Philo of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
"And the Lord God said, It is not good for the man to be alone; let us make him a helper corresponding to him" (Gen. 2:18). Why, prophet, is it not good for the man to be alone? Because, he says, it is good for the Alone to be alone. God alone, being one by himself, is unique; nothing is like God. So since it is good for the One who truly is to be alone -- for the good belongs to him alone -- it would not be good for the man to be alone.
That God alone exists can also be understood in this way: nothing existed with God before the creation, and once the world came to be, nothing is ranked alongside him; for he needs absolutely nothing. But this understanding is better: God alone is one, not a composite, a simple nature, whereas each of us, and everything else that has come into being, is many things. I, for instance, am many things -- soul and body, and within the soul the irrational and the rational, and again within the body hot and cold, heavy and light, dry and moist. But God is not a composite, nor made up of many elements, but unmixed with anything else. For whatever is joined to
God is either greater than he, or less, or equal to him. But nothing is equal to God or greater than God, and certainly nothing is judged inferior to him either -- for if it were, he himself would be diminished thereby, and if that were so, he would be subject to decay, which is not even permissible to conceive. God, then, is ranked according to the One and the Monad -- or rather, the Monad is ranked according to the one God. For every number is younger than the world, just as
time is, whereas God is older than the world, and is its Maker. No human being, however, is good to be alone. For there are two kinds of human beings: the one made according to the image, and the one molded out of earth. For the man made according to the image it is not good to be alone -- for he reaches out toward the image; the image of God is the archetype of all things, and every likeness longs for that of which it is a likeness, and is ranked together with it. And it is far less good for the molded man to be alone -- indeed it is impossible, for sensations and passions and vices and countless other things are yoked and joined to this mind.
For the second man a helper is formed, one who is, first of all, generated -- for it says, "let us make a helper for him" -- and who is younger than the one being helped. For God first molded the mind, and only afterward was about to mold its helper. But this too is a natural allegory: sensation and the passions of the soul are helpers younger than the soul. How they help, we shall see; that they are younger, let us now observe.
Just as, according to the best physicians and natural philosophers, the heart seems to be formed first of the whole body, in the manner of a foundation, or as the keel in a ship, on which the rest of the body is built -- which is why they say it still twitches even after death, since it is both the first to come into being and the last to perish -- so too the ruling part of the soul is older than the whole, while the irrational part is younger, whose origin Scripture has not yet described but is about to. The irrational is sense-perception and the passions that are its offspring, especially insofar as they are not our own judgments. Reasonably, then, this helper of the mind is younger, and rightly generated.
Let us look at what was postponed, namely how it helps. How does our mind grasp that this is white or black, except by employing sight as a helper? How does it grasp that the lyre-singer's voice is sweet, or on the contrary discordant, except by employing hearing as a helper? How does it grasp that vapors are fragrant or foul, except by employing smell as an ally? How does it assess flavors, except through the helper of taste? And how, again, does it distinguish soft from rough, except through touch?
There is, then, another kind of helper, as I said, namely the passions. For pleasure helps toward the continuance of our race, as does desire; and grief and fear too, by biting the soul, turn it to disregard nothing; and anger, a weapon of defense, has greatly benefited many, and so with the rest. That is why Scripture aptly said the helper is "corresponding to him" -- for this helper is truly proper to the mind, as a brother of the same blood; sense-perception and the passions are parts and offspring of one and the same soul.
The helper is of two kinds, one among the passions, the other in sense-perception. For now only the former kind will be generated, for it says: "And God still further molded out of the earth all the wild animals of the field and all the birds of the sky, and brought them to Adam to see what he would call them; and whatever Adam called it, a living soul, that was its name" (Gen. 2:19). You see who our helpers are: the wild animals are the passions of the soul. For having said "let us make a helper corresponding to him," Scripture goes on to say "he molded the wild animals," as though the wild animals were our helpers.
These, however, are called helpers not in the proper sense but by an abuse of language, since in truth they turn out to be enemies -- just as sometimes allies prove traitors and deserters, and among friends, flatterers turn out to be enemies rather than companions. Scripture has called the mind, allegorically, by the synonymous names "sky" and "field": for the mind, like a field, has countless risings and shoots, and like the sky, again, has bright, divine, and blessed natures.
