought is supported by some familiar texts (219–222). Yet God imparts this stability primarily to the Logos which under the name of Covenant is said to be made to stand upon the just Noah, thus shewing that the just man becomes as it were the pedestal (223–225); secondly to the wise man, for Abraham stands before God and Moses stood “between God and you,” thus shewing the sage as something intermediate between God and man (226–233); and thirdly to the progresser who stands midway between the full life of virtue and the death of vice (234–236). How vain then is the claim of the Pharaoh-mind to stand (237)!", + "The river is speech, which may be either good or bad (238–240). In its good sense, which includes reason, we find it in the river of Eden which divides into four heads (ἀρχαί) or virtues; and as ἀρχαί means also rules or sovereignties, we have a hint of the thought of the sage as king (241–244). Also we find in the Psalms the phrase “the river of God,” clearly indicating the divine Logos (245), and as we hear also of the river “making glad the city of God,” Philo digresses to consider what the city of God is. In one sense it is the world; in another the righteous soul; and its name of Jerusalem, vision of peace, fits this meaning well, for God is peace and dwells in the peace-loving soul (246–258). Also Abraham is given all the land from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates where the latter is soul and what soul loves, and the former does not mean that the river of Egypt or body is included in the gift; rather that river is bad and soulless speaking and thinking, and its nature is typified by its producing frogs and bringing death to the fish which represent true thoughts (259–260).", + "The edge or lip (χεῖλος) reminds us that the closing of the lips gives silence, and their opening speech, and we must remember that each has its proper season (261–263). Various texts enjoining silence are quoted (264–267), but there are also occasions which call for song, like the song of triumph of Exodus 15 or that of the well in Numbers 21, or for oratory like that enjoined in Deut. 22 on the bringing of firstfruits, and a short meditation on the details of this passage follows (268–273). With the wicked wrong speaking is more frequent than wrong silence, and three kinds of such speaking are distinguished (274–275). There are the pleasure-lovers represented by Pharaoh who was met by Moses at the “lip” of the river (276–278); the sophists represented by the people of Egypt, who were seen dead at the “lip” of the sea (279–282); the deniers of divine providence represented by the builders of Babel of whom it is said “the whole earth was of one lip” (283–284). The confusion which overtakes this third class, who are the advocates of anarchy, is enlarged on, and while repentance will bring forgiveness, persistence can only bring the divine punishment (285–295). This point is supported by a text from Leviticus on the soul which “distinguishes with its lips to do ill or well,” which Philo understands as a presumptuous claim to knowledge of the nature of good and ill. Yet this too, by proclaiming its sin, may win forgiveness (296–299).", + "The fragment which follows begins a discussion, why the phrase “lip of the river” is only found in connexion with the river of Egypt. Philo censures the critics who regard such points as hair-splitting, and reiterates his conviction that the Scripture does not mean to teach us geography but the realities of life. The continuation is lost (302-end)." + ], + "": [ + [ + "[1] In setting forth the third kind of God-sent dreams we may fitly summon Moses to our assistance, that, as he learned when he did not know, he may teach us too in our ignorance regarding their tokens, by throwing light on each. This third kind of dreams arises whenever the soul in sleep, setting itself in motion and agitation of its own accord, becomes frenzied, and with the prescient power due to such inspiration foretells the future.", + "[2] The first kind of dreams we saw to be those in which God originates the movement and invisibly suggests things obscure to us but patent to Himself: while the second kind consisted of dreams in which the understanding moves in concert with the soul of the Universe and becomes filled with a divinely induced madness, which is permitted to foretell many coming events. ", + "[3] In accordance with these distinctions, the Sacred Guide gave a perfectly clear and lucid interpretation of the appearances which come under the first description, inasmuch as the intimations given by God through these dreams were of the nature of plain oracles. Those which fall under the second description he interpreted neither with consummate clearness nor with excessive indistinctness. A specimen of these is the Vision that appeared on the heavenly stairway. For this vision was indeed enigmatic, but the riddle was not in very high degree concealed from the quick-sighted.", + "[4] The appearances of the third kind being more obscure than the former, owing to the deep and impenetrable  nature of the riddle involved in them, demanded a scientific skill in discerning the meaning of dreams. Accordingly all the dreams of this sort recorded by the lawgiver received their interpretation at the hands of men who were experts in the aforesaid science.", + "[5] Whose then are the dreams? Does not everybody perceive that they are those of Joseph, those of Pharaoh king of Egypt, and those which the chief baker and chief butler themselves saw?", + "[6] It would seem fitting always to begin our teaching with those which come first; and first to come are those which Joseph saw when from the divisions of the universe, two in number, heaven and earth, two visions were presented to him. From the earth came the dream of the reaping. It runs on this wise: “Methought that we were binding sheaves in the midst of the plain, and my sheaf rose up” (Gen. 37:7). The other has to do with the zodiac: “As it were the sun and the moon and eleven stars worshipped me” (ibid. 9).", + "[7] On the former dream an interpretative judgement is pronounced in a tone of vehement menace to this effect: “Shalt thou indeed be king over us? or shalt thou indeed be lord over us?” (ibid. 8). The latter dream again incurs well-merited displeasure: “Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren come to bow down to the ground to worship thee?” (ibid. 10)." + ], + [ + "[8] So much by way of a foundation. As we go on to build the superstructure let us follow the directions of Allegory, that wise Master-builder, while we investigate the details of either dream. There are, however, in both dreams some prefatory remarks to be listened to first. Some have given the nature of that which is good a wide application, making it extend to many objects; while others have assigned it only to that which is most excellent: the former have regarded it as mixed, while the latter have left it free from admixture.", + "[9] Now, those who have maintained that only the morally beautiful is good, preserving it unmixed, have attributed the good to the reasoning faculty, the noblest part in us; while those who have regarded it as mixed have associated it with three things, soul, body, and things external to us. The latter class belong to the softer and luxurious way of life, having been reared up for the greater part of the time from their very cradle in the women’s quarter and in the effeminate habits of the women’s quarter. Those others are austere of life, reared by men, themselves too men in spirit, eager for what will do them good rather than for what is pleasant, and taking food suited to an athlete with an eye to strength and vigour, not to pleasure.", + "[10] There are two companies as leaders of which Moses introduces Isaac and Joseph. The noble company is led by Isaac who learns from no teacher but himself, for Moses represents him as weaned (Gen. 21:8), absolutely disdaining to make any use of soft and milky food suited to infants and little children, and using only strong nourishment fit for grown men, seeing that from a babe he was naturally stalwart, and was ever attaining fresh vigour and renewing his youth. The company which yields and is ready to give in is led by Joseph,", + "[11] for he is one who does not indeed take no account of the excellences of the soul, but is thoughtful for the well-being of the body also, and has a keen desire to be well off in outward things; and he is naturally drawn in different directions since he has set before him many ends in life, and as he experiences one counter-attraction after another, he is shaken this way and that and can never attain to fixity.", + "[12] For indeed our aims  do not rest in peace like cities under a treaty, 〈but engage in war and deliver attacks〉 and counter-attacks, in turn winning victory and suffering defeat. For at times the appetite flows strongly to wealth and reputation and completely masters the interests of body and soul, and then again is met and driven back by an opposing force, and vanquished by both or one of them.", + "[13] In the same way the pleasures of the body descend upon us in gathered force like a cataract deluging and obliterating one after another all the things of the mind; and then, after no long interval, Wisdom with strong and vehement counterblast both slackens the impetus of pleasures and mitigates in general all the appetites and ambitions which the bodily senses kindle in us.", + "[14] Such is the cycle of unceasing warfare ever revolving round the many-sided soul; for, when one foe has been laid low, another yet mightier is sure to spring up, after the fashion of the many-headed Hydra; for we are told that on it another head grew to take the place of that which had been cut off; and this is a figurative way of teaching how hard it is to vanquish undying vice so varied in its form, so varied in its offspring.", + "[15] Do not, then, select any single thing 〈and regard it〉 as Joseph’s sole portion, but be well assured that he represents Opinion with its vast medley of ingredients. For there is manifest in him, on the one hand, the rational strain of self-control, which is of the masculine family,", + "[16] fashioned after his father Jacob: manifest, again, is the irrational strain of sense-perception, assimilated to what he derives from his mother, the part of him that is of the Rachel type: manifest also is the breed of bodily pleasure, impressed on him by association with chief butlers and chief bakers and chief cooks: manifest too is the element of vainglory, on to which as on to a chariot his empty-headedness makes him mount up, when (Gen. 41:43) puffed with pride he lifts himself aloft to overthrow equality from its seat." + ], + [ + "[17] In what we have said so far we have been giving a rough sketch of Joseph’s character. We must now consider in detail each of his dreams. And the one which must be examined first is the one concerning the sheaves. “Methought,” says he, “that we were binding sheaves” (Gen. 37:7). The very first word, “methought,” is the utterance of one at a loss, hesitating, dimly supposing, not seeing steadily and distinctly.", + "[18] For “methought” is a word which becomes those waking up out of deep sleep and still in dreamland, not those who are thoroughly awake and see things clearly.", + "[19] You will not find the Practiser Jacob saying “methought,” but “behold a stairway firmly fixed, whose top reached to heaven” (Gen. 28:12), and again “at the time that the sheep conceived, I saw them with my eyes in my sleep, and behold the he-goats and the rams leaped upon the sheep and the goats wholly white, and streaked, and sprinkled as though with ashes” (Gen. 31:10, 11).", + "[20] For the very visions seen in their sleep are of necessity clearer and purer in the case of those who deem the morally beautiful eligible for its own sake, even as their doings by day are bound to be more worthy of approbation." + ], + [ + "[21] Now, when I listen to him who is telling the dreams I marvel at his deeming that they were tying up sheaves, not reaping them. The former is the work of unskilled underlings, the latter the business of masters and of those thoroughly well versed in farm work.", + "[22] For the power to distinguish necessaries of life from refuse, and plants which supply nourishment from those which do not, and genuine from spurious, and a highly profitable fruitage from a root that is devoid of profit, in things yielded by the understanding, not in those which the soil puts forth, is a mark of consummate excellence.", + "[23] So the sacred story represents those whose eyes are open as reaping, and, what is most unexpected, not reaping barley or wheat but reaping out the reaping itself: accordingly it is said “When ye reap your reaping, ye shall not finish that which remains of the reaping” (Lev. 19:9).", + "[24] For the lawgiver wishes the virtuous man to be not only a judge of things that differ, distinguishing and separating things which produce and their productions, but to do away with the very conceit that he has the power to distinguish, mowing the very mowing and cutting away the workings of his own mind, in obedience to and belief in Moses’ saying that “judgement belongs to God only” (Deut. 1:17), with Whom in all matters comparisons and distinctions rest: to acknowledge defeat at whose hands is a noble thing and more glorious than far-famed victory.", + "[25] Like the “reaping the reaping” is the two-fold circumcision, which we meet with in such a case as that of the lawgiver devising as a new practice a circumcision of circumcision (Gen. 17:13), or “the consecration of a consecration” (Num. 6:2). that is, the purification of the very purification of the soul, when we yield to God the prerogative of making bright and clean, and never entertain the thought that we ourselves are sufficient apart from the divine overseeing guidance to cleanse our life and remove from it the defilements with which it abounds.", + "[26] To this class belongs also the “double cave” (Gen. 23:9), that pair of precious memories  concerned, one with all that has come into being, the other with Him who has made it. These constitute the nurture of the man of worth, for whom all things in the universe are objects of contemplation, and who loves to inquire also concerning the Father who brought them into being.", + "[27] I imagine that the discovery of the double diapason  in music is to be traced to this same pair. For both the work and its Fashioner must needs be celebrated by two quite perfect melodies, not the same in each case.", + "[28] For since the themes of praise were different it was necessary for the corresponding musical harmonies to be distinct also, the conjunct assigned to the conjunct universe, compacted as it is of different parts, the disjunct reserved for Him Who is in virtue of His existence disjunct from all creation, even God.", + "[29] There is again a statement breathing love of virtue expressed in the words of the Sacred Guide, “Ye shall not  make an end of what remains of the reaping” (Lev. 19:9), for he does not forget the principle with which he set out, acknowledging that “the end is the Lord’s” (Num. 31:28 ff.), with whom rests the lordship and establishment of these things.", + "[30] But in fact the man who has never learned the mysteries of reaping vaunts him saying, “Methought I was in company with others binding sheaves which I had not reaped” (Gen. 37:7), and failed, as I pointed out a little while ago, to take into account that this is a service performed by unskilled slaves.", + "[31] When we assign to words their figurative meaning we say that sheaves are “doings” which each of us grasps with the hand as his proper nourishment, hoping that he will find life and occupation therein for