{
"title": "Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis",
"language": "en",
"versionTitle": "merged",
"versionSource": "https://www.sefaria.org/Allegorical_Interpretation_of_Genesis",
"text": {
"Book I": {
"Introduction": [
"ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION OF GENESIS 2, 3 (LEGUM ALLEGORIA)
ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION TO BOOK I",
"In 1–18 Philo deals with Gen. 2:1–3, which tells first of the completion of Heaven and Earth. He takes these to mean the originals of Mind and Sense-perception, and bases on the Greek version a contrast between the numbers 6 and 7, making the former represent things earthly, and the latter things heavenly.",
"In Gen. 2:2 he finds the origin of Mind and Sense-perception ascribed first to a Book and then to a Day, both Book and Day signifying the Mind or Reason of God. (19–21.)",
"In the repetition of the word “field” in Gen. 2:5, he sees two fields yielding, respectively, what is intellectually and what is sensibly perceptible: in the rain the power given to the senses of apprehending objects presented to them, a power not needed when material objects did not exist, and in whose absence the Mind is without employment. (22–27.)",
"Gen. 2:6 tells how Mind, the “spring,” waters the senses, “the face of the earth,” and shows the interdependence of Mind, Sense-perception, and object of sense, and the dependence of Mind on God; as well as the superiority of the living creature in being able to take in and go out to external object. (28–30.)",
"Going on to Gen. 2:7, he contrasts the earthy man, moulded of clay by the Divine Artificer, with the heavenly Man, stamped with the image of God, and dwells on the change wrought in the former by the inbreathing of Life. He then answers four questions.",
"To the question why the Divine Breath is given, not to the heavenly, but to the earthy Man, he answers (a) that God loves to give, even to the imperfect; (b) that the inbreathing is on a par with the enjoining of a “positive” duty, which is a duty only because it is enjoined.",
"To the question as to the meaning of “inbreathed” he answers that it is a pregnant term for “inspired,” and that its aim is to enable us to conceive of God.",
"To the question why the inbreathing is “into the face,” he answers (a) that the face is the part where the senses are chiefly situated; (b) that the face represents the mind, which acts as God’s deputy in inspiring organs and senses. Such was Moses to Pharaoh. He is thus led to speak of God’s use of agents. Lastly, he says that πνοή intimates a less powerful gift than would have been intimated by πνεῦμα. (31–42.)",
"We now come to Gen. 2:8. God planting a Garden shows earthly wisdom to be a copy of heavenly wisdom, for it means God causing excellence to strike root on earth. The “Garden” is Virtue. “Eden” tells of its luxuriant yield of happiness. It is “toward the sunrising,” for right reason or virtue ever rises to dispel darkness. Man is placed in the Garden “to tend it,” i.e. to give his whole mind to virtue.",
"God planting does not justify man in planting a grove by the altar, which is forbidden in Deut. 16:21, for (a) man cannot, like God, plant virtues in the soul; (b) a grove contains some wild trees; (c) what is prohibited is planting “to ourselves” (cf. 2nd Commandment).",
"It is somewhat startling to be told that the Man placed in the Garden in Gen. 2:15 is not the Man of Gen. 2:8, but the Man of Gen. 1:27. Only the latter can till and guard the virtues. The former sees them only to be driven from them. The one is “made,” the other is “moulded.” The Man of 2:8 has but facility in apprehending (as is signified by the words “placed in the Garden”). The Man of 2:15 has also persistence in doing (“to till it”), and tenacity in keeping (“to guard it”). (43–55.)",
"Gen. 2:9 tells of the Trees, which are particular virtues, and their activities. Theoretical virtue is denoted by “fair to behold”; practical virtue by “good for food.” The Tree of Life is goodness, virtue, not (as physicians might suppose) the heart. It is “in the midst of the Garden.” Where “the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil” is, we are not told. Actually it is in the Garden, virtually outside it, for our dominant part is actually in God’s Garden through receiving the impress of goodness, virtually outside by receiving that of wickedness. Just so, my body can be here, my mind elsewhere. (56–62.)",
"The theme of Gen. 2:10–14 is the Rivers. The four Rivers are the particular Virtues, effluxes of generic Virtue, the River that issues from “Eden,” which is the Wisdom or Reason of God. “Heads” implies the sovereignty of the Virtues: “separated”; their limited, defining, action. “Pheison” is Prudence, God’s fairest treasure, gleaming like gold, and encircling “Evilat” or Graciousness. “Geon” is Courage, beleaguering Ethiopia, which is Lowness or Cowardice. “Tigris” is Self-mastery, set against “Assyria,” the directing force claimed by Desire. Prudence, Courage, and Self-mastery occupy places in the soul corresponding to their spheres of action in the body, head, breast, and abdomen, the seats of Reason, High Spirit, and Lust. “Euphrates” (= fruitfulness) is Justice, or the harmony of the three parts of the soul.",
"We are then shown another way of reaching the same truth about the four Rivers. “Pheison” signifies “change of mouth,” i.e. transformation of speech into action, the true sign of Prudence. “Evilat” signifies “in travail,” as Folly in its futility always is. (63–76.)",
"The next eight sections (Gen. 2:12) are a Note on the Gold and Precious Stones. Prudence, the gold, is still God’s, Philo taking “where” (οὗ) as “whose”. “The gold of that land” is universal, as distinguished from particular, Prudence, and to it belongs the epithet “good.” The “ruby” and the “emerald” represent respectively having and exercising good sense. Or the two stones are, perhaps, Judah and Issachar, representing, the one, thankfulness, the other, noble deeds. So in the High-priestly robes, the ruby must, from its position, have borne the name of Judah, and the sapphire that of Issachar. “Stone” is not added after “ruby,” because praise and thanksgiving lift a man out of himself and all that is of earth. Red befits Judah, green Issachar. (77–84.)",
"Now comes a short Note on Compassing (Gen. 2:11 and 13). “Pheison” and “Geon” are said to “compass” countries, for Prudence and Courage enclose and capture Folly and Cowardice. “Tigris” is said to be “over against the Assyrians,” for Self-mastery can but face and fight Pleasure. “Euphrates,” or Justice, neither encircles nor withstands but makes awards. (85–87).",
"In 88 f. we see the heavenly Man, the Man whom God had “made” not “moulded,” placed in the garden. This pure and less material Mind is set amid the Virtues (“plants”) to practise (“till”) and remember (“guard”) them.",
"The remainder of the treatise deals with the injunction to “Adam” in Gen. 2:16 ff.",
"Since “Adam,” a name not self-imposed, signifies “earth,” probably the “moulded, earthy man” is meant. Moreover the heavenly Man needs no injunction to till and guard; still less does he need prohibition or exhortation.",
"The command is given by “the Lord God.” Obedience to the “Lord” or ‘Master’ prepares us for boons from “God” the ‘Benefactor.’ So in Gen. 3:23 punishment is inflicted by “the Lord God” in kind severity.",
"“Every tree” signifies all virtues. The addition of “feedingly” to “eat” signifies spiritual mastication. Eating represents perfunctory obedience: “feeding on,” thoughtful, hearty obedience.",
"Anent the position of the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, illustrations of actual and virtual presence are given in 100.",
"The fact that the prohibition is addressed to more than one is explained by saying that (a) inferior men are very numerous; (b) the inferior man devoid of concentration is not a unity.",
"The treatise ends with the drawing of a distinction between the death which all die and the death of the soul."
],
"": [
[
"[1] “And the heaven and the earth and all their world were completed” (Gen. 2:1). He had already told of the creation of mind and sense-perception; he now fully sets forth the consummation of both. He does not say that either the individual mind or the particular sense-perception have reached completion, but that the originals have done so, that of mind and that of sense-perception. For using symbolical language he calls the mind heaven, since heaven is the abode of natures discerned only by mind, but sense-perception he calls earth, because sense-perception possesses a composition of a more earthly and body-like sort. “World,” in the case of mind, means all incorporeal things, things discerned by mind alone: in the case of sense-perception it denotes things in bodily form and generally whatever sense perceives."
],
[
"[2] “And God finished on the sixth day His works which He had made” (Gen. 2:2). It is quite foolish to think that the world was created in six days or in a space of time at all. Why? Because every period of time is a series of days and nights, and these can only be made such by the movement of the sun as it goes over and under the earth: but the sun is a part of heaven, so that time is confessedly more recent than the world. It would therefore be correct to say that the world was not made in time, but that time was formed by means of the world, for it was heaven’s movement that was the index of the nature of time.",
"[3] When, then, Moses says, “He finished His work on the sixth day,” we must understand him to be adducing not a quantity of days, but a perfect number, namely six, since it is the first that is equal to the sum of its own fractions ½, ⅓, and /6, and is produced by the multiplication of two unequal factors, 2×3; and see, the numbers 2 and 3 have left behind the incorporeal character that belongs to 1, 2 being an image of matter, and being parted and divided as that is, while 3 is the image of a solid body, for the solid is patient of a threefold division.",
"[4] Nay more, the number 6 is akin to the movements of animals provided with instrumental limbs, for the body equipped with such instruments is so constituted by nature that it can move in six directions, forwards and backwards, upwards and downwards, to the right and to the left. Moses’ wish, therefore, is to exhibit alike the things created of mortal kind and those that are incorruptible as having been formed in a way corresponding to their proper numbers. As I have just said, he makes mortal things parallel with the number six, the happy and blessed things with the number seven.",
"[5] First of all, then, on the seventh day the Creator, having brought to an end the formation of mortal things, begins the shaping of others more divine."
],
[
"For God never leaves off making, but even as it is the property of fire to burn and of snow to chill, so it is the property of God to make: nay more so by far, inasmuch as He is to all besides the source of action.",
"[6] Excellently, moreover, does Moses say “caused to rest” not “rested”; for He causes to rest that which, though actually not in operation, is apparently making, but He Himself never ceases making. For this reason Moses adds after “He caused to rest” the words “from what He had begun.” For whereas things produced by human arts when finished stand still and remain as they are, the products of divine skill, when completed, begin again to move; for their endings are the beginnings of other things, as the end of day is the beginning of night, and the openings of a month and of a year must naturally be regarded as limits which close those which have elapsed:",
"[7] birth again is accomplished through other things decaying, and decay through fresh births, showing the truth of the saying:",
"Naught that is born doth ever die,",
"Its severed parts together fly,",
"And yield another shape."
],
[
"[8] Nature takes delight in the number seven. Thus there are seven planets, the counterpoise to the uniform movement of the fixed stars. It is in seven stars that the bear reaches completeness, and gives rise not to commerce only but to fellowship and unity among men. The changes of the moon, again, occur by sevens: this is the luminary most sympathetic to earthly matters. And such changes as Nature produces in the atmosphere, she effects mainly by the influence of figures dominated by seven.",
"[9] Indeed, all that concerns us mortals has a divine origin drawn from heaven and is for our weal when its movement is ruled by seven. Who does not know that seven months’ infants come to the birth, while those that have taken a longer time, remaining in the womb eight months, are as a rule still-born?",
"[10] And they say that man becomes a reasoning being during his first seven years, by which time he is already capable of expressing ordinary nouns and verbs through having acquired the reasoning faculty; and that during his second period of seven years he reaches complete consummation; consummation meaning the power of reproducing his like; for at about the age of fourteen we are able to beget offspring like ourselves. The third period of seven years, again, is the end of growth, for till the age of twenty-one years men increase in height, and by many this time is called his prime.",
"[11] Furthermore the unreasoning side of the soul consists of seven parts, five senses, and the organ of speech, and the genital organ.",
"[12] The body again has seven movements, six mechanical, the seventh circular. Seven also are the internal organs, stomach, heart, spleen, liver, lung, two kidneys. Of equal number in like number are the divisions of the body—head, neck, breast, hands, belly, abdomen, feet. And the face, the living creature’s noblest part, is pierced by seven apertures, by two eyes, and two ears, as many nostrils, and the mouth, which make up seven.",
"[13] The excrements are seven—tears, mucus, spittle, seed, superfluities discharged by two ducts, and the sweat that oozes from all over the body. Once again in diseases the seventh is the most critical day. And the monthly purgings of women extend to seven days."
],
[
"[14] The power of this number reaches also to the most beneficent of the arts: in grammar, for instance, the best and most effective of the letters, namely the vowels, are seven in number: in music we may fairly call the seven-stringed lyre the best of instruments, because the enharmonic genus, which as we know is the most dignified of those used in melodies, is best brought out when that instrument renders it. Sevenfold are the modulations in pronunciation—acute, grave, circumflex, aspirated and unaspirated, long, short.",
"[15] Further, seven is the first number after the perfect number six, and the same in some sort with the number one. Whereas other numbers within the decade are either produced by or produce those within the decade and the decade itself, the number seven neither produces any of the numbers within the decade nor is produced by any. By reason of this the Pythagoreans, indulging in myth, liken seven to the motherless and ever-virgin Maiden, because neither was she born of the womb nor shall she ever bear."
],
[
"[16] “He rested therefore on the seventh day from all His works which He had made” (Gen. 2:2). This is as much as to say that God ceases moulding the masses that are mortal, whenever He begins to make those that are divine and in keeping with the nature of seven. But the interpretation of the statement in accordance with its bearing on human life and character is this, that, whenever there comes upon the soul the holy Reason of which Seven is the keynote, six together with all mortal things that the soul seems to make therewith comes to a stop."
],
[
"[17] “And God blessed the seventh day and hallowed it” (Gen. 2:3). God both blesses and forthwith makes holy the dispositions set in motion in harmony with the seventh and truly Divine light, for closely akin are the character that is charged with benediction and the character that is holy. That is why, when treating of him who has vowed the great vow, he says that, if a change suddenly befall him and defile his mind, he shall no longer be holy, but “the preceding days are not reckoned.” Rightly enough, for the character that is not holy is vile, of no account, so that the character well accounted of is holy.",
"[18] Rightly, then, did he say that God both blessed and hallowed the seventh day, “because in it He ceased from all His works which God began to make” (Gen. 2:3). But the reason why the man that guides himself in accordance with the seventh and perfect light is both of good understanding and holy, is that the formation of things mortal ceases with this day’s advent. For, indeed, the matter stands thus; when that most brilliant and truly divine light of virtue has dawned, the creation of that whose nature is of the contrary kind comes to a stop. But we pointed out that God when ceasing or rather causing to cease, does not cease making, but begins the creating of other things, since He is not a mere artificer, but also Father of the things that are coming into being."
],
[
"[19] “This book is that of the origin of heaven and earth, when it came into being” (Gen. 2:4). (That is to say): “This perfect Reason, moving in accord with the number 7, is the primal origin both of mind ordering itself after the original patterns, and of sense-perception in the domain of mind (if the expression is permissible) ordering itself after those originals.” “Book” is Moses’ name for the Reason of God, in which have been inscribed and engraved the formation of all else.",
"[20] But that you may not suppose that the Deity makes anything in definite periods of time, but may know that to mortal kind the process of creation is unobserved, undescried, incomprehensible, he adds, “When it came into being,” not defining “when” by a determining limit, for the things that come into being under the hand of the First Cause come into being with no determining limit. There is an end, then, of the notion that the universe came into being in six days."
],
[
"[21] “In the day in which God made the heaven and the earth and every green thing of the field before it appeared upon the earth and all grass of the field before it sprang up; for God had not sent rain on the earth, and there was no man to till the earth” (Gen. 2:4, 5). Above he has called this day a book, for he delineates the creation of heaven and earth as wrought in both: for by His own supremely manifest and far-shining Reason God makes both of them, both the original of the mind, which in symbolic language he calls “heaven,” and the original of sense-perception, to which by a figure he gave the name of “earth.”",
"[22] And he compares the original of the mind and the original of sense-perception to two fields; for they bear fruit, the mind all that is done in thinking, sense-perception all that is done in perceiving. What he means is something of this sort. As before the particular and individual mind there subsists a certain original as an archetype and pattern of it, and again before the particular sense-perception, a certain original of sense-perception related to the particular as a seal making impression is to the form which it makes; just so, before the individual objects of intellectual perception came into being, there was existing as a genus the ‘intellectually-perceptible’ itself, by participation in which the name has been given to the members of the genus; and before the individual objects of sense-perception came into existence, there was existing as a genus the ‘sensibly-perceptible’ itself, by sharing in whose being all other objects of sense have become such.",
"[23] “Green of the field,” then, is what he terms the “intellectually-perceptible” of the mind; for as in a field the green things spring up and bloom, even so the ‘intellectually-perceptible’ is a growth springing from the mind. Before, then, the particular ‘intellectually-perceptible’ came into being, the Creator produces the solely abstract ‘intellectually-perceptible,’ as a generic existence. This he rightly calls “all,” for the particular ‘intellectually-perceptible,’ being a fragment, is not all, but the generic is so, being a full whole."
],
[
"[24] “And all the grass of the field” he says, “before it sprang up,” that is to say, before the particular objects of sense sprang up, there existed by the Maker’s forethought the generic ‘sensibly-perceptible,’ and that it is that he again calls “all.” Natural enough is his comparison of the ‘sensibly-perceptible’ to grass. For as grass is the food of a creature devoid of reason, so has the ‘sensibly-perceptible’ been assigned to the unreasoning part of the soul. Else why, after saying before “green of the field,” does he go on to say, “and all grass,” as if it were impossible for green of the field to come up as grass? The fact is, “the green of the field” is the ‘intellectually-perceptible,’ an outgrowth of the mind, but the “grass” is the ‘sensibly-perceptible,’ it in turn being a growth of the unreasoning part of the soul.",
"[25] He goes on “for God had not rained upon the earth, and there was no man to work the ground.” These words discover a deep knowledge of the laws of being. For if God does not shower upon the senses the means of apprehending objects presented to them, neither will the mind have anything to “work” or take in hand in the field of sense-perception. For the mind by itself is without employment when the Cause of all things does not pour down, like rain and moisture, colours on the sight, sounds on the hearing, savours on the taste, and that which is proper to them on the other senses.",
"[26] But as soon as God has begun to water sense with objects of sense, that moment the mind also is found to be a tiller of rich soil, so to speak. The original of ‘sense-perception’ has no need of nourishment; but the nourishment of ‘sense-perception,’ which he figuratively calls “rain,” is the particular objects of sense, which of course are bodies; whereas an original has nothing to do with bodies. Thus before the creation of particular concrete substances, God did not rain on the original idea of sense-perception, which Moses calls “earth,” and this means that He supplied it with no food: for indeed it was in absolutely no need whatever of a sensible object of perception.",
"[27] The meaning of the words, “and there was not a man to work the ground,” is this: the original idea of the mind did not work the original idea of sense-perception: for my mind like yours works the sense-perception through the objects of the senses, but the original idea of the mind, as there was of course no particular body in existence proper to it, does not work the original idea of ‘sense-perception’: for were it working, it would be working it by means of the objects of sense, but among original ideas there is no such thing as an object of sense."
],
[
"[28] “And a spring went up out of the earth and watered all the face of the earth” (Gen. 2:6). He calls the mind a “spring” of the earth, and the senses its “face,” because Nature, exercising forethought in all things, assigned this place to them out of all the body as most suitable for their special activities: and the mind like a spring waters the senses, sending to each of them the streams suitable to it. See then, how, like links in a chain, the powers of the living creature hold on to each other; for mind and ‘sense-perception’ and object of sense being three, ‘sense-perception’ is in the middle, while mind and object of sense occupy each extreme.",
"[29] But neither has the mind power to work, that is, to put forth its energies by way of ‘sense-perception,’ unless God send the object of sense as rain upon it; nor is any benefit derived from the object of sense when so rained down, unless, like a spring, the mind, extending itself to reach the ‘sense-perception,’ stir it out of its repose to grasp the object presented to it. Thus the mind and the object of sense are always practising a reciprocity of giving, the one lying ready for sense-perception as its material, the other, like a craftsman, moving sense-perception in the direction of the external object, to produce an impulse towards it.",
"[30] For the living creature excels the non-living in two respects, in the power of receiving impressions and in the active impulse towards the object producing them. The impression is produced by the drawing nigh of the external object, as it stamps the mind through sense-perception; while the active impulse, close of kin to the power aforesaid, comes about by way of the mind’s power of self-extension, which it exercises through sense-perception, and so comes into touch with the object presented to it, and goes towards it, striving to reach and seize it."
],
[
"[31] “And God formed the man by taking clay from the earth, and breathed into his face a breath of life, and the man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). There are two types of men; the one a heavenly man, the other an earthly. The heavenly man, being made after the image of God, is altogether without part or lot in corruptible and terrestrial substance; but the earthly one was compacted out of the matter scattered here and there, which Moses calls “clay.” For this reason he says that the heavenly man was not moulded, but was stamped with the image of God; while the earthly is a moulded work of the Artificer, but not His offspring.",
"[32] We must account the man made out of the earth to be mind mingling with, but not yet blended with, body. But this earthlike mind is in reality also corruptible, were not God to breathe into it a power of real life; when He does so, it does not any more undergo moulding, but becomes a soul, not an inefficient and imperfectly formed soul, but one endowed with mind and actually alive; for he says, “man became a living soul.”"
],
[
"[33] The question might be asked, why God deemed the earthly and body-loving mind worthy of divine breath at all, but not the mind which had been created after the original, and after His own image; in the second place, what “breathed in” means; thirdly, why the breathing is “into the face”; fourthly, why, though he shows his knowledge of the word ‘spirit’ when he says “and the Spirit of God was borne above the water” (Gen. 1:2), he now says “breath” not “spirit.”",
"[34] In answer to the first query, one thing to be said is that God loves to give, and so bestows good things on all, even those who are not perfect, at the same time encouraging them to a zeal for virtue and a participation in it, by displaying His own overflowing wealth, and how there is abundance even for those who will derive no great benefit from it. This characteristic He shows very clearly in other instances also. For when He rains upon the sea, and causes springs to gush forth in the depths of the desert, and waters the poor and rough and barren soil, pouring on it rivers with their overflowings, what else does He prove save the exceeding greatness of His own wealth and goodness? This is the reason for which He created no soul barren of virtue, even if the exercise of it be to some impossible.",
"[35] A second thing to be said is this. It is His will to make compliance with positive ordinances part of duty. One, then, into whom real life had not been breathed, but who was without experience of virtue, when punished for his transgressions would have said that he is unjustly punished, for that it was through inexperience of good that he failed in respect of it, and that the blame lay with Him who had failed to breathe into him any conception of it. Nay, he will perhaps say that he does not sin at all, if (as some say) involuntary acts and acts done in ignorance do not count as wrong deeds.",
"[36] “Breathed into,” we note, is equivalent to “inspired” or “be-souled” the soulless; for God forbid that we should be infected with such monstrous folly as to think that God employs for inbreathing organs such as mouth or nostrils; for God is not only not in the form of man, but belongs to no class or kind. Yet the expression clearly brings out something that accords with nature.",
"[37] For it implies of necessity three things, that which inbreathes, that which receives, that which is inbreathed: that which inbreathes is God, that which receives is the mind, that which is inbreathed is the spirit or breath. What, then, do we infer from these premises? A union of the three comes about, as God projects the power that proceeds from Himself through the mediant breath till it reaches the subject. And for what purpose save that we may obtain a conception of Him?",
"[38] For how could the soul have conceived of God, had He not breathed into it and mightily laid hold of it? For the mind of man would never have ventured to soar so high as to grasp the nature of God, had not God Himself drawn it up to Himself, so far as it was possible that the mind of man should be drawn up, and stamped it with the impress of the powers that are within the scope of its understanding.",
"[39] The breathing “into the face” is to be understood both physically and ethically: physically, because it is in the face that He set the senses; for this part of the body is beyond other parts endowed with soul: but ethically, on this wise. As the face is the dominant element in the body, so is the mind the dominant element of the soul: into this only does God breathe, whereas He does not see fit to do so with the other parts, whether senses or organs of utterance and of reproduction; for these are secondary in capacity.",
"[40] By what, then, were these also inspired? By the mind, evidently. For the mind imparts to the portion of the soul that is devoid of reason a share of that which it has received from God, so that the mind was be-souled by God, but the unreasoning part by the mind. For the mind is, so to speak, God of the unreasoning part. In like manner he does not hesitate to speak of Moses as “a God to Pharaoh” (Exod. 7:1).",
"[41] For of the things which come into being some come into being both by God’s power and through God’s agency, while others come into being by God’s power but not by His agency. The most excellent things were made both by God and through God. For example, he will presently say, “God planted a pleasaunce” (Gen. 2:8): to these the mind belongs; but the part devoid of reason was made by God’s power but not by God’s agency, but by that of the reasonable power which rules and holds dominion in the soul.",
"[42] He uses the word ‘breath’ not ‘spirit,’ implying a difference between them; for ‘spirit’ is conceived of as connoting strength and vigour and power, while a ‘breath’ is like an air or a peaceful and gentle vapour. The mind that was made after the image and original might be said to partake of spirit, for its reasoning faculty possesses robustness; but the mind that was made out of matter must be said to partake of the light and less substantial air, as of some exhalation, such as those that rise from spices: for if they are kept and not burned for incense there is still a sweet perfume from them."
],
[
"[43] “And God planted a pleasaunce in Eden toward the sun-rising, and placed there the man whom He had formed” (Gen. 2:8). By using many words for it Moses has already made it manifest that the sublime and heavenly wisdom is of many names; for he calls it “beginning” and “image” and “vision of God”; and now by the planting of the pleasaunce he brings out the fact that earthly wisdom is a copy of this as of an archetype. Far be it from man’s reasoning to be the victim of so great impiety as to suppose that God tills the soil and plants pleasaunces. We should at once be at a loss to tell from what motive He could do so. Not to provide Himself with pleasant refreshment and comfort.",
"[44] Let not such fables even enter our mind. For not even the whole world would be a place fit for God to make His abode, since God is His own place, and He is filled by Himself, and sufficient for Himself, filling and containing all other things in their destitution and barrenness and emptiness, but Himself contained by nothing else, seeing that He is Himself One and the Whole.",
"[45] Well then, God sows and plants earthly excellence for the race of mortals as a copy and reproduction of the heavenly. For pitying our race and noting that it is compact of a rich abundance of ills, He caused earthly excellence to strike root, to bring succour and aid to the diseases of the soul. It is, as I said before, a copy of the heavenly and archetypal excellence, to which Moses gives many names. Virtue is figuratively called “pleasaunce,” and the locality specially suited to the pleasaunce “Eden,” which means “luxury”; excellence to be sure has for its fit adjuncts peace and welfare and joy, in which true luxury consists.",
"[46] Again the planting of the pleasaunce is “towards the sun-rising,” for right reason does not set nor is quenched, but its nature is ever to rise, and, I take it, just as the sun when it has risen fills the gloom of the atmosphere with light, so virtue also, when it has risen in the soul, illumines its mist and disperses its deep darkness.",
"[47] “And He placed there” it says, “the man whom He had formed.” For God, being good and training our race to virtue as the operation most proper to it, places the mind amid virtue, evidently to the end that as a good gardener it may spend its care on nothing else but this."
],
[
"[48] Now the question might be asked, “Why, seeing that to imitate God’s works is a pious act, am I forbidden to plant a grove by the altar, while God plants the pleasaunce?” For it says, “Thou shalt not plant thyself a grove: thou shalt not make to thyself any wood by the side of the altar of the Lord thy God” (Deut. 16:21). What then are we to say? That it becomes God to plant and to build virtues in the soul,",
"[49] but that the mind shows itself to be without God and full of self-love, when it deems itself as on a par with God; and, whereas passivity is its true part, looks on itself as an agent. When God sows and plants noble qualities in the soul, the mind that says “I plant” is guilty of impiety. Thou shalt not plant, therefore, whensoever God is tending His plants. But if thou dost set plants in the soul, O mind, set only fruit-bearing plants. Set not a grove, for in a grove there are both wild and cultivated trees. And to plant in the soul barren wickedness by the side of cultivated and fruit-yielding virtue is like leprosy with its twofold growths and blending of discordant hues.",
"[50] If, however, thou dost bring into the same place things heterogeneous and incapable of mixture, let them be separate and distinct from the pure and unsullied growth that offers up fruits free from blemish to God. And it is such a growth that is meant by the altar of sacrifice: for it is a violation of this to say that anything is the (independent) work of the soul, since there is nothing there that has not reference to God.",
"[51] To say that is to mingle the barren with the fruit-bearing. And this is a blemish, whereas only things without blemish are offered to God. If then thou transgress in any of these respects, O soul, thou wilt injure thyself, not God; that is why it says “thou shalt not plant to thyself”; for to God no one does such tillage, above all when the plants are bad ones; and it goes on to say, “thou shalt not make to thyself.” It says also in another case, “Ye shall not make together with Me gods of silver, and gods of gold ye shall not make to yourselves” (Exod. 20:23). For he that thinks either that God belongs to a type, or that He is not one, or that He is not unoriginate and incorruptible, or that He is not incapable of change, wrongs himself not God; for it says, “to yourselves ye shall not make”; for we must deem that He belongs to no type, and that He is One and incorruptible and unchangeable. He that does not so conceive infects his own soul with a false and godless opinion.",
"[52] Do you not see that, even if He bring us into virtue and even if, when brought in, we plant no fruitless thing but “every tree good for food,” He yet commands us “thoroughly to cleanse its uncleanness” (Lev. 19:23)? And this means the notion that we are planting, for it is the cutting away of self-conceit that He demands, and self-conceit is in its nature unclean."