Scripture likens the passions to wild beasts and birds, because they savage the mind, being untamed and unruly, and because, like birds, they fly up into the understanding; for their impulse is sharp and unrestrainable. It is not by chance that the word "still further" is added to "molded." Why? Because it says that the wild animals had already been molded before the creation of man, as it also shows in these words concerning the sixth day: "And he said, let the earth bring forth a living soul according to kind: four-footed creatures and reptiles and wild beasts" (Gen. 1:24).
What, then, has happened to him, that he now molds other wild animals, not content with the earlier ones? This must be said in the moral sense: the class of vice is rich within the created realm, so that the basest things are continually being generated in it. And in the natural sense: earlier, in the six days, he was producing the classes and forms of the passions, but now he is molding further particular species.
That is why it says "he still further molded." That the classes had been made long before is clear from the words "let the earth bring forth a living soul" -- not "species," but "according to kind." And this is found to be his method in every case: he completes the classes before the species, just as with man; for having first sketched the generic man, in whom he says the male and the female class exist, he later fashions the particular form, Adam.
This, then, is the account he has given of one kind of helper; the other, that of sense-perception, he postpones until he undertakes to mold the woman. Having set that aside, he expounds the theory of the giving of names. Both the figurative and the literal account here deserve our wonder. The literal account is this: the lawgiver assigned the giving of names to the first man to come into being.
For the philosophers among the Greeks too said that those who first assigned names to things were wise men. But Moses did better, for he assigned this task, first, not to some earlier people but to the first man to come into being, so that just as he himself was molded to be the origin of generation for the others, so too he might be reckoned the origin of speech -- for if there were no names, there would be no language either. And second, because if many people were assigning names, they would inevitably turn out discordant and incompatible, one person naming things one way and another another way, whereas it was necessary that the assignment of one person should fit the thing, and that this should be a symbol, the same for all, of the
object referred to, or of what is signified. The moral account is this: we often put "what" in place of "why" -- for instance, "what do you walk for," "what do you converse for," all these standing for "why." So when it says "to see what he would call them," understand this as equivalent to: why will the mind call, summon, and welcome each of these things? Is it only for the sake of necessity, since the mortal being is necessarily yoked to passions and vices, or also for the sake of excess and superfluity? And is it for the needs of the earthborn creature, or because it judges these things to be best and most admirable?
For example, one must make use of pleasure as something that has come to be; but the base person will use it as a complete good, while the person of worth will use it only as a necessity -- for nothing among mortal-born things comes about apart from pleasure. Again, the base person judges the acquisition of wealth to be the most complete good, while the person of worth judges it too to be merely necessary. God, then, reasonably wishes to see and learn how the mind summons and welcomes each of these things -- whether as goods, or as indifferent things, or as things that are bad, yet in another sense useful.
That is why, whatever the mind summoned and welcomed as a living soul, judging it worthy of equal honor with a soul, the name that resulted belonged not only to the thing summoned but also to the one who summoned it. For instance, if it welcomed pleasure, it was called a lover of pleasure; if desire, a man of desire; if licentiousness, licentious; if cowardice, cowardly; and so with the rest. For just as, from the virtues, the person qualified by them is called prudent, or temperate, or just, or courageous, so too, from the vices, he is called unjust and foolish and unmanly, whenever he has summoned and welcomed these states.
"And God cast a trance upon Adam, and he slept; and he took one of his ribs" and so on (Gen. 2:21). The literal statement here is mythical. For how could anyone accept that a woman, or indeed a human being at all, came to be from a man's rib? What would have prevented the same cause that fashioned the man out of earth from likewise fashioning the woman? The maker was the same, and the matter was practically limitless, out of which every quality was constructed.
Why, then, when so many parts were available, did he not form the woman from some other part, but from a rib? And which rib did he take -- so that we might say only two are indicated, since Scripture did not even reveal their number -- the left, perhaps, or the right? And if he filled up the one with flesh again, was not the remaining one presumably not fleshly? And yet all our ribs are akin and related in every part, and made of the same flesh. What, then, must be said? This must be said:
ordinary usage calls the powers "ribs": we say a person "has ribs" as equivalent to "has powers," and that an athlete is "well-ribbed" instead of "strong," and that a singer to the lyre "has ribs" instead of "has vigorous power in singing."
