“And Adam and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord God in the midst of the forest of the garden” (Gen. iii. 8). He introduces a doctrine showing that the bad man is an exile. For if virtue is a city belonging to the wise, the man who has no capacity to share in virtue has been driven away from the city, in which the bad man is incapable of taking part. Accordingly, only the bad man has been driven away and sent into exile. But by incurring such exile, the exile from virtue has hidden himself from God. For if the wise, as 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 towards right reason. 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. xxv. 27); for vice, which hunts after the passions, is by nature unfit to dwell in the city of virtue. Rather, in utter senselessness, it follows rustic grossness, the life of the untrained. Jacob, the man full of wisdom, belongs to a city, and he occupies virtue as his dwelling-house. The prophet says of him: “But Jacob was a simple man dwelling in a house” (ibid.). In keeping with this, too, the midwives, since they feared God, made houses for themselves (Exod. i. 21); for those (souls) that search out 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 they have chosen to make their abode in it. These instances have made clear how the bad man is without a city or home, since he is an exile from virtue, while the good man has received wisdom as his lot for both city and dwelling. Let us see next how a man is actually said to hide himself from God. If one did not 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 place, then, could a man occupy where God is not? The prophet bears witness to this elsewhere, saying, “God in heaven above and upon the earth beneath and there is none other but He” (Deut. iv. 39). And again, “Here I stand before you (were made)” (Exod. xvii. 6); for God is before every created thing, and is found everywhere, so that no one could possibly hide himself from God. And why should we marvel at this? Whatever happens, we could never escape or hide ourselves from those things, even among created things, that are essential elements of creation. For instance, let a man flee, if he can, from earth or water or air or sky or the world at large. A man must necessarily have all these around him, for no one shall ever be able to escape out of the world. Then, since 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 the part that he has chosen for his lurking-place. It can be taken in this way. In the bad man the true opinion about God is hidden in obscurity, for he is full of darkness, with no divine radiance in him by which to investigate realities. Such a man is banished from the divine company, like the leper and the man with an issue. The former combines God and creation as joint causes, though they are mutually hostile natures, for he shows two different colours, whereas there is one single Cause, namely He who does 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, siding with the opinion of Heracleitus in advocating such tenets as “fullness and lack,” “the universe one,” and “all things interchange.” So the divine word says, “Let them send forth out of the holy soul every leper, and everyone that has an issue, and everyone that is unclean in soul, both male and female” (Numb. v. 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. xxiii. 2). But wise reasonings, far from hiding themselves, are keenly eager to be manifest. Do you not see that Abraham “was still standing before the Lord and drew near and said, ‘Do not destroy the just man together with the impious one’” (Gen. xviii. 22 f.), the one that is manifest and known to You together with the one who shuns and avoids You? For this one is impious, but the one who stands before You and does not avoid You is just. For the only justice is that You, Master, should be honoured. A pious man is not found as easily as an impious one. We have to be content with a just man. This is why he says, “Do not destroy a just together with an impious man.” For no one honours God as He deserves but only as is just. It is impossible to repay even our parents with favours equal to those we have received from them—for we cannot repay them by becoming their parents. How much more impossible must it be to repay or to praise as He deserves the One who brought the universe out of non-existence? For that was an exercise of every virtue towards us. Through three seasons, then, soul, that is, throughout the whole of time with its threefold divisions, always make yourself manifest to God, not dragging after you the weak feminine passion of sense-perception, but giving forth as incense the manly reasoning schooled in fortitude. For the sacred word (Deut. xvi. 16) commands that at three seasons of the year every male must show himself before the Lord the God of Israel. 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 does not know the Lord (Exod. v. 2). “Moses,” we read, “withdrew from Pharaoh’s presence and settled in the land of Midian” (Exod. ii. 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. So he withdraws from the godless opinion of Pharaoh, which the passions follow as their leader, and withdraws into Midian, the sifting-place, to find out whether he should keep still or contend again with the evil man for his destruction; he considers whether, if he attacks him, he will prevail and win the victory, and so he is kept there waiting on God, as I have said, to see whether He will give a deep reasoning faculty, free from shallowness, a stream large enough to drown the onrush of the king of the Egyptians, the onrush, that is, of his passions. And he is found worthy of the favour: for, having taken the field in the cause of virtue, he does not abandon the warfare until he sees the pleasures prostrate and out of action. This is why Moses does not flee 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 by divine words he has raised forces of wisdom and every other virtue to aid him in renewing the attack with irresistible power. But Jacob, the “Supplanter,” who acquires virtue with great toil by wiles and artifices, and whose name has not yet been changed to “Israel,” runs away from Laban and all his belongings, tints and shapes and material bodies generally, which by nature inflict wounds on the mind through the objects of sense. For since he was not able to vanquish them completely when facing them, he flees, fearing defeat at their hands. And in doing so he thoroughly deserves praise; for Moses says, “You shall make the sons of the seeing one cautious” (Lev. xv. 31), not bold and aiming at what is beyond their capacity. ‘And Jacob stole away unawares to Laban the Syrian, in that he did not tell him 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. xxxi. 20f.). It is entirely in keeping with true principles that he is said to have hidden the fact that he is running away and not to have told Laban, who represents the way of thinking governed by objects of sense. For instance, if you have caught sight of beauty and been captivated by it, and if it is likely to be a cause of stumbling to you, flee secretly from the sight of it, and give no further report of it to your 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. The same principle holds for every kind of attraction, through 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, my mind, you are in imminent danger of falling prey to some object of sense that has shown itself, never report it to yourself, never dwell on it, so that you are not overcome and plunged into misery. Instead, rush out into the open, make your escape, choose the freedom of the wild rather than the slavery of the tame. Now (let us ask) why, as though Jacob did not know that Laban was a Syrian, does he say, “Jacob kept Laban the Syrian in the dark”? This too has a pertinent point. 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 appears lofty, stately, weighty, the mind in training is the first to run away, followed by all his belongings, which are 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, which swamps and drowns the soul under the flood of the passions, and, when he has crossed it, sets his face toward the lofty highland, the principle of perfect virtue: “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 its removal was to its advantage and benefit, and led it on away from the evil things that make the soul low and grovelling up to the height and greatness of virtue. 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 did you run away secretly” (Gen. xxxi. 26), and not remain in the company of bodily enjoyment and of the teaching that gives preference to bodily and external good things? But besides fleeing from this view of life, you also carried off my soundness of sense, that is, Leah and Rachel. For these, while they remained with the soul, produced in it sound sense, but when they moved elsewhere they left it ignorance and indiscipline. This is why he adds the words “you robbed me” (ibid.), that is, you stole my good sense. He is going to explain, then, what his good sense was; for he adds “and carried away my daughters as prisoners of war: and if you had told me, I would have sent you away” (ibid.). You would not have sent away those at variance with one another; for if you had really sent away and freed the soul, you would 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, you say that you are ready to send her away free, but by your actions you admit that you would have kept her in prison; for if you had sent her on her way with “music and timbrels and harp” and the pleasures that suit each separate sense, you would not really have sent her away at all. For it is not from you only, Laban, friend of bodies and of tints, that we are running away, but from everything that is yours too: and this includes the voices of the senses sounding in harmony with the operations of the passions. For, if indeed we are under virtue’s training, we have made our own an absolutely vital study, which was also Jacob’s study: to consign to death and destruction the gods that are alien to the soul, the gods moulded in metal, whose making Moses has forbidden (Lev. xix. 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 what is moulded, if dissolved, grows fixed and firm again. 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. xxxv. 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. Similarly, when the king of Sodom is craftily trying to exchange 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. xiv. 22), since he would take nothing of all that was the king’s “from a cord even to a shoelace,” so that he may not say that he has enriched the man whose eyes were open, by giving him poverty in return for his wealth of virtue. The passions are always hidden away and placed under guard in Shechem— “shoulder” is the meaning of the name—for he who devotes toil to pleasures tends 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 today, for the daily cycle is the measure of all time. For this reason too Jacob gives Shechem to Joseph as a special portion (Gen. xlviii. 22), the things of the body and of the senses, since he is busy toiling at these things, but to Judah who openly acknowledges God he gives, not presents, but praise and hymns and hallowed songs from his brothers (Gen. xlix. 8). Jacob receives Shechem not from God, but by means 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 the one to whose nature they are akin. Do you not see that, with the gods too, though he apparently received them, he did not really do so, but hid them and did away with them and “destroyed” them for ever from himself? What soul, then, succeeded in hiding away wickedness and removing it from sight, if not 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. xviii. 17). It is fitting, Saviour, that You display Your own works to the soul that longs for all beautiful things, and that You have concealed none of Your works from it. That is why it is strong to shun evil and always to hide and becloud and destroy passion that works cruel havoc. We have shown, then, how the bad man is in banishment and hiding himself from God; let us now consider where he hides himself. “In the midst,” it says, “of the wood of the garden” (Gen. iii. 