ever." + ], + [ + "[32] Now, the varieties of the sheaves, that is to say of the doings which may be called our nourishment, are so countless, so countless also the various sorts of men who lay hold of and make choice of the sheaves, that it is impossible to recount or even to conceive of them all. It may not, however, be out of place to instance some of these varieties which are introduced in his story of his dream.", + "[33] For he says to his brothers, “Methought we were binding sheaves” (l.c.). Brothers he has ten who are sons of the same father as he, one who is son of the same mother; and the name of each of them is the symbol of a most essential “doing.” “Reuben” is the symbol of good natural endowments, for “seeing son” he is called, in so far as he is a son not perfect, but in so far as he is a man with power to see and keenness of vision, well endowed by nature.", + "[34] Symeon, which means “diligent listening,” is the symbol of aptness to learn; Levi of excellent activities and practices and sacred ministries; Judah of songs and hymns addressed to God; Issachar of rewards rendered as recompense for noble deeds, the deeds themselves, it may be, constituting the perfect reward; Zabulon of light, since he is named “night’s flowing,” and when night fails and flows away, light of necessity dawns;", + "[35] of distinguishing and analysing matters Dan is the symbol; Gad of piratical attack and counter-attack; Asher, whose name signifies “felicitation,” symbolizes natural wealth, which has the reputation of being a possession conferring felicity;", + "[36] Naphthali’s name denotes a “broadening” or “flung wide open,” and so he is a symbol of peace, by which all things are opened out and given width, just as they are shut in by war. Benjamin is a symbol of time, both that of youth and that of old age, for his name is said to mean “son of days,” and youth and old age are alike measured by days and nights.", + "[37] Thus each one of them grasps the sheaves that are proper to him, and when he has grasped them binds all these parts together. The man well endowed by nature grasps quickness of apprehension, persistence, goodness of memory, the qualities in which excellence of natural endowment shows itself; the apt learner grasps listening, silence, attention; the enterprising man, venturesomeness and courage ready to take risks;", + "[38] the man of thanksgiving takes hold of commendations, eulogies, odes, panegyrics both in speech and song; the man who is bent on rewards, lays his hand on unflinching assiduity, fortitude that never gives in, and the carefulness in which speed is combined with caution;", + "[39] he who is in pursuit of light replacing darkness grasps wakefulness and keen-sightedness; the man who aims at analysis and accurate distinctions, lays hold of keen-edged arguments, of power to resist the delusion of confusing likeness and identity, of impartiality, of integrity;", + "[40] he who pirate-like counters ambush by ambush grasps trickery, quackery, sorcery, fallacies, pretence, feigning, practices which are in themselves reprehensible but when resorted to in dealing with enemies are belauded; he that makes it his object to be rich in nature’s riches, will lay his hands on self-control and parsimony; the lover of peace on good order, just dealing, freedom from arrogance, equality." + ], + [ + "[41] These are the constituent parts of the sheaves bound by the brothers of the dreamer, sons of the same father as he, while the sheaf of his uterine brother is made up of days and time, cause of nothing as cause of everything. ", + "[42] The dreamer himself, interpreter of dreams to boot, lays hold of vainglory, deeming it a possession of highest importance and splendour and advantage to human life. Accordingly it is in the first instance from dreams, things beloved of night, that he becomes known to the sovereign of the land of the body, not from “doings” luminous with the self-evidence of manifest fact, things which need day to exhibit them.", + "[43] The next step is that he is proclaimed procurator or protector of all Egypt, to stand second only to the sovereign in the signs of honour shewn to him, a position set down as more insignificant and absurd in wisdom’s judgement than the infliction of indignity and defeat.", + "[44] In the next place he puts round his neck “a golden collar” (Gen. 41:41 f.), a manifest halter, a circlet and hoop of unending necessity, not a life of orderly sequence, not the chain which marks Nature’s doings: these are properties of Tamar, whose adornment is not a collar but a necklace  (Gen. 38:18). Yes, and he puts on his finger a royal ring (Gen. 41:42), a gift and pledge, by which nothing is given, nothing pledged, in sharp contrast once more to that which was given to Tamar by Judah, king of the nation that sees, even Israel.", + "[45] For this king gives the soul a seal (Gen. 38:18), a gift all-beauteous, by which he teaches it that when the substance of the universe was without shape and figure God gave it these; when it had no definite character God moulded it into definiteness, and, when He had perfected it, stamped the entire universe with His image and an ideal form, even His own Word. ", + "[46] To go back to Joseph. He mounts the second chariot (Gen. 41:43), elated by mental dizziness and empty conceit, and becomes the victualler (ibid. 48) and keeper of the body’s treasuries, providing food for it from all quarters: and thus threatens serious danger to the soul.", + "[47] Not the least significant testimony to his principle and ambition for life is his name. “Joseph” means an “adding,” and vainglory is always making additions.", + "To what is genuine it adds what is counterfeit, to what is appropriate what is alien, to what is true what is false, to what is sufficient what is excessive, to vitality debauchery, to life’s maintenance vanity." + ], + [ + "[48] Mark what it is that I wish to make clear. Food and drink nourishes us, though it be the plainest barley-cake and water from the spring. Why then has vainglory superadded countless sorts of milk cakes and honied pastry and elaborate and diversified blends of innumerable wines highly seasoned with a view to indulgence in pleasure rather than partaking of nourishment?", + "[49] Again, relishes of the simplest kind are onions, greens, many fruits and cheese, and anything else of that kind as well: if you like, we will put down beside these fish and meat in the case of men who are not vegetarians.", + "[50] Would it not, then, have been quite sufficient, after broiling them on the coals or roasting them in a rough and ready way just as real heroes used to do,  to eat them? Nay, this is not all that your epicure craves for. Having procured the alliance of vainglory and stirred up the greediness within him he is on the look-out for and hunts up pastry-cooks to dress their food and serve their table, men who are famous masters of their art.", + "[51] These set at work the baits that have been found out ages ago to tempt our miserable belly, and make up and arrange in proper order decoctions of special flavour with which they coax the tongue into subservience: hereupon they forthwith get on to their hook the sense of taste which gives them access to the senses in general: and by means of taste the glutton is quickly revealed as no freeman but a slave.", + "[52] Clothing, as everybody knows, was produced at first to guard against the harm done to the body by great cold and heat, “wind-proof,” as I think the poets have it,  in winter and 〈cooling in summer〉.", + "[53] Who, then, is the cunning worker of those costly sea-purples, those light transparent summer gauzes, those spider-web shawls, those costumes dyed or woven into gay colouring by hands expert in producing variety by either art, which outdo the painter’s power of imitating nature? Who? I ask. Is it not vainglory?" + ], + [ + "[54] Once more, we felt the need of a house to live in for the same reasons, and that we may not suffer from the incursions of wild beasts or of men worse than beasts. Why then do we decorate the pavements and walls with costly marbles? Why do we scour Asia and Libya and all Europe and the islands searching for choicest columns and architraves?", + "[55] Why for the adornment of the capitals of our columns do we vie with each other in enthusiasm over Doric and Ionic and Corinthian carvings and other embellishments devised by those who scorn to keep to the established styles? Why do we build men’s and women’s apartments with golden ceilings? Is it not owing to vainglory?", + "[56] For sleep, all that was needed was a soft piece of ground (for it is reported that to this very day the Naked Philosophers among the Indians retain their primitive custom of making earth their couch), or, if more was required, a bed of rushes  or of unhewn stones or common timber.", + "[57] But in fact beds with ivory legs to their framework are provided, and sofas with costly mother-of-pearl and many-hued tortoiseshell inlaid with much toil and outlay of money and expenditure of time. Some are all of silver or all of gold or of mosaic work elaborately furnished with bedding of gold tissue and brocaded with flowers evidently for show and display, not for everyday use. Of these vainglory is the artist.", + "[58] For unguents what need was there to look for anything more than the fruit-juice pressed from the olive? For indeed it produces smoothness, and counteracts physical exhaustion, and brings about good condition. If a muscle be relaxed it braces it and renders it firm, nor is there anything surpassing it for infusing tone and vigour.", + "[59] But to attack the position of such wholesome kinds vainglory’s delicate unguents were set up. For these great countries where spices grow are laid under contribution, Syria, Babylon, the lands of the Indians and the Scythians; and on these the labour of perfumers is expended." + ], + [ + "[60] Again, for drinking what more was needed than Nature’s cup, art’s very masterpiece? Of that cup our hands are the material. Let a man hold them close together and hollow them; then let him carefully lift them to his mouth while someone else pours the water into them. He obtains not only the quenching of his thirst, but pleasure untold.", + "[61] But if a different one must needs have been found, was not the rustic mazer sufficient? Was it necessary to go in search of works of art by other famous artists? Why was it necessary that a lavish quantity of gold and silver goblets should be manufactured save for the sake of vanity, so loud in its insolence, and vainglory swinging so dizzily to and fro?", + "[62] When, again, we see people wanting to be crowned not with a garland of laurel or ivy, not with a sweet-smelling wreath of violets or lilies or roses or olive or any flower at all, but passing by God’s gifts, which He distributes as the seasons of the year run their course; when they poise over their head golden wreaths, a grievous weight, without any shame in mid-market at the hour when it is full,  what else can we think of them than that they are slaves of vainglory, though they assert that they are not only free, but actually lords and rulers of many others?", + "[63] The day will pass before I have given the sum of the corruptions of human life, and indeed why need we dwell at length upon them? For who has not heard, who has not seen them? Indeed who is not conversant and familiar with them? And therefore the Holy Word did well in giving the name of Addition to one who was the enemy of simplicity and the friend of vanity.", + "[64] For just as we find on trees, to the great damage of the genuine growth, superfluities which the husbandmen purge and cut away to provide for their necessities, so the true and simple life has for its parasite the life of falsity and vanity, for which no husbandman has hitherto been found to excise the mischievous overgrowth, root and all.", + "[65] And so the practisers of sound sense, perceiving that Joseph first with his senses, and afterwards with his understanding, pursues this way of artificiality, cry outright, “An evil beast has seized and devoured him”  (Gen. 37:33).", + "[66] And indeed this life of confused mankind, so full of complications, of vain inventions, which has covetousness and knavery for its cunning architects, what is it but a ferocious beast which feasts on all who come near to it? And therefore such as these will be the subject of mourning, as though they were dead, even while they still live, since the life that they obtain is meet to be lamented and bewailed; for Jacob, we are told, mourned for Joseph while still alive.", + "[67] On the other hand Moses will not suffer Nadab and his brother, those holy principles, to be mourned (Lev. 10:6). They were not seized by a savage, evil beast, but were taken up by a rush of fire unquenchable, by an undying splendour, since in sincerity they cast aside sloth and delay, and consecrated their zeal, hot and fiery, flesh-consuming and swiftly moving, to piety, a zeal which was alien  to creation, but akin to God. They did not mount by steps to the altar, which the law had forbidden (Ex. 20:26), but wafted by a favouring breeze and carried even to the revolving heavens were there like the complete and perfect burnt offering resolved into ethereal rays of light." + ], + [ + "[68] So then, O soul, that art loyal to thy teacher, thou must cut off thy hand, thy faculty, when it begins to lay hold of the genitals, whether they be the created world or the cares and aims of humanity. ", + "[69] For he often  bids us cut away the hand that has taken hold of the “pair”  (Deut. 25:11, 12), first because it has thereby given a welcome to the pleasure which it should hate, secondly because it has judged that to beget rests with ourselves, and thirdly because it has ascribed to the created the power of its maker.", + "[70] Observe that Adam, that mass of earth,  is doomed to die when he touches the twofold tree (Gen. 2:9), thus honouring the two before the one, and revering the created rather than the maker. Not so be it with thee. Pass clear away “from the smoke and wave,” and flee fast from the silly cares and aims of mortal life as from that dread Charybdis and touch it not, as the saying goes, with the tip of thy toe.", + "[71] But when thou hast stripped thyself to serve the holy rites, then widen hand and power and take a right good grip of the lessons of instruction and wisdom, for there is an ordinance running thus: “If a soul bring a gift or sacrifice, the gift shall be fine flour,” and then it continues, “and taking a full handful from the fine flour, with the oil and all the frankincense, he shall lay the memorial on the altar” (Lev. 2:1, 2).", + "[72] This is an excellent saying, that the server of the sacrifice should be an unbodied soul, not the twofold gross mass compounded of mortal and immortal. For that which prays, which gives thanks and offers sacrifice truly without blemish, must be as he says a “one” only, the soul.", + "[73] What then is the offering of an unbodied soul? What but the fine flour, the symbol of a will, purified by the councils of instruction, fit to produce nourishment that gives no sickness and life that knows no guilt.", + "[74] From such a sacrifice is the priest bidden to take his handful, take it with his whole hand, that is with all the grips of the mind, to offer the best of sacrifices, even the whole soul, brimful of truths of all sincerity and purity—a soul, too, rich with fatness, gladdened by light divine and perfumed with the breaths exhaled from justice and the other virtues, thus fitted to enjoy for ever a life of all fragrance and sweetness. For this is signified by the oil and the frankincense with which the priest fills his hand as well as with the wheaten flour." + ], + [ + "[75] Therefore also Moses dedicated a special feast for the “hand-grip of corn,” only not for all but for such as come from the holy land, for “When,” he says, “ye come into the land which I give you and ye reap its reaping, ye shall bring handgrips of corn as a firstfruit unto the priest” (Lev. 23:10).", + "[76] That means, “When, my mind, thou comest to virtue’s land, the gift fit for God alone, the land of goodly pasturage and tilth and fruit-bearing, and then if so be that thou hast sown in accordance with it, thou reapest the good when brought to its increase by God the consummator, do not bear the harvest home, that is, do not assign or ascribe to thyself the cause of the produce until thou hast rendered the firstfruit to Him Who is the source of riches and moves thee to practise the husbandry of thy enrichment.”", + "[77] And we are told to bring the “firstfruit of your reaping,” that is not of the land but of ourselves, that we may mow and reap ourselves, by consecrating every nourishing, excellent and worthy growth." + ], + [ + "[78] But he who was both the initiated and the initiator in the mysteries of dreams boldly said that his sheaf rose and stood upright (Gen. 37:7). For indeed as skittish horses rear their necks proudly on high, so all the votaries of vainglory set themselves up above everything, above cities and laws and ancestral customs and the affairs of the several citizens.", + "[79] Then they proceed from the leadership of the people to dictatorship over the people, and while they bring low the state of their neighbours they cause their own to rise and stand upright and firm, and thus they bring into subjection even souls whose spirit is naturally free and unenslaved.", + "[80] That is why he adds, “Your sheaves turned round and made obeisance to my sheaf” (ibid.). For the lover of modesty is overawed by the stiff-necked, and the cautious by the self-willed, and the honourer of equality by one who is unequal both in relation to himself and others.", + "[81] And surely that is natural, for the man of worth who surveys, not only human life but all the phenomena of the world, knows how mightily blow the winds of necessity, fortune, opportunity, force, violence and princedom, and how many are the projects, how great the good fortunes which soar to heaven without pausing in their flight and then are shaken about and brought crashing to the ground by these blasts.", + "[82] And therefore he must needs take caution to shield him, as an inseparable safeguard to prevent any grave disaster suddenly befalling him, for caution is to the individual man what a wall is to a city.", + "[83] Surely then they are all lunatics and madmen who take pains to display untimely frankness, and sometimes dare to oppose kings and tyrants in words and deeds. They do not perceive that not only like cattle are their necks under the yoke, but that the harness extends to their whole bodies and souls, their wives and children and parents, and the wide circle of friends and kinsfolk united to them by fellowship of feeling, and that the driver can with perfect ease spur, drive on or pull back, and mete out any treatment small or great just as he pleases.", + "[84] And therefore they are branded and scourged and mutilated and undergo a combination of all the sufferings which merciless cruelty can inflict short of death, and finally are led away to death itself." + ], + [ + "[85] These are the rewards of untimely free-speaking, which in the eyes of sensible judges is not free-speaking at all; rather they are the guerdons of silliness and frenzy and incurable brainsickness. Why? Who if he sees a storm at its height, a fierce counter-wind, a hurricane swooping down and a tempest-tossed sea, sets sail and puts out to sea when he should remain in harbour?", + "[86] What pilot or skipper was ever so utterly intoxicated as to wish to sail with all these terrors launched upon him, only to find the ship water-logged by the down-rushing sea and swallowed up, crew and all. For he who would have a safe voyage can always wait for the sunny breeze to take him gently and smoothly on his way.", + "[87] Again, would anyone who has seen a bear or a lion or wild boar sweeping along to attack him, instead of soothing and calming them as he should, provoke them to savagery just to offer himself as a banquet to satisfy the cruel appetites of the carnivorous brutes?", + "[88] As well might we think it advisable to fight against the stinging scorpions and asps of Egypt and all other creatures possessed of fatal poison whose single bite carries with it inevitable death—creatures whom we may well be content to tame with charms and ensure that they do us no grievous harm.", + "[89] Then are there not some men more fierce and malicious than boars, scorpions or asps, men whose spite and malice can only be avoided by using some method of taming and soothing them?", + "And therefore we shall find wise Abraham doing obeisance to the sons of Cheth (Gen. 23:7), whose name means “removing,” when the fitness of the circumstances prompted him to do so.", + "[90] For it was not out of any feeling of respect for those who by nature and race and custom were the enemies of reason, who remove instruction, the true coinage of the soul, and change it into petty coins and waste it miserably, that he brought himself to do obeisance. Rather it was just because he feared their power at the time and their formidable strength and took care to give no provocation, that he will win that great and secure possession, that prize of virtue, the double cave which is the most excellent abiding-place of wise souls: the cave which could not be won by war and fighting, but with reason shewn in subservience and respectful treatment. ", + "[91] Again, do not we too, when we are spending time in the market-place, make a practice of standing out of the path of our rulers and also of beasts of carriage, though our motive in the two cases is entirely different? With the rulers it is done to shew them honour, with the animals from fear and to save us from suffering serious injury from them.", + "[92] And if ever occasions permit it is good to subdue the violence of enemies by attack, but if they do not permit the safe course is to keep quiet, and if we wish to gain any help from them the fitting course is to soften and tame them." + ], + [ + "[93] Praise therefore is due to those also who are here under consideration, because they did not give way to the champion of vainglory but resisted him and said: “Shalt thou indeed reign over us? Not so” (Gen. 37:8). For they see that he is not yet become strong, that he is not as a flame fully kindled and shining brightly with abundance of fuel to feed it, but is still a mere smouldering spark, one who sees glory but as in a dream and does not yet pursue it with clear waking vision.", + "[94] In their hearts they have a comfortable hope that they may even be able to escape his clutches, and so they say: “Shalt thou indeed be king over us?” that is, “Dost thou think to lord it over us while we still have life, existence, strength, breath? When we have grown weak, thou wilt perhaps have the mastery, but while we are strong thou wilt hold but the rank of a subject.”", + "[95] And that is but natural, for when right reason is strong in the mind, vainglory is brought low, but gains strength when reason is weak. While, then, the soul still preserves its power and no part of it is amputated, let it take courage to ply the opposing vanity with missiles and arrows and use full liberty of speech. “Thou shalt not lord or king it over us,” it will say,", + "[96] “nor over others while we live, but we will with a single onset bear down thy threats and menaces, with the aid of the spear and shield-bearers, the children of sound sense, of whom it is said ‘they went on to hate him because of his dreams and because of his words’ ” (ibid.).", + "[97] And are not all the phantoms created by vanity but dreams and words? while all things which concern right living and thinking are facts and clear realities, and the former because of their falsity deserve our hatred, while the latter because they are filled full of the loveliness of truth deserve our love.", + "[98] Let no one then after this dare to accuse these persons so rich in virtue as though they were displaying the marks of a misanthropic and unbrotherly character, but understanding that it is no man that is here judged but one of the traits or feelings that exist in every man’s soul (in this case the mad craving for glory and love of vanity), let him give his approval to those who are moved by implacable loathing and enmity against a mind of this sort, and never tolerate the object of their abhorrence.", + "[99] For he knows for a certainty that such judges could never have failed to give a sound verdict, but as their training from the first has taught them who is the true king, the true lord, they hate the thought of giving homage and honour to one who appropriates the honour due to God and calls away his suppliants to do service to himself." + ], + [ + "[100] Therefore they will boldly say: “Wilt thou indeed be king and king it over us, or dost thou fail to know that we are not self-ruling but under the kingship of an immortal king, the one and only God? Wilt thou indeed be lord and lord it over us? Are we not under a master, and have we not and shall we not have for ever the same lord, bondage to whom gives us more joy than his freedom does to any other?” For of all things that are held in honour in this world of creation bondage to God is the best.", + "[101] So I myself would pray that I might hold firmly to their judgements, for they are the scouts, the watchers, the overseers of mental facts, not of material things,  strict in censorship, never failing in soberness, thus no more misled by the lures which so commonly deceive.", + "[102] But hitherto I have been as a drunken man beset by constant uncertainty, and like the blind I need staff and guiding hands, for had I a staff to lean on I might perhaps be saved from stumbling or slipping.", + "[103] But those who know themselves to be lacking in self-testing and thoughtfulness and yet do not take pains to follow those who have tested and thought out everything with care, those who know the road of which they themselves are ignorant, may be sure that they are pinned amid impassable ravines and with all their efforts will be unable to advance further.", + "[104] And I, when the drunken fit abates a little, am in such close alliance with them that I take their friends for my friends and their enemies for my enemies. Indeed, even in my present state I will reject and hate the dreamer because they hate him; and no one of sense can blame me for this because the votes and decisions of the majority must always prevail.", + "[105] But when he changes his life for the better and renounces his idle visions, his troublous crawling and cringing amid the vain fantasies of the vainglorious, and the dreams of night and darkness and the chance issues of things vague and obscure;", + "[106] when he rises from his deep slumbering to abiding wakefulness and welcomes clearness before uncertainty, truth before false supposition, day before night, light before darkness; when moved by a yearning for continence and a vast zeal for piety he rejects bodily pleasure, the wife of the Egyptian, as she bids him come in to her and enjoy her embraces (Gen. 39:7);", + "[107] when he claims the goods of his kinsmen and father from which he seemed to have been disinherited and holds it his duty to recover that portion of virtue which falls to his lot; when he passes step by step from betterment to betterment and, established firmly as it were on the crowning heights and consummation of his life, utters aloud the lesson which experience had taught him so fully, “I belong to God” (Gen. 50:19), and not any longer to any sense object that has been created,", + "[108]—then his brethren will make with him covenants of reconciliation, changing their hatred to friendship, their ill-will to good-will, and I, their follower and their servant, who have learnt to obey them as masters, will not fail to praise him for his repentance.", + "[109] And with good reason too, since Moses the revealer preserves from destruction the story of his repentance, so worthy of love and remembrance, under the symbol of the bones which he held should not be suffered to remain buried for ever in Egypt (Ex. 13:19). For he deemed it a grievous shame to suffer any fair blossom of the soul to be withered or flooded and drowned by the streams which the Egyptian river of passion, the body, pours forth unceasingly through the channel of all the senses.” " + ], + [ + "[110] So much for the vision drawn from earth—the vision of the sheaves and the interpretation put upon it. It is now fitting to examine the other, and to see how the rules of dream-interpretation explain it.", + "[111] He saw, the text says, another dream and told it to his father and brethren, and said “it was as though the sun and the moon and the eleven stars made obeisance to me.” And his father rebuked him and said, “What is this dream that thou hast dreamt? Shall I and thy mother and thy brethren indeed come to do obeisance to thee on the earth?” And his brothers were angry with him, but his father kept the saying in memory (Gen. 37:9–11).", + "[112] Well, the students of the upper world tell us that the Zodiac, the largest of the circles of heaven, is formed into constellations out of twelve signs, called zodia or “creatures” from which also it takes its name. The sun and the moon, they say, ever revolve along the circle and pass through each of the signs, though the two do not move at the same speed, but at unequal rates as measured in numbers, the sun taking thirty days and the moon about a twelfth of that time, that is two and a half days.", + "[113] He then who saw that heavensent vision dreamt that the eleven stars made him obeisance, thus classing himself as the twelfth to complete the circle of the zodiac.", + "[114] Now, I remember once hearing a man who had applied himself to the study in no careless or indolent manner say that it is not only men who have a mad craving for glory, but the stars too have rivalry for precedence and consider it right that the greater should have the lesser for their squires.", + "[115] How far this is true or mere idle talk is a question I must leave to the investigators of the upper world.", + "But we say that the lover of ill-considered aims, irrational contentions and vainglory is always puffed up by folly and claims to exalt himself not only above men but above the world of nature,", + "[116] and thinks that all things have come into being for his sake and that they must each of them, earth, water, air, heaven, pay their tribute to him as king. And so extreme is the stupidity under which he labours that he has not the reasoning power to see what even a brainless child could understand, that no craftsman makes the whole for the sake of the part, but rather the part for the sake of the whole, and that a man is a part of the all, so that as he has come into being to help to complete the universe it would be only right for him to subscribe his contribution to it." + ], + [ + "[117] But some people we see are so brimful of folly that they are aggrieved if the whole world does not follow their wishes.", + "Thus Xerxes, the king of the Persians, wishing to strike terror into his enemies, made a display of action on a grand scale by creating a revolution in nature; for he converted two elements,", + "[118] earth into sea, and sea into earth, giving dry land to the ocean and ocean in exchange to the dry land, by bridging over the Hellespont and breaking up Mount Athos into deep hollows, which filled