Having said this beforehand, this too must be said: that the mind naked and unbound to a body -- for the discussion concerns the mind not yet bound -- has many powers: cohesion, growth, soul, reason, understanding, and countless others besides, both specific and generic. Cohesion is common even to lifeless things, stones and wood, and our bones, which resemble stones, share in it. Growth extends also to plants; and in us there are things that resemble plants, namely nails and hair. Growth is cohesion already set in motion.
Soul is a nature that has additionally acquired impression and impulse; this is common also to irrational creatures, and our mind too has something analogous to an irrational soul. Again, the power of understanding is peculiar to the mind, while the power of reason is common, perhaps, even to more divine natures, but peculiar, among mortals, to man; and this is twofold -- one kind, by which we are rational insofar as we partake of mind, and another, by which we converse.
There is, then, yet another power in the soul, a sister of these, the perceptive power, which is the subject of this discussion. For the text here is describing nothing other than the coming-to-be of sense-perception in actuality; and reasonably so, for immediately after mind it was necessary that sense-perception be formed as its helper and ally. Having brought the first creation to completion, God molds the second, both in order and in power -- sense-perception in actuality -- for the completion of the whole soul and for the apprehension of the things that underlie it. How, then, is it generated?
As he himself says again, it is when the mind falls asleep. For indeed, when the mind sleeps, sense-perception comes to be, and conversely, when the mind is awake, it is extinguished. Here is the proof: whenever we wish to think something with precision, we flee into solitude, close our eyes, stop up our ears, and take leave of the senses. Thus, when the mind rises and makes use of wakefulness, sense-perception perishes.
Let us look also at the other case: how mind makes use of sleep. When sensation has risen up and been kindled to life, and sight looks with pleasure on the well-crafted works of painters or sculptors, is mind not idle, contemplating nothing intelligible? And when hearing attends to the melody of a voice, can mind reason about anything of its own concerns? By no means. And mind becomes far more idle still when taste rises up and greedily gorges itself on the pleasures of the belly.
This is why Moses, fearing that mind might not merely fall asleep but actually die outright, says elsewhere: “And you shall have a peg on your belt, and when you squat down you shall dig with it, and having covered it over you shall cover your shame” (Deut. 23:13), calling the peg, in symbolic terms, the reason that digs out things hidden.
He commands the man to wear it upon the passion, which must be kept girded up and never allowed to hang slack and loose. And this must be done whenever mind, having abandoned its tension toward things intelligible, gives way to the passions, and squats down, yielding and being led by bodily necessity.
And so it is: whenever, in luxurious company, mind forgets itself, overpowered by the things that lead to pleasure, we are enslaved and make use of uncovered impurity; but if reason has the strength to purify the passion, then we are neither drunk from what we drink nor run riot from what we eat through excess, but, without idle chatter, take our food soberly.
So then, the waking of the senses is a sleep of mind, and the waking of mind is an inactivity of the senses — just as, when the sun rises, the brightness of the other stars becomes invisible, but when it sets, they become plainly visible. In the manner of the sun, then, mind, when awake, overshadows the senses, but when it has fallen asleep, it lets them shine forth.
Having said this, we must apply it to the words. “God cast a trance upon” the one “he had put to sleep” (Gen. 2:21) — rightly; for the trance and turning of mind is its sleep. It is put in a trance whenever it is not occupied with the intelligible things incumbent upon it; and when it is not engaged in these activities, it sleeps. And it is well said that it “was put in a trance” — that is, was turned — not by itself, but by God, who casts, brings on, and sends the turning upon it.
For indeed this is how it is: if turning depended on me, I would make use of it whenever I wished, and whenever I did not so choose, I would remain unturned. But as things stand, the turning even contends against me, and often, though I wish to think of something fitting, I am flooded by influxes contrary to what is fitting; and conversely, when I have conceived some shameful notion, I have washed it away with wholesome thoughts, God, by his own grace, pouring a sweet stream into the soul instead of a brackish one.
Now everything that has come into being must necessarily be subject to turning — for this is its own property, just as being unturning is God’s property. But of those who have been turned, some have remained so until utter corruption, while others, only so far as was necessary for a mortal being to suffer, were straightway restored.