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 who runs away from God takes refuge in himself. There are two minds: the mind of the universe, which is God, and the individual mind. He who flees from his own mind flees for refuge to the Mind of all things. For he who abandons his own mind acknowledges as nothing everything that takes the human mind as its standard, and he refers all things to God. On the other hand, he who 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 rush along automatically, with no one 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. But you perceive, my soul, the difference between 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, uncreated 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. This is the reason for Moses’ words, “If the thief is found where he has just broken through and is struck and dies, there is no blood-guiltiness for him”: “but if the sun has risen upon him, (then he) is liable, he shall die in requital” (Exod. xxii. 2 f.). For if a man cleaves and breaks through the tenet that stands firm in its soundness and uprightness, testifying that unlimited power belongs to God alone, and he is 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 taking what belongs to another; 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 grievous blow, hard to heal, namely self-conceit, a thing akin to boorish ignorance. Moses does not mention the man who strikes separately, for he is none 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. In the same way, he who steals what is God’s and assigns it to himself is the victim of the outrage inflicted by his own impiety and self-conceit. It would be a good thing if he died when struck, that is to say, if he permanently failed to accomplish his purpose; for he must then be held to be less of a sinner. For wickedness presents itself sometimes as stationary, sometimes 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. If, therefore, the understanding which fancies itself and not God to be the cause of all that comes into existence dies, that is, shrinks into inactivity, there is no blood-guiltiness on it; it has not gone so far as to abolish the living doctrine which ascribes to God the totality of powers. But if the sun has risen, that is, the mind that shines so brilliantly in us, and has 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 in himself he is found to be futile and truly dead; he has come forward as the author of a lifeless, mortal, and erroneous doctrine. In keeping with this the sacred word pronounces a curse on anyone who sets up in secret a graven or molten image, the work of the hands of the craftsman (Deut. xxvii. 15). Why, mind, do you hoard and treasure in yourself those wrong opinions: that God, the Being who is without kind, is of this or that kind, like the graven images, and that He, the incorruptible, is corruptible, like the molten images? Why do you not rather bring them forth into the open, so that you may be taught the things which you ought to learn from those who study the truth? For you fancy yourself versed in science because you have gone over methods of persuasion unworthy of an educated man, with which to combat the truth. But your science proves to be no science, since you refuse to submit to healing treatment for your soul’s grievous malady of ignorance. We shall learn from Moses, who “struck the Egyptian and hid him in the sand” (Exod. ii. 12), that the bad man sinks down into his own incoherent mind as he strives to avoid Him who is. This means that he took full account of the man who maintains that the things of the body have pre-eminence and holds the things of the soul to be nothing, and regards pleasures as the end and aim of life. 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 abusing the one who sees; and having looked around the whole soul in this direction and that, and seen no one standing except God who is, but all other things tossing in wild confusion, after striking 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. But the man whose character is the reverse of his does flee 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. xv. 5). We would gladly take these in at one all-encompassing view, since we are insatiable in our love of virtue, but we are powerless to measure the riches of God. Yet thanks be to the Lover of Giving, for telling us in this way that He has set for Himself in the soul seeds far-shining, radiant, fully 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 perhaps 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, so too in the soul, what is outside one part can be inside another part. We must understand 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 would it gain by renouncing sense-perception and taking shelter under the uttered word? For the mind that is to be led forth and set free should 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. For this reason elsewhere he glories, saying “The Lord, the God of heaven, and the God of the earth, who took me out of my father’s house” (Gen. xxiv. 7); for it is not possible for one who lives in the body and the mortal race to attain to being with God; this is possible only for him whom God rescues from the prison. For this reason Isaac also, the soul’s gladness, when he meditates and is alone with God, goes forth, leaving himself and his own mind behind; for it says, “Isaac went forth into the plain to meditate as evening was drawing near” (Gen. xxiv. 63). Yes, and Moses, the word of prophecy, says, “When I go forth out of the city,” that is, the soul (for this too is the city of the living being giving him laws and customs), “I will spread out my hands” (Exod. ix. 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. When the soul has attained perfect sincerity and godlikeness in all its words and actions, the voices of the senses cease, and so do all those abominable sounds that used to trouble it. For the visible calls and summons the sense of sight to itself, and the voice calls the sense of hearing, and the perfume calls the sense of smell, and everywhere the object of sense invites the sense to itself. But all these cease 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. Truly “the hands of Moses” are “heavy” (Exod. xvii. 12); for since 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 you 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. xx. 25); for the end of the Word is Truth, which casts a beam more far-reaching than light. This is what the Word earnestly strives to attain. Do you not see that when he had received from God (Exod. xxxiii. 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.” This is very finely said. For if you are seeking God, mind, go out from yourself and seek diligently; but if you remain amid the heavy encumbrances of the body or the self-conceits with which the understanding is familiar, though you may have the semblance of a seeker, the quest for the things of God is not yours. But whether you will find God when you seek is uncertain, for He has not manifested Himself to many, but their zeal has been unsuccessful all along. And yet the mere seeking by itself is sufficient to make us partakers of good things, for it is always the case that endeavours toward noble things, even if they fail to attain their object, gladden in their very course those who make them. 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. “And the Lord God called Adam and said to him, ‘Where are you?’” (Gen. iii. 9). Why is Adam alone called, when his wife had hidden herself with him? Well, first of all we must say that the mind is called even where it was, when it receives reproof and its defection is checked. 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 existing; and one of the faculties is sense-perception, which is woman. The call of Adam, the mind, then includes the call of sense-perception, the woman; but God does not call her separately. Why? Because, being irrational, she has no capacity of her own to receive reproof. For neither sight nor hearing nor any of the senses is capable of instruction, so none of them can apprehend subjects. But He who made sense-perception made it capable of distinguishing between material forms only: but it is the mind that receives instruction, and that is why He challenged it but not sense-perception. The words ποῦ εἶ, “Where are you?” can be explained in many different ways: first, as declarative rather than interrogative, equivalent to “you are in a place,” with ποὺ taking the grave accent. For whereas you thought that God walked in the garden and was contained by it, learn that you were wrong to think this, and listen to a most true utterance from the mouth of God who knows, which says that God is not somewhere (for He is not contained but contains the universe), but what has come into being is in a place, for it must necessarily be contained and not contain. A second account is this: What is said is equivalent to “Where have you arrived, soul?” What evils have you chosen for yourself in place of such great goods? When God had invited you to participate in virtue, are you going after wickedness, and when He had provided for your enjoyment the tree of life, that is of wisdom, by which you might have the power to live, did you gorge yourself with ignorance and corruption, preferring misery, the soul’s death, to happiness, the real life? Thirdly, there is the interrogative sense, to which two answers might be made. One answer to the question, “Where are you?” is “Nowhere,” for the soul of the bad man has no place to find footing or to settle on. Because of 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 who is not good, always restless and unstable, drifting this way and that like a chopping wind, attaching himself to no fixed principle at all. A second answer might be given along these lines. 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 those are who shun virtue, where those are who are 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 Your voice in the garden and was afraid, because I am naked, and I hid myself” (Gen. iii. 10), he reveals all the traits just enumerated, as I have fully shown in earlier sections. Nevertheless Adam is not naked now: the words “they made for themselves girdles” occur a little earlier. By this too the prophet wishes to teach you that by nakedness he means not the nakedness of the body, but the nakedness in which the mind is found unprovided with virtue and not clothed with it. “The woman,” he says, “whom You gave with me, she gave me of the tree, and I ate” (Gen. iii. 12). It is good that he does not say, “the woman whom You gave to me,” but “with me”; for You did not give sense to me as a possession, but You left it too free and at large, in some respects not subservient to the commands of my understanding. For instance, if the mind chooses to tell the sight not to see, the sight will nonetheless see what lies before it. Again, when a sound has reached the hearing, it will certainly let it in, even if the mind resolutely commands 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 forbids it to welcome them. Because of 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 the attention of the sight and of the mind simultaneously; 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: as proof that it did, the mind immediately judged the sound, pronouncing it weak or loud, tuneful and rhythmical, or on the other hand out of tune and discordant. We find the same thing in the case of the other senses. The addition of the words “she gave me of the tree” is quite excellent. 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? The mind said rightly and with perfect truth, ‘sense-perception alone gives me opportunities of apprehending bodies.’ “And God said to the woman, ‘What is this you have done?’ And she said, ‘The serpent beguiled me and I ate’” (Gen. iii. 13). God asks sense-perception about one point, and she answers about another: for God asks something about the man; she does not speak about him, but says something about herself, for her words are “I ate,” not “I gave.” Perhaps, then, if 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 when she ate, the man necessarily ate too. For when sense-perception, meeting with the object of sense, is filled with the presentation of it, at once the mind also is in contact, takes hold and in a way absorbs the sustenance which it provides. This, then, is what she says: I did not give it to the man by any act of will, for as soon as I came upon the object, he (so swift is he to move) received the image and impression of it himself. Now observe that, whereas the man says that the woman gave, the woman does not say that the serpent gave but that he beguiled; for to give is characteristic of sense-perception, but to cheat and beguile is characteristic of pleasure with its serpent-like subtlety. For instance, sense-perception gives to the mind what is by nature white and what is black, what is hot and what 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 just as they appear to the eye. But pleasure does not report the object to the mind as it is, but artfully falsifies it, representing as something advantageous what is of no benefit at all: just as one can see repulsive courtesans applying pigments to their faces and painting under their eyes to conceal their ugliness. We can also note the immoderate man inclined to gluttony: this man welcomes as a good thing the abundance of strong drink and the well-spread table, though they harm him in both body and soul. Again we may see those who are in love, often quite crazy about women who are most hideous to look at, 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. All kinds of consummate deception, then, belong most properly 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. “And the Lord God said to the serpent, ‘Because you have done this, cursed are you from among all cattle and from among all the beasts of the earth. Upon your breast and your belly you shall go, and earth you shall eat all the days of your life. And I will put enmity between you and the woman, and between your seed and her seed. He shall watch for your head, and you shall watch for his heel’” (Gen. iii. 