with salt water at once formed a new and artificial sea entirely transformed from its ancient nature.", + "[119] And having played the conjurer, as he thought, with the regions of earth he proceeded in the boldness of his schemes to mount to heaven also, taking, unhappy wretch, impiety as his fellow climber. He thought to remove the irremovable and to overthrow the divine host, and, to quote the proverb, he began with the “sacred line.” ", + "[120] “For he aimed his arrows at the best of the heavenly bodies, the sun who rules the day, and little knew that he himself was wounded by the unseen bolt of insanity, not merely because the feats he hoped to do were impossible, but because they were utterly unholy, either of which reflects great discredit on the attempter.", + "[121] And the Germans of the most thickly populated part, where the sea ebbs and flows, when the flood-time comes there, try eagerly, we are told, to repel its onsets, brandishing their unsheathed swords and running like a hostile band to meet the oncoming waves. ", + "[122] They deserve our detestation in that in their godlessness they dared to take arms to oppose the parts of nature which know no servitude. They deserve our ridicule because they attempt the impossible as though it were possible, and think that water like a living creature can be speared, wounded, killed, or again can feel pain and fear,  or, in its terror at the attack, run away, and in fact feel all the sensations of the living soul, both pleasurable and painful." + ], + [ + "[123] Not long ago I knew one of the ruling class  who when he had Egypt in his charge and under his authority purposed to disturb our ancestral customs and especially to do away with the law of the Seventh Day which we regard with most reverence and awe. He tried to compel men to do service to him on it and perform other actions which contravene our established custom, thinking that if he could destroy the ancestral rule of the Sabbath it would lead the way to irregularity in all other matters, and a general backsliding.", + "[124] And when he saw that those on whom he was exercising pressure were not submitting to his orders, and that the rest of the population instead of taking the matter calmly were intensely indignant and shewed themselves as mournful and disconsolate as they would were their native city being sacked and razed, and its citizens being sold into captivity, he thought good to try to argue them into breaking the law.", + "[125] “Suppose,” he said, “there was a sudden inroad of the enemy or an inundation caused by the river rising and breaking through the dam, or a blazing conflagration or a thunderbolt or famine, or plague or earthquake, or any other trouble either of human or divine agency, will you stay at home perfectly quiet?", + "[126] Or will you appear in public in your usual guise, with your right hand tucked inside and the left held close to the flank under the cloak lest you should even unconsciously do anything that might help to save you?", + "[127] And will you sit in your conventicles and assemble your regular company and read in security your holy books, expounding any obscure point and in leisurely comfort discussing at length your ancestral philosophy?", + "[128] No, you will throw all these off and gird yourselves up for the assistance of yourselves, your parents and your children, and the other persons who are nearest and dearest to you, and indeed also your chattels and wealth to save them too from annihilation.", + "[129] See then,” he went on, “I who stand before you am all the things I have named. I am the whirlwind, the war, the deluge, the lightning, the plague of famine or disease, the earthquake which shakes and confounds what was firm and stable; I am constraining destiny, not its name but its power, visible to your eyes and standing at your side.”", + "[130] What shall we say of one who says or even merely thinks these things? Shall we not call him an evil thing hitherto unknown: a creature of a strange land or rather one from beyond the ocean and the universe —he who dared to liken to the All-blessed his all-miserable self?", + "[131] Would he delay to utter blasphemies against the sun, moon and the other stars, if what he hoped for at each season of the year did not happen at all or only grudgingly, if the summer  visited him with scorching heat or the winter  with a terrible frost, if the spring failed in its fruit-bearing or the autumn shewed fertility in breeding diseases?", + "[132] Nay, he will loose every reef of his unbridled mouth and scurrilous tongue and accuse the stars of not paying their regular tribute, and scarce refrain from demanding that honour and homage be paid by the things of heaven to the things of earth, and to himself more abundantly inasmuch as being a man he conceives himself to have been made superior to other living creatures." + ], + [ + "[133] Such is our description of the leaders of vainglory: let us now consider separately the rank and file which follow them. They are for ever plotting mischief and evil against the practisers of virtue, and when they see them zealous to brighten their life with the light of guileless truth and irradiate it with moonbeams as it were and with pure sunlight, they hinder them by deceit or violence and drive them down to the sunless region of the impious where deep night reigns and endless darkness, and innumerable tribes of spectres and phantoms and dream-illusions. And when they have brought them to their setting there they compel them to do obeisance to themselves as masters.", + "[134] For we understand by the sun the practiser of wisdom, since it provides light for material things even as the other does for the immaterial things of the soul.  And by the moon we understand the instruction which serves the wise, for both render a service most pure and useful in lightening a night, while the excellent thoughts and reasonings, the children as it were of instruction and the practising soul, are the brethren.  These it is who rule aright the straight path of life, but those who purpose to say nothing and think nothing that is wholesome deem well to ply them all with wrestling-grips of manifold turns and twists, with the throat-clutch which dislocates the neck, or the leg-fall which brings the wrestler with a thud to the ground.", + "[135] And therefore one of this sort is gently rebuked by his father, not Jacob, but by that right reason which is higher and greater than Jacob. “What is this dream which you dreamt?” (Gen. 37:10), he says.", + "[136] “You did not dream,” he means, “or did you suppose that the naturally free would be forced into slavery to the human, the powers which rule into subjection and, more unreasonable still, made subject not to some others but to those whom they rule, and slaves to none but those who themselves are in slavery?”  That could only be if  by the power of God who alone can do all things, whose right it is to move the immovable and to make stable the inconstant, the present state of things should be changed to its opposite.", + "[137] Nay, no dream! for what sense would there be in rebuking or showing anger to one who has seen an illusion in his sleep? “Was it of my free will that I saw it?” he would say. “Why charge me as you charge those who have deliberately gone wrong? I did but tell you what came upon me from without and struck my mind suddenly through no action of my own.”", + "[138] But the fact is that we are not concerned here with a dream, but with things that resemble dreams: things which seem great and brilliant and desirable to those who are not very well purified, but are small and dull and ridiculous in the eyes of uncorrupted judges of truth." + ], + [ + "[139] What he means is this: “Shall I right reason come: shall fruitful instruction the mother and nurse of the soul-company that yearns for knowledge come too, shall the children of us two press forward, and shall we all standing straight opposite ranged in order with lifted hands address our prayers to vanity?", + "[140] Shall we first bow  and then cast ourselves to the ground in supplication and obeisance?” No, may the sun never shine on these happenings, since deep darkness befits things evil and bright light the good, and what greater evil could there be than that vanity the fictitious and deceiver should receive praise and admiration, usurping the place of its opposite, simplicity in whom there is no fiction or falsity.", + "[141] There is a further excellent lesson in the words, “The father retained the saying” (Gen. 37:11). For surely it is the business of a soul which is no youngster nor barren nor sterile but verily an elder and skilled in parenthood, to take caution for its lifemate, to despise nothing at all but to crouch in awe before the power of God which none can evade or defeat, and to look with circumspection to see what end shall befall it.", + "[142] And so the oracles say that the sister of Moses, to whom we who deal in allegory give the name of “Hope,” “spied out from a distance” (Ex. 2:4), looking doubtless to the consummation of life, that it may meet us with good auspice sent down from high heaven by the Consummator.", + "[143] For many a time and to many has it happened that they have crossed wide spaces of navigable waters and passed a long voyage in safety escorted by favourable breezes, and then in the harbour itself have suddenly been shipwrecked just when they were on the point to cast anchor.", + "[144] Multitudes, too, have fought manfully for years in cruel warfare and remained unwounded without even a scratch or a pin-prick: they have returned in mirth and in gladness as though war were a public festival and a civic banquet, without a limb missing or unsound, and then in their own homes have been conspired against by those who should have been the last to do such a deed and slaughtered as the saying goes like “oxen at the stall.” " + ], + [ + "[145] And just as sudden and unexpected evils are wont to bring these outward inflictions upon us, so too they push the soul’s faculties in the opposite direction or deflect them to a side course if they can, or seek violently to overturn them. For who that has entered the arena of life remains without a fall?", + "[146] Who has never been tripped up and thrown? Happy he who has fallen but seldom. Has there been any for whom fortune was not ever lying in wait, taking breath and collecting her strength, to grip him in her arms and carry him off before he can prepare to meet her?", + "[147] Do we not know by experience of men who have passed from childhood to old age without feeling any disturbance of soul, because nature has so blessed them, or through the care of those who rear and train them or through both—men full of the profound inward peace which is the only true peace of which the peace of cities is but a copy—men who have therefore been held happy because they have never known even in their dreams the intestine war kindled by passion, the cruellest of wars—and then at the very eventide of life they have been wrecked on the rock of an unlocked tongue or insatiate greed of belly, or in uncontrolled lasciviousness of the lower-lying parts.", + "[148] For some “on the threshold of old age”  affect the life of prodigal youth, a life dishonoured, abandoned, shamed. Others affect a life of knavery, slander and roguery, starting on their restless course just when, were it an old habit, we should expect them to discard it.", + "[149] And therefore we should earnestly entreat and supplicate God that He should not pass by our perishing race but charge His saving mercy to remain with us to the end, for it is a grievous thing that when we have tasted peace in its purity we should be hindered from taking our fill of it." + ], + [ + "[150] And yet this hunger  for peace, assuaged as it is by yearning and desire, is a lighter ill than thirst; but when in our eagerness to quench our thirst we have to drink of another fountain whose water is muddy and noisome, we must needs, replete with bitter-sweet pleasure, lead the life which is not worth living, pursuing the harmful as though it were profitable in our ignorance of our own interest.", + "[151] And the stream of these evils becomes most grievous when the unreasoning forces of the soul attack and overpower the forces of reason.", + "[152] Whilst the herd obeys its herdsman, or the flocks of sheep or goats obey the shepherd or goatherd, all goes well with them; but, when the controlling herdsmen prove weaker than their charges, everything goes awry. Arrangement gives way to disarrangement, order to disorder, steadiness to disturbance, organization to confusion, since the lawful control no longer subsists. For if it ever existed it is now destroyed.", + "[153] What follows? Must we not believe that, since the troop of unreason has made the soul its province, we have within ourselves a herd of brute cattle and a herdsman too, the ruling mind? But while the mind is strong and capable of playing the herdsman, all things are managed with justice and profit;", + "[154] but when weakness befalls the king, the subject element must suffer also, and it is just when the victim thinks he is most at liberty that he becomes the easiest of prizes, which whoso would win needs but little preparation for the contest. For it is the nature of anarchy to plot mischief and of government to bring salvation, and chiefly so where law and justice are honoured, and that means government based on reason." + ], + [ + "[155] Here we may conclude our close study of the dreams of vainglory. As for gluttony it has two forms—drinking and eating, and the spicings and the flavourings needed are by no means simple in the former, but innumerable in the latter. These are entrusted to two caretakers: the liquor treated with nicety to a chief butler, the more elaborate edibles to a chief baker.", + "[156] There is a carefully considered meaning in describing the dreams as appearing to both these in a single night. They both aim at serving the same need, for it is not simple nutrition which they prepare but nutrition accompanied with pleasure and delight. And though the labour of each deals with but a half of nutrition they are both concerned with the whole:", + "[157] each half attracts the other, for after eating men at once desire to drink and after drinking no less quickly to eat, and this is one of the chief reasons for assigning the same time to the dreams of both.", + "[158] Now the province of the chief butler is drunkenness and of the chief baker gluttony. Each in his vision sees what fits his trade, wine and the parent plant of wine, the vine, in the first case, in the second loaves of the finest meal disposed on baskets which the baker saw himself carrying (Gen. 40:16, 17).", + "[159] It would be well to examine the former dream first. It runs as follows: “In my sleep there was a vine over against me, and on the vine were three stalks,  and itself was blossoming having put forth shoots. The grapes in the cluster were ripe, and Pharaoh’s cup was in my hand, and I took the cluster and squeezed it into the cup and I gave the cup into Pharaoh’s hand” (Gen. 40:9–11).", + "[160] The prefacing with the words “in my sleep” is as striking as the words are true. For indeed he who gives way to the intoxication which is of folly rather than of wine bears a grudge against upright standing and wakefulness, and lies prostrate and sprawling like sleepers with the eyes of his soul closed, unable to see or hear aught that is worth seeing or hearing.", + "[161] And thus brought low, as he passes through life he finds no road but a pathless tract where neither eye nor hand can guide him. He is pierced by brambles and thorn-bushes and sometimes rolls over precipices or charges into others, bringing miserable