This is why Moses also says that God “will not allow the destroyer to enter your houses to strike” (Exod. 12:23): for he allows the destroyer — and destruction is the turning — to enter the soul, so as to display what is proper to the created being; but God will not permit the offspring of him who sees, Israel, to be so turned as to be struck down by the turning, but will force him to run back up and lift his head, as if out of the deep, and be restored.
“He took one of his ribs” (Gen. 2:21). Of the many powers of mind he took one, the perceptive power. And “he took” is not to be understood as “listened to,” but as “counted, examined” — as elsewhere, “take the total of the plunder taken captive” (Num. 31:26).
What, then, does he wish to establish? Sensation is spoken of in two senses: one according to a settled state, which belongs to us even while we sleep, and one according to actuality. From the former, the one according to a settled state, there is no benefit, for through it we do not apprehend the things that underlie it; but through the second, the one according to actuality, we do make our apprehensions of sensible things.
Having generated, then, the former sensation, the one according to a settled state, at the very time he generated mind — for he equipped mind together with many powers lying at rest — he now wishes to bring to completion the sensation according to actuality. And this is completed whenever the settled-state sensation, once set in motion, is stretched out as far as the flesh and the organs of perception. For just as nature is completed when seed is set in motion, so too is activity completed when a settled state is set in motion.
“And he filled up the flesh in its place” (Gen. 2:21) — that is, he completed the settled-state sensation by bringing it into actuality and stretching it out as far as the flesh and the whole surface of the body. This is why he adds that God “built it into a woman” (Gen. 2:22), showing thereby that “woman” is the most fitting and most exactly apt name for sensation. For just as the man is contemplated in acting, and the woman in being acted upon, so mind is examined in acting, and sensation, after the manner of a woman, in being acted upon.
This is easy to learn from plain evidence. Sight is acted upon by the visible things that move it — white, black, and the rest; hearing, in turn, is affected by sounds, and taste is disposed by flavors, smell by vapors, touch by the rough and the smooth. And all the senses remain at rest until whatever is to move each of them from outside approaches it.
“And he brought her to Adam; and Adam said, this now is bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh” (Gen. 2:22–23). God brings the sensation according to actuality to mind, knowing that its motion and apprehension must bend back toward mind. And he, having beheld the power he formerly possessed, at rest according to its settled state, now become a completed result and set in motion as an actuality, marvels and cries out, declaring that it is not something alien to him but altogether his own; “this,”
he says, “is bone of my bones” — that is, a power from my powers, for “bone” is here used to mean power and strength — “and a passion of my passions”; “and flesh,” he says, “of my flesh” — for everything that sensation undergoes, it endures not without mind, since mind is the source
and the foundation on which it rests. It is worth considering why “now” was added; for he says, “this now is bone of my bones.” Sensation by nature exists only “now,” subsisting only in present time. Mind, on the other hand, lays hold of all three times, for it both thinks the things present, and remembers the things past, and anticipates the things to come;
but sensation neither apprehends things future, nor experiences anything analogous to expectation or hope, nor remembers things past, but is by nature made to be affected only by what is already acting on it and present — as, for instance, the eye is whitened now by the white that is present, but is not affected at all by what is not present. Mind, however, is moved even by what is not present — by what is past, through memory, and by what is to come, through hoping and anticipating.
“And she shall be called woman for this” (Gen. 2:23) — that is, for this reason sensation will be called “woman,” “because she was taken from the man” who moves her, “this one,” he says. Why, then, is “this one” added? Because there is another sensation, not taken from mind but come into being together with it; for, as I have already said, there are two sensations, the one according to a settled state, the other according to actuality.
The one according to a settled state, then, is not taken from the man — that is, from mind — but grows up together with him; for mind, as I have shown, when it was generated, was generated together with many powers and settled states — rational, psychic, vegetative, and so also perceptive. But the sensation according to actuality comes from mind; for it was stretched out from the settled-state sensation already existing in mind, so as to become actual, so that this second sensation, the one according to motion, has come to be from mind itself.
Foolish is he who thinks, in the eyes of true reason, that anything at all is generated from mind, or from itself. Do you not see that even to sensation — which sits enthroned upon idols, in the person of Rachel, thinking that its movements come from mind — the one who sees rebukes it? For she says, “Give me children; otherwise I shall die” (Gen. 30:1); but he answers, O you who hold a false opinion, mind is the cause of nothing, but the God who is before mind is. This is why he adds, “Am I in the place of God, who has deprived you of the fruit of the womb?” (ibid. 2).