],
[
"[53] Speaking here of the man whom God moulded, it merely says that He “placed him in the garden.” Who then is it of whom it says later on “The Lord God took the man whom He had made, and placed him in the garden to till it and to guard it” (Gen. 2:15)? It would seem then that this is a different man, the one that was made after the image and archetype, so that two men are introduced into the garden, the one a moulded being, the other “after the image.”",
"[54] The one then that was made according to the original has his sphere not only in the planting of virtues but is also their tiller and guardian, and that means that he is mindful of all that he heard and practised in his training; but the “moulded” man neither tills the virtues nor guards them, but is only introduced to the truths by the rich bounty of God, presently to be an exile from virtue.",
"[55] For this reason in describing the man whom God only places in the garden, Moses uses the word “moulded,” but of the man whom He appoints both tiller and guardian he speaks not as “moulded,” but he says “whom He had made”; and the one He receives, and the other He casts out. And He confers on him whom He receives three gifts, which constitute natural ability, facility in apprehending, persistence in doing, tenacity in keeping. Facility in apprehending is the placing in the garden, persistence in doing is the practice of noble deeds, tenacity in keeping the guarding and retaining in the memory of the holy precepts. But the “moulded” mind neither keeps in mind nor carries out in action the things that are noble, but has facility in apprehending them and no more than this. Accordingly after being placed in the garden he soon runs away and is cast out."
],
[
"[56] “And God caused to spring out of the ground every tree fair to behold and good for food, and the tree of life in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil” (Gen. 2:9). Moses now indicates what trees of virtue God plants in the soul.",
"[57] These are the several particular virtues, and the corresponding activities, and the complete moral victories, and what philosophers call καθήκοντα or common duties. These are the plants of the garden. These very plants he characterizes, showing that what is good is also most fair to be seen and enjoyed. For some of the arts and sciences are theoretical indeed but not practical, such as geometry and astronomy, and some are practical, but not theoretical, as the arts of the carpenter and coppersmith, and all that are called mechanical; but virtue is both theoretical and practical; for clearly it involves theory, since philosophy, the road that leads to it, involves it through its three parts, logic, ethics, physics; and it involves conduct, for virtue is the art of the whole of life, and life includes all kinds of conduct.",
"[58] But while virtue involves theory and practice, it is furthermore of surpassing excellence in each respect; for indeed the theory of virtue is perfect in beauty, and the practice and exercise of it a prize to be striven for. Wherefore he says that it is both “beautiful to look upon,” an expression signifying its aspect as theory, and “good to eat,” words which point to its excellence in exercise and practice."
],
[
"[59] Now the tree of life is virtue in the most comprehensive sense, which some term goodness. From it the particular virtues derive their existence. That is why it is also set in the midst of the garden, occupying the central all-embracing position, that it may, like a king, be attended by those on either side as by body-guards. But some say that it is the heart that is called the tree of life, since it is the cause of life and has been allotted the central place in the body, as it naturally would, being in their view the dominating principle. But these people should remember that they are setting forth a view worthy of the physician rather than of the philosopher, while we, as we have said, maintain that virtue in its most generic aspect is called the tree of life.",
"[60] Of this he expressly says that it is in the midst of the garden, but as to the other tree, that of knowing good and evil, he has not made it clear whether it is within or without the garden, but immediately after the words, “and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil,” he comes to a stop without making it clear where it was. His silence is due to his desire to prevent the man unversed in natural philosophy from regarding with wonder the spot where that knowledge dwells.",
"[61] What then must we say? That this tree is both in the garden and outside it, in literal fact in it, virtually outside it. How so? Our dominant part is all-receptive and resembles wax that receives all impressions fair and ugly; accordingly the supplanter Jacob makes acknowledgement saying, “Upon me came all these things” (Gen. 42:36); for upon the soul, one as it is, the countless impressions of all things in the universe are borne. Whenever, then, it shall have received the stamp of perfect virtue, it straightway becomes the tree of life, but when it receives that of wickedness, it straightway becomes the tree of knowledge of good and evil. But wickedness has been exiled from the divine choir. The ruling part in us therefore that has received it is actually in the garden, for it has in it likewise the stamp of virtue, properly belonging to the garden; but on the other hand it is virtually not in it, because the impress of wickedness is alien to a place of divine sunrising.",
"[62] You may grasp what I mean in this way. At this moment my ruling part is in literal fact in my body, but virtually in Italy or Sicily, when it is pondering on these countries, and in heaven, when it is considering heaven. Accordingly it often happens that people who are actually in unconsecrated spots are really in most sacred ones, when they are forming images of all that pertains to virtue. Others, on the other hand, who are in consecrated spots are in mind profane, owing to their mind admitting bad impressions and inclinations to what is unworthy. Thus wickedness neither is in the garden, nor is it not in it, for it can be there actually, but virtually it cannot."
],
[
"[63] “A river goes forth from Eden to water the garden: thence it is separated into four heads; the name of the one is Pheison; this is that which encircles all the land of Evilat, there where the gold is; and the gold of that land is good; and there is the ruby and the emerald. And the name of the second river is Geon; this encompasses all the land of Aethiopia. And the third river is Tigris; this is that whose course is in front of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates” (Gen. 2:10–14). By these rivers his purpose is to indicate the particular virtues. These are four in number, prudence, self-mastery, courage, justice. The largest river, of which the four are effluxes, is generic virtue, which we have called “goodness.” The four effluxes are the virtues of the same number.",
"[64] Generic virtue takes its start from Eden, the wisdom of God, which is full of joy, and brightness, and exultation, glorying and priding itself only upon God its Father; but the specific virtues, four in number, are derived from generic virtue, which like a river waters the perfect achievements of each of them with an abundant flow of noble doings.",
"[65] Let us look too at the particular words used. “A river,” it says “issues forth from Eden to water the garden.” “River” is generic virtue, goodness. This issues forth out of Eden, the wisdom of God, and this is the Reason of God; for after that has generic virtue been made. And generic virtue waters the garden, that is, it waters the particular virtues. “Heads” he takes not in the sense of locality but of sovereignty. For each of the virtues is in very deed a sovereign and a queen. “Is separated” is equivalent to ‘has boundaries to define it.’ Prudence, concerned with things to be done, sets boundaries round them; courage round things to be endured; self-mastery round things to be chosen; justice round things to be awarded."
],
[
"[66] “The name of the one is Pheison. This is that which encompasseth all the land of Evilat, there where the gold is; and the gold of that land is good; and there is the ruby and the emerald.” One species of the four virtues is prudence, which he has called “Pheison,” owing to its ‘sparing’ and guarding the soul from deeds of wrong. And it encircles in its roundel the land of Evilat; that is to say, it cherishes with care the kindly and gentle and gracious disposition; and, as of all smelted substance the most excellent and most approved is gold, so of the soul too the most approved virtue is prudence.",
"[67] And the words, “there where (or ‘whose’) the gold is” are not a mere piece of local information, there where the gold is, but there (is He) whose is the treasure, even prudence gleaming like gold, tried by the fire, and precious; and prudence is acknowledged to be God’s fairest treasure. And in the place where prudence dwells are two corresponding concretes, the man who is prudent, and the man who exercises prudence. These he likens to ruby and emerald."
],
[
"[68] “And the name of the second river is Geon; this encircles all the land of Ethiopia.” This river figuratively represents courage; for the word Geon is ‘breast’ or ‘butting’; and each of these indicates courage; for it has its abode about men’s breasts, where the heart also is, and it is fully equipped for self-defence; for it is the knowledge of things that we ought to endure and not to endure, and of things that fall under neither head. And it encompasses and beleaguers Ethiopia, whose name being interpreted is ‘lowness’; and cowardice is a low thing, while courage is a foe to lowness and cowardice.",
"[69] “And the third river is Tigris; this is that whose course is over against the Assyrians.” Self-mastery is the third virtue, and takes its stand against pleasure, which thinks that it can direct the course of human weakness; for expressed in the Greek tongue “Assyrians” is ‘directing.’ He further compares desire, with which self-mastery is occupied, to a tiger, the animal least capable of being tamed."
],
[
"[70] It is worth inquiring why courage is mentioned in the second place, self-mastery in the third, and prudence in the first, and why he has not set forth a different order of the virtues. We must observe, then, that our soul is threefold, and has one part that is the seat of reason, another that is the seat of high spirit, and another that is the seat of desire. And we discover that the head is the place and abode of the reasonable part, the breast of the passionate part, the abdomen of the lustful part; and that to each of the parts a virtue proper to it has been attached; prudence to the reasonable part, for it belongs to reason to have knowledge of the things we ought to do and of the things we ought not; courage to the passionate part; and self-mastery to the lustful part. For it is by self-mastery that we heal and cure our desires.",
"[71] As, then, the head is the first and highest part of the living creature, the breast the second, and the abdomen the third, and again of the soul the reasoning faculty is first, the high-spirited second, the lustful third: so too of the virtues, first is prudence which has its sphere in the first part of the soul which is the domain of reason, and in the first part of the body, namely the head; and second is courage, for it has its seat in high spirit, the second part of the soul, and in the breast, the corresponding part of the body; and third self-mastery, for its sphere of action is the abdomen, which is of course the third part of the body, and the lustful faculty, to which has been assigned the third place in the soul."
],
[
"[72] “The fourth river,” he says, “is Euphrates.” “Euphrates” means ‘fruitfulness,’ and is a figurative name for the fourth virtue, justice, a virtue fruitful indeed and bringing gladness to the mind. When, then, does it appear? When the three parts of the soul are in harmony. Harmony for them is the dominance of the more excellent; for instance, when the two, the high-spirited and the lustful, are guided by the reasoning faculty as horses by their driver, then justice emerges; for it is justice for the better to rule always and everywhere, and for the worse to be ruled: and the reasoning faculty is better, the lustful and the high-spirited the inferior.",
"[73] Whenever, on the other hand, high spirit and desire turn restive and get out of hand, and by the violence of their impetus drag the driver, that is the reason, down from his seat and put him under the yoke, and each of these passions gets hold of the reins, injustice prevails. For it cannot but be that owing to the badness and want of skill of the driver, the team is swept down precipices and gullies, just as by experience and skill it must needs be brought safely through."
],
[
"[74] Now let us go on to look at our subject in this way. “Pheison” signifies ‘alteration of mouth,’ and “Evilat” ‘in travail’: and by these prudence is plainly indicated. For while most people deem the man prudent who can find sophistical arguments, and is clever at expressing his ideas, Moses knows such an one to be a lover of words indeed, but a prudent man by no means. For prudence is discerned in “alteration of the mouth,” that is in the word of utterance undergoing a transformation. This comes to the same thing as saying that prudence is not seen in speech but in action and earnest doings.",
"[75] And prudence surrounds with an encircling wall Evilat, or “folly in travail,” to besiege and overthrow it. “Travailing” is a name strictly appropriate to folly, because the foolish mind, being enamoured of things out of its reach, is evermore in travail pangs. This is so when it is enamoured of money, when of glory, when of pleasure, when of anything else.",
"[76] But, though in travail, it never brings to the birth, for the soul of the worthless man has not by nature the power to bring forth any offspring. What it seems to produce turn out to be wretched abortions and miscarriages, devouring half of its flesh, an evil tantamount to the death of the soul. Accordingly Aaron, the sacred word, begs of Moses, the beloved of God, to heal the change in Miriam, that her soul may not be in travail with evils; and so he says “Let her not become as one dead, as an abortion coming forth from the womb of a mother; consuming half of her flesh” (Num. 12:12)."
],
[
"[77] To resume. “There,” it says, “where (or ‘whose’) the gold is” (Gen. 2:11). It does not merely say that the gold is there, but “there (is He) ‘whose’ it is.” For prudence, which he has likened to gold, a substance free from alloy and pure and cleansed by fire and tested and precious, is there in the wisdom of God, but, being there, is not a possession of wisdom, but of Him whose is wisdom itself also, even God Who created it and makes it His.",
"[78] “Now the gold of that land is good.” “Is there, then, other gold that is not good?” Yes, indeed, for prudence is of two kinds, the one universal, the other particular. The prudence that is in me, being particular, is not good, for when I perish, it perishes together with me. But the universal prudence, which has for its abode the wisdom of God and His dwelling-place, is good, for, itself imperishable, it abides in an imperishable dwelling-place."
],
[
"[79] “And there is the ruby and the greenstone (ibid.), the two concrete embodiments of this virtue, the man who has good sense, and the man who exercises good sense: the determining quality in the one is potential good sense, that in the other good sense exercised. For it was for the sake of these concretes that God sowed in the earth-born man good sense (in particular) and virtue (in general). For what benefit had there been in virtue had there not been ready for it the activities of reason to welcome it and receive its impressions?” So that, naturally, there where good sense, is, there is both the man who has good sense, and the man who exercises good sense, the two precious stones.",
"[80] Judah and Issachar seem to be these. For the man who exercises himself in the practical wisdom of God, makes thankful acknowledgement to Him who bestowed good without stint; while the representative of the other aspect is furthermore engaged in noble and worthy works. Now of the man who makes confession of thankfulness Judah is the symbol, with whose birth Leah leaves off bearing (Gen. 29:35); but of him who is engaged in noble deeds Issachar is the figure, “for he submitted his shoulder to labour and became a tiller of the soil” (Gen. 49:15). In his case, as Moses says, when he has been sown and planted in the soul “there is a reward” (Gen. 30:18), that is to say his labour is not in vain, but crowned by God and awarded a recompense.",
"[81] That he is referring to these patriarchs he shows elsewhere when he says of the high-priestly garment, “And thou shalt weave together in it precious stones in fourfold order: there shall be a row of precious stones, sardius, topaz, smaragdus, making the one row”—Reuben, Simeon, Levi—“and the second row” it says “ruby and sapphire” (Exod. 28:17 f.): but the sapphire is a green stone. Now Judah is engraved in the ruby, for he is fourth in order, and Issachar on the sapphire.",
"[82] Why then, while saying “a green stone,” does he not also say, “a ruby stone”? Because Judah, the disposition prone to make confession of praise, is exempt from body and matter. For indeed the very word denoting confession (of praise) vividly portrays the acknowledgement that takes a man out of himself. For whenever the mind goes out from itself and offers itself up to God, as Isaac or “laughter,” does, then does it make confession of acknowledgement towards the Existent One. But so long as the mind supposes itself to be the author of anything, it is far away from making room for God and from confessing or making acknowledgement to Him. For we must take note that the very confession of praise itself is the work not of the soul but of God who gives it thankfulness. Incorporeal assuredly is Judah with his confession of praise.",
"[83] But for Issachar who has advanced through labour there is need accordingly of a material body. For how shall the keen endeavourer read without eyes? How shall he hear the words of encouragement without ears? How shall he eat food and drink without a stomach and its wonderful processes? That is why he is likened to a stone.",
"[84] Yes, and the colours differ. To him who makes confession of praise the hue of the ruby belongs, for he is permeated by fire in giving thanks to God, and is drunk with a sober drunkenness. But to him who is still labouring the hue of the green stone is proper, for men in exercise and training are pale, both by reason of the wearing labour and by reason of the fear that they may perchance not obtain the result that accords with their prayer."
],
[
"[85] It is worth inquiring why, while the two rivers Pheison and Geon encompass countries, the one Evilat, the other Ethiopia, neither of the others does so; but of the Tigris it is said that it is over against the Assyrians, and the Euphrates is not said to be over against anything; and yet as a matter of fact the Euphrates both flows round many countries and has many facing it. But the subject of the passage is not the river, but amendment of character.",
"[86] We must observe, then, that prudence and courage are able to construct an enclosing wall against the opposite vices, folly and cowardice, and capture them; for they are both of them weak and easy to take, for the foolish man falls an easy victim to the prudent man, and the coward lies at the mercy of the brave man; self-mastery on the contrary is powerless to encircle desire and pleasure; for they are hard to wrestle with and difficult to overthrow. Mark you not that even the most self-controlled of men under compulsion of the mortal element in them resort to food and drink, out of which the pleasures of the appetite develop? So we must be content to face and fight lust as a principle.",
"[87] That is why the river Tigris is over against the Assyrians, self-mastery over against pleasure. Justice, however, the characteristic of the river Euphrates, neither besieges and encircles anyone with a palisade, nor withstands any in conflict. Why? Because it is the function of justice to assign to each what he deserves, and justice sustains the part neither of prosecutor nor of defendant but of judge. Even as the judge, therefore, makes it his business neither to conquer any persons, nor to wage war on any and oppose them, but pronounces a judgement and awards what is just, so too justice, being nobody’s opponent, accords to each matter what it merits."
],
[
"[88]. “And the Lord God took the man whom He had made, and placed him in the garden to till and to guard it” (Gen. 2:15). “The man whom God made” differs, as I have said before, from the one that “was moulded”: for the one that was moulded is the more earthly mind, the one that was made the less material, having no part in perishable matter, endowed with a constitution of a purer and clearer kind.",
"[89] This pure mind, then, God takes, not suffering it to go outside of Himself, and, having taken it, sets it among the virtues that have roots and put forth shoots, that he may till them and guard them. For many, after beginning to practise virtue, have changed at the last: but on the man to whom God affords secure knowledge, He bestows both advantages, both that of tilling the virtues, and also that of never desisting from them, but of evermore husbanding and guarding each one of them. So “tilling” represents practising, while “guarding” represents remembering."
],
[
"[90] “And the Lord God commanded Adam saying: From every tree that is in the garden thou shalt feedingly eat, but of the tree of knowing good and evil ye shall not eat of it: and in the day that ye eat of it ye shall surely die” (Gen. 2:16, 17).",
"We must raise the question what Adam He commands and who this is; for the writer has not mentioned him before, but has named him now for the first time. Perchance, then, he means to give us the name of the man that was moulded. “Call him earth” he says, for that is the meaning of “Adam,” so that when you hear the word “Adam,” you must make up your mind that it is the earthly and perishable mind; for the mind that was made after the image is not earthly but heavenly.",
"[91] And we must inquire why when assigning their names to all the other creatures Adam did not assign one to himself. What, then, are we to say? The mind that is in each one of us can apprehend other objects, but is incapable of knowing itself. For just as the eye sees other objects but does not see itself, so the mind too perceives other objects, but does not apprehend itself. Can it say what it is and of what kind, breath or blood or fire or air or anything else? Can it even say that it is a body or else that it is incorporeal? Are not they simpletons, then, who inquire about God’s substance? For how should those, who know not the substance of their own soul, have accurate ideas about the soul of the universe? For we may conceive of God as the soul of the universe."
],
[
"[92] Quite naturally, therefore, Adam, that is the Mind, though he names and apprehends other things, gives no name to himself, since he is ignorant of himself and his own nature. Now it is to this being, and not to the being created after His image and after the original idea, that God gives the command. For the latter, even without urging, possesses virtue instinctively; but the former, independently of instruction, could have no part in wisdom.",
"[93] There is a difference between these three—injunction, prohibition, command accompanied by exhortation. For prohibition deals with wrongdoings and is addressed to the bad man, injunction concerns duties rightly done, and exhortation is addressed to the neutral man, the man who is neither bad nor good: for he is neither sinning, to lead anyone to forbid him, nor is he so doing right as right reason enjoins, but has need of exhortation, which teaches him to refrain from evil things, and incites him to aim at things noble.",
"[94] There is no need, then, to give injunctions or prohibitions or exhortations to the perfect man formed after the (Divine) image, for none of these does the perfect man require. The bad man has need of injunction and prohibition, and the child of exhortation and teaching. Just so the perfect master of music or letters requires none of the directions that apply to those arts, whereas the man who stumbles over the subjects of his study does require what we may call laws or rules with their injunctions and prohibitions, while one who is now beginning to learn requires teaching.",
"[95] Quite naturally, then, does God give the commandments and exhortations before us to the earthly man who is neither bad nor good but midway between these. To enforce the exhortation, both Divine titles are employed, both “Lord” and “God,” for it says “God the Lord commanded him.” This is in order that, should he obey the exhortations, he may be deemed worthy by God of His benefactions; but that, should he rebel, he may be driven from the presence of the Lord who has a Master’s authority over him.",
"[96] For this reason again, when he is being cast out of the garden, the sacred writer has introduced the same titles, for he says, “And the Lord God sent him forth out of the garden of delight, to till the ground, out of which he was taken” (Gen. 3:23). This is to show that, since “the Lord” as Master and “God” as Benefactor had issued the commands, so in both capacities does He inflict punishment on him who had disobeyed them. For he dismisses the disobedient by the exercise of the very powers which He had exercised in urging him to obedience."
],
[
"[97] The charge which he gives is this: “From every tree that is in the garden thou shalt eat feedingly thereon” (Gen. 2:16). He moves the soul of the man to get benefit, not from a single tree or from a single virtue but from all the virtues: for eating is a figure of soul-nourishment: and the soul is nourished by the acquisition of things noble, and the practice of things rightful.",
"[98] And He says not merely “shalt eat,” but also “feedingly,” that is, chewing and masticating the nourishment, not like an ordinary person, but like an athlete, that you may gain strength and power: for, as we know, the trainers charge the athletes not to bolt their food, but to masticate it slowly, in order that they may grow stronger. For the athlete and I take nourishment with different objects; I, just to sustain life, the athlete, for the further purpose of growing brawny and strong; and so mastication of food is a special point in training. Such is the meaning of “thou shalt eat feedingly thereon.”",
"[99] Let us try to form a yet more precise conception of it. To honour our parents is something eatable and nutritious: but good and bad sons honour them differently, the latter in compliance with custom, and these do not “eat feedingly,” but simply eat. When, then, eat they feedingly too? When, after exploring the precept and searching for the grounds on which it rests, they freely determine that such conduct is noble. The grounds for it are such as these: they gave us birth, nurtured us, educated us, have been authors of all good things to us. Honour again shown to the Existent One is something eatable; it is shown “feedingly,” when the honour we show is coupled with close search into the precept, and with a due appreciation of its motives."
],
[
"[100] “But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat” (Gen. 2:17). Therefore this tree is not in the garden: for if He bids them to eat of every tree in the garden, but not to eat of this one, it is evident that it is not in the garden: and this is quite naturally so: for actually, as I have said, it is there, and virtually it is not. For as all the impressions are virtually in the wax, but actually only the one that has been made, so in the soul, whose nature is waxlike, all the types are contained virtually, but not in actual execution, and the single one engraved in it is in possession, so long as it has not been obliterated by another seal which has made over it a clearer and bolder impression.",
"[101] Next there is this further question to be raised. When He is giving the charge to eat of every tree of the garden, He addresses the command to a single person, but when He issues the prohibition against making any use of that which causes evil and good, He speaks to more than one: for in the former case He says, “Thou shalt eat from every tree”; but in the latter, “ye shall not eat, and in the day that ye eat” not “that thou eatest,” and “ye shall die” not “thou shalt die.”",
"[102] We must accordingly remark in the first place that the good is scarce, the evil abundant. Hence it is hard to find a single wise man, while of inferior men there is a countless multitude. Quite fitly, therefore, does He bid a single man to find nourishment in the virtues, but many to abstain from evil-doing, for myriads practise this.",
"[103] In the second place, for the acquisition and practice of virtue a single thing only, namely our understanding, is requisite: but the body not only fails to co-operate to this end, but is an actual hindrance; for we may almost make it an axiom that the business of wisdom is to become estranged from the body and its cravings: but for the enjoyment of evil it is necessary not only that the mind be in a certain condition, but also the power of perception and of speech, in fact the body;",
"[104] for all these the inferior man requires for the full satisfaction of his particular form of wickedness. For how shall he divulge sacred and hidden truths unless he have an organ of speech? And how is he to indulge in pleasures, if he be bereft of a stomach and the organs of taste? So it is in accordance with the necessities of the case that He addresses the understanding alone about gaining virtue; for, as I said, it alone is needed for its acquisition; whereas in the pursuit of evil several faculties are needed, soul, speech, senses, body, for wickedness employs all these in displaying itself."
],
[
"[105] And further he says, “In the day that ye eat thereof, ye shall die the death” (Gen. 2:17). And yet after they have eaten, not merely do they not die, but they beget children and become authors of life to others. What, then, is to be said to this? That death is of two kinds, one that of the man in general, the other that of the soul in particular. The death of the man is the separation of the soul from the body, but the death of the soul is the decay of virtue and the bringing in of wickedness.",
"[106] It is for this reason that God says not only “die” but “die the death,” indicating not the death common to us all, but that special death properly so called, which is that of the soul becoming entombed in passions and wickedness of all kinds. And this death is practically the antithesis of the death which awaits us all. The latter is a separation of combatants that had been pitted against one another, body and soul, to wit. The former, on the other hand, is a meeting of the two in conflict. And in this conflict the worse, the body, overcomes, and the better, the soul, is overcome.",
"[107] But observe that wherever Moses speaks of “dying the death,” he means the penalty-death, not that which takes place in the course of nature. That one is in the course of nature in which soul is parted from body; but the penalty-death takes place when the soul dies to the life of virtue, and is alive only to that of wickedness.",
"[108] That is an excellent saying of Heracleitus, who on this point followed Moses’ teaching, “We live,” he says, “their death, and are dead to their life.” He means that now, when we are living, the soul is dead and has been entombed in the body as in a sepulchre; whereas, should we die, the soul lives forthwith its own proper life, and is released from the body, the baneful corpse to which it was tied."
]
],
"Appendix": [
"APPENDIX TO ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION, I",
"§ 3. Multiplication of two unequal factors. Ἑτερομήκης, though often used more widely by general writers, is a term reserved by the mathematicians for numbers of the form x(x+1), i.e. 1×2, 2×3, 3×4, etc. (See Nicomachus ii. 17.) This restricted use of the word obviously fits the present passage.",
"§ 30. Impressions … active impulse. The φαντασία, translated now by “presentation,” now by “mental picture,” conceived of as an imprint (τύπωσις) on the mind, is a thoroughly Stoic idea. (See e.g. Diog. Laert. vii. 45; S. V. F. ii. 52 ff.) So also is ὁρμή, “impulse” or “appetite.” The sense of this section is given more fully and clearly in Quod Deus 43.",
"§ 57. Theoretical … practical. A more careful classification of the arts is given by Aristotle, Met. v. 1, viz.—θεωρητικαί, πρακτικαί and ποιητικαί (“productive”). Thus rhetoric and dancing are πρακτικαί, sculpture and poetry ποιητικαί, Cf. Quintilian ii. 18.",
"ibid. Its three parts. This division is claimed for the Stoics by Diogenes Laertius (vii. 39), though actually it appears incidentally in Aristotle, Topica i. 14, 105 b 20. The comparison quoted by Diogenes in vii. 40 of τὸ λογικόν to the fledge (φραγμός), τὸ φυσικόν to the field or trees, and τὸ ἠθικόν to the fruit is adopted by Philo in De Agr. 14.",
"§ 60. Another suggestion may be made for emending this passage. Elsewhere Philo explains unexpected silences on Moses’ part by his desire to stimulate the mystic to discover some high truth for himself. E.g. L.A. ii. 55. iii. 239. Note in particular De Cherubim 121 fin., where the likeness of diction to this passage is significant. There the silence is stated to be ἵνα ὁ μὴ φυσιολογίας ἀμύητος εἰς ἐπιστήμην ὠφελῆται. The stimulus to thought, that is to say, will be an actual assistance to the philosophical mind in its quest for knowledge. Here if we change the order of ὁ and μὴ we may perhaps leave the text otherwise undisturbed, translating “that the man versed in natural philosophy may <discover the=\"\" truth=\"\" for=\"\" himself=\"\" and=\"\"> revere Him that is for His knowledge.” Or we might read (for τὸν ὄντα) τὸν <μεταδ>όντα τῆς ἐπιστήμης. The sense conveyed will then be that the stimulus to thought will lead to a higher knowledge, and so to reverence for Him who has imparted it.",
"§ 70. Our soul is threefold, etc. This theory is familiar to readers of Plato from the famous myth of the soul’s chariot in the Phaedrus 246 ff., where τὸ λογικόν appears as the charioteer, τὸ θυμικόν and τὸ ἐπιθυμητικόν as the nobler and baser horses respectively. Cf. Timaeus 69 C; Republic 439 D. Philo, in fact, reproduces the figure in 72 f., but without Plato’s distinction of the character of the two horses. The location of the three in different parts of the body here mentioned is taken from Timaeus 69 E, 90 A.",
"§ 80. Judah and Issachar. The idea seems to be that Judah, the mystic representing φρόνησις as a spiritual or mental condition, is ὁ φρόνιμος, while Issachar, who represents the same as carried into practical life, is ὁ φρονῶν. The somewhat unexpected use of ἀσκητής as applied to the mystic may perhaps be explained by laying stress on θεοῦ. He is a “practiser,” but of a wisdom higher than that of practisers in general.",
"§ 91. We conceive of God as the soul of the universe. It is implied that it is not an accurate or adequate expression. Cf. De Migr. 179, where the possible danger of this expression, as tending to suggest that God is contained in the universe, is pointed out, and ibid. 181, where the thought is further developed. The expression is Stoic (S. V. F. ii. 774). The equivalent ἡ τοῦ κόσμου ψυχή is attributed to Cleanthes himself (S. V. F. i. 532)."