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. xix. 17) and that one party not be believed until the other is heard? Yet you see, no doubt, that He did not simply believe Adam and prejudge the case against the woman, but gives her the opportunity to defend herself, when He inquires “What is this that you have done?” (Gen. iii. 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 stop Him from asking the serpent here too whether he had beguiled her, instead of prejudging the case and pronouncing the curse without listening to any defence? We have to say, then, that sense-perception belongs neither among bad things nor among 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 of its own, but wavers between good and evil, inclining to either side, it is not pronounced guilty until it has admitted that it followed evil. But the serpent, pleasure, is bad of itself; and therefore it is not found at all in a good man, and the bad man alone suffers all the harm of it. So God quite appropriately pronounces 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. For this reason also, in the case of Er, God knows him to be wicked and puts him to death without bringing an open charge against him (Gen. xxxviii. 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 each of us is nothing but a corpse-bearer, 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. The most muscular athlete would not have the 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 kills Er; rather, the body which He made and which Er represents was a corpse to begin with. By nature, as I have said, it is wicked and a plotter against the soul, but this is not evident to all, only to God 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 considers it friendly to itself, its kinsman and brother. The proof of this is that it takes refuge in what is dear to the body. This is why 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, being a lover of the body, would sacrifice the soul itself on its behalf; but the philosopher, in love with the noble thing that lives in him, 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. You see that Er is killed 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 used so that you may know that He has made the inanimate things too, not by exercising authority but by goodness, just as He has made the living creatures by goodness. For, so that the superior beings might be clearly manifested, an inferior creation also had to exist, due to the same power, namely the goodness of the First Cause. And that goodness is God. When, then, soul, will you most fully realize that you are a corpse-bearer? Will it not be when you are perfected, and counted worthy of prizes and crowns? For then you will be no lover of the body, but a lover of God. And you will win the rewards if Judah’s daughter-in-law becomes your wife: Tamar, whose name means a palm-tree, the sign of victory. Here is a proof of it. As soon as Er has married her, he is found to be wicked and is killed. For we read, “And Judah took for Er his first-born a wife whose name was Tamar” (Gen. xxxviii. 6), and the next words are, “And Er was wicked before the Lord, and God killed him” (ibid. 7). For when the mind has carried off the rewards of victory, it condemns the corpse-body to death. You see that God both curses the serpent without allowing him to defend himself—for he is pleasure—and kills Er without bringing an open charge against him; for he is the body. And if you consider it, my friend, you will find that God has made some natures in the soul faulty and blameworthy in themselves, and others excellent and praiseworthy in every respect, just as is the case with plants and animals. Do you not see that among the plants the Creator has made some that repay cultivation and are useful and wholesome, and others that are wild and harmful and cause disease and destruction, and the same with animals? So, no doubt, He has made the serpent, our present subject, for the creature is in itself destructive of health and life. What a serpent does to a man, pleasure does to the soul, and that is why the serpent was taken to represent pleasure. Just as God, then, has conceived a hatred for pleasure and the body without giving reasons, so too he has promoted fine natures without any evident reason, praising them before pronouncing any action of theirs acceptable. For if anyone asks why the prophet says that Noah found grace in the sight of the Lord God (Gen. vi. 8) when, as far as we know, he had not yet done any good deed, we will give a suitable answer: he is shown to have an excellent nature from his birth, for Noah means “rest” or “righteous.” But he who rests from sinful and unrighteous acts, rests upon what is noble and lives in fellowship with righteousness cannot fail to find favour with God. Finding favour is not, as some suppose, merely the same as being well-pleasing; it also means something like this. The righteous man, exploring the nature of existing things, makes one surprising discovery: that all things are a grace of God, and that creation has no gift of grace to bestow, for it has no possession either, since all things are God’s possession, and for this reason grace too belongs to Him alone as His very own. So 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, are a free gift and an act of kindness and grace on God’s part. God has also made Melchizedek both king of peace,⁠a for that is the meaning of “Salem,” and His own priest (Gen. xiv. 18). He has not first fashioned any deed of his, but brings him forward from the outset as such a king, peaceable and worthy of His own priesthood. For he is called “the righteous king,” and a “king” is the enemy of a despot: the one is the author of laws, the other of lawlessness. So the mind that plays the despot issues harsh and hurtful decrees for both soul and body that bring grievous woes: I mean the conduct that wickedness prompts, and free indulgence of the passions. But the king first resorts to persuasion rather than decrees, and then issues directions that enable a vessel, I mean the living being, to make life’s voyage successfully, piloted by the good pilot, who is right principle. So let the despot’s title be ruler of war, and the king’s prince of peace, of Salem, and let the king offer the soul food full of joy and gladness; for he brings bread and wine, which Ammonites and Moabites refused to supply to the seeing one, and for this reason they are excluded from the divine congregation and assembly. These characters, the Ammonites, who derive their nature from their mother, sense-perception, and the Moabites, who derive theirs from their father, mind, hold that all things owe their coherence to these two things, mind and sense-perception, and take no thought of God; and they “shall not enter,” says Moses, “into the congregation of the Lord, because they did not meet us with bread and water” (Deut. xxiii. 3 f.) when we came out from the passions of Egypt. But let Melchizedek offer wine instead of water, and give souls strong drink, so that they may be seized by a divine intoxication, more sober than sobriety itself.⁠b For he is a priest, namely Reason, who has as his portion Him who is, and all his thoughts of God are high and vast and sublime: for he is priest of the Most High (Gen. xiv. 18), not that there is any other who is not Most High—for God being One “is in heaven above and on earth beneath, and there is none beside Him” (Deut. iv. 39)—but to conceive of God not in low earthbound ways but in lofty terms that transcend all other greatness and all else that is free from matter, calls up in us a picture of the Most High. What good thing had Abram already done, that he tells him to cut himself off from his fatherland and the kindred there and to live in whatever land God Himself may give him? (Gen. xii. 1). And that is a good, large and very prosperous city, for God’s gifts are great and precious. But God created this character too in a shape that merits esteem, for “Abram” means “father high-soaring,” and both epithets are grounds for praise. 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, turning away in all matters 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 go on holding the principles it first absorbed, but in its desire to improve itself seeks to change its abode for a better one. God endows some with a fine form and equipment even before their birth, and has determined that they will have a most excellent portion. Do you not see what He says to Abraham about Isaac, when Abraham could not trust that he would ever become the father of such offspring, and indeed 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. xvii. 17). He ratifies and confirms it saying, “Yes, Sarah your wife shall bear you a son and you shall call his name Isaac, and I will establish My covenant with Him for an everlasting covenant” (ibid. 19). What is it, then, that has caused this one too to be praised before his birth? Some good things benefit us when they have reached us and are present, such as health, excellence of the bodily senses, perhaps wealth, and fame—for even these may be loosely called “good things”;—others not only when they have come, but also when their coming has been foretold. For instance, joy, a happy condition of the soul, gladdens not only when it is present and actively at work, but even while it is still only hoped for brings an anticipatory brightness. For here again it possesses an advantage all its own. While other good things take effect only by virtue of their own particular goodness, 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 is attached to it. But we rejoice over the other good things not only when they have already come about and are present, but also when they are looked for in the future, for when we hope that we will grow rich, or obtain office, or win praise, or discover a way of getting rid of disease, or obtain our share of health and strength, or no longer be ignorant but be men of knowledge, we are glad in no small measure. Since, then, joy causes the soul to overflow with gladness not only when present but also when hoped for, God fittingly held Isaac, even before he was conceived, worthy of his great name and, in it, of a vast endowment: for “Isaac” means laughter of soul and joy and gladness, Again, God declares of Jacob and Esau, while they are still in the womb, that the one is a ruler and leader and master, but that Esau is a subject and a slave.⁠c For God the Maker of living beings knows well the different pieces of his own handiwork, even before He has thoroughly chiselled and completed them, and the faculties they will display later: 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 your womb, and two peoples shall be separated from your belly, and one people shall be above the other people, and the elder shall serve the younger” (Gen. xxv. 23). For in God’s judgement what is base and irrational is by nature a slave, but what is of fine character, endowed with reason and better, is princely and free. And this holds not only when either is full-grown in soul, but even when their development is still uncertain. For it is always the case that even a slight breath of virtue is evidence not merely of liberty 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. 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 placing his hands that way, 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. xlviii. 19). What, then, should we say but this: that God created two exceedingly necessary faculties in the soul, memory and recollection? Of these, memory is the better and recollection the inferior. For while the former keeps everything that it has apprehended fresh and distinct, so that it goes wrong in nothing through ignorance, recollection is always preceded by forgetfulness, a maimed and blind affair. But the inferior of the two, recollection, turns out to be older than the superior, memory: [while recollection has many gaps of forgetfulness, memory is] unbroken and uninterrupted. For when we are first being introduced to the various arts we are unable to master their principles at once; 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 eventually wins the day. So memory, being born later, is formed as recollection’s younger sister. So Ephraim is the figurative name for 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, when translated, is said to mean “out of forgetfulness”, and he who escapes from forgetfulness necessarily recollects. So Jacob, the overthrower of the passions and the trained seeker of virtue, very rightly lays his right hand on Ephraim as fruitful memory, and counts Manasseh, who is recollection, worthy of the second place. 