destruction both to himself and them.", + "[162] And that deep and abysmal sleep which holds fast all the wicked robs the mind of true apprehensions, and fills it with false phantoms and untrustworthy visions and persuades it to approve of the blameworthy as laudable: thus in the present case the dreamer treats sorrow as a joy and does not perceive that the vine of his vision is the plant which 〈produces〉 folly and madness.", + "[163] “There was,” he said, “a vine before me” (Gen. 40:9), the wanted and the wanter, wickedness and the wicked, facing each other. That vine we fools till, little thinking that it is to our own harm, and we eat and drink its fruit, thus ranking it with both kinds of nutriment, a possession which proves to entail no half measure but a wholesale complete totality of mischief." + ], + [ + "[164] But we should not fail to understand that a strong drink produced by the vine does not affect all who take it in the same way; often it acts in opposite ways so that some may be reckoned as bettered by it and others worsened.", + "[165] With some it relaxes pensiveness and gloom, lightens the stress of cares, softens wrath and fears, tutors the temperament to reasonableness and makes the soul contented with itself. With others it lubricates anger, screws up grief, excites amorousness and rouses discourtesy. It unlocks the mouth and unbridles the tongue, unbars the senses, maddens the passions, and makes the mind savage and wild and flustered with everything it meets.", + "[166] Thus the condition in the former case seems to resemble still cloudless weather in the air, or unruffled calm in the sea, or undisturbed peace and tranquillity in the city; while that of the latter resembles a fierce violent blast, a stormy billowy sea or civil faction, the turmoil of which is more hateful than even uncivilized warfare.", + "[167] Thus in one of two convivial gatherings we may find nothing but laughter and sport, guests promising, expecting and conferring kindnesses, pleasant feelings and pleasant talk, cheerful faces, glad hearts and freedom from restraint;", + "[168] in the other nothing but anxiety, depression, quarrellings, revilings, woundings, while the guests snort, scowl and bark, and fight it out with neck-grips, wrestling and fisticuffs, gnawing off ears and noses or any limbs or parts of the body that come handy,  and thus exhibiting their life-long inebriation and tipsiness with every kind of misconduct in this far from sacred contest." + ], + [ + "[169] The deduction follows that the vine symbolizes two things—folly and gladness.", + "Each of them is shewn by many proofs, but to avoid prolixity I will give only a few.", + "[170] There was a time when he led us along the way of philosophy, the way of the desert, barren of passions and of wrongdoings, and took us as to the high land and there set right reason on a peak of wide view and bade it survey the whole land of virtue, whether it is rich and deep of soil, fertile of grass and fruit, and well fitted both to give increase to the lessons there sown and to raise the stalk of tree-like verities there planted, or the opposite of all this; survey, too, the actions which are as cities, whether they are thoroughly well fenced and secure, or uncovered and stripped of the security which is as a wall; survey the inhabitants, too, whether they have increased in number and strength, or whether they are weak through fewness, or few through weakness  (Num. 13:18–21).", + "[171] And it was then that, unable to carry the whole main-stalk of wisdom, we cut a single branch and cluster of grapes and raised it up, a manifest sign of joy, as the lightest of burdens, meaning by the vine so rich in clustering grapes to shew forth to those of keen mental vision the sprouting and fruit-bearing alike of noble living (Num. 13:24). " + ], + [ + "[172] This vine of which we could take but a part men aptly liken to gladness, and in this I have the witness of one of the ancient prophets who under inspiration said, “The vineyard of the Lord Almighty is the house of Israel” (Is. 5:7).", + "[173] Israel is the mind which contemplates God and the world, for Israel means “seeing God,” while the house of the mind is the whole soul, and this is that most holy vineyard which has for its fruit that divine growth, virtue.", + "[174] So great and splendid is happy thinking, for that is the original meaning  of gladness or εὐφροσύνη, that Moses tells us that God does not disdain to feel and shew it, particularly when the human race turns away from its sins and inclines and reverts to righteousness, following by a free-will choice the laws and statutes of nature.", + "[175] “For the Lord, thy God,” he says, “will turn to be glad over thee for good, as He was glad over thy fathers, if thou shalt hear His voice, to keep all His commandments and ordinances and the judgements which are written in the book of this law” (Deut. 30:9, 10).", + "[176] What could be better able to implant the yearning for virtue or an ardour for noble living than this? Dost thou wish, O mind, that God should be glad? Be glad thyself, and bring Him no costly gift (for what does He need of what is thine?), but contrariwise accept rejoicing all the good things which He gives thee.", + "[177] For it gladdens Him to give when the recipients are worthy of His bounty, since you surely must admit that if those who live a life of guilt can be rightly said to provoke and anger God, those whose life is laudable may be equally well said to gladden Him.", + "[178] Mortal parents, fathers and mothers, vast as are their deficiencies, are gladdened by nothing so much as by the virtues of their children. And shall not the Begetter of all, in Whom is no deficiency at all, be gladdened by the noble living of His creatures?", + "[179] So then, my mind, having learned how great an evil is the wrath of God, and how great a good is the gladness of God, stir not up to thine own destruction aught that deserves His anger, but practise those things only by which thou shalt make God glad.", + "[180] And these thou shalt not find by traversing long roads where no foot has trodden, or by crossing seas where no ship has sailed, nor by pressing without a pause to the boundaries of land and ocean. For they do not dwell apart in the far distance, nor are they banished from the habitable world, but, as Moses says (Deut. 30:12–14), the good is stationed just beside thee and shares thy nature, close bound with the three most essential parts, heart, mouth and hands, that is mind, speech, actions, since to think and speak and do the morally good is the essential thing, a fullness composed of good purposing, good action and good speaking." + ], + [ + "[181] Let us say then to one whose business is one form of belly-gorging, namely deep-drinking, that is to the chief butler, “Why in this evil plight, thou fool? Thou thinkest that thy preparations conduce to gladness of mind, but in reality thou kindlest the flame of lack of mind and lack of continence and feedest it with fuel in lavish abundance.”", + "[182] But he, perhaps, may answer: “Do not upbraid me so rashly, without first considering how I stand. My appointed task is to be cup-bearer, not to one invested with self-control and piety and the other virtues, but to one steeped in greed, licentious, unjust, priding himself on his impiety, he who once dared to say, ‘I know not the Lord’ (Ex. 5:2). Naturally I, on my side, have busied myself with what gives him pleasure.”", + "[183] And wonder not that God and Pharaoh, the mind which usurps the place of God, find gladness in things opposite to each other. Who then is God’s cup-bearer? He who pours the libation of peace, the truly great high priest who first receives the loving-cups of God’s perennial bounties, then pays them back when he pours that potent undiluted draught, the libation of himself. ", + "Mark how the differences between the cup-bearers correspond to those whom they serve.", + "[184] Thus I, the servant of that Pharaoh who keeps his stubborn incontinent thinking in an intensity of looseness, am an eunuch (Gen. 40:7), gelded of the soul’s generating organs, a vagrant from the men’s quarters, an exile from the women’s, a thing neither male nor female, unable either to shed or receive seed, twofold yet neuter, base counterfeit of the human coin, cut off from the immortality which, through the succession of children and children’s children, is kept alight for ever, roped off from the holy assembly and congregation. “For he that hath lost the organs of generation is absolutely forbidden to enter therein” (Deut. 23:1)." + ], + [ + "[185] But the high priest is blameless, perfect, the husband of a virgin (Lev. 21:12, 13) who, strange paradox, never becomes a woman, but rather has forsaken that womanhood through the company of her husband (Gen. 18:11). And not only is he a husband, able to sow the seed of undefiled and virgin thoughts, but a father also of holy intelligences.", + "[186] Some of these survey and watch the facts of nature as Eleazer and Ithamar (Ex. 28:1). Others are God’s ministers, hastening to kindle and keep alive the heavenly flame.  For rubbing together words and thoughts on holiness they cause piety, that most godlike of qualities, to flash forth as though from tinder.", + "[187] And he who is at once the preceptor and father of these is no ordinary part of the holy congregation but one without whom the solemn council of the soul’s parts could never be convened at all, its chairman, its president, its chief magistrate,  who alone, and by himself, and without any other, is capable of considering and executing all things.", + "[188] When he is in line with others he is one of a few, but when he stands alone he is a “many,” a whole judgement-court, a whole senate, a whole people, a whole multitude, a whole human race, or rather, to tell the real truth, a being whose nature is midway between 〈man and〉 God, less than God, superior to man.", + "[189] “For when the high priest enters the Holy of Holies he shall not be a man” (Lev. 16:17).  Who then, if he is not a man? A God? I will not say so,  for this name is a prerogative, assigned to the chief prophet, Moses, while he was still in Egypt, where he is entitled the God of Pharaoh (Ex. 7:1). Yet not a man either, but one contiguous with both extremes, which form, as it were, one his head, the other his feet." + ], + [ + "[190] We have explained one kind of vine, that which is the property of gladness, and the potent drink which it gives, undiluted wise counsel, and also the cup-bearer who draws it from the divine mixing-bowl which God Himself has filled to the brim with virtues.", + "[191] The other kind, the vine of folly and grief and wine frenzy, has already been explained in a way, but it is represented typically otherwise by the words spoken elsewhere in the Greater Song.  “Their vine,” he says, “is of the vine of Sodom and their tendrils of Gomorrah, their grapes are grapes of gall, a cluster of bitterness to them. Their wine is the wrath of dragons and the incurable wrath of asps” (Deut. 32:32, 33).", + "[192] You see what the potent wine-cup of folly produces: bitterness, evil temper, sudden passionateness, deep anger, savageness, stinging spite, maliciousness. Most forcible are his words when he says that the plant of folly is in Sodom, for Sodom means blinding or making barren, since folly is blind and unproductive of excellence, and through its persuasions some have thought good to measure and weigh and count everything by the standard of themselves, for Gomorrah by interpretation is “measure.”", + "[193] But Moses held that God, and not the human mind, is the measure and weighing scale and numbering of all things.  And he shews it in these words: “There shall not be in thy pouch divers weights, great and small. There shall not be in thy house divers measures great and small. A true and a just weight thou shalt have” (Deut. 25:13–15).", + "[194] And the true and just measure is to hold that God Who alone is just measures and weighs all things and marks out the confines of universal nature with numbers and limits and boundaries, while the false and unjust measure is to think that these things come to pass as the human mind directs.", + "[195] This eunuch and chief cup-bearer in one to Pharaoh, after seeing in his vision the parent plant of folly, the vine, goes on to picture it with three roots, to suggest the extremes which can be reached in sinning through the three divisions of time, for the root is the extreme." + ], + [ + "[196] When then folly overshadows and masters the whole soul and suffers no part of it to go at large and in freedom, it compels him to commit, not only such sins as may be remedied, but also such as are incurable.", + "[197] The sins which admit of healing treatment are described as the lightest and first in the list; those that are beyond treatment as hard indeed and coming last, thus corresponding to roots.", + "[198] And just as wisdom begins its benefits with the lesser of right actions and ends with them at their highest point, so folly, I think, forces the soul down from the height and little by little removes it from instruction and sets its dwelling far apart from right reason and brings it in ruin to the uttermost extremes.", + "[199] After the roots the dream shewed him the vine blossoming and sprouting and bearing fruit. “It was blossoming itself, having put forth shoots. The grapes of the cluster were ripe” (Gen. 40:10). Would that fruitlessness might be its lot, that it might never put forth green shoots and remain withered for all time,", + "[200] for what greater evil could there be than that folly should blossom and be fruitful?", + "Again, the cup of Pharaoh, the receptacle of senselessness and wine-frenzy and ceaseless life-long intoxication, is, he says, “in my hand” (Gen. 40:11), that is, in the enterprises which I take in hand, in my projects and faculties, for without the activities of my mind passion by itself will make little headway.", + "[201] The reins should be in the hands of the driver, and the rudder in the hands of the pilot, since only so can the chariot go aright in the race or the ship on its voyage. Even so in the hand and power of the craftsman, who produces one form of belly-gorging, namely wine-bibbing, is the task of filling the incontinent man. ", + "[202] But what was he thinking of, that he did not shrink from boasting over an action which called for denial rather than confession? Were it not a better course, instead of confessing that he was the teacher of incontinence, to ascribe the incentives to passion to the incontinent one himself as inventor and author of his own base,", + "[203] unmanly, invertebrate life? But the fact is that folly prides herself on matters which should make her hide her face in shame. In this case she not only glories in carrying round the cup, the receptacle of the incontinent soul, and displaying it to all, but in squeezing the grapes into it, and this means manufacturing the stuff which brings passion to its fullness and drawing it out of concealment into the light.", + "[204] For just as babes who want to be fed, when they are going to suck the milk, squeeze and press the nurse’s breast, so the maker of incontinence presses hard on the fountain from which the curse of wine-bibbing pours like rain, to find in the squeezed droppings a nourishment of delicious sweetness." + ], + [ + "[205] Thus then let us describe that wine-maddened, raving, incurable pest, the man frenzied by strong liquor. But his fellow, himself too a belly-slave, the friend of gross eating and gluttony, the dissolute artificer of viands, must be considered in his turn.", + "[206] Yet we need little thought in our quest of him, for the dreamer’s vision is the closest possible