]
},
"Book II": {
"Introduction": [
"ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION TO BOOK II",
"This treatise deals with Genesis 2:18–3:1. Let us mark its mode of dealing with the Sacred Text in salient instances.",
"The story of the creation of Eve, we are told, is not meant to be taken literally. It is a Myth,” showing forth the origin of Sense-perception, which becomes active when Mind is asleep (Gen. 2:21). The bringing of Woman to Man is the introduction of Sense-perception to Mind, which hails it as its own (2:22 f.). (19 ff., 40 ff.)",
"That Adam and Eve were both naked (2:25) means that they were without either good or evil; for nakedness of soul can show itself as (a) freedom from passions; (b) loss of virtue; (c) neutrality. Adam and Eve were inactive both in mind and sense-perception, and were “unashamed,” i.e. without either the shamelessness of the worthless man, or the shamefastness of the man of worth. (53 ff.)",
"The entry of the Serpent (Gen. 3:1) is due to the need of some means of uniting Mind and Sense-perception for their joint apprehension of objects, and of eliciting their activities. (71 ff.)",
"Let us notice next the extent to which Philo dwells on single words.",
"The word “alone” in Gen. 2:18 draws out the reminder that God only is alone, self-contained, needing naught, not composite; while the heavenly Man ever yearns to be with God, and the earthy man always is with his passions. (1–4.)",
"The word “help” or “helper” suggests to him the created, later-born helpers given to the earthy man. These “wild beasts” are the senses and passions, such as desire, fear, anger, given to Mind (Gen. 2:19)—our helpers, but often our foes. (5 ff.)",
"The word “moreover” (in the Greek version of Gen. 2:19) is taken by Philo to mean a second creation of senses and passions; and this further creation is accounted for by the observation that evils are numerous, and by the suggestion that Gen. 1:24 refers to genera, and Gen. 2:19 to species, a suggestion in support of which evidence is adduced. (11 f.)",
"In the account of the giving of names to the creatures, the words “what he would call” are taken as meaning “why he would invite.” (14 f.)",
"In the story of the creation of Eve, “ribs” or “sides” are understood as “strength”; “took” as meaning “entered on the roll,” “registered,” i.e. brought into active service (this on the strength of Numb. 31:26, “take the sum”); “filled up flesh in its stead” means “fulfilled” sense-perception, and “filled” the body “with it”; and woman is “builded” (Gen. 2:22, R.V. margin) because she is moved to activity from without. (19 f., 35, 38 f.)",
"A striking example of single words pressed into the service of allegory is Adam’s welcome to Eve, “This is now bone of my bones.” “This” is Sense-perception no longer passive but become active; and “now” is indicative of Sense-perception being affected only by the present. (42 f.)",
"We pass on to observe the examples afforded by this treatise of Philo’s fondness for drawing illustrations and adducing parallels from the story of the patriarchs and the early history of Israel.",
"In 46 f. Philo maintains that, though active Sense-perception, being an extension of the potential Sense-perception inherent in Mind, may be said to come from Mind, yet to suppose that anything whatever is, in the strict sense of the word, derived from Mind is to be guilty of shallow thinking, and illustrates the truth of what he says by the contrast between Rachel addressing to Jacob the appeal “Give me children,” and “the Lord opening Leah’s womb” (Gen. 29:31 and 30:1 f.).",
"In 51 f. the danger of the drawing down of Mind from the love of God by its cleaving to Sense-perception is brought out by a reference to Levi’s noble choice (Deut. 33:9) making the Lord his portion (10:9), and to the two goats of Lev. 16:8.",
"Freedom from passions (one of the meanings of “nakedness”) is illustrated by Moses setting up the Tent of Witness outside the Camp (Exod. 33:7); by Aaron entering unrobed (!) into the Holy of Holies (cf. Lev. 16:1 ff.); by Nadab and Abihu leaving their coats (or irrational parts) for Mishael and Elzaphan (Lev. 10:5); by Abraham leaving his country (Gen. 12:1); by Isaac being forbidden to go down into Egypt (i.e. the body, Gen. 26:2); and by Jacob’s smoothness (Gen. 27:11). (54 ff.)",
"Loss of virtue (another meaning given to “nakedness”) is illustrated by Noah’s lapse (Gen. 9:21). And the indications which Philo finds in the narrative that the lapse was not irretrievable are illustrated by the provision in the Law that vows made only in intent may be rescinded (Numb. 30:10). (60 ff.)",
"The assaults of pleasure and the healing virtue of Self-mastery are illustrated by the deadly serpents and the brazen serpent of the wilderness journey (Numb. 21). Distraction, Pleasure’s agent, is like the scorpion (= “scattering”) of the desert. The soul-thirst of “Egypt” is quenched by the Wisdom (“Water”) as is hunger by the Word (“Manna”) of God. A sign of the great daring of Pleasure, in attacking even Moses, is found in the story of his rod. Like Jacob’s, it is “discipline.” Shrinking from this, Moses casts it away, and is then bidden to grasp it by its tail (Exod. 4:1 ff.). (78 ff., 87 ff.)",
"Pleasure is again pointed at in the Prayer of Jacob (Gen. 49:16–18), where Dan (= “distinguishing”) is the principle of self-mastery, who is to become a serpent biting the horse (sc. passions), and saving from them Mind (the “horseman”), who “waits for” God’s “salvation”; and in the Song of Moses (Exod. 15:1), where horse and rider, i.e. the four passions with Mind mounted on them, are cast into the sea."
],
"": [
[
"[1] “And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone, let us make for him a helper corresponding to him” (Gen. 2:18). Why, O prophet, is it not good that the man should be alone? Because, he says, it is good that the Alone should be alone: but God, being One, is alone and unique, and like God there is nothing. Hence, since it is good that He Who IS should be alone—for indeed with regard to Him alone can the statement “it is good” be made—it follows that it would not be good that the man should be alone. There is another way in which we may understand the statement that God is alone.",
"[2] It may mean that neither before creation was there anything with God, nor, when the universe had come into being, does anything take its place with Him; for there is absolutely nothing which He needs. A yet better interpretation is the following. God is alone, a Unity, in the sense that His nature is simple not composite, whereas each one of us and of all other created beings is made up of many things. I, for example, am many things in one. I am soul and body. To soul belong rational and irrational parts, and to body, again, different properties, warm and cold, heavy and light, dry and moist. But God is not a composite Being, consisting of many parts, nor is He mixed with aught else.",
"[3] For whatever is added to God, is either superior or inferior or equal to Him. But there is nothing equal or superior to God. And no lesser thing is resolved into Him. If He do so assimilate any lesser thing, He also will be lessened. And if He can be made less, He will also be capable of corruption; and even to imagine this were blasphemous. The “one” and the “monad” are, therefore, the only standard for determining the category to which God belongs. Rather should we say, the One God is the sole standard for the “monad.” For, like time, all number is subsequent to the universe; and God is prior to the universe, and is its Maker."
],
[
"[4] It is not good that any man should be alone. For there are two races of men, the one made after the (Divine) Image, and the one moulded out of the earth. For the man made after the Image it is not good to be alone, because he yearns after the Image. For the image of God is a pattern of which copies are made, and every copy longs for that of which it is a copy, and its station is at its side. Far less is it good for the man moulded of the earth to be alone. Nay, it is impossible. For with the mind so formed, linked to it in closest fellowship, are senses, passions, vices, ten thousand other presences.",
"[5] With the second man a helper is associated. To begin with, the helper is a created one, for it says, “Let us make a helper for him”; and, in the next place, is subsequent to him who is to be helped, for He had formed the mind before and is about to form its helper. In these particulars again, while using terms of outward nature he is conveying a deeper meaning. For sense and the passions are helpers of the soul and come after the soul. In what way they help we shall see: let us fix our attention on their coming later than the soul."
],
[
"[6] In the view of the best physicians and natural philosophers the heart is thought to be formed before the whole body, by way of a foundation, or as the keel in a ship, the rest of the body being built upon it; and they assert that accordingly even after death it still beats, and decays after the body, as it came into existence before it. In just the same way, it is thought, the princely part of the soul is older than the soul as a whole, and the irrational portion younger. The creation of this the prophet has not as yet related, but he is going to describe it. The irrational portion is sense and the passions which are the offspring of sense, unquestionably so if they are not the result of any choice of our own. This helper then is later born and of course created.",
"[7] Now let us consider the point which we deferred, how the help is given. How does our mind apprehend the fact that an object is white or black, except by using sight as a helper? How does it become aware that the musician’s voice is sweet or on the other hand out of tune, save by using the sense of hearing as a helper? How does it recognize that perfumes are pleasant or disagreeable, except by using as an ally the sense of smell? How does it distinguish savours, except by means of the taste acting as its helper?",
"[8] Things smooth and rough, again, how but by touch? Moreover, there are, as I have said, helpers of another kind, namely the passions. For pleasure and desire contribute to the permanence of our kind: pain and fear are like bites or stings warning the soul to treat nothing carelessly: anger is a weapon of defence, which has conferred great boons on many: and so with the other passions. This shows also that the prophet was perfectly right in saying that the helper must be one “corresponding to him.” For in very deed this helper is intimately allied to the mind, as though a brother of one blood with it: for sense-perception and passions are parts and offspring of one soul with it."
],
[
"[9] There are two species of this helper: the one has its sphere in the passions, the other in sense-perception. At present He will produce the former only, for he says, “And God moulded moreover out of the earth all the wild beasts of the field, and all the birds of the heaven, and led them to Adam, to see what he would call them: and whatever Adam called a living soul, this was its name” (Gen. 2:19). You see who are our helpers, the wild beasts, the soul’s passions: for after saying, “Let us make a helper corresponding to him,” he adds the words, “He moulded the wild beasts,” implying that the wild beasts are our helpers. These are not properly called our helpers,",
"[10] but by a straining of language; in reality they are found to be our actual foes, just as the allies of states sometimes turn out to be traitors and deserters, and in private friendships flatterers prove enemies instead of comrades. He uses the terms “heaven” and “field” as synonyms, meaning the mind. For the mind is like the field in having countless sproutings and upgrowths, and like heaven again in having natures brilliant and godlike and blessed.",
"[11] The passions he likens to wild beasts and birds, because, savage and untamed as they are, they tear the soul to pieces, and because like winged things they light upon the understanding; for the assault of the passions is violent and irresistible. The addition of “further” to “formed” is by no means otiose. How do we see this? Because above also he mentions the forming of the wild beasts before the creation of man, as we see from these words referring to the sixth day: and He said, “Let the earth bring forth the living soul after its kind, four-footed animals and creeping things and wild beasts” (Gen. 1:24).",
"[12] How comes He, then, to form other wild beasts now, and not to be satisfied with those former ones? From the ethical point of view what we must say is this. In the realm of created things the class or kind of wickedness is abundant. It follows that in this the worst things are ever being produced. From the philosophical point of view our answer must be, that on the former occasion, when engaged in the Work of the six days, He wrought the genera or kinds and the originals of the passions, whereas now He is fashioning the species as well.",
"[13] This is why he says, “He fashioned moreover.” That what were created in the first instance were genera, is evident from the words employed, “Let the earth bring forth the living soul,” not according to species but “according to kind.” And we find Him in every instance working in this way. Before the species He completes the genera. He does so in the case of man. Having first fashioned man as a genus, in which the prophet says that there is the male and the female genus. He afterwards makes Adam, the finished form or species."
],
[
"[14] Helpers of this sort the prophet has now dealt with; the other sort he defers, that of sense-perception, I mean, until the Creator takes in hand to fashion woman. Having deferred that subject, he goes on to a systematic treatment of the giving of names. Here his literal statement and his symbolic interpretation alike claim our admiration. What we admire in the Lawgiver’s literal statement is his ascription to the first man of the fixing of names.",
"[15] Indeed Greek philosophers said that those who first assigned names to things were wise men. Moses did better than they, first of all in ascribing it not to some of the men of old but to the first man created. His purpose was that, as Adam was formed to be the beginning from which all others drew their birth, so too no other than he should be regarded as the beginning of the use of speech: for even language would not have existed, if there had not been names. Again, had many persons bestowed names on things, they would inevitably have been incongruous and ill-matched, different persons imposing them on different principles, whereas the naming by one man was bound to bring about harmony between name and thing, and the name given was sure to be a symbol, the same for all men, of any object to which the name was attached or of the meaning attaching to the name."
],
[
"[16] What he says in the domain of ethics is to this effect. We often use “τί”(= “what”) for “διὰ τί” (“by reason of what”), as “what (i.e. why) have you bathed?” “What (i.e. ‘why’) are you walking?” “What (i.e. ‘why’) are you conversing?” In all these cases “what” stands for “because of what.” When the prophet says “to see what he would call them” you should understand something equivalent to ‘why the mind would call and invite to it and greet’ each of these objects, whether only for the sake of that which it cannot dispense with, seeing that all that is mortal is necessarily bound up with passions and vices, or also for the sake of what is in excess of reasonable needs; and whether to satisfy the needs of flesh and blood, or because it deems them good and admirable above all things.",
"[17] For example. A created being cannot but make use of pleasure. But the worthless man will use it as a perfect good, but the man of worth simply as a necessity, remembering that apart from pleasure nothing in mortal kind comes into existence. Again the worthless man accounts the acquisition of wealth a most perfect good; the man of worth regards it as just necessary and serviceable and no more.",
"[18] No wonder then that God wishes to see and ascertain how the mind invites and welcomes each of these, whether as good, or as indifferent, or as bad but at all events as serviceable. Hence it came about that everything which he called to himself and greeted as living soul, reckoning it equal in worth to the soul, this became the name not only of the thing called but of him who called it. For example, if he welcomed pleasure, he was called pleasure-loving; if desire, desire-ridden; if licence, licentious; if cowardice, cowardly; and so on. For, just as the man whose quality is determined by the virtues is from them called wise or sober-minded or just or brave, so from the vices is he called unjust and foolish and unmanly, whensoever he has invited to himself and given a hearty welcome to the corresponding dispositions."
],
[
"[19] “And God brought a trance upon Adam, and he fell asleep; and He took one of his sides” and what follows (Gen. 2:21). These words in their literal sense are of the nature of a myth. For how could anyone admit that a woman, or a human being at all, came into existence out of a man’s side? And what was there to hinder the First Cause from creating woman, as He created man, out of the earth? For not only was the Maker the same Being, but the material too, out of which every particular kind was fashioned, was practically unlimited. And why, when there were so many parts to choose from, did He form the woman not from some other part but from the side? And which side did he take? For we may assume that only two are indicated, as there is in fact nothing to suggest a large number of them. Did he take the left or the right side?",
"[20] If He filled up with flesh (the place of) the one which He took, are we to suppose that the one which He left was not made of flesh? Truly our sides are twin in all their parts and are made of flesh. What then are we to say?",
"[21] “Sides” is a term of ordinary life for “strength.” To say that a man has “sides” is equivalent to saying that he is strong, we say of a powerful athlete “he has stout sides,” and to say that a singer has “sides” is as much as to say that he has great lung power in singing.",
"[22] Having said this, we must go on to remark that the mind when as yet unclothed and unconfined by the body (and it is of the mind when not so confined that he is speaking) has many powers. It has the power of holding together, of growing, of conscious life, of thought, and countless other powers, varying both in species and genus. Lifeless things, like stones and blocks of wood, share with all others the power of holding together, of which the bones in us, which are not unlike stones, partake. “Growth” extends to plants, and there are parts in us, such as our nails and hair, resembling plants; “growth” is coherence capable of moving itself.",
"[23] Conscious life is the power to grow, with the additional power of receiving impressions and being the subject of impulses. This is shared also by creatures without reason. Indeed our mind contains a part that is analogous to the conscious life of a creature without reason. Once more, the power of thinking is peculiar to the mind, and while shared, it may well be, by beings more akin to God, is, so far as mortal beings are concerned, peculiar to man. This power or faculty is twofold. We are rational beings, on the one hand as being partakers of mind, and on the other as being capable of discourse.",
"[24] Well, there is also another power or faculty in the soul, closely akin to these, namely that of receiving sense-impressions, and it is of this that the prophet is speaking. For his immediate concern is just this, to indicate the origin of active sense-perception. And logical sequence leads him to do so."
],
[
"For it was requisite that the creation of mind should be followed immediately by that of sense-perception, to be a helper and ally to it. Having then finished the creation of the mind He fashions the product of creative skill that comes next to it alike in order and in power, namely active sense-perception, with a view to the completeness of the whole soul, and with a view to its apprehension of objects presented to it.",
"[25] How is it, then, produced? As the prophet himself again says, it is when the mind has fallen asleep. As a matter of fact it is when the mind has gone to sleep that perception begins, for conversely when the mind wakes up perception is quenched. A proof of this is afforded by the fact that whenever we wish to get an accurate understanding of a subject we hurry off to a lonely spot; we close our eyes; we stop our ears; we say “good-bye” to our perceptive faculties. So then, we see that, when the mind is astir and awake, the power of perception is suppressed.",
"[26] There is the other point to be noticed. Let us see what happens to the mind in sleep. When the perceptive faculty has been set astir and aflame, owing to the eye contemplating the masterpieces of painters or sculptors, does not the mind remain inactive, and cease to exercise itself on objects of thought? And when the ear is intent on the tunefulness of a voice, can the mind be employing its reasoning power upon any of the subjects belonging to its sphere? Of course not. And in good sooth the mind finds itself still more completely out of work when the sense of taste has fully roused itself and is gorging itself with all that delights the appetite.",
"[27] And this is the reason why Moses, fearing lest the mind should not only go to sleep but absolutely die, says in another place, “And thou shalt have a shovel upon thy belt; and it shall be, when thou sittest down abroad, thou shalt dig therewith and cover over thine unseemliness” (Deut. 23:13). He uses the term “shovel” figuratively for the reason that digs out hidden matters.",
"[28] And he bids the man wear it upon his passion, which must be girded up and which he must not allow to be loose and slack. And this girding must be put into practice whenever the mind, relaxing from the strain of its own objects, lowers itself to the passions, and “sits down abroad,” giving itself up to be drawn by bodily necessity.",
"[29] And this is how the matter stands. Whenever the mind forgets itself amid the luxuries of a festive gathering and is mastered by all that conduces to pleasure, we are in bondage and we leave our “unseemliness” uncovered. But if the reason prove strong enough to purge the passion, we neither go on drinking till we are drunk, nor eat so greedily as to wax wanton, but we banish folly and take our food soberly.",
"[30] Thus the wakefulness of the senses means sleep for the mind, and the wakefulness of the mind a time of leisure for the senses; just as, when the sun has risen, the lights of the other heavenly bodies are invisible; when it has set, they show themselves. The mind, like the sun, when awake, throws the senses into the shade, but if it goes to sleep, it causes them to shine out."
],
[
"[31] Having said this, we must show how the terms employed accord with it. “God cast,” he says, “a trance upon Adam, and he went to sleep” (Gen. 2:21). Quite correctly does he use this language. For the mind’s trance and change is its sleep, and it falls into a trance when it ceases to be engaged with the objects appropriate to it; and when it is not at work at these, it is sleeping. Rightly also does he say that this change or turning which he undergoes is not of his own motion but of God’s; that it is God who “casts it on him,” that is, brings and sends it on him.",
"[32] For the case is this. For if the change were in our hands I should have recourse to it, when I wished, and when it was not my deliberate choice I should then continue unturned. But as it is, the change is actually repugnant to me, and many a time when wishing to entertain some fitting thought, I am drenched by a flood of unfitting matters pouring over me; and conversely when on the point of admitting a conception of something vile, I have washed the vile thing away with wholesome thoughts, God having by His grace poured upon my soul a sweet draught in place of the bitter one.",
"[33] Now every created thing must necessarily undergo change, for this is its property, even as unchangeableness is the property of God. But, while some, after being changed, remain so until they are entirely destroyed, others continue so only so far as to experience that to which all flesh is liable, and these forthwith recover.",
"[34] This is why Moses says, “He will not permit the destroyer to come into your houses to smite you” (Exod. 12:23): for He does indeed permit the destroyer—(“destruction” being the change or turning of the soul)—to enter into the soul, that He may make it evident that what is peculiar to created things is there; but God will not let the offspring of “the seeing” Israel be in such wise changed as to receive his death-blow by the change, but will force him to rise and emerge as though from deep water and recover."
],
[
"[35] “He took one of his sides” (Gen. 2:21). Of the many faculties of the mind He took one, the faculty of perception. “Took” must not be understood as equivalent to “removed,” but as equivalent to “enrolled,” “registered,” as we find it elsewhere “take the sum of the spoils of the captivity” (Numb. 31:26).",
"[36] What idea is it, then, that he wants to convey? The word “perception” is used in two ways, first in that of a condition, in which sense it is ours when we are asleep, secondly in the sense of an activity. From perception in the former sense, as it is a state, we derive no benefit, for it does not enable us to apprehend the objects about us. It is from the second kind of perception, as an activity, that we get benefit, for our apprehension of the objects of sense-perception is made possible by this.",
"[37] Having, then, brought into being the former sort of perception as a quiescent condition, at the time when He was bringing the mind itself into being—for He made the mind with many faculties lying dormant—now it is His wish to produce perception as an activity. Active perception is brought to pass when quiescent perception has been set in motion and extended to reach the flesh and the perceptive organs. For, just as growth is effected by seed being set in motion, so is activity or actuality by a quiescent condition being set in motion."
],
[
"[38] “And he filled up flesh in its stead” (Gen. 2:21), that is to say He fulfilled perception that was only a state by leading it on to be an activity, and extending it till it reached the flesh and the whole surface of the body. And so he adds the words, “He built it to be a woman” (Gen. 2:22), proving by this that the most proper and exact name for sense-perception is “woman.” For just as the man shows himself in activity and the woman in passivity, so the province of the mind is activity, and that of the perceptive sense passivity, as in woman.",
"[39] It is easy to learn this from what is before our eyes. Sight is in a passive relation to the objects of sight that set it moving, white, black, and the rest. Hearing, again, is affected by sounds, and the sense of taste by savours, the sense of smell by odours, that of touch by things rough and smooth; and the faculties of perception are all dormant, until there draws near to each of them from outside that which is to set it in motion."
],
[
"[40] “And he led her to Adam; and Adam said, This is now bone out of my bones and flesh out of my flesh” (Gen. 2:22, 23). God leads active perception to the mind, knowing that its movement and apprehensive power must revert to the mind as their starting-point. The mind, on beholding that, which it had before as a potentiality and as a dormant state, now become a finished product, an activity, and in motion, marvels at it, and cries aloud declaring that it is not foreign to it but in the fullest sense its own, for it says,",
"[41] “This is bone out of my bones,” that is, power out of my powers, for “bone” is here used as “power and strength”, “and feeling out of my feelings”; “and flesh,” he says, “out of my flesh”; for not without the mind does the perceptive faculty bear anything that it feels, for the mind is to it a fountain-head and a basis on which it rests.",
"[42] It is worth our while to consider why the word “now” was added: for what he says is, “This is now bone out of my bones.” Perception by itself is now, subsisting only in relation to the present time.",
"[43] For whereas past, present, and future are within the scope of the mind, as it grasps things present, remembers things past, and looks forward to things future, perception, on the other hand, has no power either to reach out to future things by experiencing something corresponding to hope or expectation, nor does it remember things past, but it is so constituted as to be affected only by that which is present and sets it in motion at the moment. For instance, the eye has a sensation of white now under the influence of the white that is present, but from that which is not present it feels no effect. The mind, on the contrary, is set in motion by occasion of that which is not present as well, if past, by way of memory, if future, by building hopes and expectations on it."
],
[
"[44] “To this one shall be given the title ‘woman’ ” (Gen. 2:23), as much as to say, for this cause shall perception be called “woman” because out of man that sets it in motion “this one is taken.” Why, then is “this one” put in? Because there is another perception, not taken from the mind, but brought into being together with it. For there are, as I have said already, two perceptions, one existing as quiescent condition, the other as activity. The one, then, that exists as quiescent condition, is not taken out of the man, that is to say the mind, but comes into being with it.",
"[45] For the mind, as I have pointed out, when it came into existence, came into existence in association with many potentialities and conditions, those of reason, animal life, and growth, and so with that of perception also. But the one that exists as an activity comes out of the mind. For it was extended out of the perception which is in the mind as a condition, that it might come to be an activity. Thus the second one, the one that is characterized by movement, has been produced out of the mind itself.",
"[46] But he is a shallow thinker who supposes that in strict truth anything whatever derives its birth from the mind or from himself. Do you not see that perception in the person of Rachel who sits upon the teraphim, is rebuked by “the seeing one,” when she imagines that movements have their source in mind? For she says, “Give me children; if you do not, I shall die” (Gen. 30:1); but he answers, “O woman, full of false fancies, the mind is the origin of nothing, but God who is antecedent to the mind is the only cause”; and so he adds, “Am I in the place of God who deprived thee of the fruit of the womb?” (ibid. 2).",
"[47] But that it is God who brings about birth, Scripture will give evidence in the case of Leah, when it says, “And the Lord seeing that Leah was hated opened her womb, but Rachel was barren” (Gen. 29:31). The opening of the womb is man’s proper function. But mortal kind is prone of itself to hate virtue, and accordingly God has bestowed honour upon it and vouchsafes to her that is hated to bear the first-born.",
"[48] He says elsewhere, “If a man have two wives, one of them beloved and one of them hated, and they shall bear children to him and the first-born son be the son of the hated wife … he shall not be able to give the right of the first-born to the son of the beloved wife, overlooking the son of the hated one who is the first-born” (Deut. 21:15, 16): for first of all and most perfect of all are the offspring of the hated virtue, while the offspring of the well-loved pleasure are last of all."
],
[
"[49] “For this cause shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife, and the twain shall be one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). For the sake of sense-perception the Mind, when it has become her slave, abandons both God the Father of the universe, and God’s excellence and wisdom, the Mother of all things, and cleaves to and becomes one with sense-perception and is resolved into sense-perception so that the two become one flesh and one experience.",
"[50] Observe that it is not the woman that cleaves to the man, but conversely the man to the woman, Mind to Sense-perception. For when that which is superior, namely Mind, becomes one with that which is inferior, namely Sense-perception, it resolves itself into the order of flesh which is inferior, into sense-perception, the moving cause of the passions. But if Sense the inferior follow Mind the superior, there will be flesh no more, but both of them will be Mind. The man, then, of whom the prophet speaks is such as has been described; he prefers the love of his passions to the love of God.",
"[51] But there is a different man, one who has made the contrary choice, even Levi, who “said to his father and his mother ‘I have not seen thee,’ and knew not his brethren, and disclaimed his sons” (Deut. 33:9). This man forsakes father and mother, his mind and material body, for the sake of having as his portion the one God, “for the Lord Himself is his portion” (Deut. 10:9).",
"[52] Passion becomes the portion of the lover of passion, but the portion of Levi the lover of God is God. Do you not see again that he prescribes that on the tenth day of the seventh month they should bring two goats, “one portion for the Lord and one for the averter of evil”? (Lev. 16:8). For in very deed the portion of the lover of passion is a passion that needs an averter."
],
[
"[53] “And the two were naked, Adam and his wife, and were not ashamed.” “Now the serpent was the most subtil of all the beasts that were upon the earth, which the Lord God had made” (Gen. 2:25, 3:1). The mind that is clothed neither in vice nor in virtue, but absolutely stripped of either, is naked, just as the soul of an infant, since it is without part in either good or evil, is bared and stripped of coverings: for these are the soul’s clothes, by which it is sheltered and concealed. Goodness is the garment of the worthy soul, evil that of the worthless.",
"[54] Now there are three ways in which a soul is made naked. One is when it continues without change and is barren of all vices, and has divested itself of all the passions and flung them away. For this reason “Moses fixes his tent outside the camp, a long way from the camp, and it was called the tent of testimony” (Exod. 33:7).",
"[55] What this means is this. The soul that loves God, having disrobed itself of the body and the objects dear to the body and fled abroad far away from these, gains a fixed and assured settlement in the perfect ordinances of virtue. Wherefore witness is also borne to it by God that it loves things that are noble; “for,” says he, “it was called the tent of witness.” He leaves unmentioned who it is that calls it so, in order that the soul may be stirred up to consider who it is that bears witness to virtue-loving minds.",
"[56] This is why the high priest shall not enter the Holy of Holies in his robe (Lev. 16:1 ff.), but laying aside the garment of opinions and impressions of the soul, and leaving it behind for those that love outward things and value semblance above reality, shall enter naked with no coloured borders or sound of bells, to pour as a libation the blood of the soul and to offer as incense the whole mind to God our Saviour and Benefactor.",
"[57] Nadab and Abihu, too, who had drawn nigh to God and had forsaken the mortal life and become partakers of the life immortal are beheld naked of vain and mortal glory. For those who carried them away would not have borne them in their coats (Lev. 10:5), had they not become naked by bursting every bond of passion and of bodily constraint, in order that their nakedness and freedom from the body should not be debased by the irruption of impious thoughts. For not to all must leave be given to contemplate the secret things of God, but only to those who are able to hide and guard them.",
"[58] And so Mishael and Elzaphan do not take them up in their own coats, but in those of Nadab and Abihu, who had been devoured by fire and been taken up (into heaven). For having stripped themselves of all that covered them, they offered their nakedness to God, but their coats they left behind for Mishael and Elzaphan. Now coats are those parts of the irrational by which the rational was hidden.",
"[59] Abraham too becomes naked when the words have been spoken to him, “Go forth out of thy country and thy kindred” (Gen. 12:1). Isaac also does not indeed become naked, but is always naked and without body, for an injunction has been given him not to go down into Egypt (Gen. 26:2), and “Egypt” is the body. Jacob, again, loves nakedness of the soul, for his smoothness signifies nakedness. “For Esau,” we read, “was a hairy man, but Jacob a smooth man” (Gen. 27:11), and accordingly he has “Leah” as wife."