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 longer hankered after them, but to those who sacrificed the second time he assigns the second place, for after turning back they retraced the wrong steps they had taken and, as though they had forgotten their duties, 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. This, moreover, is the reason why God proclaims Bezalel by name, and says that He has given him wisdom and knowledge, and that He will appoint him artisan and chief craftsman of all the works of the Tabernacle, that is of the soul (Exod. xxxi. 2 ff.), though He has so far pointed to no work or deed of Bezalel’s that would 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. We will know what image is impressed on it if we first determine the exact meaning of the name. Bezalel means, then, “in the shadow of God”; but God’s shadow is His Word, which he used like an instrument, and so made the world.⁠d 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. i. 27), implying that the Image had been made as a representation of God, but that the man was made after the Image when it had acquired the force of a pattern. Let us observe, therefore, what character is impressed. The first men sought to find how we came to conceive of the Deity. Then those whose philosophy was reputed to be 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. If a man sees 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 craftsman, for he will judge that the house never reached that completeness without the skill of the craftsman; and likewise in the case of a city and a ship and every smaller or greater construction. In just the same way, anyone who enters this world, as if it were some vast house or city, and sees the sky circling around and embracing all things within it, and planets and fixed stars moving without any variation in rhythmical harmony and with advantage to the whole, and the 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 made without consummate art, but that the Maker of this whole universe was and is God. Those who base their reasoning in this way on what is before their eyes apprehend God by means of a cast shadow, discerning the Craftsman by means of His works. 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 to apprehend from Him both Himself and His shadow. To apprehend that was, we saw, to apprehend both the Word and this world. The mind I am speaking of is Moses, who says, “Manifest Yourself to me, let me see You that I may know You” (Exod. xxxiii. 13); ‘for I would not want You to 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 Your being in anything other than You Who are God, for the reflections in created things are dissolved, but those in the Uncreate will remain abiding, sure and eternal.’ This is why God has expressly called Moses and why He spoke to Him. He has also expressly called Bezalel, but not in the same way. One receives the clear vision of God directly from the First Cause Himself. The other discerns the Craftsman, as if from a shadow, from created things through a process of reasoning. Hence you will find the Tabernacle and all its furniture made first by Moses and afterwards by Bezalel, for Moses is the craftsman of the archetypes, and Bezalel of the copies of these. For Moses has God for Instructor, as He says “you shall make all things according to the pattern that was shown to you in the mount” (Exod. xxv. 40), but Bezalel is instructed by Moses. And all this is just as we should expect. For likewise, on the occasion of the rebellion of Aaron, Speech, and Miriam, Perception, they are expressly told “If a prophet is raised up to the Lord, God shall be known to 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. xii. 6-8). Since, then, we have found two natures created, moulded and chiselled into full relief by God’s hands, the one essentially hurtful, blameworthy, and accursed, the other beneficial and praiseworthy, the one stamped with a counterfeit impression, the other with a genuine one, let us offer the noble and suitable prayer that Moses offered before us, “that God may open to us His own treasury” (Deut. xxviii. 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. For with God there are treasuries of good things and also of evil things, as He says 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. xxxii. 34f.). 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 there are many treasuries of evil things, for those who sin are countless too. But here too observe the goodness of Him who is. He opens the treasury of good things, and closes those of evil things. For it is God’s way to hold out good things and to be the first to bestow them, but to be slow to inflict evil things. 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; though at such a time it might justly have been judged worthy of punishment. For he says that the treasuries of evil things were sealed in the day of vengeance, the sacred word showing in this way that God will not proceed at once even against those who sin, but gives time for repentance and for healing the one who had slipped and setting him on his feet again. “And the Lord God said to the serpent, Cursed are you from among all cattle and from among all the beasts of the earth” (Gen. iii. 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 makes 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. xxvii. 17):—for God set virtue, the tree of life, as a landmark and law for the soul. This landmark is removed by the man who has fixed wickedness, the tree of death, as a landmark in its place. “Cursed again is he who causes a blind man to go astray in the way” (Deut. xxvii. 18), “and he that strikes his neighbour craftily” (ibid. 24). And these also are acts of pleasure, the utterly godless one; for sense by itself is a blind thing, since it is irrational, for it is the reasoning faculty that confers sight. So it is only with reason that we apprehend matters; sense does not take us that far; for by means of sense we gain impressions only of the material forms of things. Pleasure, then, has cheated poor maimed sense of the power of apprehending matters, since, when sense could have turned to mind and secured it as its charioteer, pleasure has prevented it, leading it only to what can be perceived externally, and giving it a craving for what produces pleasure, so that sense, being a maimed thing, may follow a blind guide, namely what 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. For if things had corresponded at all to what nature prescribes, the maimed faculties would have been bound to follow the reasoning faculty, which has eyes, for in this way the damage incurred would have been diminished. As it is, pleasure has contrived so shrewd a device against the soul that it has compelled it to use blind guides, inducing it by deceptive wiles to exchange virtue for evil things, and to surrender its innocence and receive wickedness in its place. The holy word also forbids such an exchange, when it says, “You shall not change good with evil” (Lev. xxvii. 33). On these grounds pleasure is accursed. Let us see how appropriate the curses are that He pronounces on it. He says that it is cursed from all cattle (Gen. iii. 14). Our irrational faculty of sense-perception, then, belongs to the cattle kind, and each of our senses curses pleasure as a most deadly enemy: for it is truly hostile to sense, as is proved by the fact that, when we have glutted ourselves with immoderate pleasure, we cannot see or hear or smell or taste or feel clearly, but our contact with objects of sense is dim and feeble. This is what we experience when we have stopped 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, could sense not rightly lay curses on the pleasure that maims it? It is also cursed 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 considered 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, arises from a dread of being without pleasure. It is clear, then, that all the passions depend on pleasure, and these would perhaps never have taken shape at all, if what produces them, pleasure, had not first been laid down. “On your breast and belly you shall go” (Gen. iii. 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 anger is; for lovers of pleasure when deprived of their pleasures grow bitter and angry. Let us look still more carefully at what is 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 by function, others also by the places 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 body-guards, and that the senses which are in the region of the head are body-guards of the mind, and that it follows that the king must be there too, since it has been allotted to him as his dwelling, like a castle in a city. 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 region around the abdomen and the belly, for it is there that lust, irrational craving, has its abode. If, therefore, mind, you ever ask what quarter pleasure has as her portion, do not consider the place occupied by the head, where the reasoning faculty resides, for you will 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 both our faculty of choice and the passions are found in the irrational. 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, which is in us not as a combative but as a peaceful resident, cannot fail to become a prisoner of war. For look: the Sacred Word, knowing how strong the impulse of each passion is, of both high spirit and lust, puts a curb on each of them by setting reason over them as charioteer and pilot. And first, this is how it speaks about high spirit, aiming to cure and heal it: “And you shall 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. xxviii. 30). The “oracle,” then, is the organ of speech in us, which is the uttered word: 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 equivalent to “well tested and examined.” He says that the two highest possible virtues, clearness and truthfulness, belong to this approved word. He is quite right to say so. For reason at the outset fell short of making matters clear and evident to another, since we have no power to display the affection that external things call up in the soul, or to convey an idea of its character. Therefore we were compelled to resort to signs given by means of the voice, nouns and verbs, which cannot fail to be intelligible, so 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. For what good is a clear and distinct expression if it is false in other respects? For under these circumstances the hearer must necessarily be deceived and incur a very great misfortune, being not merely ignorant but badly taught as well. For what if I point to the letter alpha and tell the boy clearly and distinctly that it is gamma, or point 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? He may speak clearly and distinctly, 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 make the word beneficial to the pupil, bringing into play its two virtues, perhaps the only virtues indeed which it possesses. It says, then, that the tested word, having the virtues that are peculiarly its own, was enthroned on the breast (namely Aaron’s), that is, on the spirited element, so 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 how, in those who are enraged, not only their understanding but also their words are full of disturbance and confusion? It was appropriate therefore that anger’s lack of clearness should be set right again by clearness. Third, it must be guided by truthfulness, for along with its other faults anger has this one too as peculiarly its own: lying. Experience shows that hardly one of those who give way to this passion speaks the truth. They are victims of an intoxication not of body but of soul. These are the 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 grievous sickness of the soul. To whom, then, does it belong to bear these? Not to my understanding or to the understanding of any chance comer, but to the understanding that exercises its priesthood and offers sacrifices in purity, the understanding of Aaron, and not always even to this, for it often turns and fails, but when it remains 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. But very often the mind does enter with these into sacred and holy and purified opinions, but these are mere human opinions, 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 one who is in this state is fit to bear the oracle upon his breast with the virtues that belong to it, but only he 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 gives these too all they deserve, not, however, stopping at them, but mounting up in the effort to become acquainted