reproduction of his image, and through careful study of the dream we shall see him reflected as it were in a mirror.", + "[207] “I thought,” it says, “that I lifted three baskets of wheaten loaves on my head” (Gen. 40:16). “Head” we interpret allegorically to mean the ruling part of the soul, the mind on which all things lie, and once indeed that mind cried out loudly and bitterly,  “All these things have been upon me” (Gen. 42:36).", + "[208] So then he marshals the procession of all the arts which he contrived against the unhappy belly, and bearing the ritual  basket himself is not ashamed, poor fool, to be burdened with a triple load of baskets, that is with the three divisions of time.", + "[209] For pleasure is said by her votaries to consist of the memory of past, the enjoyment of present and the hope of future delights. ", + "[210] Thus the three baskets are likened to the three divisions of time, and the baked meats in the baskets to the concomitants of each of these divisions, memories of the past, participations of the present, expectations of the future, and he who bears all these to the pleasure-lover, who has loaded the table not with one general kind of incontinence, but with practically every species and genus of licentiousness, and that board has no peace-draughts and lacks the salts of friendship.", + "[211] At this board there is one banqueter only, and yet to him it is as a public feast: that banqueter is King Pharaoh, who has made dispersion and scattering and the undoing of continence his business, for his name means “scattering.” And he shews his great importance and kingship not in delighting in the seemly, the good cheer of temperance, but in glorying in the unseemly, the practices of foulness, wrecked as he is on the rocks of insatiableness and greediness and luxurious living.", + "[212] And therefore the birds (Gen. 40:17), that is the unforeseen chance events which swoop upon us from without, will overrun like fire all the contents and set them ablaze and consume them with their devouring force, so that not a fragment is left to be enjoyed by the basket-bearer who had hoped to carry his inventions and projects for ever as a secure and permanent possession never to be taken from him.", + "[213] But thanks be to the victorious God who, however perfect in workmanship are the aims and efforts of the passion-lover, makes them to be of none effect by sending invisibly against them winged beings to undo and destroy them. Thus the mind stripped of the creations of its art will be found as it were a headless corpse, with severed neck nailed like the crucified to the tree of helpless and poverty-stricken indiscipline.", + "[214] For so long as they remain unharmed by the visitors, whose way it is to arrive suddenly and unforeseen, the arts which cater for the enjoyment of pleasure seem to flourish. But when these visitors swoop down out of the unseen, these arts are turned upside-down and the craftsman perishes with them." + ], + [ + "[215] We have now explained the dreams of the two partners in the workshop of the palate, where both kinds of provender, drink and food, and these not of the necessary, but of the superfluous and intemperate kind, are produced. Our next immediate duty is to investigate the dreams of him who believed himself to be the king of these two, and the other faculties of the soul, namely Pharaoh.", + "[216] “In my sleep,” he says, “I thought I was standing by the edge of the river, and it was as though from the river came up seven kine of choice flesh and well favoured, and they fed in the reed grass. And, lo, seven other kine came up behind them from the river, evil and ugly to look on, and lean-fleshed, such that I never saw uglier in all Egypt.", + "[217] And the lean and ugly kine ate up the seven first kine, the choice and well favoured, and they passed into their bellies. But it could not be seen that they had passed into their bellies, and their looks remained ugly as at the first.", + "[218] And after I had waked I slept, and saw again in my sleep that seven ears of corn came up on one stalk, full and good, and other seven ears thin and wind-blasted grew up beside them, and the seven ears swallowed up the good and full ears” (Gen. 41:17–24).", + "[219] You note the opening words of the self-lover, who, in body and soul alike, is the subject of movement and turning and change. “I thought I stood,” he says, and does not reflect that to be unswerving and stable belongs only to God and to such as are the friends of God.", + "[220] God’s unswerving power is proved most clearly by this world which ever remains the same unchanged, and, since the world is firmly balanced, its maker must needs be steadfast. We have other infallible witnesses in the sacred oracles,", + "[221] for we have these words with God as speaker: “Here I stand there before thou wast, on the rock in Horeb”  (Ex. 17:6), which means, “This I, the manifest, Who am here, am there also, am everywhere, for I have filled all things. I stand ever the same immutable, before thou or aught that exists came into being, established on the topmost  and most ancient source of power, whence showers forth the birth of all that is, whence streams the tide of wisdom.”", + "[222] For I am He “Who brought the fountain of water from out the steep rock,”  as it says elsewhere (Deut. 8:15). And Moses too gives his testimony to the unchangeableness of the deity when he says “they saw the place where the God of Israel stood” (Ex. 24:10), for by the standing or establishment he indicates his immutability." + ], + [ + "[223] But indeed so vast in its excess is the stability of the Deity that He imparts to chosen natures a share of His steadfastness to be their richest possession. For instance, He says of His covenant filled with His bounties, the highest law and principle, that is, which rules existent things, that this God-like image shall be firmly planted with the just soul as its pedestal. For so He declares when he says to Noah, “I will establish My covenant on thee” (Gen. 9:11).", + "[224] And these words have two further meanings. First that justice and God’s covenant are identical; secondly that while the gifts bestowed by others are not the same as the recipients’, God gives not only the gifts, but in them gives the recipients to themselves. For He has given myself to me and everything that is to itself, since “I will establish my covenant with thee” is the same as “I will give thyself to thee.” ", + "[225] And it is the earnest desire of all the God-beloved to fly from the stormy waters of engrossing business with its perpetual turmoil of surge and billow, and anchor in the calm safe shelter of virtue’s roadsteads.", + "[226] See what is said of wise Abraham, how he was “standing in front of God” (Gen. 18:22), for when should we expect a mind to stand and no longer sway as on the balance save when it is opposite God, seeing and being seen?", + "[227] For it gets its equipoise from these two sources: from seeing, because when it sees the Incomparable it does not yield to the counter-pull of things like itself; from being seen, because the mind which the Ruler judges worthy to come within His sight He claims for the solely best, that is for Himself.", + "To Moses, too, this divine command was given: “Stand thou here with Me” (Deut. 5:31), and this brings out both the points suggested above, namely the unswerving quality of the man of worth, and the absolute stability of Him that IS." + ], + [ + "[228] For that which draws near to God enters into affinity with what is, and through that immutability becomes self-standing.  And when the mind is at rest it recognizes clearly how great a blessing rest is, and, struck with wonder at its beauty, has the thought that it belongs either to God alone or to that form of being which is midway between mortal and immortal kind.", + "[229] Thus he says: “And I stood between the Lord and you” (Deut. 5:5), where he does not mean that he stood firm upon his feet, but wishes to indicate that the mind of the Sage, released from storms and wars, with calm still weather and profound peace around it, is superior to men, but less than God.", + "[230] For the human mind of the common sort shakes and swirls under the force of chance events, while the other, in virtue of its blessedness and felicity, is exempt from evil. The good man indeed is on the border-line, so that we may say, quite properly, that he is neither God nor man, but bounded at either end by the two, by mortality because of his manhood, by incorruption because of his virtue.", + "[231] Similar to this is the oracle given about the high priest: “When he enters,” it says, “into the Holy of Holies, he will not be a man until he comes out” (Lev. 16:17).  And if he then becomes no man, clearly neither is he God, but God’s minister, through the mortal in him in affinity with creation, through the immortal with the uncreated,", + "[232] and he retains this midway place until he comes out again to the realm of body and flesh. That it should be so is true to nature. When the mind is mastered by the love of the divine, when it strains its powers to reach the inmost shrine, when it puts forth every effort and ardour on its forward march, under the divine impelling force it forgets all else, forgets itself, and fixes its thoughts and memories on Him alone Whose attendant and servant it is, to whom it dedicates not a palpable offering, but incense, the incense of consecrated virtues.", + "[233] But when the inspiration is stayed, and the strong yearning abates, it hastens back from the divine and becomes a man and meets the human interests which lay waiting in the vestibule ready to seize upon it, should it but shew its face for a moment from within." + ], + [ + "[234] Moses then describes the perfect man as neither God nor man, but, as I have said already, on the border-line between the uncreated and the perishing form of being. While, on the other hand, the man who is on the path of progress is placed by him in the region between the living and the dead, meaning by the former those who have wisdom for their life-mate and by the latter those who rejoice in folly,", + "[235] for we are told of Aaron that “he stood between the dead and the living, and the breaking abated” (Num. 16:48). For the man of progress does not rank either among those dead to the life of virtue, since his desires aspire to moral excellence, nor yet among those who live in supreme and perfect happiness, since he still falls short of the consummation, but is in touch with both.", + "[236] And therefore he quite properly concludes with the phrase “the breaking abated,” not “ceased.” For in perfection all the influences which break and crush and fracture the soul do cease, but in the stage of progress they diminish, being so to speak cut down and confined, but nothing more." + ], + [ + "[237] We find, then, that stability or fixity or permanent immobility, in virtue of its immutable and unchangeable quality, subsists as an attribute primarily to the Existing Being, secondly to His Word which He calls His covenant, thirdly to the Sage, and fourthly to the man of gradual progress. What then could make the wicked mind, fit subject for every manner of curse, think that he could stand alone, when he is carried to and fro as in a flood and swept down by eddy after eddy of the torrent of which that dead burden the body is the channel?", + "[238] For “I thought,” he says, “that I stood on the edge of the river” (Gen. 41:17). River, I submit, is here a symbol of speech, since both flow outward and with a swift strong current, and both are sometimes fruitful in producing inundations, water in one case, words in the other, sometimes unfruitful when they slacken or subside.", + "[239] And both may be beneficial by irrigating, one the fields, the other the souls of docile hearers; both at times do harm, the river by flooding the adjoining land, speech by reducing the mental powers of the inattentive to chaos and confusion.", + "[240] In this way speech is like a river, but it has a twofold nature better and worse, the better beneficial, the worse necessarily injurious.", + "[241] Moses has provided examples of both, of the plainest kind to those who have the gift of vision. “A river,” he says, “goes out of Eden to water the garden; thence it separates into four heads” (Gen. 2:10),", + "[242] and he gives the name of Eden, which is by interpretation “delight,” to the wisdom of the Existent, because no doubt wisdom is a source of delight to God and God to wisdom, and so in the Psalms the singer bids us to “delight in the Lord” (Ps. 37(36):4). The Divine Word descends from the fountain of wisdom like a river to lave and water the heavensent celestial shoots and plants of virtue-loving souls which are as a garden.", + "[243] And this holy Word is “separated into four heads,” which means that it is split up into the four virtues, each of which is royal. For separation into heads or rules is not like separation into local regions but into kingdoms, and when he points to virtues he means thereby to declare that the Sage who possesses them is a king, a king appointed not by men but by nature, the infallible, the incorruptible, the only free elector.", + "[244] Thus it was said to Abraham by those who saw his worthiness: “thou art a king from God with us” (Gen. 23:6).  And thus they laid down the doctrine for the students of philosophy, that the Sage alone is a ruler and king, and virtue a rule and a kingship whose authority is final. " + ], + [ + "[245] It is this Word which one of Moses’ company compared to a river, when he said in the Psalms “the river of God is full of water” (Ps. 65(64):10); where surely it were senseless to suppose that the words can properly refer to any of the rivers of earth. No, he is representing the Divine Word as full of the stream of wisdom, with no part of it empty or devoid of itself but a …, as it has been called, filled through and through with the influx and lifted up on high by the constant never-failing outflow from that perennial fountain.", + "[246] And there is another psalm which runs thus: “The strong current of the river makes glad the city of God” (Ps. 66(65):4). What city? For the existing holy city, where the sacred temple also is, does not stand in the neighbourhood of rivers any more than of the sea. Thus it is clear that he writes to shew us allegorically something different from the obvious.", + "[247] It is perfectly true that the impetuous rush of the divine word borne along 〈swiftly〉 and ceaselessly with its strong and ordered current does overflow and gladden the whole universe through and through.", + "[248] For God’s city is the name in one sense for the world which has received the whole bowl, wherein the divine draught is mixed, and feasted thereon and exultingly taken for its possession the gladness which remains for all time never to be removed or quenched. In another sense he uses this name for the soul of the Sage, in which God is said to walk as in a city. For “I will walk in you,” he says, “and will be your God” (Lev. 26:12).", + "[249] And, when the happy soul holds out the sacred goblet of its own reason, who is it that pours into it the holy cupfuls of true gladness, but the Word, the Cup-bearer of God and Master of the feast, who is also none other than the draught which he pours—his own self free from all dilution, the delight, the sweetening, the exhilaration, the merriment, the ambrosian drug (to take for our own use the poet’s terms) whose medicine gives joy and gladness?" + ], + [ + "[250] Now the city of God is called in the Hebrew Jerusalem and its name when translated is “vision of peace.” Therefore do not seek for the city of the Existent among the regions of the earth, since it is not wrought of wood or stone, but in a soul, in which there is no warring, whose sight is keen, which has set before it as its aim to live in contemplation and peace.", + "[251] For what grander or holier house could we find for God in the whole range of existence than the vision-seeking mind, the mind which is eager to see all things and never even in its dreams has a wish for faction or turmoil?", + "[252] I hear once more the voice of the invisible spirit, the familiar secret tenant, saying, “Friend, it would seem that there is a matter great and precious of which thou knowest nothing, and this I will ungrudgingly shew thee, for many other well-timed lessons have I given thee.", + "[253] Know then, good friend, that God alone is the real veritable peace, free from all illusion, but the whole substance of things  created only to perish is one constant war. For God is a being of free will; the world of things is Fatality.  