],
[
"[60] This is one form, the noblest form, of stripping or becoming naked. The other is of a contrary nature, a deprivation of virtue due to a turning or change of condition, when the soul becomes foolish and deranged. This kind of stripping is experienced by Noah, who is made naked when he has drunk wine. But, thanks be to God, the change of condition and the stripping of the mind which ensued upon the deprivation of virtue, did not spread out abroad and reach those outside, but stayed in the house, for what is said is “he was made naked in his house” (Gen. 9:21): for the wise man, if he do commit sin, does not run riot, as does the bad man. The evil of the one has been spread forth; that of the other has been held in check; so he becomes sober again, that is to say, he repents and recovers as from an illness.",
"[61] Let us contemplate more in detail the fact that the stripping takes place in the house. When the soul in its perversion only purposes some outrage, but does not follow it up so as to complete it in action, the sin has been committed in the soul’s abode and house. But if, in addition to designing the bad deed, it goes on to carry out its design and do the thing, the unrighteous act has been spread out of doors as well.",
"[62] It is in accordance with this that a curse is pronounced on Canaan, because he reported abroad the change of the soul. This means that he gave it fuller scope and wrought it out further, adding a further evil to the evil wish, even its accomplishment by deeds. Shem and Japhet on the other hand receive praise for not joining in the soul’s act but covering over its sad change.",
"[63] For this reason also the vows and determinations of the soul are annulled, when they have been made in the house of father or husband (Numb. 30:4 ff.), if the reason and reflection do not hold their peace and so add their weight to the soul’s failure, but remove the offence; for in that case the Lord of all also “shall cleanse her.” But he leaves with no removal the vow of a widow or of her that is cast off: “for whatever vows she shall have vowed,” he says, “against her soul, abide for her” (Numb. 30:10). And this is reasonable. For if she has been cast off and gone forth to the parts outside, not turning merely but sinning by overt deeds, she abides incurable with no part in a husband’s admonition and deprived of her father’s persuasion.",
"[64] A third form of producing nakedness is the middle or neutral one. Here the mind is irrational and has no part as yet either in virtue or in vice. It is of this form that the prophet is speaking. In this the infant too is partaker. Accordingly the words, “The two were naked, both Adam and his wife,” amount to this: neither mind nor sense was performing its functions, the one being bare and barren of mental action and the other of the activity of sense-perception."
],
[
"[65] Let us look again at the words, “they were not ashamed.” The words suggest three points for consideration: shamelessness, and shamefastness, and absence of both shamelessness and shamefastness. Shamelessness, then, is peculiar to the worthless man, shamefastness to the man of worth, to feel neither shamefastness nor shamelessness to the man who is incapable of right apprehension and of due assent thereto, and this man is at this moment the prophet’s subject. For he who has not yet attained to the apprehension of good and evil cannot possibly be either shameless or shamefast.",
"[66] Examples of shamelessness are all those unseemly actions, when the mind uncovers shameful things which it ought to hide from view, and vaunts itself in them and prides itself on them. Even in the case of Miriam, when she spoke against Moses, it is said, “If her father had but spat in her face, should she not feel shame seven days?” (Numb. 12:14).",
"[67] For veritably shameless and bold was sense-perception in daring to decry and find fault with Moses for that for which he deserved praise. In comparison with him, who was “faithful in all God’s house” (ibid.), sense-perception was set at naught by the God and Father; and it was God Himself who wedded to Moses the Ethiopian woman, who stands for resolve unalterable, intense, and fixed. For this Moses merits high eulogy, that he took to him the Ethiopian woman, even the nature that has been tried by fire and cannot be changed. For, even as in the eye the part that sees is black, so the soul’s power of vision has the title of woman of Ethiopia.",
"[68] Why then, seeing that results of wickedness are many, has he mentioned only one, that which attends on conduct that is disgraceful, saying “they were not shamed,” but not saying “they did not commit injustice,” or “they did not sin,” or “they did not err”? The reason is not far to seek. By the only true God I deem nothing so shameful as supposing that I exert my mind and senses.",
"[69] My own mind the author of its exertion? How can it be? Does it know as to itself, what it is or how it came into existence? Sense-perception the origin of the perceiving by sense? How could it be said to be so, seeing that it is beyond the ken either of itself or of the mind? Do you not observe that the mind which thinks that it exercises itself is often found to be without mental power, in scenes of gluttony, drunkenness, folly? Where does the exercise of mind show itself then? And is not perceptive sense often robbed of the power of perceiving? There are times when seeing we see not and hearing hear not, whenever the mind, breaking off its attention for a moment, is brought to bear on some other mental object.",
"[70] So long then as they are naked, the mind without self-exertion, the perceptive sense without perceiving, they have nothing shameful: but when they have begun to apprehend, they fall into shameful and wanton conduct, for they will be found often showing silliness and folly rather than healthy knowledge, not only in times of loathsome surfeit and depression and mad fooling but also in the rest of their life. For when bodily sense is in command, the mind is in a state of slavery heeding none of its proper objects; but when the mind is in the ascendant, the bodily sense is seen to have nothing to do and to be powerless to lay hold of any object of sense-perception."
],
[
"[71] “Now the serpent was the most subtle of all the beasts on the earth, which the Lord God had made” (Gen. 3:1). Two things, mind and bodily sense, having already come into being, and these being in nakedness after the manner that has been set forth, it was necessary that there should be a third subsistence, namely pleasure, to bring both of them together to the apprehension of the objects of mental and of bodily perception. For neither could the mind apart from bodily sense apprehend an animal or a plant or a stone or a log or any bodily shape whatever, nor could the bodily sense apart from the mind maintain the act of perceiving.",
"[72] Since then it was necessary that both of these should come together for the apprehension of the objects about them, who was it that brought them together save a third, a bond of love and desire, under the rule and dominion of pleasure, to which the prophet gave the figurative name of a serpent?",
"[73] Exceeding well did God the Framer of living beings contrive the order in which they were created. First He made mind, the man, for mind is most venerable in a human being, then bodily sense, the woman, then after them in the third place pleasure. But it is potentially only, as objects of thought, that they differ in age; but in actual time they are equal in age. For the soul brings all together with herself, some parts in virtue of actual existence, others in virtue of the potentiality to arrive, even if they have not yet reached their consummation.",
"[74] The reason pleasure is likened to a serpent is this. The movement of pleasure like that of the serpent is tortuous and variable. To begin with it takes its gliding course in five ways, for pleasures are occasioned by sight and by hearing and by taste and by smell and by touch; but those connected with sexual intercourse prove themselves the most violent of all in their intensity, and this is the method ordained by Nature for the reproduction of the type.",
"[75] Furthermore the fact that pleasure insinuates itself about all the organs of the irrational portion of the soul is not the only reason for our calling her variable; for we call her so also because she glides with many a coil about each part. For instance variegated pleasures come through sight, those afforded by every kind of painting and of sculpture, and by all other artistic creations which in one art after another charm the eye; by the changes too that plants go through as they shoot up, bloom, and bear fruit; by the beauty of animals seen in so many forms. Similarly the ear gets pleasure from the flute, from the harp, from every kind of instrument, from the tuneful voices of creatures without reason, swallows, nightingales, other birds which Nature has made musical; from the euphonious speech of beings endowed with reason, from musicians as they exercise their histrionic powers in comedy, tragedy, and all that is put on the stage."
],
[
"[76] What need to illustrate my point from the pleasures of the table? There are, we may roughly say, as many varieties of pleasure, as there are of dishes set before us stirring our senses with their delicious flavours. Pleasure being, then, a thing so variable, was it not fitly compared to a tortuous animal, the serpent?",
"[77] For this reason, too, when the part of us that corresponds to the turbulent mob of a city, pines for the dwellings in Egypt, that is, in the corporeal mass, it encounters pleasures which bring death, not the death which severs soul from body, but the death which ruins the soul by vice. For we read, “And the Lord sent among the people the deadly serpents, and they bit the people, and much people of the children of Israel died” (Numb. 21:6). For verily nothing so surely brings death upon a soul as immoderate indulgence in pleasures.",
"[78] That which dies is not the ruling part in us, but the part that is under rule, the part that is like the vulgar herd. And so long will it incur death, as it fails to repent and acknowledge its fall. For they came to Moses saying, “We have sinned in that we spake against the Lord, and against thee. Pray therefore to the Lord, and let Him take away the serpents from us” (ibid. 7). ’Tis well that they say, not “We spake against, we sinned” but “We sinned, we spake against.” For it is when the mind has sinned and ceased to cleave to virtue, that it blames God’s ways, fastening its own defection on God."
],
[
"[79] How, then, is a healing of their suffering brought about? By the making of another serpent, opposite in kind to that of Eve, namely the principle of self-mastery. For self-mastery runs counter to pleasure, a variable virtue to a variable affection, and a virtue that defends itself against pleasure its foe. So then God bids Moses make the serpent that expresses self-mastery, and says: “Make for thyself a serpent and set it upon a standard” (ibid. 8).",
"[80] You notice that Moses makes this serpent for no one else, but for himself, for God’s bidding is “Make it for thyself.” This is that you may know that self-mastery is not a possession of every man, but only of the man beloved of God.",
"We must consider why Moses makes a brazen serpent, no direction having been given him as to material. Possibly these are the reasons. In the first place, matter is not an element in God’s gifts making them to be of this or that sort; but the gifts of us mortals are always looked upon embodied in matter. A second reason: Moses loves excellences without bodily form, whereas our souls, being unable to get out of our bodies, crave for excellence in bodily shape.",
"[81] But the principle of self-mastery, being forcible and unyielding, is likened to the strong and firm substance of brass, perhaps also because, whereas the self-mastery found in the man beloved of God is most precious and like gold, that which is found in him who has absorbed wisdom by gradual progress holds the second place. Everyone, then, “whom a serpent shall have bitten, when he looks on it shall live” (ibid.). This is quite true. For if the mind, when bitten by pleasure, the serpent of Eve, shall have succeeded in beholding in soul the beauty of self-mastery, the serpent of Moses, and through beholding this, beholds God Himself, he shall live; only let him look and mark well."
],
[
"[82] Do you not notice that Sarah, that is dominant wisdom, says: “For whosoever shall hear of it shall rejoice with me” (Gen. 21:6)? Just suppose that someone has succeeded in hearing that Virtue has given birth to Happiness (Isaac). Straightway he will sing a hymn of sympathetic joy. As then fellowship in joy is his who has heard of Isaac’s birth, so is escape from death his who has looked with clear vision on self-mastery and God.",
"[83] But many souls, after being enamoured of endurance and self-mastery and divested of passions, nevertheless do experience the might of God and receive the turning to the lower way, the Master making a sharp distinction between Himself and His creation. He Himself stands ever steadfast, while His creation wavers and inclines in opposite directions.",
"[84] For the prophet says: “Who led thee through that great and terrible wilderness, where there was biting serpent and scorpion and drought, where there was no water, who brought out a spring of water for thee from the hard rock, who fed thee with manna in the wilderness, which thy fathers knew not” (Deut. 8:15 f.). You see that it is not only when attracted by the passions of Egypt that the soul falls in with the serpents, but when it is in a wilderness too it is bitten by pleasure, that subtle and snake-like passion. And pleasure’s mode of action has received a most appropriate name, for it is here called a biting.",
"[85] But not those in a wilderness only are bitten by pleasure, but those also who are a prey to scattering. For many a time have I myself forsaken friends and kinsfolk and country and come into a wilderness, to give my attention to some subject demanding contemplation, and derived no advantage from doing so, but my mind scattered or bitten by passion has gone off to matters of the contrary kind. Sometimes, on the other hand, amid a vast throng I have a collected mind. God has dispersed the crowd that besets the soul and taught me that a favourable and unfavourable condition are not brought about by differences of place, but by God who moves and leads the car of the soul in whatever way He pleases.",
"[86] To return to what I was saying, the soul falls in with a scorpion, which is “scattering,” in the wilderness, and the drought of the passions seizes upon it, until God send forth the stream from His strong wisdom and quench with unfailing health the thirst of the soul that had turned from Him. For the flinty rock is the wisdom of God, which He marked off highest and chiefest from His powers, and from which He satisfies the thirsty souls that love God. And when they have been given water to drink, they are filled also with the manna, the most generic of substances, for the manna is called “somewhat,” and that suggests the summum genus. But the primal existence is God, and next to Him is the Word of God, but all other things subsist in word only, but in their active effects they are in some cases as good as non-subsisting."
],
[
"[87] Note now a difference between him who turns aside in the wilderness and him who does so in Egypt. The one has experience of deadly serpents, that is to say insatiable pleasures inflicting death; but the disciplined one is only bitten and scattered, not done to death, by pleasure. And while the one is cured by self-mastery, even the brazen serpent made by the wise Moses, the other is caused by God to drink a draught most excellent, even wisdom out of the fountain which He drew out from His own wisdom.",
"[88] Not even from Moses, most beloved of God, does Pleasure, the serpent-like one, refrain, but this is what we read: “If therefore they say, ‘God has not appeared to thee,’ and believe me not and hearken not to my voice, what shall I say to them? And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘What is that in thine hand?’ And he said, ‘A rod.’ And He said, ‘Cast it upon the ground.’ And he cast it upon the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses fled from it. And the Lord said unto Moses, ‘Stretch forth thine hand and lay hold of its tail’ (and he stretched forth his hand and took hold of its tail, and it became a rod in his hand): that they may believe thee” (Exod. 4:1 ff.).",
"[89] How should one come to believe God? By learning that all other things change but He is unchangeable. Therefore God asks the wise man what there is in his hand or in the active life of his soul, for the hand represents activity; and he answers, “Schooling,” giving it the name of a rod. So Jacob also, the supplanter of the passions, says, “For in my rod I crossed this Jordan” (Gen. 32:10). The meaning of Jordan is “descent” or “coming down.” And to the nature that is down below, earthly, corruptible, belongs all that is done under the impulse of vice and passion. Over these Mind, the disciplined One, crosses in schooling himself. To take the words to mean that he crossed the river with a staff in his hand would be tame."
],
[
"[90] Good, therefore is the reply of Moses beloved of God; for in truth the conduct of the virtuous man leans on discipline as on a rod, settling and allaying the tumult and tossing of the soul. This rod when cast away becomes a serpent; naturally; for if the soul casts away discipline, it at once becomes a lover of pleasure in place of a lover of virtue. And so Moses flies from it; for the lover of virtue runs away from passion and pleasure.",
"[91] But, mark you, God does not applaud his flight. For while it well befits thee, O my mind, who art not yet made perfect, to get practice by flying and running away from the passions, it befits Moses, the perfect one, not to desist from the warfare against them, but to resist them and fight it out. Otherwise, finding nothing to alarm or to stop them, they will make their way up to the very citadel of the soul, and storm and plunder the whole soul after the fashion of a lawless ruler.",
"[92] Wherefore also God bids him “lay hold of the tail.” This means, “Let not pleasure’s opposition and her savagery daunt thee. That is the very part to make for. Grip it fast and quell it; for then there shall be once more a rod instead of a serpent; that is to say, instead of pleasure there shall be in thy hand discipline.”",
"[93] But it is “in the hand” in the doing of the wise man, that this shall come to pass. This is quite true. It would be impossible to lay hold of pleasure and get the mastery of it if the hand were not first stretched out, that is to say, if the soul were not first to acknowledge that all its achievements and successes are due to God’s impelling force and to refer nothing to itself. The man whose eyes are open determines to run away from this serpent, and he fashions another, the principle of self-mastery, that serpent of brass, in order that the man who has been bitten by pleasure may, on seeing self-mastery, live the real life."
],
[
"[94] Such a serpent does Jacob pray that Dan may become, and speaks on this wise:",
"“Dan shall judge his people,",
"As if indeed one tribe of Israel,” and",
"“Let Dan become a serpent in the way,",
"Seated on the beaten track, biting the horse’s heel,",
"And the horseman shall fall backward,",
"Waiting for the salvation of the Lord.”",
"(Gen. 49:16–18.)",
"Of those born of Leah Issachar is Jacob’s fifth genuine son, or if Zilpah’s two sons are reckoned in, he is the seventh. But Jacob’s fifth son is Dan, by Bilhah Rachel’s handmaid. The occasion of this remark we shall discover in my special treatise on the subject. The subject of Dan demands further study.",
"[95] The soul bears two kinds of offspring, the one divine, the other perishable. The better kind she has already conceived, and with it she ceases to bear. For when the soul had attained to making full submission and acknowledgement to God there was no better possession for it to go on to gain. This is why she ceased when she had borne Judah, the spirit of praise and acknowledgement.",
"[96] The soul now goes on to the fashioning of the mortal race. The mortal subsists by swallowing. For the taste, like a foundation, is the cause of living creatures continuing to live. And Bilhah means “swallowing.” From this woman there springs Dan, whose name signifies sifting or distinguishing: for this race distinguishes and separates things immortal from those that are mortal. So his father prays that he may prove a lover of self-mastery. But for Judah he will offer no such prayer, for Judah already has the property of praising and pleasing God.",
"[97] So he says, “Let Dan become a serpent on the road.” The soul is our road; for as on the roads it is possible to see the distinction of existences, lifeless, living; irrational, rational; good, bad; slave, free; young, or older; male, female; foreign, or native; sickly, healthy; maimed, entire; so in the soul too there are lifeless, incomplete, diseased, enslaved, female, and countless other movements full of disabilities; and on the other hand movements living, entire, male, free, sound, elder, good, genuine, and, in a real sense, of the fatherland.",
"[98] Let then the principle of self-mastery become a serpent upon the soul whose road lies through all the circumstances of life and let it seat itself upon the well worn track. What is this? The path of virtue is unworn, for few tread it, while that of vice is well worn. He calls on him to beset with his ambuscade and to lie in wait upon the beaten road of passion and vice, on which reasoning powers that flee from virtue wear out their life."
],
[
"[99] “Biting the horse’s heel.” It is quite in keeping that the character which upsets the stability of created and perishable life attacks the heel. The passions are likened to a horse. For passion, like a horse, is a four-legged creature, impulsive, full of wilfulness, and naturally restive. But the principle of self-mastery loves to bite and wound and destroy passion. When passion with its heel bitten has stumbled “the horseman shall fall backwards.” We must understand by “the horseman” the mind that is mounted on the passions, which falls off the passions when they are brought to a reckoning and overthrown.",
"[100] ’Tis well that the soul does not fall forwards: let him not get in advance of the passions, but be behind them, and he shall learn self-control. And there is sound principle in what is said here. For if the mind, after starting out to do wrong, drops behind and falls backwards, it will not do the wrong deed; and if, after experiencing an impulse to an irrational passion, it does not follow it up, but stays behind, it will reap the fairest reward, even exemption from passion.",
"[101] That is why the prophet, understanding the falling backwards to be escape from the passions, adds the words, “waiting for the salvation of the Lord”: for he is indeed saved by God who falls away from the passions and comes short of realizing them in act. May my soul have such a fall, and never mount the beast of passion, wild like a bounding capering horse, that, having waited for God’s salvation, it may attain to bliss.",
"[102] This explains why Moses in the Song praises God, that “He cast horse and rider into the sea” (Exod. 15:1). He means that God cast to utter ruin and the bottomless abyss the four passions and the wretched mind mounted on them. This is indeed practically the chief point of the whole Song, to which all else is subsidiary. And it is true; for if the soul be won by exemption from passion, it will have perfect bliss."
],
[
"[103] But we must inquire why, whereas Jacob says, “the horseman shall fall backwards” (Gen. 49:17), Moses sings of the drowning of horse and rider. We must remark then, that, whereas he that is to perish by drowning is the Egyptian character, which, even if it flees, flees under the water, that is, under the current of the passions; the horseman who falls backwards does not belong to the lovers of the passions. A proof of this is that he is called “horseman,” whereas the other is called “rider.”",
"[104] A horseman’s business is to subdue his horse and use the bit when it disregards the rein, whereas a rider’s business is to be carried wherever the animal takes him. On the sea, too, the helmsman’s business is to guide the boat and keep it upright and in its course, but it is for the passenger to experience all that the ship undergoes. Accordingly the horseman who subdues the passions is not drowned but, dismounting from them, awaits the salvation that comes from the Master.",
"[105] Now the sacred word in Leviticus directs them to feed “on creeping things that go upon all four, which have legs above their feet, so as to leap with them” (Lev. 11:21). Such are the locust, the wild locust, the grasshopper, and in the fourth place the cricket. And this is as it should be. For if serpentlike pleasure is a thing un-nourishing and injurious, self-mastery, the nature that is in conflict with pleasure, must be wholesome and full of nourishment.",
"[106] Do thou also contend, O my mind, against all passion and above all against pleasure, for indeed “the serpent is the most subtle of all beasts upon the earth, which the Lord God made” (Gen. 3:1);",
"[107] for pleasure is the most cunning of all things. Why is this? Because all things are enthralled to pleasure, and the life of bad men is under the dominion of pleasure. The things that yield pleasure are obtained by means of cunning of every kind; gold, silver, glory, honours, offices, the materials of objects of sense, the mechanical arts, and all other arts in great variety that minister to pleasure. It is for the sake of pleasure that we do wrong, and wrong deeds are ever associated with desperate cunning.",
"[108] Therefore set judgement, the serpent-fighter, against it, and contend to the end in this noblest contest, and strive earnestly, by defeating pleasure that conquers all others, to win the noble and glorious crown, which no human assembly has ever bestowed."
]
],
"Appendix": [
"APPENDIX TO ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION, II",
"§ 6. Philo is alluding to the Stoic view that the πάθη are mental judgements. See Diogenes Laertius vii. 111 δοκεῖ δὲ αὐτοῖς τὰ πάθη κρίσεις εἶναι, καθά φησι Χρύσιππος ἐν τῷ Περὶ παθῶν· ἥ τε γὰρ φιλαργυρία ὑπόληψίς ἐστι τοῦ τὸ ἀργύριον καλὸν εἶναι, καὶ ἡ μέθη δὲ καὶ ἡ ἀκολασία ὁμοίως, καὶ τὰ ἄλλα. Here he may mean that he accepts this view in some cases, but not in all; or, perhaps, that his statement that the πάθη are ἄλογα might be doubted if the view that they are κρίσεις be accepted, but is certainly true if that view be rejected.",
"§ 15. Greek philosophers. Presumably this includes (a) Plato; see Cratylus 401 B, where we are told that the first name-givers must have been considerable persons. Cf. ibid. 390 D. (b) Pythagoras. In Tusc. Disp. i. 62 Cicero, speaking of the greatness of the task of assigning names, says “summae sapientiae Pythagorae visum est.”",
"§§ 16, 18. Having in 16 prepared the way for his interpretation of Gen. 2:19 by observing that τί = διὰ τί, “why,” Philo goes on to make καλεῖν = “invite,” “welcome,” to treat ψυχὴν ζῶσαν as predicative, putting ὡς before it in his paraphrase, practically to ignore αὐτό as an otiose accusative, πᾶν ὃ ἐὰν being the sufficient object of ἐκάλεσεν. The verse for him has to do, not with assigning names, but with proclaiming affinities. To welcome pleasure, desire, or cowardice as living souls is to proclaim affinity with them, and so to share their title or name.",
"§ 20. εἴ γε μὴν … σαρκίνη δήπου; “if one of the two sides was filled up with flesh, are we to presume that the one not so treated was not made of flesh?” Philo captiously presses the words of Gen. 2:21, ἀνεπλήρωσεν σάρκα ἀντʼ αὐτῆς, to mean that in the filling up a different material, namely flesh, was substituted (ἀντι) for the material which was there before; which would of course imply that the other side was of a material other than flesh.",
"§ 22. The power of holding together, etc. This fourfold classification is Stoic (see S. V. F. ii. 457–460). It is explained more fully in Quod Deus 35 ff. It is difficult to see at first sight how the “naked” mind can have these powers, at any rate that of ἕξις, which is the characteristic of inorganic matter. But in Quod Deus 35 we find that the ἕξις which holds together a stone or a piece of wood is a breath or spirit, which extends itself from the centre of the body in question to its extremes and then reverses its course. Thus ἕξις and the others are conceived of as powers distinct from the objects or persons in which they are found. In fact we are told (Themistius, De anima 72 B) that the Stoics held that God ποὺ μὲν εἶναι νοῦν, ποὺ δὲ ψυχήν, ποὺ δὲ φύσιν, ποὺ δὲ ἕξιν. Seneca translates ἕξις when used in this way by unitas. The sense seems different, and perhaps has a different origin, from that of “state” or “disposition” (Lat. habitus). Zeller, however, equates the two by regarding the ἕξις of this passage as = simple quality without any further characteristic (Stoics, p. 208).",
"§ 44. For the construction ταύτῃ κληθήσεται cf. Jer. 19:6 οὐ κληθήσεται τῷ τόπῳ τούτῳ ἔτι Διάπτωσις. In Judges 18:12 A has ἐκλήθη ἐκείνῳ τῷ τόπῳ Παρεμβολὴ Δάν, omitting ἐν found in some MSS. before ἐκείνῳ. (Or, as the words that follow perhaps suggest, Philo may have taken ταύτῃ as an adverb and explained it as = διὰ τοῦτο.)",
"§ 46. Rachel, who represents sense-perception (or superficiality), takes her seat upon idols (E.V. “teraphim,” Gen. 31:33), and is rebuked by Jacob (or “Israel,” the man of vision) when her words show that she imagines that mind is the author and originator of movements.",
"§ 63. The actual meaning of Num. 30:4 ff. is that a woman’s vows hold if her father or husband silently acquiesce, but not if they forbid them; whereas those of a widow, seeing there is no such person to prohibit them, must hold. By taking “husband” or “father” to represent reason, Philo extracts the thought that our wishes are not guilty if our reasoned thoughts prohibit them, so that we do not translate them into action. The “widow” stands for the soul, which has cut itself off from any such controlling influence, and whose guilt is abiding.",
"§ 65. They were not ashamed. The real meaning of the story is of course that they did not feel shame, but in 68 ff. Philo gives the words a sense, which they are capable of bearing, “they were not shamed,” i.e. “brought to do anything shameful.”",
"§ 67. Intense and fixed, or “full (or ‘deep’) coloured.” The word κατακορής may be used of any colour. But as in the Timaeus, which Philo knew so well, it is associated (68c) with μέλαν (=“intense black”), he probably uses it here with reference to the complexion of the Ethiopian woman. There may also be a play on its similarity to κόρη in the sense of “a pupil of the eye.”",
"§ 78. ’Tis well that they say, etc. A clearer meaning could be obtained by reading οὐχ ὅτι “κατελαλήσαμεν ὅτι ἡμάρτομεν,” ἀλλʼ ὅτι “ἡμάρτομεν ὅτι κατελαλήσαμεν.” “It is well that they say, not ‘we spake against the Lord (laying it to His charge) that we sinned,’ but ‘we sinned (in) that we spake against the Lord.’ ” This harmonizes with the next words. It was easy for scribes to confuse the ὅτι’s.",
"§ 83–87. The meaning of these sections seems to be as follows. We here deal with souls which are more blessed than those mentioned above, yet are subjected to a τροπή by God to convince them of their frailty and that of human kind (§ 83). These souls Philo takes to be described in Deut. 8. They are in contrast with those of Num. 21. in the following ways. First these (the historical situation being ignored) are in Egypt (87 init.). As they were “craving for the habitations of Egypt,” they are virtually (cf. L.A. i. 61) in Egypt. The others are in the wilderness, which is the reverse of Egypt. They too, indeed, are bitten by the serpent of pleasure and the scorpion of scattering, yet these bites are not deadly like those of Numb. 21. And they do not need the brazen serpent of καρτερία to cure them; for they are already καρτερίας ἐρασταί (83). They have the higher spiritual food of the manna and the rock-water, and are thus brought back from their τροπή spiritually enriched. Philo evidently associates himself with these souls.",
"§ 99. Four-legged. The reference is to the four passions, grief, fear, desire, pleasure. See S. V. F. iii. 381 ff."