with, know and honour the One. For he who is in this state 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. Aaron, then, being inferior to Moses, who cuts the breast, that is, the spirited element, clean out, does not allow it to be carried away by random impulses, for he is afraid that, if it is given free rein, it may some day become unmanageable, as a horse does, and trample down the whole soul. No, he curbs and controls it, first by reason, so that, driven by an excellent charioteer, it may not grow too restive; next he employs the virtues of speech, distinctness, and truth. For if high spirit is trained in this way, so as to yield to reason and distinctness, and also to train itself to shun falsehood, it will not only rid itself of much ferment, but will also make the whole soul gentle. Well, Aaron, as I have said, has this passion and attempts to cure it with the saving medicines already 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 a complete absence of passion. Holy Scripture testifies that what I say is true, 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. viii. 29). Rightly so; for it was the task of the man who loved virtue and was loved by God, once he had contemplated the whole 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 just any animal, as chance might have it, but from the ram of consecration, although a heifer was offered too. But he passed this by and went to the ram, because it is a creature naturally prone to butt, since it is full of spirit and ready for a fight. This is why engineers make most engines of war in the shape of rams. The part of us, then, that resembles a ram in its reckless readiness for a fight is the wrangling kind; 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, as he must, cuts out anger, the discordant offspring of the soul that loves wrangling and contention. He does this so that she may become barren and stop bearing harmful offspring, and so that this may become a portion fit for 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, namely the power to cut out the passions. You see how the perfect man always makes perfect freedom from passion his aim. But Aaron, the man making gradual progress, who holds a lower position, practises moderation, as I have said; for his power does not reach far enough for 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 that bears Clear-showing and Truth. But he will bring out the difference more clearly with 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. vii. 34). You see that these cannot take 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 a small scale, not a grand one, but seek to come to terms and arrange a truce with them, putting forward the word of pacification, so that it, like a charioteer, may curb their excessive impetuosity. Furthermore the shoulder is a symbol of toil and hardship; and this is the character of the one who attends to and ministers in holy things, subject to toil and discipline. But the man on whom God bestows his good things in perfection and in overflowing measure is free from toil. He who acquires virtue by toil falls 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 the imperfect falls short of the perfect, and the one who learns falls short of the one who is self-taught. This is why Aaron takes the breast with the shoulder, but Moses without the shoulder. The reason why he calls it the breast of “the special offering put on” is that reason must 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 does not speak of it, as he does 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. The soul must not ascribe its toil for virtue to itself, but must take it away from itself and refer it to God, confessing that it was not its own strength or power that acquired nobility, but He who freely bestowed the love of it as well. 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 favour. We have already mentioned that pleasure goes not only on its breast but also on its belly, and pointed out that the stomach is the most appropriate place for pleasure, for we may almost describe it as a reservoir of all the pleasures. For when the belly has been filled, cravings for the other pleasures also grow intense, but when it has been emptied, these quiet down and grow calmer. And so the prophet says in another passage, “Whatever goes upon the belly, and whatever goes all the time upon four feet, which has many feet, is unclean” (Lev. xi. 42). The lover of pleasure fits this description, always going after the belly and the pleasures of the adjoining parts. With what creeps after the belly he has paired what walks on four feet; and quite naturally; for the passions that belong to the realm of pleasure are four in number, as has been mentioned in a treatise specially devoted to that subject. Accordingly, the man who is given up to the one thing, pleasure, is unclean, and so is the man who relies on all four passions. Now that we have said this, note once more how a perfect man differs from one making gradual progress. We have already found 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 was found schooling it with well-tested speech, accompanied by two virtues, clearness and truth. In the same way we shall now find Moses, the wise man, in his perfection, scouring away and shaking off pleasures, but the man of gradual improvement not treating pleasure as a whole in this way, but welcoming simple and unavoidable pleasure while declining the excessive and overelaborate kind found in delicacies. For of Moses he says this: “And he washed with water the belly and the feet of the whole burnt-offering” (Lev. ix. 14). That is excellently said; for the wise man consecrates his whole soul as being worthy to be offered to God, since it is free from voluntary or involuntary blemish; and, 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 dealing in this way with only part of it, but so filled with contempt for the whole that he rejects even necessary food and drink, being fed by the contemplation of things divine. And so testimony is given about him in another place too: “for forty days he ate no bread and drank no water” (Exod. xxxiv. 28), when he was in the holy mount and listened to the divine communications made by God as He declared His laws. He not only renounces the whole belly, but scours away the feet with it, that is, the supports of pleasure; these supports are the things that give rise to pleasure, for the man of gradual improvement is said to wash the inwards and the feet (Lev. i. 9), not the whole belly: for he is not able to thrust pleasure away from him completely, 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, which the epicures tell us serve, so to speak, as a means of giving succulence to the principal pleasures. He further stresses the mere moderating of passion in the man of gradual advance, by representing the wise man as declining all the pleasures of the belly without being told to, while the man of gradual advance acts under orders; for in the wise man’s case the text says “he washed with water the belly and the feet” (Lev. ix. 14), spontaneously and unbidden, but in the case of the priests it reads like this: “the inwards and the feet,” not “they washed” but “they shall wash” (Lev. i. 9). This is said with great precision. For it must be that while the perfect man moves of his own accord towards virtuous actions, the man who is in training does so with the aid of reason, which guides him in what he should do, and to obey its directions is a noble thing. 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 present the whole clearly; and having mentioned the most essential matter, he in effect deals with the rest, about which he has said nothing. 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 has the belly to support it, for nature has made the belly the basis of all things. This is why, 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. xxix. 35), God, intending 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 means “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 the whole body and over the whole material frame, whose concern is mere living. Do not let any subtle point escape your notice, for you will not find a single pointless expression. Moses removes the breast; he does not remove the belly, but washes it (Lev. viii. 29, ix. 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 he is powerless to cut out the belly. Even the man of fewest needs, who scorns the very necessities 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 of superfluous and unclean provisions; for this too is a sufficiently great gift from God to the lover of virtue. This is why, when dealing with the soul suspected of adultery, he says (Num. v. 27), that if it has forsaken the right principle, which is the lawful husband, and is discovered to have had intercourse with soul-defiling passion, “it will swell up in the belly,” which means that it will always have the pleasures and desires of the belly unfilled and insatiable, and will never stop being insatiable because of gross stupidity, but, with a countless throng of them pouring in, will keep its passion for ever. For instance, I know many who have been brought to such disaster by the craving of the belly that after resorting to emetics they rush straight back to strong drink and all the rest. For the craving of the soul that is out of control is not limited by size, as the bodily organs are. These are vessels of a fixed capacity that admit nothing beyond it and eject all that is superfluous. Desire is never filled up, but continues always thirsty and in need of more. This explains why “the breaking up of the thigh” is added as the sequel to the swelling of the belly. For it is then that the soul experiences the breaking up of the right principle, the principle that is the seed from which all noble things are begotten. We see this from the words that follow, “If she has not been defiled and is pure, she shall be free and shall conceive seed” (Numb. v. 28), if she has not been defiled by passion, but has been chaste and faithful to her lawful husband, the princely and wholesome principle, she will have a fruitful and productive soul, yielding the offspring of sound sense and righteousness and all excellence. Is it possible, then, for us, tied as we are to a body, not to comply with bodily requirements? How could it be? But look. The sacred guide tells the man who feels the pressure of bodily necessity how to deal with it: to comply with it only as far as he actually must. First he says, “Let there be to you a place outside the camp” (Deut. xxiii. 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. Next he says, “You shall go forth there without.” Why go forth? Because the soul cannot have dealings with any of the body’s friends while it remains 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 it is when it has gone forth from the sacred dwellings of virtue that it turns to material things, which treat the body badly and weigh it down. How then shall I deal with them? “Let there be to you, he says, a shovel upon your girdle, and you shall dig with it” (Deut. xxiii. 13), that is to say, reason shall be upon the passion digging it out, tucking it up, not allowing it to wrap itself around you. For God wants us to gird up our passions, not wear them flowing and loose. So at the crossing over from them, which is called Passover, He commands that their “loins should be bound up” (Exod. xii. 11), in other words, that their desires be restrained. Let a shovel then, that is, reason, follow the passion, preventing it from spreading abroad, for in this way we shall comply only with urgent demands and abstain from all that goes beyond them. When we attend entertainments and are about to take and enjoy the food 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, overloaded with unlimited strong drink, shall we succumb to intoxication and the foolish talk that follows it; for reason will curb and bridle the impetuous rush of the passion. To cite myself as proof of what I say, I know from frequent experience how true it is. Many times I have been present at gatherings with little that was sociable about them, or at costly suppers. When I did not arrive with reason as 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. “You shall dig,” he says, you see, “with the shovel” (Deut. xxiii. 13), that is, you shall lay bare and distinguish by means of reason the nature of each passion, eating, drinking, sexual indulgence, that you may discern them and learn the truth about them. For then you will know that none of these contains the good, only what is useful and necessary. “And bringing the shovel to bear on it then you shall cover your indecency” (ibid.). It is well said. So, soul, bring reason to bear on all things, by which all indecency of flesh and passion is covered, and hidden, and put out of sight. For all that is unaccompanied by reason is unsightly, just as all that reason accompanies is beautiful. This is the result. 