That it is God who generates, he will attest in the case of Leah, when he says, “And the Lord, seeing that Leah was hated, opened her womb, but Rachel was barren” (Gen. 29:31). Now to open a womb is the property of a man. And by nature virtue is hated among the mortal race; this is why God has honored her, and grants the birthright to the one who is hated.
And he says elsewhere: “If a man has two wives, one of them loved and one of them hated, and they bear him children, and the firstborn son is the son of the hated wife … he shall not be able to give the birthright to the son of the loved wife, disregarding the son of the hated wife, the firstborn” (Deut. 21:15). For the offspring of hated virtue are the very first and most perfect, while those of beloved pleasure are the last.
“For this reason a man shall leave his father and mother, and shall cling to his wife, and the two shall become one flesh” (Gen. 2:24). For the sake of sensation, mind, whenever it is enslaved to it, leaves both the father of all things, God, and the mother of all things, virtue and the wisdom of God, and clings to and is united with its equal, and dissolves into sensation, so that the two become one flesh and one passion.
Observe, however, that it is not the woman who clings to the man, but rather, conversely, the man who clings to the woman — mind to sensation. For whenever the better, mind, is united to the worse, sensation, it dissolves into the worse, the race of flesh, sensation being the cause of the passions; but whenever the worse, sensation, follows the better, mind, it will no longer be flesh, but both will be mind. Such, then, is this man, who prefers the love of passion to the love of God.
Observe that it is not the woman who cleaves to the man, but on the contrary the man to the woman - mind to sense-perception. For whenever the better, the mind, is united with the worse, sense-perception, it dissolves into the worse, the race of flesh, which is the cause of the passions, sense-perception; but whenever the worse, sense-perception, follows the better, the mind, it will no longer be flesh, but both will be mind. Such, then, is this man, who prefers the passion-loving life to the God-loving life.
But there is another, of the opposite choice, Levi, who "says to his father and mother, I have not seen you, and does not acknowledge his brothers, and disowns his sons" (Deut. 33:9). This man abandons father and mother - mind and the matter of the body - in order to have as his portion the one God, "for the Lord himself is his portion" (Deut. 10:9).
So the portion of the passion-loving man is passion, while the portion of Levi, the God-loving man, is God. Do you not see that on the tenth day of the seventh month he commands two goats to be brought forward, one lot for the Lord and one lot for the scapegoat (Lev. 16:8)? For the true portion of the passion-loving man is the passion that is sent away.
"And the two were naked, Adam and his wife, and they were not ashamed. Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the beasts on the earth that the Lord God had made" (Gen. 2:25-3:1). The mind is naked when it is clothed neither with vice nor with virtue, but is truly stripped of both, just as the soul of an infant child, having no part in either good or evil, has cast off its coverings and is stripped bare. For these are the garments of the soul, by which it is covered and concealed - the good, in the case of the serious soul, the evil, in the case of the base one.
The soul is stripped bare in three ways. Once, when it remains unchanging and has been emptied of all its vices, and has cast off and rejected all its passions. This is why "Moses pitches his own tent outside the camp, far from the camp, and it was called the tent of testimony" (Exod. 33:7). This is what it means.
The God-loving soul, stripping off the body and the things dear to it, and fleeing far outside from these, receives fixity and stability and settlement in the perfect doctrines of virtue. This is why it is testified to by God, that it loves what is beautiful - for it says, "it was called the tent of testimony" - and it kept silent about who does the calling, so that the soul, being stirred to inquiry, might consider who it is that bears witness to minds that love virtue.
For this reason the high priest will not enter into the holy of holies wearing the full-length robe (cf. Lev. 16:1ff.), but stripping off the tunic of the soul's opinion and outward show, and leaving it to those who love external things and have honored opinion above truth, he will enter naked, without colors and sounds, to pour out the blood of the soul as a libation and to burn the whole mind as incense to God the savior and benefactor.