]
},
"Book III": {
"Introduction": [
"ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION TO BOOK III",
"A. MAN EXILED. Gen. 3:8 (1–48)",
"(a) Man hiding from God (1–27).",
"Contrasted with Moses (12–14),",
"who is open before God, and shuns Distraction (“Pharaoh”).",
"Contrasted with Jacob (15–23),",
"who flies from Material Temptation (“Laban”), to heights of Virtue and Witness (“Gilead”).",
"Contrasted with Abraham (24–27),",
"who, loyal to God, refuses the offer of the World (King of Sodom).",
"(b) Man taking refuge in Self (28–47).",
"Exod. 22:1 f. Rejection of God, that comes to nothing, far less heinous than thorough-going Self-exaltation (32–35).",
"Deut. 27:15. Evil of secretly holding false opinions (36).",
"Exod. 2:12. Evil of being buried in our own loose mind (37).",
"Gen. 15:5. Bliss of flying from Self to God (39).",
"Gen. 24:7—and of quitting the mortal body to be with God (42).",
"Exod. 9:29—and our own mind to open all to God (43).",
"Exod. 33:7—of going out of Self, and seeking God, even if we fail (46 f.).",
"B. THE CALL. Gen. 3:9–13 (49–64)",
"The Call is addressed to Mind, for Mind is capable of instruction. (Sense-perception receives no special call.)",
"The Question, “Where art thou?” capable of being taken in other ways.",
"The Answer of Mind comes to this, “There where fear is, and hiding from Thee, and nakedness of virtue” (49–55).",
"The words “gavest with me” imply the freedom of Sense-perception, which apprehends simultaneously with Mind, and gives it occasions of apprehending (“She gave it me”) (56–58).",
"The Answer of Sense-perception is pertinent, though she says “I ate,” when asked about Adam’s eating, for Mind concurs at once with Sense-perception.",
"And she rightly says “beguiled,” for, while Sense-perception gives without any guile, Pleasure falsifies the object (59–64).",
"C. PLEASURE, EVIL IN ORIGIN. Gen. 3:14 (65–106)",
"God cursing the serpent (viz. Pleasure), without giving him an opportunity to defend himself, is paralleled with God slaying Er (Gen. 38:7), without bringing an open charge against him. Slain Er is the Body, a corpse from the first, and the soul knows itself best to be a corpse-bearer when perfected (65 ff.).",
"How the God of Goodness came to create Er and the Serpent, we are not told. We are told that creation is due to the goodness of God (75 ff.).",
"And the Book of the Law affords many examples of wide divergence in original endowments. Noah “finds grace in the sight of the Lord,” and Melchizedeck is made His “Priest” and “King of peace,” no previous merit being mentioned in either case (79 ff.). (Philo stops to contrast M. with the Moabites and Ammonites, who failed to bring forth bread and water, Deut. 23:3 f.) Abram was created good, and led to a better city. Isaac, who is compared with Hope, was richly endowed before birth. The lots of Jacob and Esau were told when they were unborn (82). Ephraim and Manasseh have names denoting, the one Memory and its Fruitfulness, the other escape only from Forgetfulness (94). Bezalel called to a position, which he is not said to have earned, bears a name meaning “In the shadow of God” and is taught by Moses, while Moses is taught by God. In view of all this we must pray and ponder God’s goodness (95–103).",
"D. THE CURSE ON PLEASURE. Gen. 3:14 (107–199)",
"Its Ground, 107–110.",
"Its Fitness, 111–114.",
"Its Content, 115–199.",
"Content of the Curse—115–159. Posture and Motion.",
"(a) On the Breast (115–137).",
"The Breast the seat of high spirit—the Urim and Thummim there point to Aaron’s control of high spirit which Moses wholly exscinds (Lev. 8:29).",
"(b) On the Belly.",
"(α) Appropriate to Pleasure whose lover goes “on” or “after” the belly and the four passions (138 f.).",
"(β) The perfect man contrasted with the man of gradual improvement in their dealing with self-indulgence (140–144).",
"(γ) The belly the basis of all passions (145–150).",
"Note.—Breast cut out, while the belly is washed, for it is indispensable (147).",
"(δ) Bodily necessity compels us to go forth from the house of wisdom—girded with Reason—putting out of sight all that is unreasonable (151–158).",
"161–181. Food.",
"The earthy body feeds on earth.—",
"Contrast of the “Bread out of Heaven,” “the day’s portion for the day,” like dew—prolific as coriander-seed—like hoar-frost, called “What is it?” (Deut. 8:3).",
"Contrast “The God who feedeth me,” said by Jacob, with “I will nourish thee,” by Joseph—true son of Rachel (“Give me children”).",
"Enmity (182–199).",
"The Combatants (185–187).",
"Their Warfare (188).",
"Jacob grips the heel of Esau, the man who says “Mine,” a word for God only to use (189–199).",
"E. THE DISCIPLINE. Gen. 3:16–19 (200–253)",
"(a) Of the Woman (Gen. 3:16) (200–245).",
"(α) Grief the lot of Sense-perception (200).",
"Contrast God confirming good to Abraham by an oath (201–203).",
"Discussion of oath taken by God (204–208).",
"Groaning—good and bad (211 continued from 200).",
"(β) Subjection to her husband (220 ff.).",
"Num. 21:27 ff., the women adding to the fire.",
"Potiphar’s wife contrasted with Joseph and",
"Phinehas. Sarah. Hagar (224 ff.).",
"(b) Of the Man (Gen. 3:17 ff.) (246–253).",
"Due to Serpent. Thorns. Grass. Return to Earth."
],
"": [
[
"[1] “And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God in the midst of the forest of the garden” (Gen. 3:8). He introduces a doctrine showing that the bad man is an exile. For if virtue is a city peculiar to the wise, the man who has no capacity to partake of virtue has been driven away from the city, in which the bad man is incapable of taking part. It is accordingly the bad man only who has been driven away and sent into exile. But the exile from virtue has by incurring such exile hidden himself from God. For if the wise, as being His friends, are in God’s sight, it is evident that all bad men slink away and hide from Him, as is to be expected in men who cherish hatred and ill-will to right reason.",
"[2] The prophet, moreover, finds proof that the bad man is without city or dwelling-house, in the account of Esau, the hairy man, crafty in wickedness, when he says, “Esau was skilled in hunting, a countryman” (Gen. 25:27); for vice, that hunts after the passions, is by nature unfit to dwell in the city of virtue. Rather, in utter senselessness, it follows after rustic grossness, the life of the untrained. Jacob, the man full of wisdom, belongs to a city, and as a dwelling-house he occupies virtue. The prophet says of him: “But Jacob was a simple man dwelling in a house” (ibid.).",
"[3] It accords with this too that the midwives, since they feared God, made houses for themselves (Exod. 1:21); for such(souls) as make a quest of God’s hidden mysteries—and this is what is meant by “saving the males’ lives” or “bringing the males to the birth”—build up the cause of virtue, and in this they have elected to have their abode. By these instances it has been made clear how the bad man is without a city or home, being an exile from virtue, while the good man has received it as his lot to have wisdom for both city and dwelling."
],
[
"[4] Let us see next how a man is said actually to hide himself from God. Were one not to take the language as figurative, it would be impossible to accept the statement, for God fills and penetrates all things, and has left no spot void or empty of His presence. What manner of place then shall a man occupy, in which God is not? The prophet elsewhere bears witness of this saying, “God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath and there is none else but He” (Deut. 4:39). And again, “Here stand I before thou (wert made)” (Exod. 17:6); for before every created thing God is, and is found everywhere, so that no one could possibly hide himself from God. And why should we marvel at this?",
"[5] Whatever should happen, we could never escape or hide ourselves from those, even among things created, that are essential elements of creation. For instance, let a man fly, if he can, from earth or water or air or sky or the world at large. A man must needs have all these round him, for no one shall ever be able to escape out of the world.",
"[6] Then, seeing a man is powerless to hide himself from the parts of the world or from the world itself, would he be able to escape the eye of God? By no means. Why then does it say “they hid themselves”? The bad man thinks that God is in a place, not containing but contained; and for this reason he imagines that he can hide from Him, fancying that God, the Author of all things, is not in that part, which he has chosen for his lurking-place."
],
[
"[7] It is possible to take it in this way. In the bad man the true opinion concerning God is hidden in obscurity, for he is full of darkness with no divine radiance in him, whereby to investigate realities. Such an one is in banishment from the divine company, like the leper and the man with an issue. The former combines as joint causes God and creation, which are natures mutually hostile, for he shows two different colours, whereas there is one single Cause, even He who doeth all. The man with an issue, on the other hand, deriving everything from the world, and making it return into the world, imagines that nothing has been created by God, associating himself with the opinion of Heracleitus, in his advocacy of such tenets as “fullness and want,” “the universe one,” and “all things interchange.”",
"[8] So the divine word saith, “Let them send forth out of the holy soul every leper, and everyone that hath an issue, and everyone that is unclean in soul, both male and female (Numb. 5:2), and eunuchs with the generative organs of the soul cut away, and fornicators, deserters from the rule of One, to whom entrance into the assembly of God is absolutely forbidden (Deut. 23:2).",
"[9] But wise reasonings, so far from hiding themselves, are keenly desirous to be manifest. Do you not see that Abraham “was still standing before the Lord and drew nigh and said, ‘Destroy Thou not the just man together with the impious one’ ” (Gen. 18:22 f.), the one that is manifest and known to Thee together with him who shuns and avoids Thee? For this one is impious, but he that stands before Thee and avoids Thee not is just. For the only justice is that Thou, O Master, shouldst be honoured.",
"[10] A pious man is not found with the same ease as an impious one. We have to be content with a just man. This is why he says, “Destroy not a just together with an impious man.” For no one honours God as He deserves but only as is just. It is impossible to requite even our parents with boons equal to those which we have received from them—for it is out of the question to requite by becoming their parents. How must it not be impossible to recompense or to praise as He deserves Him who brought the universe out of non-existence? For it was an exercise towards us of every virtue."
],
[
"[11] Through three seasons, then, O soul, that is throughout the whole of time with its threefold divisions, make thyself ever manifest to God, not dragging after thee the weak feminine passion of sense-perception, but giving forth as incense the manly reasoning schooled in fortitude. For the sacred word (Deut. 16:16) enjoins that at three seasons of the year every male is to show himself before the Lord the God of Israel.",
"[12] For this reason Moses also, when he is being established as one standing open before God, avoids Pharaoh, the symbol of dispersion, for he boasts saying that he knows not the Lord (Exod. 5:2). “Moses,” we read, “withdrew from Pharaoh’s presence and settled in the land of Midian” (Exod. 2:15), or in the examination of the things of nature, “and sat on the well,” waiting to see what draught God would send to quench the thirst of his soul in its longing for that which is good.",
"[13] So he withdraws from the godless opinion of Pharaoh, which the passions follow as their leader, and withdraws into Midian, the sifting-place, to inquire whether he is to be still or to dispute again with the evil man for his destruction; he considers whether, if he attack him, he shall prevail to win the victory, and so he is kept there waiting upon God, as I have said, to see whether He will bestow upon a deep reasoning faculty free from shallowness a stream sufficient to drown the onrush of the king of the Egyptians, the onrush, that is, of his passions.",
"[14] And he is deemed worthy of the boon: for, having taken the field in the cause of virtue, he does not abandon the warfare till he beholds the pleasures prostrate and out of action. This is why Moses does not fly from Pharaoh, for that would have been to run away and not return, but, like an athlete taking an interval to regain his breath, “withdraws,” that is, brings about a cessation of arms, until he shall by divine words have raised forces of wisdom and every other virtue to aid him in renewing the attack with irresistible power.",
"[15] But Jacob, “Supplanter” that he is, acquiring virtue with great toil by wiles and artifices, his name having not yet been changed into “Israel,” runs away from Laban and all his belongings, tints and shapes and material bodies generally, whose nature it is to inflict wounds on the mind through the objects of sense. For since when facing them he was not able completely to vanquish them, he flies, fearing defeat at their hands. And in doing so he is thoroughly deserving of praise; for Moses says, “Ye shall make the sons of the seeing one cautious” (Lev. 15:31), not bold and aiming at what is beyond their capacity."
],
[
"[16] “And Jacob stole away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he told him not that he fled. So he fled with all that he had; and passed over the river, and set his face toward the mountain of Gilead” (Gen. 31:20 f.). It is thoroughly in accordance with true principles that he is said to have concealed the fact that he is running away and not made it known to Laban, who represents the way of thinking governed by objects of sense. For instance, if thou hast caught sight of beauty and been captivated by it, and if it is like to be a cause of stumbling to thee, fly secretly from the vision of it, and give no further report of it to thy mind, that is to say, do not give it another thought or ponder it: for to keep on recalling anything is the way to engrave on the mind distinct outlines of it, which injure the mind and often bring it to ruin against its will.",
"[17] The same principle holds in the case of every kind of attraction by the avenue of whatever sense it may reach us; for here safety lies in secret flight; but recalling the attractive object in memory, telling of it, turning it over, spells conquest and harsh slavery for our reasoning faculty. If, therefore, O my mind, thou art in imminent danger of falling a prey to some object of sense that has shown itself, never report it to thyself, never dwell on it, lest thou be overcome and plunged into misery. Nay, rush forth at large, make thy escape, choose the freedom of the wild rather than the slavery of the tame."
],
[
"[18] Now(let us ask) why, as though Jacob were not aware that Laban was a Syrian, does he say, “Jacob kept Laban the Syrian in the dark”? In this likewise there is a point not without pertinence. For “Syria” means “Highlands.” Jacob, therefore, the mind in training, when he sees passion grovelling low before him, awaits its onset calculating that he will master it by force, but when it is seen to be lofty, stately, weighty, the first to run away is the mind in training, followed by all his belongings, being portions of his discipline, readings, ponderings, acts of worship, and of remembrance of noble souls, self-control, discharge of daily duties; he crosses the river of objects of sense, that swamps and drowns the soul under the flood of the passions, and, when he has crossed it, sets his face for the lofty high-land, the principle of perfect virtue:",
"[19] “for he set his face towards the mountain of Gilead.” The meaning of this name is “migration of witness”; for God caused the soul to migrate from the passions that are represented by Laban, and bore witness to it how greatly to its advantage and benefit its removal was, and led it on away from the evil things that render the soul low and grovelling up to the height and greatness of virtue.",
"[20] For this reason Laban, the friend of the senses and the man whose actions are regulated by them and not by the mind, is vexed, and pursues him, and says, “Why didst thou run away secretly” (Gen. 31:26), but didst not remain in the company of bodily enjoyment and of the teaching that gives the preference to bodily and external good things? But in addition to fleeing from this view of life, thou didst carry off my soundness of sense as well, Leah and Rachel to wit. For these, while they remained with the soul, produced in it sound sense, but when they removed elsewhither they left behind to it ignorance and indiscipline. This is why he adds the words “thou didst rob me” (ibid.), that is, didst steal my good sense."
],
[
"[21] What, then, his good sense was, he is going to explain; for he adds “and didst carry away my daughters as prisoners of war: and if thou hadst told me, I would have sent thee forth” (ibid.). Thou wouldst not have sent forth those at variance one with another; for hadst thou really sent forth and liberated the soul, thou wouldst have stripped from it all voices belonging to the body and senses: for it is in this way that the understanding is delivered from vices and passions. But as it is, thou sayest that thou art ready to send her forth free, but by thy actions thou ownest that thou wouldst have detained her in prison; for if thou hadst sent her on her way with “music and tabrets and harp” and the pleasures that suit each several sense, thou wouldst not really have sent her forth at all.",
"[22] For it is not from thee only, O Laban, friend of bodies and of tints, that we are running away, but from all too that is thine: and this includes the voices of the senses sounding in harmony with the operations of the passions. For we have made our own, if so be that we are under virtue’s training, a study absolutely vital which was Jacob’s study also, to consign to death and destruction the gods that are alien to the soul, the gods moulded in metal, the making of which Moses has forbidden (Lev. 19:4); and these are a means of dissolving virtue and well-being, and a means of forming and giving fixity to wickedness and passions, for that which undergoes moulding, if dissolved, grows fixed and firm again."
],
[
"[23] We read as follows: “And they gave Jacob the strange gods, which were in their hands, and the ear-rings which were in their ears, and Jacob hid them under the terebinth that was in Shechem” (Gen. 35:4). These are bad men’s gods. And Jacob is not said to receive them, but to hide and destroy them. This is in every point perfectly accurate. For the man of sterling worth will take nothing to make him rich in the products of evil, but will hide them secretly and do away with them.",
"[24] In like manner when the king of Sodom is artfully attempting to effect an exchange of creatures without reason for reasonable beings, of horses for men, Abraham says that he will take none of the things that are his but will “stretch out” his soul’s operation, which he figuratively called his “hand,” “to the Most High God” (Gen. 14:22), for that he would not take of all that was the king’s “from a cord even to a shoelace,” in order that he may not say that he has conferred wealth on the man whose eyes were open, by giving him poverty in return for his wealth of virtue.",
"[25] The passions are always hidden away and placed under guard in Shechem—“shoulder” is the meaning of the name—for he that devotes toil to pleasures is prone to keep pleasures well guarded. But in the case of the wise man the passions perish and are destroyed, not for some short period but “even to this day,” that is, always. For the whole age of the world is made commensurate with to-day, for the daily cycle is the measure of all time.",
"[26] For this reason too Jacob gives as a special portion to Joseph Shechem (Gen. 48:22), the things of the body and of the senses, as he is occupied in toiling at these things, but to Judah who openly acknowledges God he gives not presents, but praise and hymns and hallowed songs from his brethren (Gen. 49:8). Jacob receives Shechem not from God, but by dint of “sword and bow,” words that pierce and parry. For the wise man subjects to himself the secondary as well as the primary objects, but, having subjected them, does not keep them, but bestows them on him to whose nature they are akin.",
"[27] Mark you not that, in the case of the gods also, though apparently receiving them, he has not really done so, but hid them and did away with them and “destroyed” them for ever from himself? What soul, then, was it that succeeded in hiding away wickedness and removing it from sight, but the soul to which God manifested Himself, and which He deemed worthy of His secret mysteries? For He says: “Shall I hide from Abraham My servant that which I am doing?” (Gen. 18:17). It is meet, O Saviour, that Thou displayest Thine own works to the soul that longs for all beauteous things, and that Thou hast concealed from it none of Thy works. That is why it is strong to shun evil and always to hide and becloud and destroy passion that works cruel havoc."
],
[
"[28] In what manner, then, the bad man is in banishment and hiding himself from God we have shown; let us consider now where he hides himself. “In the midst,” it says, “of the wood of the garden” (Gen. 3:8), that is in the centre of the mind, which in its turn is the centre of what we may call the garden of the whole soul: for he that runs away from God takes refuge in himself.",
"[29] There are two minds, that of the universe, which is God, and the individual mind. He that flees from his own mind flees for refuge to the Mind of all things. For he that abandons his own mind acknowledges all that makes the human mind its standard to be naught, and he refers all things to God.",
"[30] On the other hand he that runs away from God declares Him to be the cause of nothing, and himself to be the cause of all things that come into being. The view, for instance, is widely current that all things in the world tear along automatically independently of anyone to guide them, and that the human mind by itself established arts, professions, laws, customs, and rules of right treatment both of men and animals on the part of the state and in our conduct whether as individual persons or as members of communities.",
"[31] But thou perceivest, O my soul, the difference of the two opinions; for the one turns its back on the particular being, created and mortal mind, and whole-heartedly puts itself under the patronage of the universal Mind, uncreate and immortal; the other opinion on the contrary, rejects God, and by a grievous error calls in to share its warfare the mind that is insufficient even to help itself."
],
[
"[32] This is the ground for Moses’ words, “If the thief be found where he has just broken through and be smitten and die, there is no blood-guiltiness for him: but if the sun have risen upon him,(then he) is liable, he shall die in requital” (Exod. 22:1 f.). For if a man cleave and break through the tenet that stands firm in its soundness and uprightness, testifying of unlimited power as belonging to God alone, and he be found where he has broken through, that is, in the pierced and cloven doctrine that is conscious of a man’s own mind at work but not of God, he is a thief abstracting what belongs to another;",
"[33] for all things are God’s possessions, so that he who assigns anything to himself is appropriating what is another’s, and he receives a blow grievous and hard to be healed, even self-conceit, a thing akin to boorish ignorance. Moses does not make distinct mention of the man who strikes, for he is no other than the man who is struck; just as the man who rubs himself is also rubbed, and the man who stretches himself is also stretched; for in his own person he is at the same time active and passive, employs the force and submits to its effect. Even so he that steals what is God’s and assigns it to himself, is the victim of the outrage inflicted by his own impiety and self-conceit. A good thing it would be should he die when struck, that is to say permanently fail of the accomplishment of his purpose; for he must then be held to be less a sinner.",
"[34] For wickedness presents itself now as stationary, now as moving. It is wickedness in motion that is ripe for filling up its full measure by carrying its designs to completion, and so it is worse than stationary wickedness.",
"[35] If, therefore, the understanding which fancies itself and not God to be the cause of all that comes into existence die, that is, shrink into inactivity, blood-guiltiness does not pertain to it; it has not gone the full length of abolishing the living doctrine which ascribes to God the totality of powers. But if the sun shall have risen, that is the mind that shines so brilliantly in us, and shall have conceived the notion that it discerns all things, and decides all things, and that nothing ever escapes it, he is guilty, he shall die in requital for the living doctrine which he destroyed, which acknowledges God as the sole Cause. For he is found futile and dead indeed in himself; he has come forward as the author of a lifeless, mortal, and erroneous doctrine."
],
[
"[36] In keeping with this the sacred word pronounces a curse on one setting up in secret a graven or molten image, the work of the hands of the craftsman (Deut. 27:15). For why, O mind, dost thou hoard and treasure in thyself those wrong opinions, that God is as the graven images are, of this or that kind, God the Being that is without kind, and that He the incorruptible is, as the molten images are, corruptible? Why dost thou not rather bring them forth into the open, to the end that thou mayest be taught the things which it behoves thee to learn from those who study the truth? For thou fanciest thyself one versed in science because thou hast conned over methods of persuasion unworthy of an educated man, wherewith to combat the truth. But thy science proves itself no science, in that thou refusest to submit to healing treatment of thy soul’s sore malady of ignorance."
],
[
"[37] That the bad man sinks down into his own incoherent mind as he strives to avoid Him that is, we shall learn from Moses who “smote the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exod. 2:12). This means that he took full account of the man who maintains that the things of the body have the pre-eminence and holds the things of the soul to be naught, and regards pleasures as the end and aim of life.",
"[38] For having noted the toil imposed by the king of Egypt on him who sees God—and the king is wickedness whose lead the passions follow—he sees the Egyptian man, that is, human and perishable passion, beating and outrageously treating the seeing one; and having looked round upon the whole soul in this direction and in that, and seen no one standing, save God who IS, but all other things tossing in wild confusion, after smiting and thoroughly reckoning up the lover of pleasure, he hides him in his mind, which is a congeries of disconnected grains, devoid of cohesion and union with the beautiful and noble. So this man has been hidden away in himself.",
"[39] But the man of a character the reverse of his flies indeed from himself but takes refuge in the God of those that are."
],
[
"And for this reason he says, “He led him forth abroad and said, Look up to heaven and count the stars” (Gen. 15:5). These we would fain take in in one all-encompassing view, being insatiable in our love of virtue, but we are powerless to take the measure of the riches of God.",
"[40] Yet thanks be to the Lover of Giving, for telling us in-this way that He has set for Himself in the soul seeds farshining, radiant, full charged with meaning, as he has set the stars in heaven. But is not “abroad” a superfluous addition to “led him forth”? For who is ever led forth within? But it may be that this is what he means; He led him forth to outermost space, not just to one of the outside spaces, one that can be encompassed by others. For just as in our houses the women’s apartments have the men’s quarters outside them and the passage inside them, and the courtyard door is outside the court but inside the gateway, even so, in the case of the soul too, that which is outside one part can be inside another part.",
"[41] We must take what he says in this way; He led forth the mind to the outermost bound. For what advantage would it have been for it to leave the body behind and take refuge in sense-perception? What gain in renouncing sense-perception and taking shelter under the uttered word? For it behoves the mind that would be led forth and let go free to withdraw itself from the influence of everything, the needs of the body, the organs of sense, specious arguments, the plausibilities of rhetoric, last of all itself."
],
[
"[42] For this reason he glories elsewhere saying “The Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, who took me out of my father’s house” (Gen. 24:7); for it is not possible that he whose abode is in the body and the mortal race should attain to being with God; this is possible only for him whom God rescues out of the prison.",
"[43] For this reason Isaac also, the soul’s gladness, when he meditates and is alone with God, goes forth, quitting himself and his own mind; for it says, “Isaac went forth into the plain to meditate as evening was drawing near” (Gen. 24:63). Yes, and Moses, the word of prophecy, says, “When I go forth out of the city,” the soul to wit (for this too is the city of the living being giving him laws and customs), “I will spread out my hands” (Exod. 9:29), and I will spread open and unfold all my doings to God, calling Him to be witness and overseer of each one of them, from whom evil cannot hide itself, but is forced to remove all disguises and be plainly seen.",
"[44] When the soul in all utterances and all actions has attained to perfect sincerity and godlikeness, the voices of the senses cease and all those abominable sounds that used to vex it. For the visible calls and summons the sense of sight to itself, and the voice calls the sense of hearing, and the perfume that of smell, and all round the object of sense invites the sense to itself. But all these ceases when the mind goes forth from the city of the soul and finds in God the spring and aim of its own doings and intents."
],
[
"[45] For truly are “the hands of Moses heavy” (Exod, 17:12); for inasmuch as the bad man’s doings are light and windy, those of the wise man will be weighty and immovable and not easily shaken. Accordingly they are steadied by Aaron, the Word, and Hor, which is “Light”; and life has no clearer light than truth. The prophet’s aim therefore is to show thee by means of symbols that the doings of the wise man are upheld by the most essential of all things, the Word and Truth. And so, when Aaron dies, that is, when he is made perfect, he goes up into Hor, which is “Light” (Numb. 20:25); for the end of the Word is Truth, which casts a beam more far-reaching than light. To this it is the earnest endeavour of the Word to attain.",
"[46] Mark you not, that when he had received from God (Exod. 33:7) the Tent, namely, wisdom, in which the wise man tabernacles and dwells, he fixed and made it fast and strongly established it, not in the body, but outside it? For to represent the body he uses the figure of a camp, the quarters of an army full of wars and all the evils that war produces, a place that has no part in peace. “And it was called ‘the tent of testimony,’ ” wisdom testified to by God. Yes, for “everyone that sought the Lord went out to it.” Right finely is this said.",
"[47] For if thou art seeking God, O mind, go out from thyself and seek diligently; but if thou remainest amid the heavy encumbrances of the body or the self-conceits with which the understanding is familiar, though thou mayest have the semblance of a seeker, not thine is the quest for the things of God. But whether thou wilt find God when thou seekest is uncertain, for to many He has not manifested Himself, but their zeal has been without success all along. And yet the mere seeking by itself is sufficient to make us partakers of good things, for it always is the case that endeavours after noble things, even if they fail to attain their object, gladden in their very course those who make them.",
"[48] Thus it is that while the bad man, who shuns virtue and hides himself from God, takes refuge in his own mind, a sorry resource, the good man, on the other hand, who runs away from himself, returns to the apprehension of the One, thus winning a noble race and proving victor in this grandest of all contests."
],
[
"[49] “And the Lord God called Adam and said to him, ‘Where art thou?’ ” (Gen. 3:9). Why is Adam alone called, his wife having hid herself with him? Well, first of all we must say, that the mind is called even there where it was, when it receives reproof and a check is given to its defection. But not only is the mind itself called, but all its faculties as well, for without its faculties the mind by itself is found naked and not even existent; and one of the faculties is sense-perception, the which is woman.",
"[50] Included then in the call of Adam, the mind, is that of sense-perception, the woman; but God does not call her with a special call; why? because, being irrational, she has no capacity derived from herself to receive reproof. For neither sight nor hearing nor any of the senses is susceptible of instruction, so that it cannot perform the act of apprehending subjects. But He who made sense-perception made it capable of distinguishing between material forms only: but the mind it is that receives instruction, and that is why He challenged it but not sense-perception."
],
[
"[51] The words ποῦ εἶ, “Where art thou?” can be accounted for in many different ways, first as not being interrogative but declarative, as equivalent to “thou art in a place,” ποὺ receiving the grave accent. For whereas thou thoughtest that God walked in the garden and was contained by it, learn that there was something amiss with thee in thinking this, and listen to a most true utterance from the mouth of God who knoweth, to the effect that God is not somewhere (for He is not contained but contains the universe), but that which came into being is in a place, for it must of necessity be contained but not contain.",
"[52] A second account is this: What is said is equivalent to “Where hast thou arrived, O soul?” In the place of how great goods, what evils hast thou chosen for thyself? When God had invited thee to participate in virtue, art thou going after wickedness, and when He had provided for thy enjoyment the tree of life, that is of wisdom, whereby thou shouldst have power to live, didst thou gorge thyself with ignorance and corruption, preferring misery the soul’s death to happiness the real life?",
"[53] Thirdly, there is the interrogative sense, to which two answers might be made. One answer to the question, “Where art thou?” is “Nowhere,” for the soul of the bad man has no place where to find footing or upon which to settle. Owing to this the bad man is said to be “placeless”—“placeless” is used of an evil that defies placing (in any known category). Such is the man that is not good, always restless and unstable, drifting this way and that like a chopping wind, attaching himself absolutely to no fixed principle whatever.",
"[54] A second answer might be given to this effect. Adam in fact gave it. “Hear where I am; where those are who are incapable of seeing God; where those are who do not listen to God; where those are who hide themselves from the Author of all things; where are those that shun virtue, where are the destitute of wisdom, where those are who owing to unmanliness and cowardice of soul live in fear and trembling. For when Adam says, “I heard Thy voice in the garden and was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself” (Gen. 3:10), he discovers all the traits just enumerated, as I have fully shown in former sections."
],
[
"[55] Nevertheless Adam is not naked now: “they made for themselves girdles” are the words that occur a little further back. Even by this it is the prophet’s wish to teach thee, that he understands by nakedness not that of the body, but that by which the mind is found unprovided and unclothed with virtue.",
"[56] “The woman,” he says, “whom Thou gavest with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. 3:12). It is well his not saying, “the woman whom Thou gavest to me,” but “with me”; for Thou gavest not sense to me as a possession, but it too Thou didst leave free and at large, in some respects not subservient to the behests of my understanding. For instance, should the mind choose to bid the sight not to see, the sight will none the less see what lies before it. The hearing again, when a sound has reached it, will assuredly give it entrance, even if the mind resolutely command it not to hear. And the sense of smell, when odours have found their way in to it, will smell them, even though the mind forbid it to welcome them.",
"[57] Owing to this God did not give sense-perception to the living being, but with the living being. What “giving with” means is this. Sense becomes aware of all things with our mind and simultaneously with it. For instance, the visible object arrests simultaneously the attention of the sight and of the mind; for the eye caught sight of the material substance, and at once the mind took in the thing that had been seen, took in that it was black or white or yellow or red or triangular or square or round, or some other colour or shape. Again the hearing received the impression of the sound and the mind with it: in proof that it did, it immediately judged of the sound, pronouncing it weak or loud, tuneful and rhythmical, and on the other hand whether it is out of tune and a discord. We find the same thing in the case of the other senses.",
"[58] Quite excellent is the addition of the words “she gave me of the tree.” For no one, except sense-perception, ever gives to the mind the tree with its sensibly-discerned bulk. For who gave to the mind the possibility of recognizing the body or whiteness? Did not sight? Who gave it the sound? Did not the hearing? Who the odour? Did not the sense of smell? Who the savour? Did not the taste? Who the rough and the soft? Did not the touch? Rightly and with perfect truth was it said by the mind ‘sense-perception alone gives me opportunities of apprehending bodies.’"