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. There is an excellent point in the next words too: “You shall go upon your breast and your belly” (Gen. iii. 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 just as a flame is in motion, so passion, much like a blazing thing, moves in the soul and does not allow it to be calm. Thus the prophet does not agree with those who say that pleasure is tranquil. For stillness belongs 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, far from being an experience of tranquillity, it is an indulgence in intense and violent movement. The sentence “Earth you shall eat all the days of your life” (Gen. iii. 14) is an apt one. For the food of the body brings pleasures of earth; and fittingly so, it would seem. For we consist of two things, 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. ii. 7). It is reasonable, therefore, that the body, fashioned out of earth, has food akin to it, which the earth yields, while the soul, being a portion of an ethereal nature, has by contrast ethereal and divine food; for it is fed by knowledge in its various forms and not by food and drink, which the body needs. We shall find abundant evidence in the Sacred Word that the food of the soul is not earthly but heavenly. “See, 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 test them whether they will walk by My law or not” (Exod. xvi. 4). You see that the soul is fed not with things of earth that decay, but with whatever words God pours like rain out of that lofty and pure region of life to which the prophet has given the title of “heaven.” To proceed. 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 good things sufficient in themselves, duly measured out to us, to think of God as Dispenser of those that still remain. Whoever wants everything at once earns for himself a lack of hope and trust, as well as great lack of sense. He lacks hope if he expects God to shower good things on him only now and not in the future too; he lacks faith, if he does not believe that the good gifts of God are lavishly bestowed, both now and always, on those worthy of them; he lacks sense, if he imagines that, even without God willing it, he will be a sufficient guardian of what he has gathered together; for the mind that vaingloriously ascribes to itself sureness and security has many times been made, by a slight turn of the scale, a feeble and insecure guardian of all that it looked on as in its safe-keeping. Gather together, therefore, soul, what is adequate of itself and suitable, and neither so much more than enough that it is excessive, nor so much less that it falls short, so that, dealing in right measures, you may do no wrong. For you are also required, when you make it your aim 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. xii. 4). So both with manna and with every favour that God confers on 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 that is over-reaching. Let the soul, then, gather the day’s portion for a day (Exod. xvi. 4), so that it may declare the bountiful God, not itself, guardian of the good things. 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; for example, all elementary lessons, what is called school-learning, and philosophy itself, when pursued with no higher motive than parading their superiority, or from a desire for 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 test them whether they will walk in My law or not” (Exod. xvi. 4); for this is the divine law, to value excellence for its own sake. The right principle, therefore, tests all aspirants as one does a coin, to see whether they have been debased by referring 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. He explains this point further when he says, “in the early morning when the dew ceased it appeared all round the camp, and there, 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 did not know what it was. And Moses said to them, ‘This bread, which the Lord has given us to eat, is this word, which the Lord has prescribed’” (Exod. xvi. 13 ff.). You see what kind of thing the soul’s food is. It is a word of God, continuous, resembling dew, embracing the whole soul⁠e and leaving no part of it without a share in itself. But this word does not show itself everywhere, only 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 would have. Such too is the word of God, able to confer benefits both as a whole and through every part, indeed any part you happen upon. A resemblance between the word of God and the pupil of the eye may also be intended. 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, [text missing] by which they shall clearly see all that is worth beholding. Accordingly it is also white; for what could be brighter or more far-shining than the divine word, through communion with which even other things dispel their mist and their gloom, eagerly desiring to become sharers in the light of the soul? This word produces an effect peculiar to it. 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. xvi. 14). For we also find that when he who sees God is intent on 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. xv. 8), so that he who sees Him that is might pass beyond passion. The souls, therefore, that have indeed already had experience of the word, but are not able to answer the question, ask one another “What is it?” (Exod. xvi. 15). For it often happens that on finding a sweet taste in our mouths we are unsure of the flavour that produced 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 it is that gladdens it. But it is taught by the hierophant and prophet Moses:⁠f he will tell it, This bread (ibid.) is the food which God has given to the soul, for it to feed on His own utterance and His own word; for this bread, which He has given us to eat, is “this word.” He also says in Deuteronomy: “And He afflicted you and made you weak by hunger, and fed you with manna, which your fathers did not know, that He might proclaim to you, that not on bread alone shall man live, but on every word that goes forth through the mouth of God” (Deut. viii. 3). This afflicting is propitiation; for on the tenth day too He makes propitiation by afflicting our souls (Lev. xvi. 30). For when we are being deprived of pleasant things, we think we are being afflicted, but in reality this makes God propitious to us. He also brings famine on 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 the eldest and most all-embracing of created things. This word “the fathers did not know.” This does not mean the real ancestors, but those grey with age who said, “Let us appoint a leader and let us return to Egypt,” that is, “to passion” (Numb. xiv. 4). Let God then proclaim to the soul, “Not on bread only shall men live, but on every utterance that goes forth through the mouth of God,” that is to say he shall be fed both by the whole 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 if we are fed even by a portion of it. Now those we have been speaking of 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 puts it this way: “The God to Whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac were well-pleasing, the God Who feeds me from my youth up to this day, the Angel who delivers me out of all my ills, bless these boys” (Gen. xlviii. 15 f.). How beautiful his tone and temper are! He looks on God as feeding him, not His Word; but the Angel, who is the Word, as healer of ills. This is the language of a true philosopher. He thinks it fitting and right that He that is should Himself in His own Person give the principal favours, while His Angels and Words give the secondary gifts; and the secondary gifts are those that involve deliverance from ills. For this reason, I think, God alone, by Himself, bestows health in the simplest sense, preceded by no illness in our bodies, 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. He deals with the soul in the same way. He Himself bestows the good things, the food, with His own hand, but through Angels and Words He bestows those that involve deliverance from ills. In offering this prayer Jacob censured Joseph the statesman, who had ventured to say “I will nourish you there.” His words were, “Make haste and go up to my father and say to him ‘thus says’” and so on, and then “come down to me and do not delay,” finishing with “and I will nourish you there, for there shall be famine for five years” (Gen. xlv. 9, 11). So Jacob both rebukes 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. xlviii. 15) will Himself satisfy my needs.” 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. xxx. 1). But the Supplanter will find fault with her and say, ‘You have greatly erred, for I am not in the place of God, who alone has 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. Look at your sister Leah, and you will 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. xxix. 31). But note again the delicate subtlety 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 needs 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 opens the womb is husband, but the father of the children is the one to whom she is said to bear them. “And I will put enmity between you and the woman” (Gen. iii. 15). In reality pleasure is an enemy to sense, although some think it 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. You know how, when we have gorged ourselves on pleasure, our sense organs lose their vigour. Or have you not noticed how men intoxicated with wine or love, seeing, do not see and, hearing, do not hear, and how they lose the power to use their other senses with any precision? Sometimes, after heavy overeating, all the senses lose their vigour 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 outside 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 aware of what is outside by receiving a blow, and so to gain a vivid impression of it. Notice that the words are not “I will set enmity for you and the woman,” but “between you and the woman.” Why is it put this way? Because the warfare of these two arises over what lies between pleasure and sense, over what lies on their boundary, so to speak. What lies between them is food and drink and whatever serves such purposes, each of which is both an object of sense and a source of pleasure. So when pleasure has indulged in these without restraint, it at once injures sense. The expression “between your seed and her seed” is also full of philosophical truth: for every seed is a starting-point of existence, but the starting-point of pleasure is passion, an irrational impulse, and the starting-point of sense is 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. Passion, then, is to mind what pleasure is to sense. So since the first pair are hostile to each other, the second pair must also be at war with each other. And their warfare is plain to see. When the mind is victorious, devoting itself to immaterial things, its proper object, passion leaves the scene: and on the other hand, when passion has won an evil victory, the mind gives in, kept from attending 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. xvii. 11), showing that when the mind lifts itself up away from mortal things and is borne aloft,⁠g the one that 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 it truly eats up the whole soul and licks it out, leaving behind in it no seed or spark of virtue. The words “Amalek the first of the nations” (Numb. xxiv. 20) are in keeping with this, 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 the minds to which He grants the gift of peace that He will blot out “the memorial of Amalek from under heaven” (Exod. xvii. 14). The sentence “he shall watch your head, and you shall watch his heel” (Gen. iii. 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, then, are we to say? 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, so in speaking of it we should use the pronouns “he” and “his” and so on. So it is rightly said to Pleasure, “the Mind shall watch your chief and principal doctrine, and you shall 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.” The word “shall watch” has two meanings, one like “shall guard and preserve,” the other equivalent to “shall watch in order to destroy.” The mind must necessarily be either bad or good. The foolish mind will show itself a guardian and steward of pleasure, since its delight is in pleasure; but the good mind will prove its enemy, watching eagerly for the moment when it can attack it and destroy it utterly. And notice this: Pleasure, for her part, 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, believing that the wise mind is planning her ruin, while the foolish mind is devising the best means to preserve her. But although she expects to throw and cheat the good mind, she shall herself be thrown by Jacob, who is practised in wrestling, not bodily wrestling but the wrestling in which the soul engages against the dispositions that oppose her, fighting as she does against passions and vices. And Jacob shall not let go of the heel of his adversary, passion, until 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 Esau says, “Rightly was his name called Jacob, for he has supplanted me twice already; then he took my birthright, and now he has taken my blessing” (Gen. xxvii. 