And indeed Nadab and Abihu (cf. Lev. 10:1), who drew near to God and abandoned mortal life while receiving a share of the immortal, are seen naked of empty and mortal opinion. For those who carried them out would not have carried them in their tunics (Lev. 10:5), had they not been stripped bare, having burst every bond of passion and bodily necessity, so that their nakedness and incorporeality should not be counterfeited by an intrusion of godless reasonings. For not everyone should be permitted to look upon the secret things of God, but only those who are able to keep and guard them.
This is why the men of Mishael do not carry them off in their own tunics, but in those of Nadab and Abihu, who had been consumed by fire and taken up. For having stripped off everything that covered them, they offered their nakedness to God, and left the tunics to the men of Mishael - and the tunics are the parts of the irrational soul, which the rational part had overshadowed.
And Abraham too is made naked when he hears, "Go out from your land and from your kindred" (Gen. 12:1). And Isaac is not made naked, but is always naked and incorporeal; for a command has been given to him not to go down into Egypt (Gen. 26:2), that is, into the body. And Jacob loves nakedness of soul - for his smoothness is a kind of nakedness - for Esau, it says, was a hairy man, but Jacob was a smooth man (Gen. 27:11); which is also why he is the husband of Leah.
This is the one best kind of nakedness; the other is its opposite, a stripping away of virtue that comes through a turning aside, when the soul grows foolish and loses its mind. Noah makes use of this kind of nakedness when he becomes naked from drinking wine. But thanks be to God, that the turning and the nakedness of the mind, which came through the removal of virtue, did not pour out to external things, but remained within the house; for it says, "he was made naked within his house" (Gen. 9:21). For even if the wise man sins, he does not run aground as the base man does; for the vice of the one pours out, while that of the other is held in check. Hence he sobers up again - that is, he repents, and recovers as if from an illness.
Let us look more closely at how the nakedness comes to be within the house. When the soul has only conceived, through a turning aside, some improper thought, and does not go further to carry it out in deed, the wrongdoing has occurred within the region and house of the soul. But if, in addition to reasoning something base, the soul also brings it to completion, so as to work it out, the wrongdoing has poured out into external things as well. This is why he also curses Canaan.
Because he reported outside the turning aside of the soul, that is, he extended it also to external things and worked it out fully, adding to the evil intention the evil result achieved through deeds. But Shem and Japheth are praised for not seizing upon the soul's condition, but rather covering over its turning aside.
This is why vows and the determinations of the soul are released when they occur within the house of a father or a husband (Num. 30:4ff.), if the reasonings do not remain quiet nor seize upon the turning aside, but rather remove the wrongdoing altogether; for then the master of all things "will cleanse her" too. But he allows the vow of a widow and of a divorced woman to remain irrevocable; for it says, "whatever she has vowed against her own soul shall remain binding on her" (Num. 30:10) - and reasonably so. For if, having been cast out, she has gone forward as far as external things, so as not merely to turn aside but also to sin through the results of her actions, she remains uncured, having no share in the reasoning of a husband and being deprived of the comfort of a father.
The third kind of nakedness is the middle one, according to which the mind is irrational, having a share neither in virtue nor yet in vice. It is of this kind that our discourse speaks, in which the infant too has a share, so that the statement "the two were naked, Adam and his wife," means this: neither did the mind understand nor did sense-perception perceive, but the one was empty and bare of understanding, and the other of perceiving.
Let us look again at the phrase "they were not ashamed." There are three states with respect to this matter: shamelessness, a sense of shame, and the state of being neither shameless nor ashamed. Shamelessness is characteristic of the base man, a sense of shame of the serious man, but being neither ashamed nor shameless belongs to the one who has not yet formed any comprehension or assent, which is the one our discourse now concerns. For the one who has not yet grasped good or evil can neither be shameless nor ashamed.
Now examples of shamelessness are all forms of indecency, whenever the mind uncovers shameful things that ought to be kept hidden, and takes pride and glories in them. This is also said of Miriam, when she spoke against Moses: "If her father had spit in her face, would she not be ashamed for seven days?" (Num. 12:14).
For sense-perception is truly shameless and bold - she who, though scorned by God the father in favor of the faithful man throughout his whole household (ibid. 7), the man to whom God himself joined the Ethiopian woman, the unchanging and thoroughgoing judgment, still dares to speak against Moses and accuse him for that very thing for which he ought to have been praised (ibid. 1). For this is his greatest achievement, that he took the Ethiopian woman, the unturning, fire-tested, and proven nature. For just as in the eye the part that sees is black, so the seeing faculty of the soul is called the Ethiopian woman.