],
[
"[59] “And God said to the woman, ‘What is this thou hast done?’ And she said, ‘The serpent beguiled me and I ate’ ” (Gen. 3:13). God puts a question to sense-perception touching one point, she gives an answer touching another point: for God asks something about the man; she speaks not about him, but says something about herself, for her words are “I ate,” not “I gave.”",
"[60] Perhaps, then as we read the passage figuratively, we shall solve the puzzle and show that the woman gives a very pertinent answer to the question put to her. For it is a matter of necessity that when she ate, the man too should eat. For when sense-perception, meeting with the object of sense, is filled with the presentation of it, forthwith the mind also is in contact, takes hold and in a way absorbs the sustenance which it provides. This, then, is what she says: My giving it to the man was by no act of will, for even as I struck upon the object, he (so swift is he to move) received the image and impression of it himself."
],
[
"[61] Now observe that, whereas the man says that the woman gave, the woman says not that the serpent gave but that he beguiled; for to give is characteristic of sense-perception but to cheat and beguile of pleasure with its serpent-like subtilty. For instance, sense-perception gives to the mind that which is by its nature white and that which is black, that which is hot and that which is cold, quite truthfully and with no deception. For, in the opinion of most people who do not overdo precision in their natural philosophy, objects are such as the appearance of them which meets the eye. But pleasure does not report the object to the mind such as it is, but artfully falsifies it, representing as something advantageous that which is of no benefit at all:",
"[62] even as it is possible to see repulsive courtesans applying pigments to their faces and painting under their eyes to conceal their ugliness. We can note also the immoderate man inclined to gluttony: this man welcomes as a good thing the abundance of strong drink and the well-spread board, though taking harm from them both in body and soul.",
"[63] Again we may see those who are in love, often quite crazy over women most hideous to behold, while pleasure beguiles them; you might almost say that she assures them of the beauty of form and colouring, the fullness and symmetry, that mark those who are characterized by traits the very reverse of these. Indeed they overlook those endowed with really faultless beauty, and pine for those whom I have mentioned.",
"[64] All kinds of consummate deception, then, are most proper to pleasure, while giving is the characteristic of sense-perception: pleasure outwits and misleads the mind, showing objects not as they are, but as they are not, whereas sense-perception simply gives the material forms just as nature has made them, without trickery or counterfeit."
],
[
"[65] “And the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because thou hast done this, cursed art thou from among all cattle and from among all the beasts of the earth. Upon thy breast and thy belly shalt thou go, and earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life. And I will put enmity between thee and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed. He shall watch for thy head, and thou shalt watch for his heel” (Gen. 3:14 f.). For what reason does He curse the serpent without giving it the opportunity to defend itself, though elsewhere, as seems reasonable, He commands that “the two parties between whom the dispute is should stand forth” (Deut. 19:17) and that credit be not given to the one till the other be heard?",
"[66] Yet you see, no doubt, that He did not thus give credit to Adam, and prejudge the case against the woman, but gives her opportunity to defend herself, when He inquires “What is this that thou hast done?” (Gen. 3:13), and she acknowledges that she failed owing to the deception practised on her by subtle serpent-like pleasure. When, then, the woman said “the serpent beguiled me,” what was there to prevent His inquiring here too from the serpent, whether he beguiled her, instead of prejudging the case and pronouncing the curse without listening to any defence?",
"[67] We have to say, then, that sense-perception comes under the head neither of bad nor of good things, but is an intermediate thing common to a wise man and a fool, and when it finds itself in a fool it proves bad, when in a sensible man, good. Reasonably then, since it has no evil nature on its own account, but halts between good and evil, inclining to either side, it is not pronounced guilty till it has owned that it followed evil.",
"[68] But the serpent, pleasure, is bad of itself; and therefore it is not found at all in a good man, the bad man getting all the harm of it by himself. Quite appropriately therefore does God pronounce the curse without giving pleasure an opportunity of defending herself, since she has in her no seed from which virtue might spring, but is always and everywhere guilty and foul."
],
[
"[69] For this reason in the case of Er also God knows him to be wicked and puts him to death without bringing an open charge against him (Gen. 38:7). For He is well aware that the body, our “leathern” bulk (“leathern” is the meaning of “Er”), is wicked and a plotter against the soul, and is even a corpse and a dead thing. For you must make up your mind that we are each of us nothing but corpse-bearers, the soul raising up and carrying without toil the body which of itself is a corpse. And note, if you will, how strong the soul is.",
"[70] The most muscular athlete would not have strength to carry his own statue for a short time, but the soul, sometimes for as long as a hundred years, easily carries the statue of the human being without getting tired; for it is not now (at the last) that God slays Er; nay, but the body which He made and which Er represents was a corpse to begin with.",
"[71] By nature, as I have said, it is wicked and a plotter against the soul, but it is not evident to all that it is so, but to God alone and to anyone who is dear to God; for we read “Er was wicked in the sight of the Lord.” For when the mind soars aloft and is being initiated in the mysteries of the Lord, it judges the body to be wicked and hostile; but when it has abandoned the investigation of things divine, it deems it friendly to itself, its kinsman and brother. The proof of this is that it takes refuge in what is dear to the body.",
"[72] On this account there is a difference between the soul of an athlete and the soul of a philosopher. For the athlete refers everything to the well-being of the body, and, lover of the body that he is, would sacrifice the soul itself on its behalf; but the philosopher being enamoured of the noble thing that lives in himself, cares for the soul, and pays no regard to that which is really a corpse, the body, concerned only that the best part of him, his soul, may not be hurt by an evil thing, a very corpse, tied to it."
],
[
"[73] You see that Er is slain not by the Lord, but by God. For it is not as Ruler and Governor employing the absolute power of sovereignty that He destroys the body, but in the exercise of goodness and kindness. For “God” is the name of the goodness pertaining to the First Cause, and is so used that thou mayest know that He hath made the inanimate things also not by exercising authority but goodness, even as by goodness He hath made the living creatures. For it was necessary with a view to the clear manifestation of the superior beings that there should be in existence an inferior creation also, due to the same power, even the goodness of the First Cause. And that goodness is God.",
"[74] When, then, O soul, wilt thou in fullest measure realize thyself to be a corpse-bearer? Will it not be when thou art perfected, and accounted worthy of prizes and crowns? For then shalt thou be no lover of the body, but a lover of God. And thou shalt win the rewards if Judah’s daughter-in-law become thy wife, even Tamar, which means a palm-tree, the sign of victory. Here is a proof of it. When Er has married her, he is immediately found to be wicked and slain. For we read, “And Judah took for Er his firstborn a wife whose name was Tamar” (Gen. 38:6), and the next words are, “And Er was wicked before the Lord, and God slew him” (ibid. 7). For when the mind has carried off the rewards of victory, it condemns the corpse-body to death.",
"[75] Thou seest that God both curses the serpent without allowing him to defend himself—for he is pleasure—and slays Er without bringing an open charge against him; for he is the body. And if thou wilt consider, my friend, thou wilt find that God has made in the soul some natures faulty and blameworthy of themselves, and others in all respects excellent and praiseworthy, just as is the case with plants and animals.",
"[76] Seest thou not that among the plants the Creator has made some repaying cultivation and useful and wholesome, and others wild and injurious and productive of disease and destruction, and the same with animals? As, doubtless, He has made the serpent, our present subject, for the creature is of itself destructive of health and life. What a serpent does to a man, that pleasure does to the soul, and therefore the serpent was taken to represent pleasure."
],
[
"[77] Exactly, then, as God has conceived a hatred for pleasure and the body without giving reasons, so too has he promoted goodly natures apart from any manifest reason, pronouncing no action of theirs acceptable before bestowing his praises upon them. For should anyone ask why the prophet says that Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord God (Gen. 6:8) when as yet he had, so far as our knowledge goes, done no fair deed, we shall give a suitable answer to the effect that he is shown to be of an excellent nature from his birth, for Noah means “rest” or “righteous.” But it cannot but be that he who rests from sinful and unrighteous acts and rests upon what is noble and lives in fellowship with righteousness, should find favour with God.",
"[78] Now finding favour is not as some suppose equivalent only to being well-pleasing, but something of this kind besides. The righteous man exploring the nature of existences makes a surprising find, in this one discovery, that all things are a grace of God, and that creation has no gift of grace to bestow, for neither has it any possession, since all things are God’s possession, and for this reason grace too belongs to Him alone as a thing that is His very own. Thus to those who ask what the origin of creation is the right answer would be, that it is the goodness and grace of God, which He bestowed on the race that stands next after Him. For all things in the world and the world itself is a free gift and act of kindness and grace on God’s part."
],
[
"[79] Melchizedek, too, has God made both king of peace, for that is the meaning of “Salem,” and His own priest (Gen. 14:18). He has not fashioned beforehand any deed of his, but produces him to begin with as such a king, peaceable and worthy of His own priesthood. For he is entitled “the righteous king,” and a “king” is a thing at enmity with a despot, the one being the author of laws, the other of lawlessness.",
"[80] So mind, the despot, decrees for both soul and body harsh and hurtful decrees working grievous woes, conduct, I mean, such as wickedness prompts, and free indulgence of the passions. But the king in the first place resorts to persuasion rather than decrees, and in the next place issues directions such as to enable a vessel, the living being I mean, to make life’s voyage successfully, piloted by the good pilot, who is right principle.",
"[81] Let the despot’s title therefore be ruler of war, the king’s prince of peace, of Salem, and let him offer to the soul food full of joy and gladness; for he brings bread and wine, things which Ammonites and Moabites refused to supply to the seeing one, on which account they are excluded from the divine congregation and assembly. These characters, Ammonites deriving their nature from sense-perception their mother, and Moabites deriving theirs from mind their father, who hold that all things owe their coherence to these two things, mind and sense-perception, and take no thought of God, “shall not enter,” saith Moses, “into the congregation of the Lord, because they did not meet us with bread and water” (Deut. 23:3 f.) when we came out from the passions of Egypt."
],
[
"[82] But let Melchizedek instead of water offer wine, and give to souls strong drink, that they may be seized by a divine intoxication, more sober than sobriety itself. For he is a priest, even Reason, having as his portion Him that is, and all his thoughts of God are high and vast and sublime: for he is priest of the Most High (Gen. 14:18), not that there is any other not Most High—for God being One “is in heaven above and on earth beneath, and there is none beside Him” (Deut. 4:39)—but to conceive of God not in low earthbound ways but in lofty terms, such as transcend all other greatness and all else that is free from matter, calls up in us a picture of the Most High."
],
[
"[83] What good thing had Abram already done, that he bids him estrange himself from fatherland and kindred there and dwell in whatever land God Himself may give him? (Gen. 12:1). And that is a city good and large and very prosperous, for great and precious are God’s gifts. But this character also did God create in such a shape as to merit esteem, for “Abram” means “father high-soaring,” and both epithets are grounds for praise.",
"[84] For when the mind does not, like a master, frighten the soul with threats, but governs it as a father, not granting it the things that are pleasant to it, but giving it even against its will the things that are good for it; when, in all matters turning away from what is base and from all that draws it to things mortal, it soars aloft and spends its time in contemplation of the universe and its different parts; when, mounting yet higher, it explores the Deity and His nature, urged by an ineffable love of knowledge; it cannot continue to entertain the principles it imbibed originally, but in its desire to improve itself seeks to change its abode for a better one."
],
[
"[85] Some even before their birth God endows with a goodly form and equipment, and has determined that they shall have a most excellent portion. Dost thou not see what He says concerning Isaac to Abraham when unable to trust that he shall ever become the father of such an offspring, nay when he actually laughed at the promise and said, “Shall it come to pass to him that is a hundred years old, and shall Sarah who is ninety years old bear a child?” (Gen. 17:17). He ratifies and confirms it saying, “Yes, Sarah thy wife shall bear thee a son and thou shalt call his name Isaac, and I will establish My covenant with Him for an everlasting covenant” (ibid. 19).",
"[86] What is it, then, that has made this one too to be praised before his birth? Some good things benefit us when they have reached us and are present, as health, excellence of bodily senses, wealth perhaps, fame—for even these may be loosely called “good things”;—some again not only when they have come, but when their coming has been foretold. For instance joy, a happy condition of the soul, gladdens not only when it is present and in active operation, but, when still an object of hope, brings an anticipatory brightness. For here again is a peculiar advantage which it possesses. While other good things take effect in virtue of their own particular goodness only, joy is both a particular and a general good. See how it comes to add to and enrich them all. We rejoice over health, and over liberty, and over honour, and over the other good things, so that we say with literal truth that nothing is good unless joy be attached to it.",
"[87] But we rejoice over the other good things not only when they have already come about beforehand and are present, but also when they are looked for in the future, as when we hope that we shall grow rich, or shall obtain office, or shall win praise, or shall discover a way of getting rid of disease, or shall obtain our share of health and strength, or shall be no longer ignorant, but men of knowledge, we are glad in no small measure. Seeing then, that joy, not only when present but when hoped for, causes the soul to overflow with gladness, God fitly held Isaac, even before he was begotten, worthy of his great name and therein of a vast endowment: for “Isaac” means laughter of soul and joy and gladness."
],
[
"[88] Once again, of Jacob and Esau, when still in the womb, God declares that the one is a ruler and leader and master, but that Esau is a subject and a slave. For God the Maker of living beings knoweth well the different pieces of his own handiwork, even before He has thoroughly chiselled and consummated them, and the faculties which they are to display at a later time, in a word their deeds and experiences. And so when Rebecca, the soul that waits on God, goes to inquire of God, He tells her in reply, “Two nations are in thy womb, and two peoples shall be separated from thy belly, and one people shall be above the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen. 25:23).",
"[89] For in God’s judgement that which is base and irrational is by nature a slave, but that which is of fine character and endowed with reason and better is princely and free. And this not only when either is full-grown in soul, but even if their development is still uncertain. For it is universally the case that even a slight breath of virtue is an evidence not of liberty merely but of leadership and sovereignty, and on the other hand that the most casual beginning of wickedness enslaves the reasoning faculty, even if its offspring have not yet come forth fully developed."
],
[
"[90] What led this same Jacob, when Joseph brought to him his two sons, the elder Manasseh and the younger Ephraim, to cross his hands and place his right hand on Ephraim the younger son and his left hand on Manasseh the elder; and when Joseph was distressed by it and imagined that his father had made an unintentional mistake in so placing his hands, to say it was no error, but “I know, my child, I know, this one too shall be a people, this one too shall be exalted, but his younger brother shall be greater than he”? (Gen. 48:19).",
"[91] What, then, does it behove us to say but this, that two exceedingly necessary faculties were created in the soul by God, memory, and recollection? Of these memory is the better, recollection the inferior. For while the former keeps everything that it has apprehended fresh and distinct, so as to go wrong in nothing owing to ignorance, recollection is in all cases preceded by forgetfulness, a maimed and blind affair.",
"[92] But the inferior of these, recollection, is discovered to be older than the superior one, memory: [while recollection has many gaps of forgetfulness, memory is] unbroken and uninterrupted. For when we are being first introduced to the various arts we are unable at once to master their principles; so finding ourselves liable to forgetfulness at the outset, we afterwards recollect, until as the result of repeated forgetting and repeated recollecting an unfailing memory shall subsequently win the day. Accordingly memory, being late-born, is formed as recollection’s younger sister.",
"[93] So then Ephraim is the figurative name of Memory, meaning “fruit-bearing,” for the soul of the student has borne its proper fruit when it is able by means of memory to hold securely the principles of the art that is being learned. Manasseh, however, represents recollection, for the name is said to mean “out of forgetfulness” when translated, and he who escapes from forgetfulness necessarily recollects. Most rightly, therefore, does Jacob, the overthrower of the passions and the trained seeker of virtue, lay his right hand on Ephraim as fruitful memory, and count Manasseh, who is recollection, worthy of the second place.",
"[94] Moses also, to take another case, awards special praise among the sacrificers of the Passover to those who sacrificed the first time, because when they had separated themselves from the passions of Egypt by crossing the Red Sea they kept to that crossing and no more hankered after them, but to those who sacrificed the second time he assigns the second place, for after turning they retraced the wrong steps they had taken and as though they had forgotten their duties they set out again to perform them, while the earlier sacrificers held on without turning. So Manasseh, who comes “out of forgetfulness,” corresponds to those who offer the second Passover, the fruit-bearing Ephraim to those who offer the earlier one."
],
[
"[95] This, moreover, is the reason of God’s proclaiming Bezalel by name, and saying that He has given him wisdom and knowledge, and that He will appoint him artificer and chief craftsman of all the works of the Tabernacle, that is of the soul (Exod. 31:2 ff.), though He has so far pointed to no work or deed of Bezalel’s, such as to win him even commendation. We must say, then, that here too we have a form which God has stamped on the soul as on the tested coin. What, then, the image impressed on it is we shall know if we first ascertain accurately the meaning of the name.",
"[96] Bezalel means, then, “in the shadow of God”; but God’s shadow is His Word, which he made use of like an instrument, and so made the world. But this shadow, and what we may describe as the representation, is the archetype for further creations. For just as God is the Pattern of the Image, to which the title of Shadow has just been given, even so the Image becomes the pattern of other beings, as the prophet made clear at the very outset of the Law-giving by saying, “And God made the man after the Image of God” (Gen. 1:27), implying that the Image had been made such as representing God, but that the man was made after the Image when it had acquired the force of a pattern."
],
[
"[97] Let us observe therefore what the character impressed is. The first men sought to find how we came to conceive of the Deity. Next those whose philosophy was reputed the best declared that it was from the world and its constituent parts and the forces subsisting in these that we gained our apprehension of the First Cause.",
"[98] Should a man see a house carefully constructed with a gateway, colonnades, men’s quarters, women’s quarters, and the other buildings, he will get an idea of the artificer, for he will be of opinion that the house never reached that completeness without the skill of the craftsman;",
"[99] and in like manner in the case of a city and a ship and every smaller or greater construction. Just so anyone entering this world, as it were some vast house or city, and beholding the sky circling round and embracing within it all things, and planets and fixed stars without any variation moving in rhythmical harmony and with advantage to the whole, and earth with the central space assigned to it, water and air flowing in set order as its boundary, and over and above these, living creatures, mortal and immortal beings, plants and fruits in great variety, he will surely argue that these have not been wrought without consummate art, but that the Maker of this whole universe was and is God. Those, who thus base their reasoning on what is before their eyes, apprehend God by means of a shadow cast, discerning the Artificer by means of His works."
],
[
"[100] There is a mind more perfect and more thoroughly cleansed, which has undergone initiation 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 One, so as from Him to apprehend both Himself and His shadow. To apprehend that was, we saw, to apprehend both the Word and this world.",
"[101] The mind of which I speak is Moses who says, “Manifest Thyself to me, let me see Thee that I may know Thee” (Exod. 33:13); ‘for I would not that Thou shouldst be manifested to me by means of heaven or earth or water or air or any created thing at all, nor would I find the reflection of Thy being in aught else than in Thee Who art God, for the reflections in created things are dissolved, but those in the Uncreate will continue abiding and sure and eternal.’ This is why God hath expressly called Moses and why He spake to Him.",
"[102] Bezalel also He hath expressly called, but not in like manner. One receives the clear vision of God directly from the First Cause Himself. The other discerns the Artificer, as it were from a shadow, from created things by virtue of a process of reasoning. Hence you will find the Tabernacle and all its furniture made in the first instance by Moses but afterwards by Bezalel, for Moses is the artificer of the archetypes, and Bezalel of the copies of these. For Moses has God for Instructor, as He says “thou shalt make all things according to the pattern that was shown to thee in the mount” (Exod. 25:40),",
"[103] but Bezalel is instructed by Moses. And all this is just as we should expect. For on the occasion likewise of the rebellion of Aaron, Speech, and Miriam, Perception, they are expressly told “If a prophet be raised up unto the Lord, God shall be known unto him in a vision” and in a shadow, not manifestly; but with Moses, the man who is “faithful in all His house, He will speak mouth to mouth in manifest form and not through dark speeches” (Numb. 12:6–8)."
],
[
"[104] Seeing then that we have found two natures created, undergoing moulding, and chiselled into full relief by God’s hands, the one essentially hurtful, blameworthy, and accursed, the other beneficial and praiseworthy, stamped the one with a counterfeit, the other with a genuine impression, let us offer a noble and suitable prayer, which Moses offered before us, “that God may open to us His own treasury” (Deut. 28:12) and that sublime reason pregnant with divine illumination, to which He has given the title of “heaven”; and that He may close up the treasuries of evil things.",
"[105] For there are with God treasuries as of good things so also of evil things, as He saith in the great Song, “Are not these laid up in store with Me, sealed up in My treasuries in the day of vengeance, when their foot shall have slipped?” (Deut. 32:34 f.). You see that there are treasuries of evil things. And the treasury of good things is one, for since God is One, there is likewise one treasury of good things. But of evil things there are many treasuries, for countless too are those that sin. But here too observe the goodness of Him who IS. The treasury of good things He opens, those of evil things He closes. For it is God’s property to hold out good things and to be beforehand in bestowing them, but to be slow to inflict evil things.",
"[106] But Moses, magnifying God’s love of giving gifts and granting favours, says that the treasuries of evil things are sealed up not only at other times, but also when the soul fails to direct its steps in keeping with the right principle; and yet then it might justly have been deemed worthy of punishment. For he says that the treasuries of evil things were sealed in the day of vengeance, the sacred word thus showing that not even against those who sin will God proceed at once, but gives time for repentance and for the healing and setting on his feet again of him who had slipped."
],
[
"[107] “And the Lord God said to the serpent, Cursed art thou from among all cattle and from among all the beasts of the earth” (Gen. 3:14). Just as joy, being a good condition of soul, deserves prayer, so pleasure, the passion par excellence, deserves cursing; it shifts the standards of the soul and renders it a lover of passion instead of a lover of virtue:—“Accursed,” says Moses in the Curses, “is he who removes his neighbour’s landmarks” (Deut. 27:17):—for God set as a landmark and law for the soul virtue, the tree of life. This is removed by the man who has fixed as landmark in its stead wickedness, the tree of death.",
"[108] “Cursed again is he who causes a blind man to go astray in the way” (Deut. 27:18), “and he that smiteth his neighbour craftily” (ibid. 24). And these also are acts of pleasure, the utterly godless one; for sense by itself is a blind thing, inasmuch as it is irrational, for it is the reasoning faculty that confers sight. Accordingly it is with the reason only that we apprehend matters; sense does not carry us so far; for by means of sense we gain impressions only of the material forms of things.",
"[109] Pleasure, then, has cheated poor maimed sense of the power of apprehending matters, inasmuch as, when it could have had recourse to mind and have secured it for its charioteer, it has prevented it, leading it to what can be perceived externally only, and by giving it a craving for that which produces pleasure, to the end that sense, being a maimed thing, may follow a blind guide, namely that which sense can perceive, and that the mind, led by this pair of blind guides, may be brought to the ground and robbed of self-control.",
"[110] For if there had been any correspondence with what nature prescribes, it would have been incumbent upon the maimed faculties to follow the reasoning faculty which has eyes, for in this way the damage incurred would have been diminished. As it is, pleasure has organized such a shrewd device against the soul, that it has compelled it to employ blind guides, inducing it by delusive wiles to change virtue for evil things, and to surrender its innocence and receive wickedness in lieu of it."
],
[
"Such an exchange too is forbidden by the holy word, when it says, “Thou shalt not change good with evil” (Lev. 27:33).",
"[111] Accursed on these grounds is pleasure. Let us see how appropriate the curses are which He pronounces upon it. He says that it is cursed from all cattle (Gen. 3:14). Our irrational faculty of sense-perception, then, is of the cattle kind, and each of our senses curses pleasure as a most deadly enemy: for it is in very deed hostile to sense, as is proved by the fact that, when we have glutted ourselves with immoderate pleasure, we cannot see nor hear nor smell nor taste nor feel with clearness, but our contact with objects of sense is dim and feeble.",
"[112] This is what we experience when we have ceased from indulging in pleasure; but when we are in the very midst of the enjoyments it affords, we find ourselves utterly deprived of the support that we obtain through the co-operation of the senses, to such an extent that we seem to have been maimed. How, then, should not sense rightly lay curses on pleasure that maims it?"
],
[
"[113] It is cursed also beyond all the wild beasts. By these I mean the passions of the soul, for by these the mind is wounded and destroyed, Why, then, is it accounted worse than the other passions? Because it is, we may say, at the bottom of them all, like a kind of starting-point and foundation. Lust comes into play through love of pleasure; pain arises as pleasure is withdrawn; fear again is engendered owing to a dread of being without pleasure. It is clear, then, that all the passions depend on pleasure, and these would perchance never have taken shape at all, if first there had not been deposited that which is productive of them, pleasure."
],
[
"[114] “On thy breast and belly shalt thou go” (Gen. 3:14). For passion has its lair in these parts of the body, the breast and the belly. When pleasure has the materials it needs to produce it, it haunts the belly and the parts below it. But when it is at a loss for these materials, it occupies the breast where wrath is; for lovers of pleasure when deprived of their pleasures grow bitter and angry.",
"[115] Let us look still more carefully at the thing signified. Our soul consists of three parts, and has one part given to reasoning, a second to high spirit, a third to desire. Some philosophers have distinguished these parts from each other in regard to function, some in regard also to the places which they occupy. These have gone on to assign to the reasoning part the region of the head, saying that, where the king is, there are also his bodyguards, and that the senses which are in the region of the head are bodyguards of the mind, and that it follows that the king must be there too, having had it allotted to him, like a castle in a city, for his dwelling. To the spirited part they assign the breast, pointing out that nature has given that part firmness by means of a strong and solid array of continuous bones, as though she were arming a good soldier with shield and breastplate for defence against opponents. To the lustful portion of the soul they assign the quarter about the abdomen and the belly, for there it is that lust, irrational craving, has its abode."
],
[
"[116] If, therefore, O mind, thou art ever inquiring what quarter pleasure has for her portion, do not consider the place occupied by the head, where the reasoning faculty resides, for thou wilt assuredly not find it there, since reason is at war with passion, and cannot remain in the same place with it. For when reason prevails pleasure is gone, and when pleasure conquers, reason is an exile. But look for it in the breast and belly, where high spirit and desire are, portions of the irrational: for in the irrational is to be found alike our faculty of choice and the passions.",
"[117] Well, there is nothing to prevent the mind from going out from the purely intellectual interests which are proper to it and giving itself up to its inferior. This happens when war prevails in the soul; for then reason, that is in us not as a combative but as a peaceful inmate, cannot fail to become a prisoner of war."
],
[
"[118] For look now: the Sacred Word knowing how strong is the impulse of either passion, of both high spirit and lust, puts a curb on each of them, by setting over them reason as a charioteer and pilot. And in the first place this is how it discourses concerning high spirit, aiming at curing and healing it:",
"[119] “And thou shalt put on to the oracle of the judgements the Showing and the Truth, and it shall be upon Aaron’s breast, whenever he enters into the Holy Place before the Lord” (Exod. 28:30). The “oracle,” then, is in us the organ of speech, which is the uttered word:",
"[120] and this may either be rejected as spoken at random or may be approved as well-judged: but the sacred writer is leading us to think of the word spoken with judgement and discernment; for he tells us that the oracle is not the untested or counterfeit one, but “the oracle of the judgements,” an expression tantamount to “well tested and examined.” To this approved word he says that the two virtues belong, the highest possible, clearness and truthfulness. Quite rightly does he say so. For reason at the outset fell short of making matters clear and evident to another, since we have no power to exhibit the affection called out in the soul by external things nor to convey an idea of its character."
],
[
"Wherefore we were compelled to resort to signs given by means of the voice, nouns and verbs, which cannot fail to be intelligible, that the other may get a clear and unmistakable idea of our meaning. (This was reason’s first inadequacy.) In the second place, it was inadequate to report things truly.",
"[121] For what is the good of giving a clear and distinct expression, if it be in other respects false? For under these circumstances the hearer must needs be deceived and incur a very great misfortune, being not merely ignorant but ill-taught into the bargain. For what if, pointing to the letter alpha I say to the boy clearly and distinctly that it is gamma, or to eta and tell him that it is omega? Or what if the music-master tells the beginner as he points to the enharmonic genus that it is the chromatic, or says of the chromatic that it is the diatonic, or of the note on the highest string that it is the central, or of the conjunct that it is the disjunct tetrachord, or of the highest tone in the tetrachord scale that it is the lowest?",
"[122] He will speak clearly and distinctly, it may be, but not truly. But in this way he will be a doer of evil—of the evil that belongs to speech. But when he attains both of these requisites, both clearness and truthfulness, he will render the word beneficial to the pupil, bringing into play its two virtues, perhaps the only virtues indeed which it possesses."
],
[
"[123] It says, then, that the tested word, having the virtues which are peculiarly its own, was enthroned upon the breast (Aaron’s namely), that is, upon the spirited element, that this might first of all be guided by reason, and not injured by its own irrationality; in the next place by clearness, for it is not the nature of anger to be a friend of clearness. Do we not see in those who are enraged how not their understanding only but their words also are full of disturbance and confusion? It was appropriate therefore that anger’s lack of clearness should be set right again by clearness.",
"[124] It must be guided in the third place by truthfulness, for together with its other faults anger has this one also as peculiarly its own, that of lying. As a matter of experience, of those who give way to this passion, hardly one speaks the truth. They are victims of an intoxication not of body but of soul. These are antidotes for the region of anger; reason, clearness of speech, truth of speech. For the three are virtually one, since reason, accompanied by the two virtues of truthfulness and distinctness, acts as a healer of anger, that sore sickness of the soul."