36). The bad man regards bodily things as more worthy of reverence, the good man the things of the soul, which in reality are more worthy of reverence, not in age but in value and dignity, and are truly first, as a magistrate is first in a city; and it is the soul that is sovereign over our composite being. So the one who is first in virtue has received the things that are first, which were indeed his portion; for he has also received the blessing, accompanied by perfect prayers. But it is a man who vainly thinks himself wise who says, “My blessings and my birthright has he taken”: he does not take yours, man, but those that are the opposite of yours; for yours have been judged fit for slavery, but his for lordship. And if you consent to become a slave of the wise one, you shall throw off ignorance and boorishness, plagues of the soul, and share in admonition and correction. For in his prayer your father says to you, “To your brother you shall be a slave” (Gen. xxvii. 40); but this shall not be now, for he will not put up with your unruliness, but “when you shall have loosed the yoke from your neck” (ibid.), throwing off the boasting and insolence that you acquired by yoking yourself to a chariot of passions driven by folly. As it is, you are a slave of the harsh and insufferable masters within you, whose fixed law is to set no one free. But if you escape and abandon these, a master who holds his slaves dear shall welcome you, holding out bright hopes of liberty and shall not give you up again to your former masters. For he has learned from Moses an inviolable lesson and rule, “that a man should not hand over 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 pleases him best” (Deut. xxiii. 15 f.). But as long as you have not run away, but are still governed by the bit and bridle of your old masters, you are unworthy to be slave to a wise man. You give the surest proof of a servile character unworthy of a free man by saying “my birthright and my blessings” (Gen. xxvii. 36); for these are the words of men sunk in boundless ignorance, since to speak of “Mine” is fitting for God alone, for all things are in reality the property of Him alone. For this reason He shall also testify, when he says, “You shall preserve My gifts, My grants, My fruits” (Numb. xxviii. 2), that “gifts” excel “grants.” For the term “gifts” brings out the sense of great and perfect favours, which God bestows upon the perfect; “grants” are on a very meagre scale: these are for those of natural excellence who practise and make progress. For this reason Abraham, in harmony with the will of God, also retains the property which had come to him from God, but gets rid of the horses of the king of Sodom (Gen. xiv. 21 ff.), as well as of the possessions of the concubines. Moses, moreover, sees fit to judge the weightiest cases and issues, but the investigation of the insignificant questions he commits to inferior officers (cf. Exod. xviii. 26). Whoever dares to say that anything is his own will in this way have registered himself a slave for life, just like the man who says “I have come to love my master and my wife and my children: I decline to go away free” (Exod. xxi. 5). It is well that he acknowledged himself a slave; for how can a man be anything other than a slave when he 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 depends on nothing else; “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.” But let him not only give evidence against himself. Let him be condemned also by God, and submit to an eternal and inexorable slavery when God commands his ear to be pierced, so that it may not admit words of virtue, and commands him to be a slave for ever to Mind and to Sense, bad and pitiless masters. And to the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply your sorrows and your groaning” (Gen. iii. 16). Woman, who is, as we have seen, Sense, undergoes an experience peculiarly her own, namely grief, which is called “sorrow”; for gladness arises in a certain part of our being, and grief arises in that same part: 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. The athlete and the slave take a beating in different ways, the slave submissively giving in and yielding to the lashes, while the athlete opposes and withstands and shakes off the blows that are falling upon him. You crop a man one way and a (sheep’s) fleece 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. In just 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, unable to summon up free and manly reasoning, 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,⁠h blows a counter-blast to them, so that he is not wounded by them, but regards each of them with absolute indifference; and, I think, he might with youthful spirit address to grief the proud boast in the play: Burn me, consume my flesh, drink my dark blood, Take fill of me; for sooner shall the stars go beneath the earth, and earth go up to the sky, Than you shall hear a fawning word from these lips. Just as God has appointed all sorrowful things in larger measure for sense, so He has generously bestowed an abundance of good things on the earnest soul. For example in the case of perfect Abraham He speaks in this way: “By Myself I have sworn, says the Lord, for Whose sake you have done this thing, and on My account have not spared your son, your only son, truly blessing I will bless you, and multiplying I will multiply your seed as the stars of heaven and as the sand which is by the sea shore” (Gen. xxii. 16 f.). It is good both that He confirmed the promise by an oath, and that He did so by an oath befitting God; notice that God does not swear by some other thing, for nothing is higher than He, but by Himself, who is the best of all things.⁠i 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. xii. 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 says comes to pass, and this is especially characteristic of an oath. It seems to follow from this that all God’s words are oaths, confirmed by being carried out in action. They say indeed that an oath is a calling on God to witness a disputed point; so if it is God that swears, He bears witness to Himself, which is absurd, for the one who bears witness must necessarily be a different person from the one on whose behalf it is borne. What then must we say? First, that there is nothing wrong with 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. Besides if we once take “by Myself have I sworn” in the right way, we shall give up this excessive quibbling. Probably then the truth of the matter is something like this. Nothing that can give assurance can give positive assurance regarding God, for He has shown His nature to no one, but has made 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? No, He alone shall affirm anything regarding Himself since He alone has unerringly exact knowledge of His own nature. 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 about Himself, something impossible for anyone else. 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 imperfect people, while for the wise and perfect the primal Being is their God. Moses too, let us observe, filled with wonder at the transcendency of the Uncreate, says, “and you shall swear by His Name” (Deut. vi. 13), not “by Him,” for it is enough for the created being to be accredited and to have witness borne to him by the Divine word: but let God be His own most sure guarantee and evidence. The words, “for Whose sake you have done this thing” (Gen. xxii. 16) are a token of piety; for it is pious to do all things for the sake of God only. That is why we do not spare that only child of virtue, the happiness we have attained, surrendering it to the Creator, judging such offspring fit to be counted a possession of God, and not of any created being. The words “blessing I will bless” (ibid. 17) are beautifully significant; 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. 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 regarded as 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. To return to our text. It was not enough for ill-fated sense to experience sorrows in large measure; it must also indulge in “groaning.” Groaning is intense and excessive sorrow. For we often grieve without groaning; but when we groan over them, we let our sorrows bring a real storm of trouble and distress upon us. 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 is a bad kind. Another kind is seen in those who repent and are troubled over their past defection and cry “Wretched that we are, how long, as is now evident, we have been ill without knowing it with the illness of folly and senselessness and unrighteousness in our conduct.” But this does not come about unless the king of Egypt, the godless and pleasure-loving disposition, has met his end and died out of the soul: “for after those many days the king of Egypt died.” Then at once when wickedness has died, he that sees God groans over his own failure, “for the children of Israel groaned by reason of their material and Egyptian works” (Exod. ii. 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. That is why it cries out to the Master, begging that it may not turn back again or 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 happened to Lot’s wife, who became stone because she was enamoured of Sodom and reverted to the characters that had been overthrown by God. Now, however, he says “their cry ascended to God” (Exod. ii. 23), in saying so bearing witness 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. So in what follows He says, “See, the cry of the children of Israel has come to Me” (Exod. iii. 9). It is very beautiful that the entreaty reached as far as God; but it would not have reached so far without the kindness of the One who called. Some souls He anticipates and goes forth to meet: “I will come to you and will bless you” (Exod. xx. 24). You see how great the grace of the First Cause is, since He gets ahead of 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 comes into the mind, He at once blesses it and heals all its sicknesses. Sense, however, is always sorrowing and groaning, and with pangs and incurable pain bringing forth perception, as God Himself says, “In sorrow you shall bring forth children” (Gen. iii. 16); sight brings forth seeing, the ear hearing, taste tasting, in a word sense perceiving: but she does none of these things without great distress to the foolish one, for to such a one pain is caused as he sees and hears and tastes and smells and generally exercises any sense. On the other hand, you will find virtue full of great joy at her pregnancy, and the good man begetting with laughter and a glad heart, and the offspring of them both laughter itself. The Divine word shall testify that the wise man begets with joy, not sorrow, in these words, “God said to Abraham, Sarai your wife shall not be called Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name: I will bless her and will give you a child of her” (Gen. xvii. 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). 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, ‘Until now happiness has not come to me, but my Lord (the divine Word) is greater (Gen. xviii. 11 f.), to whom this must necessarily 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: for again when Happiness has been born she says with pride “the Lord has made laughter for me; for whoever shall hear of it will rejoice with me” (Gen. xxi. 6). So, you who are initiated, open your ears wide and take in the holiest teachings. The “laughter” is joy, and “made” is equivalent to “beget,” so that what is said amounts to this: the Lord begot Isaac; for He is Himself Father of the perfect nature, sowing and begetting happiness in men’s souls. “And to your husband,” He says, “shall be your resort” (Gen. iii. 16). Sense has two husbands, the one lawful, the other a seducer. Like 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. Look at that glutton and see what a slave he is to the dishes prepared by the skill of cooks and confectioners. Notice how that one, wild with excitement over music, is swayed and held spellbound by harp or flute, or perhaps by a good singer. But vast benefit comes to sense that has been turned from all else to Mind, her lawful husband. Let us next observe how he speaks about Mind itself when it is acted on in violation of the right principle. “To Adam God said, ‘Because you have listened to the voice of your wife, and have eaten of the tree, of which I commanded you not to eat [of it you have eaten], cursed is the ground in respect of your labours’” (Gen. iii. 17). It is most unprofitable for Mind to 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; 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 plunged into a ditch by the violence of their motion, and that there is a general disaster. Again, a ship keeps to her straight course when the helmsman grasps the tiller and steers accordingly, but capsizes when a contrary wind has sprung up over the sea, and the surge has settled in it. 