Why then, when there are many deeds of vice, does he mention only the one concerning shame, saying "they were not ashamed," and not "they did not act unjustly" or "they did not sin" or "they did not offend"? The reason lies close at hand. By the one true God, I hold nothing so shameful as supposing that I myself am the cause of understanding or of perceiving. Is my mind the cause of understanding? How so?
For does it know itself - what it is, or how it came to be? And is sense-perception the cause of perceiving? How could this be said, when it is known neither by itself nor by the mind? Do you not see that the mind which seems to understand is often found to be mindless - in states of satiety, of drunkenness, of derangement? Where then is its understanding in these states? And does sense-perception not often lose its power of perceiving? There are times when, though seeing, we do not see, and though hearing, we do not hear, whenever the mind is drawn aside, even a little, toward some other object of thought, its attention elsewhere.
So then, so long as they are naked - the mind of understanding, sense-perception of perceiving - they have nothing shameful. But whenever they begin to lay claim to comprehension, they fall into shame and outrage; for they will often be found employing foolishness and folly rather than sound knowledge, not only in states of satiety, melancholy, and derangement, but also in the rest of life. For whenever sense-perception rules, the mind is enslaved, attending to nothing intelligible; and whenever the mind rules, sense-perception is seen to be inactive, having no grasp of anything perceptible.
"Now the serpent was the most cunning of all the beasts on the earth that the Lord God had made" (Gen. 3:1). Since mind and sense-perception had already come into being, and these existed naked in the manner described, there must necessarily be a third thing, pleasure, which brings the two together for the apprehension of intelligible and perceptible things. For the mind could not, apart from sense-perception, apprehend an animal or a plant or a stone or a piece of wood or a body generally, nor could sense-perception, apart from the mind, secure its perceiving.
Since, then, both of these had to come together for the apprehension of the underlying objects, what brought them together but a third bond, that of desire and appetite, of ruling and mastering pleasure, which he named symbolically the serpent?
The creator of living things, God, ordered this arrangement most excellently: mind first, the man, for it is the eldest thing in a human being; then sense-perception, the woman; then, next, third, pleasure. In power these are conceived as differing in age only in thought, but in time they are of equal age; for the soul brings everything with it at once, though some things in actuality, others only in potentiality, even if it has not yet attained its completion.
Pleasure was likened to a serpent for the following reason: the motion of a serpent is manifold and twisting, and so too is that of pleasure. It coils first in five ways, for pleasures arise through sight, through hearing, through taste, through smell, and through touch; and the most violent and intense of these are the intimacies with women, through which the generation of one's like is by nature brought to completion.
What need is there to teach about the pleasures of the belly? For there are, roughly speaking, as many pleasures as there are pleasant differences among the underlying flavors that stir the sense of taste. Is it not fitting, then, that pleasure, being of many kinds, is likened for this reason to a creature of many kinds, the serpent — and likewise to the part in us that is like a crowd, a rabble,
whenever it longs for the houses in Egypt — that is, for the bulk of the body — it falls into pleasures that bring death: not the separation of soul from body, but the corruption of the soul by vice. For it says: ‘And the Lord sent among the people serpents that brought death, and they bit the people, and many of the sons of Israel died’ (Num. 21:6). For truly the immoderation of pleasures brings death upon the soul.
What dies is not the ruling part in us, but the ruled part, the part like a rabble; and it will accept death only until, resorting to repentance, it confesses its turning aside. For they came to Moses and said, ‘We have sinned, because we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray therefore to the Lord, and let him take the serpents away from us’ (Num. 21:7). It is well said — not ‘because we were bound about we sinned,’ but ‘because we sinned, we spoke against’; for whenever the mind sins and is cut off from virtue, it lays the blame for its own turning aside upon the divine,
attaching it to God. How, then, does the healing of this passion come about? When another serpent is fashioned, the opposite of Eve’s — the reasoned principle of self-control. For self-control is opposite to pleasure, manifold virtue to manifold passion, warding off pleasure as an enemy. God therefore commands Moses to fashion the serpent of self-control, saying, ‘Make yourself a serpent and set it upon a standard’ (Num. 21:8). You see that Moses fashions this serpent for no one but himself, for God commands, ‘Make for yourself,’ so that you may know that self-control is not a possession belonging to everyone, but to the God-loving alone.