Whosoever then has the strength to forsake war and Fatality, creation and perishing, and cross over to the camp of the uncreated, of the imperishable, of free-will, of peace, may justly be called the dwelling-place and city of God.", + "[254] Let it be then a matter of indifference that you should give to the same object two different names, vision of God and vision of peace. For indeed the Potencies of the Existent have many names, and of that company peace is not only a member but a leader.”" + ], + [ + "[255] Again God promises wise Abraham a portion of land “from the river of Egypt to the great river Euphrates” (Gen. 15:18), not meaning a section of country, but rather the better part in ourselves. For our body and the passions engendered in it or by it are likened to the river of Egypt, but the soul and what the soul loves to the Euphrates.", + "[256] Here he lays down a doctrine of the greatest importance and value to life, namely, that the good man has received for his portion soul and the soul’s virtues, even as the bad on the other hand has body and the vices which belong to and arise through the body.", + "[257] Now “from” has two meanings, one where the thing from which what we are describing starts is included, the other where it is excluded. For when we say that there are twelve hours from early morning to evening, or thirty days from the new moon to the end of the month, we take into our reckoning the first hours in the former case and the new moon itself in the latter. But when one says that the field is three or four stades distant from the city, clearly he does not include the city.", + "[258] So in this case we must suppose that in the phrase “from the river of Egypt” “from” is used in this exclusive sense. For Moses would have us remove right away from bodily things, which present themselves amid restless flux and motion, which destroys and is destroyed, and receive the soul as our heritage with the virtues which are indestructible and worthy to be such.", + "[259] Thus our investigation has shewn what was meant when the speech which deserves praise was compared to a river. It follows that speech which calls for censure was none other than the river of Egypt—speech, that is, which is ill-trained, ignorant and practically soulless. And therefore it changes into blood (Ex. 7:20), since it cannot provide nourishment, for the speech of indiscipline none can drink. And further it is prolific of frogs, bloodless, soulless creatures, whose cry is a strange harsh noise, painful to the hearers.", + "[260] We are told, too, that all the fish in it died (ibid. 21), and by fish thoughts are symbolized. For thoughts swim and are bred in speech as in a river, and like living creatures give vitality to it. But set in undisciplined speech ideas die. For in such speech there is no sense to be found, only “bawling” cries disordered and “unregulated,” as the verse has it. " + ], + [ + "[261] Enough on these points; but since in the words “I thought I stood by the edge of the river” he declares that his dream contained not only a “standing” and a “river,” but also the edges or “lips” of a river, I am bound to make such observations as are suitable on the subject of “lip.”", + "[262] Nature clearly has provided animals and men in particular with lips for two most necessary purposes. One is to keep silence; for the lips form the strongest possible fence and barrier for confining sound. The other is to give expression to thought; for the stream of words flows through the lips. When they are closed that stream is held back, and until they part it cannot take its course.", + "[263] In this way the lips train and exercise us for both purposes, speech and silence, and they teach us to watch for the proper occasion for either. For example: Is something said worth hearing? Oppose it not but pay attention silently according to the command of Moses, “Be still and hear” (Deut. 27:9).", + "[264] None of those who enter upon wordy controversies can be properly held either to speak or to hear; he who would do 〈either〉 in the true sense will find 〈silence〉 useful.", + "[265] Again when amid the wars and ills of life you see the merciful hand and power of God extended over you as a shield, be still. For that Champion needs no ally, and we have a proof of this in the words which Holy Scripture keeps amid its treasures, “The Lord shall war for you and ye shall be silent” (Ex. 14:14).", + "[266] Once more, if you see the firstborn of Egypt, true children of their parents, perishing (Ex. 11:5), even lust, pleasure, grief and fear, and injustice, folly, licentiousness with all their brethren and kin, stand in awe and be silent, bending low before the tremendous power of God.", + "[267] “For not a dog shall make a sound,” it says, “with his tongue, neither from men to beast” (ibid. 7), which means that neither the dog-like tongue which barks so loud, nor the man in us, the ruling mind, nor the beast-like creature, sense, should vaunt themselves when, upon the downfall of all that is our own, assistance comes self-bidden from without to shield us." + ], + [ + "[268] But occasions often arise which ill accord with silence and call for speech in song or prose,  and of such, too, we may find instructive examples in the same storehouse. How so? Suppose some portion of good has fallen to us unexpectedly. It is well then to give thanks and hymn the sender.", + "[269] And what is that good? Suppose that the passion which was attacking us is dead and has been flung out headlong without burial. Let us not delay, but setting in order our choir raise the most sacred of anthems, bidding all to say “Let us sing unto the Lord, for He hath triumphed gloriously. Horse and rider he hath cast into the sea” (Ex. 15:1).", + "[270] But though, no doubt, the destruction and removal of passion is a good, yet it is not a perfect good, but the discovery of wisdom is a thing of transcendent excellence. And when that is discovered, all the people will sing not with one part of music only, but with all its harmonies and melodies.", + "[271] For “then,” says the text, “Israel sang this song upon the well” (Num. 21:17), and by the “well” I mean knowledge, which for long has been hidden, but in time is sought for and finally found—knowledge whose nature is so deep, knowledge which ever serves to water the fields of reason in the souls of those who desire to see.", + "[272] Again when we reap the true harvest of the mind, does not the holy Word bid us bring, stored in the basket (Deut. 26:2, 4) of our reasoning faculties, the firstfruits of that rich crop of things excellent, the product of the flowering, the sprouting, the fruit-bearing of ourselves, and as we display them pronounce with words of forthright oratory our laudings of God who gives fulfilment, in such words as these: “I have purged the things hallowed from my home and stored them in the house of God (ibid. 13) under the stewardship and guardianship of those who have been chosen for their high merit to the sacred temple-ministry.”", + "[273] These are the Levites and the proselytes, the orphans and widows (ibid.); the first suppliants, the second those who have left their homes and taken refuge with God, the others those who are as orphans and widows to creation, and have adopted God as the lawful husband and father of the servant-soul." + ], + [ + "[274] Such is the most fitting rule for speaking and keeping silence. But the practice of the wicked is quite the contrary. For they ardently pursue a guilty silence and a reprehensible speech, and they work both as an engine for the ruin of themselves and others.", + "[275] Yet it is in speech—in saying what they ought not—that they exercise themselves the most. For they open their mouths and leave them unbridled, and suffer their “promiscuous”  speech, to use the poet’s term, to take its course like an unchecked torrent whirling along with it vast quantities of unprofitable stuff.", + "[276] And so some betake themselves to pleading the cause of pleasure and lust and of every superabundant appetite and raise up unreasoning passion to menace the ruling reason. 〈Others 〉 disencumber themselves to engage in disputatious controversies, hoping thereby to blind the race of vision and to be able to hurl them over precipices and chasms, from which they can never rise again.", + "[277] Some, too, have set themselves up to oppose the virtue not only of men but of God; to such a pitch of madness have they advanced.", + "The first of these three, the company of the pleasure-lovers, are described as having for their leader the king of the country of Egypt. For God says to the prophet, “Behold he himself goeth forth to the water, and thou shalt stand meeting him by the edge (lip) of the river” (Ex. 7:15). ", + "[278] It is as characteristic of him, that he should ever go out to the spreading tide of unreasoning passion, as it is of the wise to meet its strong current, whose waters are the advocacy of pleasure and lust—meet it not with his feet, but with his judgement, steadfastly and unswervingly, on the “lip” of the river, that is on the mouth and tongue, the organs of speech. For firmly resting on these supports he will be able to overthrow and lay low the plausibilities which plead the cause of passion.", + "[279] Secondly,  we find the enemy of the race that has vision in the people of Pharaoh who attacked and persecuted and enslaved virtue without ceasing, until they received the requital of evil for the evil they meted out to others, submerged in the sea of their wrongdoings and in the mighty billows, which their raving had called up, and thus that occasion brought a peerless spectacle, an undisputed victory, and a joy which transcendedhope.", + "[280] Therefore we read: “Israel saw the Egyptians dead along the lip of the sea” (Ex. 14:30). Mighty is that champion arm by whose constraining force mouth and lips and speech became the scene of the fall of those who had whetted them as instruments against the truth, that so their own weapons, not those of strangers, should bring death to those who had taken them against others.", + "[281] Three messages, the best of tidings, does this text proclaim to the soul, one that the passions of Egypt have perished, a second that the scene of their death is none other than the lips of that fountain bitter and briny as the sea, those very lips through which poured forth the sophist-talk which wars against virtue, and finally that their ruin was seen.", + "[282] For we may pray that nothing that is good and beautiful should be unseen, but rather should be brought into clear light and bright sunshine, while its opposite evil deserves only to be brought into night and profound darkness and 〈night〉. And never may even a casual glimpse of evil come our way, but may the good be surveyed with ever growing eyesight. And what is so truly good as that the excellent should live and the bad die?" + ], + [ + "[283] Third on the list  were those who extended the activities of their word-cleverness to heaven itself, men who gave themselves to studies directed against nature or rather against their own soul. They declared that nothing exists beyond this world of our sight and senses, that it neither was created nor will perish, but is uncreated, imperishable, without guardian, helmsman or protector.", + "[284] Then piling enterprises one upon another they raised on high like a tower their edifice of unedifying doctrine.  For we read that “all the earth was one lip” (Gen. 11:1), a harmony of disharmony, that is a blend of all the parts of the soul, to dislodge from its position the greatest binding force in the universe, government.", + "[285] And therefore when they hoped to soar to heaven in mind and thought, to destroy the eternal kingship, the mighty undestroyable hand cast them down and overturned the edifice of their doctrine.", + "[286] And the place is called “confusion,” a fitting name for wild audacious revolution. For what is more fraught with confusion than want of government? Are not houses that have no ruler full of offences and disturbance?", + "[287] Are not cities left without a king destroyed by the opposite of king-rule, the greatest of evils, mob-rule? Do not countries and nations and regions of the earth lose their old abundant happiness when their governments are dissolved?", + "[288] And why should we appeal to the case of mankind? For the other collections of animals, whether of the air, or the land or the water, do not hold together any more than men without someone to captain them, but they always desire the presence of their proper leader and pay him honour as the sole author of their welfare, and in his absence they scatter and are destroyed.", + "[289] Can we then suppose that, while the creatures of the earth, who are but a tiny portion of the universe, find in government the cause of their well-being and in anarchy the cause of their ills, the world does not owe the supreme blessedness which fills it to the leadership of God its king?", + "[290] So then these aggressors against heaven suffered a penalty befitting their attempts. Having brought disorder into the holy, they saw their own unholiness disordered by anarchy; they had wrought confusion and were confounded.  