],
[
"[125] To whom, then, does it pertain to bear these? Not to my understanding or to that of any chance comer, but to that which exercises its priesthood and offers sacrifices in purity, that of Aaron, and not even to this always, for many a time it turns and fails, but when it continues free from turning, when it enters into the Holy Place, when the reasoning faculty enters in together with holy resolves and does not abandon these.",
"[126] But full often does the mind enter with these into sacred and holy and purified opinions, but these are mere human opinions, as for instance those concerning simple duties, those concerning high-standard actions, those concerning usages resting on human enactment, those concerning virtue conforming to human standards. Not even he who is in such case as this is sufficient to bear the oracle upon his breast with the virtues that belong to it, but he only who goes in in the sight of the Lord, that is he who does all things for God’s sake, and overvalues none of the things that are of less importance than God, but accords to these also all they deserve, not, however, stopping at them, but mounting up in the endeavour to acquaint himself with and know and honour the One.",
"[127] For he who is in this case will have his spirited element charioteered by purified reason, which will abolish all that is irrational in him, and by clearness, which will heal all that is uncertain and confused, and by truthfulness, which will eliminate falsehood."
],
[
"[128] Aaron, then, being inferior to Moses who cuts the breast, that is the spirited element, clean out—suffers it not to be carried away by random impulses, for he is afraid that, if it be given the rein, it may some day get unmanageable, as a horse does, and trample down all the soul. No, he curbs and controls it, first by reason, that being driven by an excellent charioteer it may not get too restive; next he employs the virtues of speech, distinctness, and truth. For if high spirit be trained in this manner, so as to yield to reason and distinctness, and also to exercise itself in eschewing falsehood, it will not only rid itself of much ferment, but will render the whole soul gentle."
],
[
"[129] Well, Aaron, as I have said, having this passion, attempts to cure it by the saving medicines that have been mentioned. Moses, on the other hand, thinks it necessary to use the knife on the seat of anger in its entirety, and to cut it clean out of the soul, for no moderation of passion can satisfy him; he is content with nothing but complete absence of passion. That what I say is true Holy Writ testifies: for it says, “Moses took the breast and removed it as a crowning offering before the Lord from the ram of consecration and it became Moses’ portion” (Lev. 8:29). Very good; for it was the business of the man who loved virtue and was beloved of God, when he had contemplated the entire soul, to seize the breast, which is the spirited element, and to cut it off and take it away, in order that, through the excision of the warlike part, the remainder might have peace. He removes it, not from this or that animal, as it may happen, but from the ram of consecration, although there was a heifer offered too. But he passed this by and went to the ram, because it is a creature naturally prone to butt, owing to its being full of spirit and ready for the fray. It is owing to this that engineers make most of the engines of war in the shape of rams.",
"[130] The part of us, then, that resembles a ram in his reckless readiness for a fight is the wrangling species; and wrangling is the mother of anger; accordingly it is those who contend most eagerly in debates and other gatherings that most easily lose their tempers. So Moses cuts out, as he needs must, anger, discordant offspring of the soul that loves wrangling and contention.",
"[131] He does this that she may be rendered barren, and cease bearing hurtful progeny, and that that this may become a portion befitting the lover of virtue, not the breast nor the seat of high spirit, but the removal of these: for God assigned to the wise man a share of surpassing excellence, even the power to cut out the passions. You observe how the perfect man always makes perfect freedom from passion his study. But Aaron, the man who is making gradual progress, holding a lower position, practises moderation, as I have said;",
"[132] for his power does not go so far as to enable him to cut out the breast and the high-spirited element, but he brings to it, as charioteer and guide, reason with the virtues attached to it, and this is the oracle on which is Clear-showing and Truth."
],
[
"[133] But he shall bring out the difference more clearly by means of the following words: “The breast of the offering put on, and the shoulder of the part removed, I have taken at the hands of the children of Israel from the sacrifices of your salvation, and have given to Aaron and his sons” (Lev. 7:34).",
"[134] You see that these are not capable of taking the breast by itself, but must take it with the shoulder, whereas Moses takes it without the shoulder. Why is this? Because he, being perfect, has no small or petty aims, nor any desire to moderate his passions, but goes so far as to cut off all passions everywhere; while those others set out to wage war on the passions on an insignificant, not on a grand, scale, but seek to come to terms and arrange a truce with them, putting forward the word of pacification, that this like a charioteer may curb their excessive impetuosity.",
"[135] Furthermore the shoulder is a symbol of toil and hardship; and this is the character of him who attends to and ministers in holy things, subject to toil and discipline. But the man on whom God bestows in overflowing measure his good things in perfection is free from toil. He who acquires virtue by toil is found to come short of full achievement, as compared with Moses, who received it easily and without toil from the hands of God. For, as toiling itself falls short of the toilless achievement and is inferior to it, so does the imperfect fall short of the perfect, and that which learns of that which is self-taught. This is why Aaron takes the breast with the shoulder, but Moses without the shoulder.",
"[136] The reason why he calls it the breast of “the special offering put on” is that it is necessary that the reason should be put and set firmly on the seat of anger, as though it were a kind of charioteer keeping straight a stiff-necked and restive horse. But when he comes to the shoulder he speaks of it not as in the case of the breast, as belonging to “the offering put on,” but as belonging to “that which was removed.” The reason he does so is this. It is necessary that the soul should not ascribe to itself its toil for virtue, but that it should take it away from itself and refer it to God, confessing that not its own strength or power acquired nobility, but He who freely bestowed also the love of it.",
"[137] Neither breast nor shoulder is taken except from the sacrifice of salvation. That is fitting. For only then does the soul begin to be saved, when the seat of anger has received reason as its charioteer, and toil has come to create in it, not self-satisfaction, but a readiness to yield the honour to God, the Bestower of the boon."
],
[
"[138] We have already mentioned that pleasure goes not only on its breast but also on its belly, and pointed out that the stomach is a place most appropriate to pleasure, for we may almost describe it as a reservoir of all the pleasures. For when the belly has been filled, cravings after the other pleasures also become vehement, but when it has been emptied, these are quieted and become more still.",
"[139] And so the prophet says in another passage, “Whatsoever goeth upon the belly, and whatsoever goeth all the time upon four feet, which hath many feet, is unclean” (Lev. 11:42). The lover of pleasure answers to this description, always going after the belly and the pleasures of the adjoining parts. With that which creepeth after the belly he has associated that which walketh upon four feet; and quite naturally; for the passions that come under the head of those in the realm of pleasure are four in number, as has been mentioned in a treatise specially devoted to that subject. Accordingly a man is unclean who is given up to the one thing, pleasure, as well as the man who has all four passions for his stay.",
"[140] Now that we have said this, note once more how a perfect man differs from one making gradual progress. We have already discovered the perfect man cutting out the seat of anger entirely from the wrangling soul, and so rendering it gentle and submissive and peaceable, and cheerfully ready to face every demand both in act and word; while the man of gradual improvement was found powerless to cut away the passion, for the breast is Aaron’s portion, but schooling it by well-tested speech, attended by two virtues, clearness and truth."
],
[
"In a corresponding manner we shall now find Moses, the wise man, in his perfection, scouring away and shaking off pleasures, but the man of gradual improvement not so treating pleasure in its entirety, but welcoming simple and unavoidable pleasure, while declining that which is excessive and overelaborate in the way of delicacies.",
"[141] For in the case of Moses he uses this language: “And he washed with water the belly and the feet of the whole burnt-offering” (Lev. 9:14). It is excellently said; for the wise man consecrates his whole soul as being worthy to be offered to God, owing to its freedom from voluntary or involuntary blemish; and, being in this condition, he washes out and bathes away and scours off the whole belly and the pleasures that it and the parts adjoining it yield, not so dealing with some part of it, but filled with such contempt for the whole, that he rejects even necessary food and drink, being fed by the contemplation of things divine.",
"[142] And therefore witness is borne to him in another place also: “for forty days he ate no bread and drank no water” (Exod. 34:28), when he was in the holy mount and listened to the divine communications made by God as He declared His laws. But not only does he renounce the whole belly, but with it he scours away the feet, that is, the supports of pleasure; but the things that create pleasure are its supports,",
"[143] for the man of gradual improvement is said to wash the inwards and the feet (Lev. 1:9), not the whole belly: for he is not sufficient to thrust from him pleasure in its completeness, but is content if he can get rid of its inwards, that is, of the delicacies, produced by the elaborate skill of dainty cooks and confectioners, of which we are told by the epicures that they serve, if we may so speak, as a means of giving succulence to the principal pleasures."
],
[
"[144] He lays further stress upon the mere moderating of passion in the man of gradual advance, by representing the wise man as declining without any bidding all the pleasures of the belly, while the man of gradual advance acts under orders; for in the wise man’s case what is said is “he washed with water the belly and the feet” (Lev. 9:14), spontaneously and unbidden, but in the case of the priests it is on this wise: “the inwards and the feet,” not “they washed” but “they shall wash” (Lev. 1:9). This shows great exactness. For it must needs be that while the perfect man moves of himself towards virtuous actions, the man who is practising should do so with the aid of reason which gives him guidance what he should do, obedience to whose directions is a noble thing.",
"[145] We must not fail to notice that Moses, when he refuses the entire belly, that is the filling of his stomach, practically renounces the other passions too. The lawgiver uses one portion to give from it a clear presentation of the whole; and having mentioned the most essential matter, virtually treats of the rest about which he has been silent."
],
[
"For the filling of the belly is the most essential matter, and the foundation, so to speak, of the other passions. None of them, as we see, can take shape unless it have the belly to support it, for nature has made the belly the basis of all things.",
"[146] Hence it comes that when Leah’s sons, the good things of the soul, had been born before Jacob’s other sons, and had ceased with Judah, who is “praise” (Gen. 29:35), God, being about to create representatives of the forward striving of the body as well, causes Bilhah, Rachel’s handmaid, to bear children even before her mistress. Now Bilhah is “swallowing.” For the prophet knew that no part or organ of the body can subsist without “swallowing” and the belly, but this holds sway and sovereignty over all the body and over all the material frame whose concern is with mere living.",
"[147] Do not let any subtle point escape your notice, for you will not find a single pointless expression. Moses removes the breast; the belly he does not remove, but washes (Lev. 8:29, 9:14). Why is this? Because the perfect wise man can, by wholly renouncing anger, utterly avert and drive off the uprising of the spirited element in him, but to exscind the belly he is powerless. Even the man of fewest needs who scorns the very necessaries of life and trains himself in abstinence from them, is forced by nature to take necessary food and drink. Let him therefore wash the belly and cleanse it from superfluous and unclean provisions; for this too is a sufficiently great gift from God to the lover of virtue."
],
[
"[148] It is owing to this that when treating of the soul suspected of adultery he says (Num. 5:27), that if it have forsaken the right principle, which is the lawful husband, and be discovered to have had intercourse with soul-defiling passion, “it will swell up in the belly,” which signified that it will have ever unfilled and insatiable the pleasures and desires of the belly, and will never cease to be insatiate owing to gross stupidity, but, with a countless throng of them pouring in, will keep its passion for ever.",
"[149] To cite an instance, I know many brought to such disaster over the craving of the belly, that after resorting to emetics they fly back again to strong drink and all the rest. For the craving of the soul that is out of control is not restricted as the bodily organs are by their size. These are vessels of a fixed capacity admitting nothing that exceeds it, but ejecting all that is superfluous. Desire is never filled up, but continues always thirsty and in want of more.",
"[150] This explains “the breaking up of the thigh,” being added as the sequel to the swelling of the belly. For then it is that the soul experiences the breaking up of the right principle, the principle that is the seed whence all noble things are begotten. We see this from the words that follow, “If she have not been defiled and be pure, she shall be free and shall conceive seed” (Numb. 5:28), if she have not been defiled by passion, but have been chaste and faithful to her lawful husband, the princely and wholesome principle, she will have a soul fruitful and productive, yielding the offspring of sound sense and righteousness and all excellence."
],
[
"[151] Is it possible, then, that we, tied as we are to a body, should not comply with bodily requirements? How can it be possible? But look. The sacred guide tells the man who feels the pressure of bodily necessity the way to deal with it, namely, to comply with it only so far as he is actually obliged to do so. First he says, “Let there be to thee a place outside the camp” (Deut. 23:12), meaning by “the camp” virtue, in which the soul has pitched its camp. For good sense and indulgence of a bodily necessity cannot occupy the same quarters.",
"[152] Next he says, “Thou shalt go forth there without.” Why go forth? Because the soul cannot have dealings with any of the body’s friends while it abides with good sense and spends its days in the house of wisdom. For then it is nourished by food more divine, which it finds in all knowledge, and for the sake of this it actually disregards the flesh. For when it has gone forth from the sacred dwellings of virtue, it is then that it turns to material things which treat the body ill and weigh it down. How then shall I deal with them?",
"[153] “Let there be to thee, he says, a shovel upon thy girdle, and thou shalt dig with it” (Deut. 23:13), that is to say, reason shall be upon the passion digging it out, tucking it up, not suffering it to clothe thee about. For God would have us gird up our passions, not wear them flowing and loose.",
"[154] So at the crossing over from them, which is called Passover, He bids that their “loins should be girded up” (Exod. 12:11), in other words that their desires should be restrained. Let a shovel then, that is, reason, follow the passion, preventing it from spreading abroad, for by this means we shall comply only with demands which are urgent, but from all that goes beyond this we shall abstain."
],
[
"[155] When we are present at entertainments and are about to take and enjoy the viands provided, if we take our places at table with reason like some weapon to parry blows, we shall neither gorge ourselves with food beyond measure like cormorants, nor overdosed with unlimited strong drink shall we succumb to intoxication with its resultant foolish talk; for reason will curb and bridle the impetuous rush of the passion.",
"[156] I, to mention myself in proof of what I say, know by frequent experience how true it is. Many a time have I been present at a gathering with little that was sociable about it or at costly suppers. When I did not arrive with reason for my companion, I found myself the slave of the enjoyments provided, at the mercy of harsh masters, entertainments for eye and ear and all that brings pleasure by way of taste or smell. But whenever I arrive with convincing reason at my side, I find myself a master not a slave, and, putting forth all my strength, win the noble victory of endurance and self-mastery, in a vigorous and pertinacious encounter with everything that excites the unruly desires.",
"[157] “Thou shalt dig,” you see he says, “with the shovel” (Deut. 23:13), that is, thou shalt lay bare and distinguish by means of reason, the nature which each passion possesses, eating, drinking, sexual indulgence, that thou mayest discern them and learn the truth about them. For then shalt thou know that in none of these is there the thing which is good, but that which is useful only and necessary.",
"[158] “And bringing the shovel to bear on it then shalt thou cover thine unseemliness” (ibid.). ’Tis well said. Bring then, O soul, reason to bear on all things, wherewith all unseemliness of flesh and passion is covered, and hidden, and put out of sight. For all that is unaccompanied by reason is unsightly, just as that with which reason is present is comely. We get this result.",
"[159] The lover of pleasure moves on the belly; the perfect man washes out the entire belly; the man who is making gradual progress washes out the contents of the belly, the man who is just beginning his training will go forth without, when he intends to curb passion by bringing reason (figuratively called a shovel) to bear upon the demands of the belly."
],
[
"[160] There is an excellent point in the next words too: “Thou shalt go upon thy breast and thy belly” (Gen. 3:14). For pleasure does not belong to the category of things becalmed and stationary, but to that of things moving and full of turmoil. For as the flame is in movement, so, not unlike a blazing thing, passion moving in the soul does not suffer it to be calm. Thus the prophet does not agree with those who say that pleasure is tranquil. For stillness pertains to a stone and a log and to everything without life, but it is alien to pleasure. For pleasure hankers after an excitement that is actually convulsive, and in some people so far from its being an experience of tranquillity, it is an indulgence in intense and violent movement."
],
[
"[161] The sentence “Earth shalt thou eat all the days of thy life” (Gen. 3:14) is an apt one. For the food of the body brings pleasures of earth; and fitly so, it would seem. For there are two things of which we consist, soul and body. The body, then, has been formed out of earth, but the soul is of the upper air, a particle detached from the Deity: “for God breathed into his face a breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7). It is in accordance with reason, therefore, that the body fashioned out of earth has food akin to it which earth yields, while the soul being a portion of an ethereal nature has on the contrary ethereal and divine food; for it is fed by knowledge in its various forms and not by meat and drink, of which the body stands in need."
],
[
"[162] That the food of the soul is not earthly but heavenly, we shall find abundant evidence in the Sacred Word. “Behold I rain upon you bread out of heaven, and the people shall go out and they shall gather the day’s portion for a day, that I may prove them whether they will walk by My law or not” (Exod. 16:4). You see that the soul is fed not with things of earth that decay, but with such words as God shall have poured like rain out of that lofty and pure region of life to which the prophet has given the title of “heaven.” To proceed.",
"[163] The people, and all that goes to make the soul, is to go out and gather and make a beginning of knowledge, not all at once but “the day’s portion for a day.” For to begin with it will be unable to contain all at once the abundant wealth of the gracious gifts of God, but will be overwhelmed by them as by the rush of a torrent. In the second place it is better, when we have received the good things sufficient of themselves as duly measured out to us, to think of God as Dispenser of those that still remain. He that would fain have all at once earns for himself lack of hope and trust, as well as great lack of sense.",
"[164] He lacks hope if he expects that now only but not in the future also will God shower on him good things; he lacks faith, if he has no belief that both in the present and always the good gifts of God are lavishly bestowed on those worthy of them; he lacks sense, if he imagines that he will be, though God will it not, a sufficient guardian of what he has gathered together; for the mind that vaingloriously ascribes to itself sureness and security has many a time been rendered by a slight turn of the scale a feeble and insecure guardian of all that it looked on as in its safe-keeping."
],
[
"[165] Gather together, therefore, O soul, what is adequate of itself and suitable, and neither more than sufficient so as to be excessive, nor on the other hand less so as to fall short, that dealing in right measures thou mayest do no wrong. For thou art required also, when making it thy study to cross over from the passions and when sacrificing the Passover, to take the forward step, whose symbol is the lamb, not without measure, for he says “each man shall reckon what suffices for him as a lamb” (Exod. 12:4).",
"[166] Both in the case of manna then, and in the case of every boon which God confers upon our race, it is good to take what is fixed by strict measure and reckoning and not that which is above and beyond us; for to do this is to be over-reaching. Let the soul, then, gather the day’s portion for a day (Exod. 16:4), that it may declare not itself but the bountiful God guardian of the good things."
],
[
"[167] And the reason for the injunction we are considering seems to me to be this. The day is a symbol of light, and the light of the soul is training. Many, then, have acquired the lights in the soul for night and darkness, not for day and light; all elementary lessons for example, and what is called school-learning and philosophy itself when pursued with no motive higher than parading their superiority, or from desire of an office under our rulers. But the man of worthy aims sets himself to acquire day for the sake of day, light for the sake of light, the beautiful for the sake of the beautiful alone, not for the sake of something else. And this is why he goes on with the words: “that I may prove them whether they will walk in My law or no” (Exod. 16:4); for this is the divine law, to value excellence for its own sake.",
"[168] The right principle, therefore, tests all aspirants as one does a coin, to see whether they have been debased in that they refer the soul’s good to something external, or whether, as tried and approved men, they distinguish and guard this treasure as belonging to thought and mind alone. Such men have the privilege of being fed not with earthly things but with the heavenly forms of knowledge."
],
[
"[169] He gives a further elucidation of this point, when he says, “in the early morning when the dew ceased it appeared all round the camp, and lo! upon the face of the wilderness a fine thing as it were coriander seed, white like hoar-frost on the ground. And when they saw it, they said one to another, ‘What is this?’ for they knew not what it was. And Moses said unto them, ‘This bread, which the Lord hath given us to eat, is this word, which the Lord hath prescribed’ ” (Exod. 16:13 ff.). You see of what sort the soul’s food is. It is a word of God, continuous, resembling dew, embracing all the soul and leaving no portion without part in itself. But not everywhere does this word show itself, but on the wilderness of passions and wickednesses, and it is fine and delicate both to conceive and be conceived, and surpassingly clear and transparent to behold, and it is as it were coriander seed. Tillers of the soil say that if you cut a coriander seed and divide it into countless pieces, each of the portions into which you cut it, if sown, grows exactly as the whole seed could have done. Such too is the word of God, able to confer benefits both as a whole and by means of every part, yes any part you light upon.",
"It is possible that a resemblance between the word of God and the pupil of the eye, is also intended.",
"[170] For as the pupil of the eye is a very small part of it and sees the zones of the universe in their completeness, and the boundless ocean, and the vast expanse of air and of the infinite heaven, all that is bounded by the rising and the setting sun, so the word of God also has keenest sight, and is able to survey all things, … wherewith they shall clearly see all that is worth beholding.",
"[171] Accordingly it is also white; for what could be brighter or more far-shining than the divine word, by communion with which even other things dispel their mist and their gloom, eagerly desiring to become sharers in the light of the soul?"
],
[
"[172] An affection peculiar to it is produced by this word. When it has summoned the soul to itself, it brings about a congealment in all that part of us that is earthly, bodily, sense-bound; and this accounts for the words “as it were hoar-frost on the earth” (Exod. 16:14). For we also find that when he that sees God is studying flight from the passions, the waves become fixed as if frozen, that is to say the rush and growth and vainglory of the passions; “for the waves became solid in the midst of the sea” (Exod. 15:8), in order that he that seeth Him that IS might pass beyond passion.",
"[173] The souls, therefore, that have indeed already had experience of the word, but are not able to answer the question, inquire one of another “What is it?” (Exod. 16:15). For it often happens that on finding a sweet taste in our mouths we are uncertain as to the flavour which has given rise to it, and that when we catch the scent of pleasant odours we do not know what they are. In the same way then the soul, when it has been gladdened, is often unable to say what the thing that gladdens it is. But it is taught by the hierophant and prophet Moses: he will tell it, This bread (ibid.) is the food which God hath given to the soul, for it to feed on His own utterance and His own word; for this bread, which He hath given us to eat, is “this word.”"
],
[
"[174] He says in Deuteronomy also: “And He afflicted thee and made thee weak by hunger, and fed thee with manna, which thy fathers knew not, that He might proclaim to thee, that not on bread alone shall man live, but on every word that goeth forth through the mouth of God” (Deut. 8:3). This afflicting is propitiation; for on the tenth day also by afflicting our souls He makes propitiation (Lev. 16:30). For when we are being deprived of pleasant things, we think we are being afflicted, but in reality thereby we have God propitious to us.",
"[175] He occasions famine also to us, not a famine of virtue, but a famine of the creations of passion and wickedness. We have a proof of this in His feeding us with His own most “generic” word; for “manna” means “something,” and this is the most generic of all terms. And the word of God is above all the world, and is eldest and most all-embracing of created things. This word “the fathers knew not.” This does not mean the real forefathers, but those whose hair was grey from age who said, “Let us appoint a leader and let us return to Egypt,” that is, “to passion” (Numb. 14:4).",
"[176] Let God then proclaim to the soul, “Not on bread only shall men live, but on every utterance that goeth forth through the mouth of God,” that is to say he shall be fed both by all the word and by a part of it; for the mouth is a symbol of utterance or speech, and the statement is a part of speech. The soul of the most perfect is fed by the word as a whole; we may well be content should we be fed even by a portion of it."
],
[
"[177] Now those of whom we have been speaking pray to be fed with the word of God. But Jacob, looking even higher than the word, says that he is fed by God Himself. He speaks on this wise: “The God to Whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac were well-pleasing, the God Who feedeth me from my youth up unto this day, the Angel who delivereth me out of all my ills, bless these boys” (Gen. 48:15 f.). How beautiful is his tone and temper! He looks on God as feeding him, not His Word; but the Angel, who is the Word, as healer of ills.",
"[178] This is the language of a true philosopher. He thinks it meet and right that He that IS should Himself in His own Person give the principal boons, while His Angels and Words give the secondary gifts; and secondary are such as involve riddance from ills. For this reason, I think, God bestows health in the simplest sense, preceded by no illness in our bodies, by Himself only, but health that comes by way of escape from illness He bestows both through medical science and through the physician’s skill, letting both knowledge and practitioner enjoy the credit of healing, though it is He Himself that heals alike by these means and without them. Now His mode of dealing is the same in the case of the soul. The good things, the food, He Himself bestows with His own hand, but by the agency of Angels and Words such as involve riddance of ills."
],
[
"[179] In offering this prayer Jacob passed a censure on Joseph the statesman, who had ventured to say “I will nourish thee there.” His words were, “Make haste and go up to my father and say to him ‘thus saith’ ” and so on, and then “come down to me and tarry not,” finishing with “and I will nourish thee there, for there shall be famine for five years” (Gen. 45:9, 11). So Jacob at once chides and instructs the man wise in his own conceit when he says: “You must know, fine Sir, that the foods which nourish the soul are various forms of knowledge, and that these are not bestowed by the word of bodily sense but by God. He who reared me from youth and early prime to full-grown manhood (cf. Gen. 48:15) will Himself satisfy my needs.”",
"[180] Joseph therefore went through the same experience as his mother Rachel. She too imagined that a created being has some power, for she says “Give me children” (Gen. 30:1). But the Supplanter will find fault with her and say, ‘Thou hast greatly erred, for I am not in the place of God, who alone hath power to open the wombs of souls, and to sow virtues in them, and to make them pregnant with noble things, and to give birth to them. Take note of Leah thy sister, and thou wilt find her receiving seed and offspring out of no created being but by God’s own gift’; “for the Lord, when he saw that Leah was hated, opened her womb, but Rachel was barren” (Gen. 29:31).",
"[181] But note again the delicate subtilty here. God opens the wombs of virtue, sowing in them noble doings, but the womb, after receiving virtue at God’s hand, does not bear to God—for He that IS is in need of no one—but bears sons to me Jacob; for it may well be that it was for my sake, not for His own sake that God sowed seed in virtue. Accordingly One is found to be husband to Leah, who is passed over in silence, and another to be father of the children born of Leah. For He that openeth the womb is husband, but father of the children is he to whom she is said to bear these."
],
[
"[182] “And I will put enmity between thee and the woman” (Gen. 3:15). In reality pleasure is a foe to sense, albeit thought by some to be a close friend. But just as no one would call the flatterer a comrade, since flattery is friendship diseased, and no one would say that the courtesan is kindly to her lover, since her tenderness is not for him but for his presents, so when you put pleasure to the test you will find that she is disguised under a counterfeit semblance of friendship with sense.",
"[183] You know how when we have surfeited ourselves with pleasure, our organs of sense relax their vigour. Or do you not observe men intoxicated with wine or love, how seeing they do not see and hearing they do not hear and how they are deprived of the power to exercise their other senses with any precision? It sometimes happens that owing to much overeating the vigour of all the senses is relaxed as sleep overtakes the man. Indeed sleep got its name from this relaxing of the senses. For at such a time the organ of perception grows slack, just as when we wake up its intensity is heightened, and the impressions which we receive from without are no longer dull, but are clear and ringing, and carry the sound all the way to the mind; for the mind has to become cognizant of what is without by receiving a blow, and so to gain a vivid impression of it."
],
[
"[184] Observe that the words are not “I will set enmity for thee and the woman,” but “between thee and the woman.” Now why is it put so? Because it is over that which is between pleasure and sense, over that which lies in their boundary so to speak, that the warfare of these two arises. But what is between them both are drinkables, eatables, what is adapted to all such purposes, each one of them being both an object of sense and a thing productive of pleasure. When pleasure, therefore, has indulged immoderately in these, it forthwith inflicts injury on sense.",
"[185] The expression again “between thy seed and her seed” is full of philosophical truth: for every seed is a starting-point of existence, but the starting-point of pleasure is passion, an irrational impulse, that of sense the mind; for from the mind as from a fountain the faculties of sense flow forth and extend. This is certainly taught by Moses, the holy prophet, who says that the woman was fashioned out of Adam, sense.(that is) out of mind. What pleasure, then, is to sense, that passion is to mind. Since, therefore, the former pair are mutually hostile, the latter must also be at war with each other."
],
[
"[186] And their warfare is patent. When mind is victorious, devoting itself to immaterial things its proper object, passion quits the scene: and on the other hand, when passion has won an evil victory, mind gives in, being prevented from giving heed to itself and to all its own occupations. Moses elsewhere says, “Whenever Moses lifted up his hands, Israel prevailed, but when he dropped them, Amalek prevailed” (Exod. 17:11), showing that when the mind lifts itself up away from mortal things and is borne aloft, that which sees God, which is Israel, gains strength, but when it has lowered its special powers and grown weak, immediately passion, named “Amalek,” which means “a people licking out,” will become strong: for in very deed it eats up the whole soul and licks it out, leaving behind in it no seed or spark of virtue.",
"[187] In keeping with this are the words “Amalek the first of the nations” (Numb. 24:20), because passion rules and lords it over promiscuous hordes that have drifted together without purpose or meaning. Through passion all the war of the soul is fanned into flame, and so God promises to minds to which He vouchsafes the gift of peace, that He will blot out “the memorial of Amalek from under heaven” (Exod. 17:14)."
],
[
"[188] The sentence “he shall watch thy head, and thou shalt watch his heel” (Gen. 3:15) is a barbarism, but has a perfectly correct meaning. It is addressed to the serpent concerning the woman, but the woman is not “he” but “she.” What is to be said then? He has left off speaking about the woman and passed on to her seed and origin; but the mind is the origin of sense; and mind is masculine, in speaking of which we should use the pronouns “he” and “his” and so on. Rightly, then, is it said to Pleasure, “the Mind shall watch thy chief and principal doctrine, and thou shalt watch it, the Mind, as it acts and rests upon its accepted tenets.” This basing of conduct and principle on tenets is naturally represented by the word “heels.”"