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 their masters; for then the mind truly is set on fire and is all ablaze, and that fire is kindled by the objects of sense which Sense-perception supplies. Moses, moreover, hints at this kind of conflagration of the mind, caused by the senses, when he says: “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 those who propound riddles say, Come to Heshbon that it may be built, and that the city of Sihon may be constructed. For a fire has 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 you, Moab, you are undone, 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, from Heshbon to Dibon, and their women yet further kindled a fire against Moab” (Numb. xxi. 27-30). “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 nature has often either brought recovery without these means being used, or brought death when they have been used, proving all the doctor’s calculations to be vain dreams, nothing but guesswork in the dark. Again, the farmer says, “I will sow, I will plant, the plants will grow, seeds and plants will yield crops, not only useful in providing 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 one who reckoned dies first without having enjoyed the benefits, and his expectation of enjoying the fruits of his toil proves a vain one. 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. xv. 6); and the words that he is “faithful in all My house” (Numb. xii. 7) testify to the precedence Moses holds. But if we put our trust in our own reasonings, we shall construct and build up the city of Mind that corrupts the truth: for “Sihon” means “corrupting.” So the dreamer finds on waking that all the movements and exertions of the foolish man are dreams void of reality. Indeed Mind itself turned out to be a dream. This is 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; and so he says, “There went forth a fire from Heshbon, a flame from the city of Sihon” (Numb. xxi. 28). In this way trust in plausible reasonings or in Mind that corrupts what is true, is irrational. “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 and indeed swallows down the boundary-stones in it, that is, each particular thought or judgement, which are engraved 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. This is how he begins the dirge over the headstrong and selfish Mind: “Woe to you, Moab: you are undone”; for if you heed guesses made according to what is probable, you have lost truth. “The people of Chemosh,” that is your 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. 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. 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 Dibon,” 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. 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, that is, the senses, lit a fire, a huge conflagration, to add to its disasters. Consider what I mean by this. It often happens in the night when we are not actively using a 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. That being so, what it produces by itself would have been enough to corrupt it. 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. One of these women is the wife of Potiphar, Pharaoh’s head-cook (Gen. xxxix. 1 ff.). How he comes to have a wife when he is a eunuch is a point to consider: 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 them a difficulty. For the Mind, that is really a 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, since he serves as eunuch to none other than Pharaoh, the disperser of noble things. For you must bear in mind that from another point of view to become a eunuch would be a very good thing, if in that way our soul could escape wickedness and unlearn passion. So Joseph too, the self-controlling character, when pleasure says to him “Sleep with me” (Gen. xxxix. 7) ‘and being human indulge human passions and enjoy the delights that come in life’s course,’ refuses to comply, saying, ‘I shall be sinning against God the Lover of virtue, if I were to show myself a lover of pleasure; for this is a wicked deed.’ And now he is merely skirmishing, but before long he is stoutly fighting it out, when the soul has entered her own house and, falling back on her own energies, has renounced everything the body regulates and has set to work at the business that properly belongs to her, since these are activities of the soul. He goes neither into Joseph’s house nor into Potiphar’s house, but “into the house.” He does not go on to say whose house, so that you may think and interpret. He simply adds, “to do his business” (Gen. xxxix. 11). So the house is the soul, into which he retires, abandoning everything outside, so 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 among all the reasonings that usually dwell in the soul within, not one such uncongenial reasoning was found there. Meanwhile pleasure does not stop struggling, but seizes his garments and says “Sleep with me.” As clothes are coverings of the body, so food and drink are coverings of the living being. This is what she says: “Why do you decline pleasure, without which you cannot live? See, I seize and carry off part of what produces her, and I declare that you could not exist without using something that produces 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 produces 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. xxxix. 12). “Who,” — someone may ask, “goes forth within?” Do not many do so? Or have not some who avoided robbing temples stolen goods from a private house, and some who never beat their fathers committed violence against a stranger? These people do indeed come forth from the sins mentioned, but they come into others. But the one who exercises perfect self-control must shun all sins, both the greater and the lesser, and be found implicated in none at all. Joseph, however, being only a youth and lacking the strength to contend with the Egyptian body and conquer pleasure, runs away. But Phinehas the priest, who was zealous with the zeal for God, has secured his own safety not by flight but by grasping the “spear,” i.e. the spirit of zeal, and he will not stop until he has “pierced the Midianitish woman,” the nature that has been sifted out of the sacred company, “through her womb” (Numb. xxv. 7 f.), so that she may never be able to make any plant or seed of wickedness shoot up: in return for this, for cutting out folly, the soul obtains a twofold portion as its reward, peace and priesthood (ibid. 12 f.), virtues as closely related as sisters. So we must not listen to such a woman, by which I mean wicked sense. For “God dealt well with the midwives” (Exod. i. 20), because, disregarding the orders of Pharaoh, the scatterer, they “saved alive” the male offspring of the soul that he wanted to destroy; for, enamoured of what is material and female, he does not know the First Cause and says, “I do not know Him” (Exod. v. 2). Quite a different woman claims our obedience, a woman such as Sarah is seen to have been, namely supreme virtue. The wise Abraham complies with her when she recommends the course to follow. For earlier, when he had not yet become perfect but, before his name was changed, was still only inquiring into supramundane things, she, knowing that he could not beget seed from perfect virtue, advises him to beget children by the handmaiden, that is, school-learning, namely Hagar (Gen. xvi. 2 ff.). This name means “Sojourning,” for the one who is eager to make his home in perfect virtue, before he is registered as a citizen of her city, sojourns with the subjects learned in the schools, so that he may be led by these to apply his unfettered powers to virtue. Afterwards, when she sees him brought to perfection and now capable of begetting [text missing]. And if he, filled with gratitude towards the education through which he was brought into union with virtue, thinks it harsh to reject it, he will be brought to comply by an oracle of God telling him, “In all that Sarah says to you listen to her voice” (Gen. xxi. 12). Let whatever seems good to virtue be law for each one of us; for if we choose to listen to all that virtue recommends, we shall be happy. The words “and you ate of the tree of which alone I commanded you not to eat” are equivalent to “you consented to wickedness, which it is your duty to keep off with all your might”: because of this “cursed”—not “are you” but “is the earth in your works” (Gen. iii. 17). What, then, was the reason for this? The serpent, we saw, was pleasure, an irrational elation of soul. She is cursed on her own account, but note carefully that she attaches herself only to the worthless man, not to any good man. Adam is the neutral mind, which sometimes proves better, sometimes worse. For insofar as he is mind, his nature is neither bad nor good, but under the influence of virtue and vice he tends to shift towards good and bad. So it is just as we would expect that he is not cursed on his own account, since he is neither wickedness nor conduct ruled by wickedness, but that the earth is cursed in his works; for the actions of which the whole soul, here given the name “earth,” is the means and occasion are blameworthy and faulty in each case where he allows wickedness to regulate them. Accordingly he goes on “in sorrow you shall eat of it.” This amounts to “you shall sorrowfully get the benefit of being alive.” For all his life long the bad man makes use of his own vitality in pain. He has no motive for joy. In the nature of things, such a motive is supplied by righteousness and good sense and the virtues that share her throne. “Thorns therefore and burrs shall it cause to spring up for you” (Gen. iii. 18). Indeed, what grows and shoots up in the soul of a foolish man but the passions that goad and wound it? Speaking figuratively, he has given these the name of thorns. The irrational impulse, like a fire, meets these first and, ranging herself with them, burns up and consumes all the soul’s possessions. For this is what is said: “If a fire breaks out and finds thorns and goes on to burn threshing-floor or standing grain or field; he that kindled the fire shall make restitution” (Exod. xxii. 6). You see that the fire, the irrational impulse, once it has broken out, does not burn the thorns but finds them; for, as a searcher after the passions, it finds what it wanted; 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 noble things have been gathered in the soul of the wise man. He likens gradual advance to the standing grain, since each is incomplete and earnestly strives for its completion. He likens goodness of natural disposition to the field, because it receives the seeds of virtue. He calls each of the passions “burrs” or “three-spiked caltrops,” because they are threefold, the passion itself, what produces it, and the finished result of the two. For instance, pleasure, the pleasant, feeling pleasure; desire, the desirable, desiring; sorrow, the sorrowful, feeling sorrow; fear, the fearful, fearing. “And you shall eat the grass of the field; in the sweat of your face you shall eat your bread” (Gen. iii. 18 f.). He uses the terms grass and bread as synonyms; the thing meant is the same. Grass is the food of an irrational creature, and a bad man with the right principle cut out of him is such a creature; the senses, a part of the soul, are irrational too. But when the mind strives to attain the objects of sense through the irrational senses, it does not do so without toil and sweat. For the life of the foolish man is exceedingly painful and burdensome, as he pursues with greedy desire everything that produces pleasures and everything that wickedness loves to bring about. And how long will this last? “Until,” He says, “you shall turn back into the earth, from which you were taken” (Gen. iii. 19). For, having forsaken the wisdom of heaven, is he not now ranked with earthly and chaotic things? We have to consider, then, how he turns back still further. But perhaps he means something like this: 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 at rest or in motion, remains the same and devoted to the same interests. And that is why he goes on to say, “Earth you are and into earth you shall depart” (ibid.), which amounts to what I have already said. It also signifies this: “your origin and your end are one and the same, for you took your origin from earth’s decaying bodies, and into them you shall again come to your end, after treading the way of life that comes between, not along a high road but on a rough path, full of brambles and burrs whose nature is to prick and wound.”