But so long as they remain unpunished, puffed up by their delusion, they deal out destruction to the government of the universe with their unholy words, enroll themselves as rulers and kings, and make over the undestroyable sovereignty of God to creation which passes away and perishes and never continues in one stay. " + ], + [ + "[291] Thus it is their way to talk bombastic, boastful absurdities such as “We are the leaders, we are the potentates; all things are based on us. Who can cause good or its opposite, save we? With whom does it really and truly rest to benefit or harm, save us? They are but idle babblers who say that all things are linked to an invisible power, and think that this power presides over everything in the world whether human or divine.”", + "[292] Such is their presumptuousness. Yet, if they pass from this intoxication to sobriety, and become themselves again; if realizing the sottishness of their past they feel shame and self-reproach for the sins to which their ill-judging judgement has led them; if they take repentance for their counsellor, a counsellor impervious to flattery and bribery; if they propitiate the merciful power of Him that is by recantations in which holiness replaces profanity, they will obtain full pardon.", + "[293] But if they continue for ever to plunge and prance like stiffnecked horses disobedient to the rein, as though they were free and independent and rulers of others, necessity inexorable and implacable will make them feel that in all things great and small they are as nothing.", + "[294] For the charioteer who has mounted the winged chariot  of this world will put his bridle upon them and pull back with force the hitherto slackened reins till they are taut, tighten the muzzles, and with whip and spur recall to them the nature of that imperious authority, which the kindness and gentleness of the ruler had caused them to forget, as bad servants do.", + "[295] For such misconstrue the mildness of the master as failure to govern, and ape the state of those who have no master, until the owner stems the full flood of the disease, by applying punishments in the place of remedies.", + "[296] Thus we read “the lawless soul which distinguishes with its lips to do well or do ill,”  and then later “shall proclaim its sin” (Lev. 5:4, 5). O soul, brimful of presumptuous folly, what is this which thou claimest? Knowest thou what is truly good, or excellent, or just, or holy, or what befits who? No,", + "[297] the knowledge and mastery of these is a gift reserved for God alone, and for whoso is God’s friend. And this is testified by the oracle in which we are told “I will kill and make to live: I will smite and I will heal” (Deut. 32:39).", + "[298] But indeed when the soul, wise in its own conceit, entertained this dream of things beyond its ken, it was no fleeting thought, but to its sorrow so puffed up with windy pride was it that it swore an oath  that these things stood firm and established, which were but its false imaginations.", + "[299] If then the throbbing fever of its disease begins to abate, the embers of health will gradually kindle into a blaze and force it first to “proclaim its sin,” that is reproach itself, then come to the altar as a suppliant, beseeching grace with prayers and vows and sacrifices, by which alone it can obtain forgiveness." + ], + [ + "[300] Next we might reasonably inquire why Moses speaks of the river of Egypt alone as having “lips” and refrains from doing so in the case of the Euphrates and other holy rivers. For while we have in one place “thou shalt stand meeting him on the lip of the river” (Ex. 7:15).… ", + "[301] Yet some perhaps may say scoffingly that such points should not be brought into our inquiries, as savouring of petty trifling rather than any profitable process. But I hold that such matters are like condiments set as seasoning to the Holy Scriptures, for the edification of its readers, and that the inquirers are not to be held guilty of any far-fetched hair-splitting, but on the contrary of dereliction if they fail so to inquire.", + "[302] For the subject which now engages our researches is not the lore of rivers as such, but that of lives which are compared to the currents of rivers and are of opposite kinds. For the lives of the good and the bad are shewn, one in deeds, the other in words, and words belong to the tongue, mouth and lips …" + ] + ], + "Appendix": [ + "APPENDIX TO DE SOMNIIS, II", + "Note on text.—The Trinity MS. which Cohn on a cursory inspection (Cohn on De Op. p. xxx) declared to be worthless as a whole, and which was therefore practically ignored in his and Wendland’s reconstruction of the text, does not seem, in this treatise at least, to deserve such a wholesale condemnation. While it certainly shares with A the great majority of that MS.’S mistakes and adds a fair number of its own, there is a not negligible number of cases where it is more correct. In three cases Wendland has adopted the reading of “Mangey e codice Cantabr. Coll. S. Trin.,” viz. σύγχυσις § 152, πᾶσαν § 196, ἐκατέρας § 241, as well as φυρόμενοι § 290, which Mangey had given on the authority of MS. Vat., a name apparently unidentified. But besides these there are several examples in which Wendland in correcting the text of A has actually reproduced that of Trin. Such are παρανέβλαστε § 64, ἀγείροντες § 127, εἰ δὲ δεῖ § 128, φῶς § 140, ὄντος § 250, κλίματα § 287.", + "The lacunas in Trin. are also of some interest. While they occur in the same places, except twice where the text runs on continuously, they do not by any means always occupy the same spaces, being in several cases considerably longer. This rouses a suspicion whether Wendland is justified in basing his conjectures, as he does to some extent, on the length of the spaces in A. Professor Minns indeed tells me that the tendency of scribes is to shorten the gaps, and that the greater length may point to the possibility that though Trin. (fifteenth or sixteenth century) is much later than A (thirteenth century) it may belong to a better tradition. In spite, however, of my doubts on this point, I have thought it wiser to record Wendland’s notes on the length of the spaces in A.", + "§ 27. Double diapason. Or perhaps “the two ways of completing the scale,” i.e. the conjunct tetrachords symbolize the attitude of the soul when it contemplates the universe by itself. In the disjunct tetrachords it is still concerned in the first tetrachord with creation, but breaks off and passes in the second to the contemplation of the Creator, whom it recognizes to be something different and transcending creation.", + "§ 38. εὐκαταφροντίστῳ. This is certainly an odd-looking word, but it is correctly formed, if we assume καταφροντίζω as an intensive form, like so many κατα’s, of the simple verb; and though only one instance of the verb in this sense (Polybius xxviii. 11. 10) is quoted, and that is said in L. & S. 1927 to be a doubtful reading, this is not much argument in dealing with Philo. On the whole, though the word is regarded as corrupt in Stephanus, I do not see much reason to doubt its genuineness. Wendland is somewhat rash in printing ἀνανταγωνίστῳ. It is not only far from the MSS. but has less point. The seeker after rewards needs not only persistence but care, and though swiftness is requisite his swift actions must be “well thought out.” I should say much the same of Mangey’s εὐκαταφόρῳ.", + "§ 45. Image and ideal form, etc. Are εἰκών and ἰδέα merely synonyms? They are combined in much the same way, though without any definite mention of the Logos, in Leg. All. i. 33, 42 and 53. I should suggest that in all these cases the Logos is the εἰκών of God, but the ἰδέα to creation. The usage is thus parallel to the phrases in which man is said to be the εἰκὼν εἰκόνος, and God the παράδειγμα παραδείγματος. See on De Som. i. 75.", + "§ 48. Barley-cake and water. Wendland refers to Aelian, Var. Hist. iv. 13 (Usener, Epicurea 602) ὁ αὐτὸς (i.e. Epicurus) ἔλεγεν ἑτοίμως ἔχειν καὶ τῷ Διὶ ὑπὲρ εὐδαιμονίας διαγωνίζεσθαι μᾶζαν ἔχων καὶ ὕδωρ.", + "§ 55. οἱ ἐντρυφῶντες <τοῖς καθεστ> ῶσι νόμοις, MSS. ζῶσι νόμοις. This emendation of Mangey, accepted by Wendland, implies the use of ἐντρυφάω = “scorn,” a sense which the word does bear, but not apparently elsewhere in Philo, with whom it means “delight in.” I am inclined to think that ζω- at any rate may be right. ζῷον, ζωωτός, ζωύφιον, ζωοφόρος are all used of sculptured or painted figures not confined to animals, and cf. ζωγραφία itself. ζωοφόροις would suit the context excellently as it is particularly used of friezes. It is, however, rather far from ζῶσι νόμοις in form. I would ask for consideration sideration of the nearer ζωωμένοις. Though the dictionaries know nothing of any use of ζωόω = to carve figures, it is more or less implied by ζωωτός.", + "§ 70. Wendland by giving the reference to Gen. 2:9 implies that the twofold tree combines the tree of life with the tree of knowledge. It is more probable, I think, that the latter only is meant, twofold because it is the knowledge of good and evil. The reference is certainly also to Gen. 3:3, where we have οὐ μὴ ἄψησθε αὐτῆς, thus linking up the story of the tree with the prohibition against “taking hold of the pair.” While in De Op. 154 Philo interprets the knowledge of good and evil as φρόνησις, i.e. the power to distinguish the two and choose the good, in Leg. All. i. 101 f. the tree is the cause of good and evil, abstinence from which is abstinence from evil. Cf. also ibid. 61. The thought comes out most clearly in Quaestiones Gen. i. 15, where speaking of the tree he says that when good and evil are mingled together, the combination contains the beginning of death (“ubi vero bonum et malum commixta sint, principium habent mixturae mortis”).", + "On the other hand, the tree of life may be the “monad” which Adam neglects. Cf. παρελθόντες τὸ ζωῆς ἀθανάτου φυτόν, De Op. 156.", + "Observe the condemnation of duality in this section contrasted with the approval of it in §§ 26–28, a contrast which Philo surely has in mind. When the soul couples its contemplation of creation with acknowledgement of the Creator, duality is blessed; when it mingles good with evil, duality is accursed.", + "§ 119. The “sacred line.” For what little is known of the technical meaning of τὸν ἀφʼ ἱερᾶς κινεῖν in the game of πεσσοί see L. & S. on γραμμή, and Dict. of Ant. s.v. latrunculi. In the other passages quoted it seems to be a proverbial phrase for “try the last chance.” This does not fit here. Possibly we might suppose that if the piece on the sacred line was the last to be moved in defence, it would also ordinarily be the last to be attacked, whereas Xerxes attacks it first. More probably Philo, seeing an effective play of words on the sacredness of the heavens and the sacred line of the draught-board, strains the phrase to cover something especially rash and desperate.", + "§ 121. The Germans, etc. Wendland quotes Strabo vii. 2. 1 οὐδʼ εὖ οὐδʼ ὁ φήσας ὅπλα αἴρεσαι πρὸς τὰς πλημμυρίδας τοὺς Κίμβρους. The same is said by Aelian, Hist. ii. 23, of the “Kelts,” probably meaning the Germans. It is suggested that this story gave Shakespeare the idea of “taking arms against a sea of troubles.”", + "§ 122. Speared, wounded, etc. So Aelian, ibid. ὡσπεροῦν ἢ φοβῆσαι δυνάμενοι ἢ τρῶσαι.", + "§ 123. One of the ruling class. Mangey positively declared that this person was Flaccus. It is as positively denied by Edersheim (Dict. of Chr. Biog., article on Philo) and by Ewald (Geschichte Volkes Israel, vol. vi. p. 253 n. 1). There is certainly nothing said in the treatise In Flaccum of an attempt to enforce Sabbath-breaking; and if it had been made, it is most unlikely that Philo would have passed it over. In fact the attempt here mentioned seems to have been unsuccessful, and the point lies in the arrogant and (in Philo’s eyes) blasphemous language in which the threat was couched. The immediate predecessors of Flaccus were Iberus (not Severus as in Mangey’s text, see Reiter’s note on In Flaccum 2) and Vitrasius Pollio (Dion Cassius Iviii. 19. 6), and either of these may have been the governor here alluded to.", + "§ 140. Shall we first bow, etc. Assuming, as in the footnote, that ἀφέντες may be corrected to ὑφέντες (or καθέντες, cf. De Plant. 145), and that πρότερον can be used in antithesis to εἶτα, the following alternative is possible, <ἃς> (i.e. χεῖρας) ὑφ(καθ)έντες, i.e. the hands are first raised in prayer, then lowered as the suppliant prostrates himself.", + "§ 209. Pleasure is said by her votaries, etc. The Epicurean view that present ills are mitigated by the memory of past good is several times referred to. See Usener, Epicurea 436–439. The closest parallel to this passage is Cic. Tusc. Disp. v. 34. 95 “(praecepit Epicurus) corpus gaudere tamdiu, dum praesentem sentiret voluptatem, animum et praesentem percipere pariter cum corpore et prospicere venientem nec praeteritam praeterfluere sinere: ita perpetuas et contextas voluptates in sapiente fore semper, cum expectatio speratarum voluptatum cum perceptarum memoria iungeretur.”", + "§ 221. Mangey retained ἐγχωρεῖν (“before thou wast dwelling”), supposing that Philo read or thought he read it in the LXX. But the argument here and elsewhere shews that he understood εἶναι.", + "§ 245. The lacuna.—Mangey in proposing to fill this up with μᾶλλον recognized its inappropriateness to us ὡς εἶπέ τις, which he wished to correct to ὡς ἂν εἴποι τις. This seems to me unnecessary. One would prefer to suppose some single poetic noun which would signify a waterspout, but I do not know of any such. The missing letters, however, may easily be some epithet applied to rushing water in general (e.g. βαθυδίνης) or adverb (e.g. ἀμβολάδην) or some longer phrase. Wendland does not state the length of the lacuna in A. In Trin. it is over twenty letters. It is a fairly likely guess, considering the number of Homeric phrases in this treatise, that this too comes from Homer. For τις applied to Homer cf. § 260 below, and De Somniis, i. 150.", + "§ 247. For the lacuna here Wendland suggests ἐπαλλήλως or ἀπαύστως, for example. But I do not see why the initial λ, which also appears in Trin. should be ignored in this case.", + "§ 282. For this lacuna the following suggestions have been proposed: νυκτὸς (Hoeschel), νύκτα πεσεῖν (Cohn), νύκτα αἰώνιον (Wendland), νύκτα ἀκτέον (Mangey), αἰώνιον or ἀκτέον being corrections for ἄξιον. Except for the doubtful evidence of space (in Trin. it is about fifteen letters), I see no objection to νύκτα alone. It is easy to supply ἄγεσθαι.", + "§ 283. Third on the list. Mangey, retaining τρεῖς, suggested as possible that the three Aloeidae are meant, cf. De Conf. 4. But the Aloeidae, Otus and Ephialtes, were two, not three. Apart from this, the explanation seems to me very improbable. In De Conf. 4 the story of the Aloeidae is no doubt compared to that of the Babel-builders, but only by the scoffers. While Philo often illustrates his points from Greek myths, I know of no instance where he accepts them in the way which Mangey’s suggestion involves.", + "Ibid. Uncreated, imperishable. Cf. De Op. 7, where the belief that the world was ἀγένητος καὶ ἀΐδιος is described as an impious falsehood ascribing inactivity (ἀπραξία) to God. On this Cohn quotes the statement that Xenophanes, Parmenides, and Melissus held that it was ἀγένητος καὶ ἀϊδιος καὶ ἄφθαρτος (Diels, Doxographi, p. 332), and the somewhat similar words of Epicurus (Diog. Laert. x. 39), τὸ πᾶν ἀεὶ τοιοῦτον ἦν οἶον νῦν ἐστι, καὶ ἀεὶ τοιοῦτον ἔσται. Philo, however, in the treatise De Aet. maintains that it is ἄφθαρτος, and indeed ascribes this belief to Moses (§ 19). May a reconciliation of these conflicting views be found in the opinion mentioned in Quis Rerum 246 φθαρτὸν μὲν εἶναι, μηδέποτε δὲ φθαρησόμενον? The Maker can destroy it, but never will. See note on that passage. Cf. also De Dec. 58.", + "§ 294. Winged chariot. From Phaedrus 246 E ὁ μὲν δὴ μέγας ἡγεμὼν ἐν οὐρανῷ Ζεὺς ἐλαύνων πτηνὸν ἅρμα πρῶτος πορεύεται. So also in Quis Rerum 301.", + "§ 300. Ex. 7:15. It is idle to guess what text or texts followed. Though Euphrates, except in Gen. 2:15, is only mentioned as a boundary, this and the other three rivers of that passage, as well as the “river of God” in Ps. 46, would serve his purpose. His point is that spiritually the “river of Egypt” alone is identified with mere speech. He seems in § 302 to ignore the fact that in §§ 238 f. he has identified all rivers with λόγος. Possibly the sequel went on to shew that in good rivers speech is reasonable speech which is inseparable from action." + ] + } + }, + "versions": [ + [ + "Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1934", + "https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001216057/NLI" + ] + ], + "heTitle": "על החלומות", + "categories": [ + "Second Temple", + "Philo" + ], + "schema": { + "heTitle": "על החלומות", + "enTitle": "On Dreams", + "key": "On Dreams", + "nodes": [ + { + "heTitle": "ספר א", + "enTitle": "Book I", + "nodes": [ + { + "heTitle": "הקדמה", + "enTitle": "Introduction" + }, + { + "heTitle": "", + "enTitle": "" + }, + { + "heTitle": "הערות", + "enTitle": "Appendix" + } + ] + }, + { + "heTitle": "ספר ב", + "enTitle": "Book II", + "nodes": [ + { + "heTitle": "הקדמה", + "enTitle": "Introduction" + }, + { + "heTitle": "", + "enTitle": "" + }, + { + "heTitle": "הערות", + "enTitle": "Appendix" + } + ] + } + ] + } +} \ No newline at end of file