],
[
"[189] The word “shall watch” has two meanings, one like “shall guard and preserve,” the other equivalent to “shall watch for to destroy.” Now the mind must needs be either bad or good. The foolish mind will show itself a guardian and steward of pleasure, seeing that its delight is in pleasure; but the good mind will prove its enemy, watching eagerly for the moment when it shall set upon it and achieve its utter destruction. And mark this: Pleasure on the other hand watches over and preserves the procedure of the foolish mind, but endeavours to break up and destroy the way of life of the wise mind, holding that the latter is planning her ruin, while the former is devising the best means to preserve her.",
"[190] But in spite of her expecting to throw and cheat the good mind, she shall herself be thrown by Jacob who is practised in wrestling, not the bodily wrestling but that in which the soul engages against dispositions that are her antagonists, fighting as she does with passions and wickednesses. And Jacob shall not let go the heel of his adversary, passion, till it has given in, and acknowledged that it has been twice thrown and vanquished, both in the matter of the birthright and in the blessing. For says Esau, “Rightly was his name called Jacob, for he hath supplanted me twice already; then he took my birthright, and now he has taken my blessing” (Gen. 27:36).",
"[191] The bad man regards bodily things as more worshipful, the good man the things of the soul, as they are in reality, not in age but in value and dignity more worshipful, and really first, as is a magistrate in a city; and it is the soul that is sovereign over our composite being."
],
[
"[192] He therefore that is first in virtue has received the things that are first, which indeed were his portion; for he has received the blessing also accompanied by perfect prayers. But vainly deeming himself wise is he who says, “My blessings and my birthright hath he taken”: not thine, man, does he take, but those which are opposite to thine; for those which are thine have been accounted meet for slavery, but his for lordship.",
"[193] And if thou shalt consent to become a slave of the wise one, thou shalt cast from thee ignorance and boorishness, plagues of the soul, and be partaker of admonition and correction. For in his prayer thy father says to thee, “To thy brother shalt thou be a slave” (Gen. 27:40); but not now shall this be, for he will not put up with thy restiveness, but when thou shalt have loosed the yoke from thy neck” (ibid.), casting from thee vaunting and insolence which thou didst acquire by yoking thyself to a chariot of passions, of which folly was the driver.",
"[194] Now indeed thou art a slave of the harsh and insufferable masters within thee, to whom it is a fixed law to set no one free. But if thou escape and abandon these, a master to whom his slaves are dear shall welcome thee, holding out bright hopes of liberty and shall not give thee up again to thy former masters. For he has learned from Moses a lesson and rule inviolable, “that a man deliver not up to his master a servant who has been handed over to him by the Lord; for he shall dwell with him in whatever place it liketh him best” (Deut. 23:15 f.)."
],
[
"[195] But so long as thou hast not run away, but art still governed by the bit and bridle of thine old masters, thou art unworthy to be slave to a wise man. Thou affordest most sure proof of a servile character unworthy of a free man by saying “my birthright and my blessings” (Gen. 27:36); for these utterances are those of men who are sunk in boundless ignorance, seeing that to speak of “Mine” befits God only, for all things are in reality the property of Him alone.",
"[196] For this reason He shall also testify, when he says, “Thou shalt preserve My gifts, My grants, My fruits” (Numb. 28:2), that “gifts” excel “grants.” For the term “gifts” brings out the sense of great and perfect boons, which God bestows upon the perfect; “grants” have shrunk to a very meagre compass: these are for those of natural excellence who practise and make progress.",
"[197] Because this is so, Abraham also in harmony with the will of God retains the property which had come to him from God, but gets rid of the horses of the king of Sodom (Gen. 14:21 ff.), as also of the possessions of the concubines. Moses, moreover, thinks fit to judge the weightiest cases and issues, but the investigation of the insignificant questions he commits to inferior officers (cf. Exod. 18:26).",
"[198] Whoever dares to say that anything is his own will thereby have registered himself a slave in perpetuity, even as the man who says “I have come to love my master and my wife and my children: I decline to go away free” (Exod. 21:5). It is well that he acknowledged himself a slave; for how can the man be other than a slave who says “mine is the master, even mind,” that is its own master and absolute lord; “mine also is sense-perception,” a means of judging material forms that is dependent upon none; “mine also are the offspring of these,” Mind’s proper objects being Mind’s offspring, and sensible objects the offspring of sense; “for in my power it is to exercise mind and to exercise the senses.”",
"[199] But let him not only give evidence against himself. Let him be condemned also by God, and submit to a slavery eternal and inexorable when God bids his ear to be pierced, in order that it may not admit words of virtue, and bids him be slave for ever to Mind and to Sense, bad and pitiless masters."
],
[
"[200] And to the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy groaning” (Gen. 3:16). Woman, who is, as we have seen, Sense, is the subject of an experience peculiarly her own, namely grief, which is called “sorrow”; for there is a quarter of our being in which gladness takes rise, and in that same quarter does grief also take rise: but it is through the senses that we feel gladness, so that of necessity we feel grief also through them. But the excellent and cleansed Mind grieves least, for the senses assail him least. But the foolish Mind experiences grief abundantly, having no antidote in the soul, with which to repel the deadly ills that come from the senses and their objects.",
"[201] The athlete and the slave take a beating in different ways, the one submissively giving in and yielding to the stripes, while the athlete opposes and withstands and shakes off the blows that are falling upon him. You crop a man in one way, a (sheep’s) fleece in another. The sheep has the role of mere passivity, whereas, in the man’s case, there is not only an active reciprocity, but his very submission is, so to speak, also reciprocal, as he adapts his position and posture to the process of being cropped.",
"[202] Just in the same way the man who does not reason yields to another as slaves do, and submits to sorrows as intolerable mistresses, and is powerless to look them in the face, not able to draw forth free and manly reasonings, and accordingly a vast mass of painful experiences pours in upon him through the senses. The man of knowledge on the contrary, stepping out like an athlete to meet all grievous things with strength and robust vigour, blows a counter-blast to them, so that he is not wounded by them, but regards each of them with absolute indifference; and, methinks, he might with youthful spirit address to grief the proud vaunt in the play, saying:",
"Burn me, consume my flesh, drink my dark blood,
Take fill of me; for sooner shall the stars
Go ’neath the earth, and earth go up to sky,
Than thou shalt from these lips hear fawning word."
],
[
"[203] Now as for sense God has appointed all woeful things in larger measure, so on the earnest soul has He bestowed without stint an abundance of good things. For example in the case of perfect Abraham He speaks in this wise: “By Myself I have sworn, saith the Lord, for Whose sake thou hast done this thing, and on My account hast not spared thy son, thine only son, verily blessing will I bless thee, and multiplying will I multiply thy seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is by the sea shore” (Gen. 22:16 f.). Good is it both that He confirmed the promise by an oath, and that He did so by an oath befitting God; you mark that God swears not by some other thing, for nothing is higher than He, but by Himself, who is best of all things.",
"[204] Some have said, that it was inappropriate for Him to swear; for an oath is added to assist faith, and only God and one who is God’s friend is faithful, even as Moses is said to have been found “faithful in all His house” (Numb. 12:7). Moreover, the very words of God are oaths and laws of God and most sacred ordinances; and a proof of His sure strength is that whatever He saith cometh to pass, and this is specially characteristic of an oath. It would seem to be a corollary from this that all God’s words are oaths receiving confirmation by accomplishment in act."
],
[
"[205] They say indeed that an oath is a calling God to witness to a point which is disputed; so if it is God that swears, He bears witness to Himself, which is absurd, for he that bears the witness must needs be a different person from him on whose behalf it is borne. What then must we say? First that there is nothing amiss in God bearing witness to Himself. For who else would be capable of bearing witness to Him? Secondly He Himself is to Himself all that is most precious, kinsman, intimate, friend, virtue, happiness, blessedness, knowledge, understanding, beginning, end, whole, everything, judge, decision, counsel, law, process, sovereignty.",
"[206] Besides if we once take “by Myself have I sworn” in the right way, we shall quit this excessive quibbling. Probably then the truth of the matter is something like this. Nothing that can give assurance can give positive assurance touching God, for to none has He shown His nature, but He has rendered it invisible to our whole race. Who can assert of the First Cause either that It is without body or that It is a body, that It is of such a kind or that It is of no kind? In a word who can make any positive assertion concerning His essence or quality or state or movement? Nay He alone shall affirm anything regarding Himself since He alone has unerringly exact knowledge of His own nature.",
"[207] God alone therefore is the strongest security first for Himself, and in the next place for His deeds also, so that He naturally swore by Himself when giving assurance as to Himself, a thing impossible for another than He.",
"It follows that men who say that they swear by God should be considered actually impious; for naturally no one swears by Him, seeing that he is unable to possess knowledge regarding His nature. No, we may be content if we are able to swear by His Name, which means (as we have seen) the interpreting word. For this must be God for us the imperfect folk, but, as for the wise and perfect, the primal Being is their God.",
"[208] Moses too, let us observe, filled with wonder at the transcendency of the Uncreate, says, “and thou shalt swear by His Name” (Deut. 6:13), not “by Him,” for it is enough for the created being that he should be accredited and have witness borne to him by the Divine word: but let God be His own most sure guarantee and evidence."
],
[
"[209] The words, “for Whose sake thou hast done this thing” (Gen. 22:16) are a token of piety; for it is pious to do all things for the sake of God only. That is why we are unsparing of that only child of virtue, even the happiness we have attained, surrendering it to the Creator, deeming such offspring meet to be reckoned a possession of God, but not of any created being. Beautifully significant are the words, “blessing I will bless” (ibid. 17);",
"[210] for there are some people who do many things that are of the nature of benedictions, when their underlying character is not fraught with blessing. Why, even the bad man does some things that it is his duty to do without acting from a dutiful character. Yes, and the drunken man and the madman now and then utter sober words and do sober deeds, but not from a sober mind; and those who are still quite young children not from a fixedly rational state (for nature has not yet trained them to be rational), do and say many things that rational men do and say. But the lawgiver wishes the wise man to be accounted a man of benediction not as the outcome of a passing mood, or of being easily led by others, or as though by chance, but as the result of a fixed state and disposition charged with benediction."
],
[
"[211] To return to our text. It was not enough for ill-starred sense to experience sorrows in large measure, it must indulge in “groaning” also. Groaning is intense and excessive sorrow. For we often grieve without groaning; but when we groan over them, we let our sorrows bring on us a very storm of trouble and distress. Now groaning is of two kinds. One kind is found in men who desire and long for opportunities of wrongdoing and cannot get them, and this a bad kind. Another kind is that which is seen in those who repent and are vexed over their defection in former days and cry “Hapless we, how long a time had we, as is now evident, been ill all unaware of it with the illness of folly and senselessness and unrighteousness in our conduct.”",
"[212] But this does not come about unless the king of Egypt, the godless and pleasure-loving disposition, shall have met his end and died out of the soul: “for after those many days the king of Egypt died.” Then straightway when wickedness has died, he that seeth God groans over his own failure, “for the children of Israel groaned by reason of their material and Egyptian works” (Exod. 2:23). For while the king and pleasure-loving temper is alive in us it induces the soul to rejoice over the sins it is committing, but when he has died, it groans.",
"[213] And thus it is that it cries out to the Master beseeching that it may turn no more nor receive its consummation imperfectly. For many souls have desired to repent and not been permitted by God to do so, but have gone away backward as though drawn by a change of current. This befell Lot’s wife, who became stone owing to her being enamoured of Sodom and reverting to the characters that had been overthrown by God."
],
[
"[214] Now, however, he says “their cry ascended to God” (Exod. 2:23), bearing witness by so saying to the grace of the existent One; for had He not powerfully called to Himself the suppliant word, it would not have ascended, that is, it would not have been caused to mount, and have grown in volume and begun to soar on high after escaping from the baseness of the things of the earth. Wherefore in the sequel He says, “Behold, the cry of the children of Israel hath come to Me” (Exod. 3:9).",
"[215] Very beautiful is it that the entreaty reached as far as God: but it would not have reached so far, but for the kindness of Him that called. Some souls He anticipates and goes forth to meet: “I will come to thee and will bless thee” (Exod. 20:24). Thou seest how great is the grace of the First Cause, as He is beforehand with our hesitation, and anticipates and meets us, bringing unlimited gain to the soul. And what is said is a divine intimation full of instruction. For if a thought of God come into the mind, He forthwith blesses it and heals all its sicknesses.",
"[216] Sense, however, is always sorrowing and groaning, and with pangs and incurable pain bringing forth perception, as God Himself says, “In sorrow shalt thou bring forth children” (Gen. 3:16); sight brings forth seeing, the ear hearing, taste tasting, in a word sense perceiving: but not without sore distress to the foolish one does she do each of these things, for to such an one pain is caused as he sees and hears and tastes and smells and generally exercises any sense."
],
[
"[217] On the other hand, you will find virtue full of exceeding joy at her pregnancy, and the good man begetting with laughter and a glad heart, and the offspring of them both laughter itself. That the wise man begets with joy not sorrow, the Divine word shall testify in these words, “God said to Abraham, Sarai thy wife shall not be called Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name: I will bless her and will give thee a child of her” (Gen. 17:15 f.); then he says further, “And Abraham fell on his face and laughed and said, Shall he that is a hundred years old have a son, and shall Sarah who is ninety years old bear?” (ibid. 17).",
"[218] Abraham evidently rejoices and laughs, because he is to beget Isaac (who is), Happiness; and Sarah, who is Virtue, laughs also. The same book shall witness to this when it says, “It ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women, and she laughed in her mind and said, Not yet hath happiness befallen me till now but my Lord (the divine Word) is greater (Gen. 18:11 f.), to whom this must needs belong and whom I must believe when he promises good.” Moreover, the offspring is laughter and joy, for that is what “Isaac” means. Let sense-perception therefore be sorrowful, but let virtue always rejoice:",
"[219] for again when Happiness has been born she says with pride “the Lord hath made laughter for me; for whosoever shall hear of it will rejoice with me” (Gen. 21:6). Therefore, O ye initiate, open your ears wide and take in holiest teachings. The “laughter” is joy, and “made” is equivalent to “beget,” so that what is said is of this kind, the Lord begat Isaac; for He is Himself Father of the perfect nature, sowing and begetting happiness in men’s souls."
],
[
"[220] “And to thy husband,” He says, “shall be thy resort” (Gen. 3:16). Sense has two husbands, the one lawful, the other a seducer. After the fashion of a seducing husband the thing seen acts on the sight, the sound on the hearing, the flavour on the palate, and so with the rest one by one. And these turn away and invite to themselves the irrational sense and get the mastery of it and domineer over it. Beauty enslaves the sight, the pleasant savour the palate, and the several objects of sense enslave the sense corresponding to them.",
"[221] Look at that glutton, what a slave he is to the dishes prepared by the skill of cooks and confectioners. Mark that one wild with excitement over music, how he is swayed and held spellbound by harp or flute or it may be by a good singer. But to sense that has been turned from all else to Mind, her lawful husband, vast benefit befalls."
],
[
"[222] Let us observe in the next place how he discourses respecting Mind itself when acted upon in violation of the right principle. “To Adam God said, ‘Because thou hast listened to the voice of thy wife, and hast eaten of the tree, of which I commanded thee not to eat [of it thou hast eaten], cursed is the ground in respect of thy labours’ ” (Gen. 3:17). Most profitless is it that Mind should listen to Sense-perception, and not Sense-perception to Mind: for it is always right that the superior should rule and the inferior be ruled;",
"[223] and Mind is superior to Sense-perception. When the charioteer is in command and guides the horses with the reins, the chariot goes the way he wishes, but if the horses have become unruly and got the upper hand, it has often happened that the charioteer has been dragged down and that the horses have been precipitated into a ditch by the violence of their motion, and that there is a general disaster. A ship, again, keeps to her straight course, when the helmsman grasping the tiller steers accordingly, but capsizes when a contrary wind has sprung up over the sea, and the surge has settled in it.",
"[224] Just so, when Mind, the charioteer or helmsman of the soul, rules the whole living being as a governor does a city, the life holds a straight course, but when irrational sense gains the chief place, a terrible confusion overtakes it, just as when slaves have risen against masters: for then, in very deed, the mind is set on fire and is all ablaze, and that fire is kindled by the objects of sense which Sense-perception supplies."
],
[
"Moses, moreover, gives intimations of such a conflagration of the mind as this, occasioned by the senses, when he says:",
"[225] “And the women kindled yet further a fire in Moab.” For “Moab” means “out of a father,” and our father is the Mind, His words are, “Then shall they that propound riddles say, Come to Heshbon that it may be built, and that the city of Sihon may be constructed. For a fire hath gone forth from Heshbon and a flame from the city of Sihon, and it devoured as far as Moab and drank up the boundaries of Arnon. Woe to thee, Moab, thou art undone, O people of Chemosh. Their sons were given up as fugitives, and their daughters as prisoners of war to Sihon, king of the Amorites, and their seed shall perish, Heshbon unto Dibon, and their women yet further kindled a fire against Moab” (Numb. 21:27–30).",
"[226] “Heshbon” means “reasonings”: and “reasonings” are riddles full of obscurity. Look at a doctor’s reasonings: “I will purge the patient, I will feed him up, I will prescribe medicines and put him on a diet that will make him well, I will operate, I will cauterize.” But many a time has nature either brought recovery without these means being used, or brought death when these have been resorted to, proving all the doctor’s calculations to be vain dreams, nothing but guesswork in the dark. Again, the farmer says,",
"[227] “I will sow, I will plant, the plants will grow, seeds and plants will yield crops, not only useful as affording food that we cannot do without, but so abundant as to give us enough and to spare.” Then all of a sudden a fire, or a storm, or persistent rain spoils everything. Sometimes all that he had reckoned on comes to pass, but the reckoner dies first without having had the benefits of them, and his expectation of enjoying the fruits of his toil proves a vain one."
],
[
"[228] So then it is best to trust God and not our dim reasonings and insecure conjectures: “Abraham believed God and was held to be righteous” (Gen. 15:6); and the precedence which Moses takes is testified to by the words he is “faithful in all My house” (Numb. 12:7). But if we repose our trust in our own reasonings, we shall construct and build up the city of Mind that corrupts the truth: for “Sihon” means “corrupting.”",
"[229] Accordingly the dreamer finds on rising up that all the movements and exertions of the foolish man are dreams void of reality. Yea Mind itself turned out to be a dream. And this is so, because to trust God is a true teaching, but to trust our vain reasonings is a lie. An irrational impulse issues forth and goes its rounds, both from our reasonings and from Mind that corrupts the truth; wherefore also he says, “There went forth a fire from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon” (Numb. 21:28). In this way trust in plausible reasonings or in Mind corrupting that which is true, is irrational."
],
[
"[230] “It devours even as far as Moab,” that is to say as far as Mind. For whom else does false opinion deceive but wretched Mind? It devours and eats up yea and swallows down the boundary-stones in it, that is, each particular thought or judgement, which are graved and chiselled as though upon a boundary-stone. The stones are Arnon, which means “their light,” since it is in reasoning that each matter is elucidated.",
"[231] This is how he begins the dirge over the headstrong and selfish Mind: “Woe to thee, Moab: thou art undone”; for if thou heedest guesses made according to what is probable, thou hast lost truth. “The people of Chemosh,” that is thy people and its power has been found to be maimed and blinded; for “Chemosh” means “as a groping,” and groping is characteristic of one who cannot see.",
"[232] These find their sons, each particular reasoning, fugitives, while their judgements, corresponding to daughters, are captives of war to the king of the Amorites, that is “the lecturer of men fond of talking”; for the Amorites, if we translate the name, are “men fond of talking,” being a figure of the uttered word, and the prince of these is the lecturer or sophist clever at searching after verbal artifices, and those who transgress the boundary of truth place themselves at the mercy of his quibbling."
],
[
"[233] Sihon, therefore, the corrupter of the healthy rule of the truth, “and his seed shall perish together with Heshbon” (that is) the quibbling riddles “as far as Dihon,” a name given to going to law, and quite appropriately, for probabilities and plausible arguments involve no knowledge concerning truth, but trial and disputation and wrangling conflict and contentiousness and everything of that sort.",
"[234] It was not, however, enough for Mind to have the troubles that are peculiar to it and belong to its own sphere, but over and above these the women, the senses, that is, lit a fire, a huge conflagration, to add to its disasters. Prythee see what I mean by this. It often happens in the night when we are actively employing no single one of our senses, that we entertain strange notions on many different subjects, for the soul is perpetually in movement and can turn ten thousand different ways. This being so, what it produces by itself would have been sufficient for its corruption.",
"[235] But as it is, the mob of the senses has introduced into it from outside an untold host of mischiefs, drawn partly from visible objects, partly from sounds, as well as from savours and scents that touch the sense of smell; and we may say that the flame arising from them affects the soul more disastrously than the flame that is kindled in it by the soul itself without calling in the organs of sense to assist it."
],
[
"[236] One of these women is the wife of Potiphar, Pharaoh’s head-cook (Gen. 39:1 ff.). How, being a eunuch, he comes to have a wife, is a point to be considered: for those, who are occupied with the literal wording of the law rather than with its figurative interpretation, will find that it involves what appears to such a difficulty. For the Mind, that is really an eunuch and chief cook, dealing not in the simple pleasures only but in excessive ones also, deserves the title of eunuch as one who is incapable of begetting wisdom, seeing that he serves as eunuch none other than Pharaoh, the disperser of noble things. For you must bear in mind that from another point of view to become an eunuch would be a very good thing, if so our soul should be able to escape wickedness and unlearn passion.",
"[237] So Joseph too, the self-controlling character, when pleasure says to him “Sleep with me” (Gen. 39:7) ‘and being human indulge human passions and enjoy the delights that come in life’s course,’ refuses to comply with her saying, ‘I shall be sinning against God the Lover of virtue, were I to show myself a lover of pleasure; for this is a wicked deed.’"
],
[
"[238] And now he is merely skirmishing, but before long he is stoutly fighting it out, when the soul has entered into her own house, and falling back on her own energies has renounced all that is regulated by the body, and has set to work at business properly belonging to her inasmuch as they are activities of the soul. He goes neither into Joseph’s house nor into that of Potiphar, but “into the house.” He does not go on to say whose house, that you may think and interpret. He simply adds, “to do his business” (Gen. 39:11).",
"[239] The house then is the soul, into which he retires, abandoning all that is outside, to the end that he may, as we say, get within himself. The “business” of the man of self-control is, we may take it, done by God’s will; for indeed, among all the reasonings wont to have their abode in the soul within, there was not one such uncongenial reasoning found there. Meanwhile pleasure does not desist from struggling, but laying hold of his garments says “Sleep with me.” As clothes are coverings of the body, so are food and drink of the living being. This is what she says, “Why do you decline pleasure, without which you cannot live?",
"[240] See, I seize and carry off part of what goes to produce her, and I declare that you would be unable to exist without using something productive of pleasure.” What does the man of self-control do? “If,” he says, “I am going to be a slave to passion for the sake of the matter that is productive of it, I will even leave passion behind and go forth outside”; for “leaving his garments in her hands he fled and went forth outside” (Gen. 39:12)."
],
[
"[241] “Who,” someone may ask, “goes forth within?” Do not many? Or have not some who have avoided the robbing of temples stolen goods from a private house, and some who have not been father-beaters, committed violence on a stranger? These people do indeed come forth from the sins mentioned, but they come into others. But he that exercises perfect self-control must shun all sins, both the greater and the lesser, and be found implicated in none whatever.",
"[242] Joseph, however, being but a youth and lacking strength to contend with the Egyptian body and vanquish pleasure, runs away. But Phinehas the priest, who was zealous with the zeal for God, has secured his own safety, not by flight, but grasping the “spear,” i.e. the spirit of zeal, he will not desist before he has “pierced the Midianitish woman,” the nature that has been sifted out of the sacred company, “through her womb” (Numb. 25:7 f.), that she may never be able to cause plant or seed of wickedness to shoot up:"
],
[
"in recompense for this, for the cutting out of folly, the soul obtains a twofold portion as its reward, peace and priesthood (ibid. 12 f.), virtues as near of kin as sisters.",
"[243] To such a woman, therefore, we must not hearken, wicked sense I mean. For “God dealt well with the midwives” (Exod. 1:20), because disregarding the injunctions of Pharaoh, the scatterer, they “saved alive” the male offspring of the soul which he wished to destroy; for, enamoured of what is material and female, he knows not the First Cause and says, “I know Him not” (Exod. 5:2).",
"[244] Quite a different woman claims our compliance, a woman such as Sarah is seen to have been, even paramount virtue. The wise Abraham complies with her when she recommends the course to follow. For at an earlier time, when he had not yet become perfect but, before his name had been changed, was still only inquiring into supramundane things, being aware that he could not beget seed out of perfect virtue, she advises him to beget children out of the handmaiden, that is school-learning, even Hagar (Gen. 16:2 ff.). This name means “Sojourning,” for he that is studying to make his home in perfect virtue, before he is registered as a member of her city, sojourns with the subjects learned in the schools, that he may be led by these to apply his unfettered powers to virtue.",
"[245] Afterwards, when she sees him brought to perfection, and capable now of begetting … And if he, filled with gratitude towards the education by means of which he was brought into union with virtue, thinks it harsh to reject it, he shall be brought to compliance by an oracle of God bidding him, “In all that Sarah saith to thee listen to her voice” (Gen. 21:12). Let that which seems good to virtue be law for each one of us; for if we choose to hearken to all that virtue recommends, we shall be happy."
],
[
"[246] The words “and thou didst eat of the tree of which alone I commanded thee not to eat” are equivalent to “thou didst consent to wickedness, which it is thy duty to keep off with all thy might”: because of this “cursed”—not “art thou” but “is the earth in thy works” (Gen. 3:17). What then was the reason of this? The serpent, we saw, was pleasure, an irrational elation of soul. She is accursed on her own account, but mark well that she attaches herself only to the worthless man, not to any good man. Adam is the neutral mind, which now proves better, now worse.",
"[247] For in so far as he is mind, his nature is neither bad nor good, but under the influence of virtue and vice it is his wont to shift towards good and bad. It is then just as we should expect, that he is not accursed on his own account, inasmuch as he is neither wickedness nor conduct with wickedness for its rule, but the earth is accursed in his works; for the doings of which the whole soul, to which is here given the name of “earth,” is the means and occasion, are blameworthy and faulty when he allows wickedness to regulate them in each case. Accordingly he goes on “in sorrow shalt thou eat of it.” This is tantamount to “thou shalt sorrowfully get the benefit of being alive.” For in pain does the bad man all his life long avail himself of his own vitality. He has no motive for joy. Such a motive is in the nature of things supplied by righteousness and good sense and the virtues that share her throne."
],
[
"[248] “Thorns therefore and burrs shall it cause to spring up for thee” (Gen. 3:18). Nay, what does grow and shoot up in the soul of a foolish man, but the passions which goad and wound it? To these, using figures, he has given the name of thorns. These the irrational impulse like a fire meets first, and ranging herself with them burns up and consumes all the soul’s possessions. For this is what is said: “If a fire break out and find thorns and go on to burn threshing-floor or standing corn or field; he that kindled the fire shall make restitution” (Exod. 22:6).",
"[249] You see that the fire, the irrational impulse, when it has broken out does not burn the thorns but finds them; for being a searcher after the passions it finds what it wanted to get; and when it has found them it burns up these three things, perfect virtue, gradual progress, goodness of natural disposition. Virtue he likens to the contents of the threshing-floor, for as the grain has been gathered together on it, so in the soul of the wise man have been gathered noble things. To the standing corn he likens gradual advance, since either is incomplete and is earnestly set on its completeness. He likens goodness of natural disposition to the field, because it is receptive of the seeds of virtue.",
"[250] He calls each of the passions “burrs” or “three-spiked caltrops,” because they are threefold, the passion itself, that which produces it, and the finished result of these. For instance, pleasure, the pleasant, feeling pleasure; desire, the desirable, desiring; sorrow, the sorrowful, feeling sorrow; fear, the fearful, fearing."
],
[
"[251] “And thou shalt eat the grass of the field; in the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat thy bread” (Gen. 3:18 f.). He uses the terms grass and bread as synonyms; the thing meant is the same. Grass is food of an irrational creature; and such is a bad man with the right principle cut out of him; irrational also are the senses, being a part of the soul. But the mind striving to attain the objects of sense by means of the irrational senses, makes this striving not without toil and sweat. For exceeding painful and burdensome is the life of the foolish man, as he pursues with greedy desire all things that are productive of pleasures and of all things that wickedness loves to bring about.",
"[252] And how long is this to be? “Until,” He says, “thou shalt turn back into the earth, from which thou wert taken” (Gen. 3:19). For, having forsaken the wisdom of heaven, is he not now ranked with things earthly and chaotic? How then he turns back yet further, we have to consider. But perhaps what he means is of this kind, that the foolish mind has indeed always turned back from the right principle, but has been taken not from the sublime nature but from the more earthly substance, and, whether staying still or in movement, is the same and devoted to the same interests.",
"[253] And that is why he goes on to say, “Earth thou art and into earth shalt thou depart” (ibid.), which amounts to what I have already said. It signifies this also, “thine origin and thine end are one and the same, for thou tookest thine origin from earth’s decaying bodies, and into them shalt thou again come to thine end, after treading the way of life that comes between, along no high road but on a rough path, full of brambles and burrs whose nature is to prick and wound.”"
]
]
}
},
"versions": [
[
"Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1929",
"https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001216057/NLI"
]
],
"heTitle": "אליגוריות החוקים",
"categories": [
"Second Temple",
"Philo"
],
"schema": {
"heTitle": "אליגוריות החוקים",
"enTitle": "Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis",
"key": "Allegorical Interpretation of Genesis",
"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"
}
]
},
{
"heTitle": "ספר ג",
"enTitle": "Book III",
"nodes": [
{
"heTitle": "הקדמה",
"enTitle": "Introduction"
},
{
"heTitle": "",
"enTitle": ""
}
]
}
]
}
}