We must consider why Moses fashions the serpent of bronze, though he was given no instruction about its material. Perhaps for these reasons: first, the graces of God are without matter and without quality, while those of mortal beings are perceived together with matter; second, Moses is in love with bodiless virtues, but our souls, unable to strip off their bodies, desire a virtue that is bodily.
The principle of self-control, being vigorous and unbroken, is likened to the strong and solid substance of bronze — perhaps also because self-control in the man beloved of God is most precious and resembles gold, while it takes second place in the one who has attained wisdom only through progress. ‘Whomever, then, the serpent bites, everyone who looks upon it shall live’ (Num. 21:8) — most truly so; for if the mind, bitten by pleasure, the serpent’s bite, has the strength to behold with the soul the beauty of self-control, the serpent of Moses, and through it God himself, it shall live. Only let it look and understand.
Do you not see that Sarah too, ruling wisdom, says: ‘Whoever hears will rejoice with me’ (Gen. 21:6)? Suppose someone has the strength to hear that virtue has borne Isaac, happiness — at once he will sing a hymn of shared rejoicing. As, then, rejoicing belongs to the one who has heard, so not dying belongs to the one who has seen self-control and God with a pure gaze.
Many souls that have fallen in love with endurance and self-control, and have been emptied of the passions, have nevertheless undergone the mastery of God and suffered a turning for the worse, as the Master demonstrates both himself and the nature of created things — himself, that he stands always unswerving; created nature, that it sways in the balance and tips now to one side, now to its opposite. For it says:
‘Who led you through that great and fearsome wilderness, where there was the biting serpent and scorpion and thirst, where there was no water; who brought forth for you a spring of water from the flinty rock; who fed you with manna in the wilderness, which your fathers did not know’ (Deut. 8:15–16). You see that the soul falls prey to the serpents not only when it longs for the passions of Egypt, but also that, even while in the wilderness, it is bitten by pleasure, the manifold and serpentine passion. And the work of pleasure has received the most fitting name, for it is called a ‘bite.’
But it is not only those in the wilderness who are bitten by pleasure; those who are scattered are bitten too. For I myself have often left behind my kinsfolk, friends, and homeland, and gone into solitude in order to contemplate something worthy of sight, and gained nothing by it — instead my mind, scattered or bitten by passion, withdrew into the opposite state. Yet there are times when, even in a crowd of countless people, my thought remains at peace, God having dispersed the rabble within the soul and taught me that it is not differences of place that produce good and bad, but the God who moves and drives the chariot of the soul wherever he chooses.
Yet it falls prey to the scorpion, which is scattering, in the wilderness, and thirst — the thirst of the passions — overtakes it, until God sends forth the stream of his own flinty wisdom and gives the turned soul drink unto unchangeable health. For the flinty rock is the wisdom of God, which he cut off, foremost and first, from his own powers, and from it he waters the souls that love God. Having drunk, the soul is also filled with manna, the most generic thing — for manna is called ‘something,’ which is the genus of all things — and the most generic is God, and second is the Logos of God, while all other things exist only in word, and in their actual working are, in some cases, equal to that which does not exist at all.
See now the difference between the one turned aside in the wilderness and the one turned aside in Egypt: the latter deals with serpents that bring death, that is, with insatiable pleasures that carry death with them; the man in training, however, is only bitten by pleasure and scattered, not put to death. And that man is healed by self-control, the bronze serpent fashioned by wise Moses, while this man is given to drink by God himself the fairest drink, wisdom, from the spring that God brought forth out of his own wisdom.
Not even the most God-beloved Moses is spared by serpentine pleasure. It is told thus: ‘If then they will not believe me or listen to my voice — for they will say, God has not appeared to you — what shall I say to them? And the Lord said to Moses, What is that in your hand? And he said, A rod. And he said, Throw it on the ground. And he threw it on the ground, and it became a serpent, and Moses fled from it. And the Lord said to Moses, Stretch out your hand and take hold of its tail. So he stretched out his hand and took hold of its tail, and it became a rod in his hand — so that they may believe you’ (Exod. 4:1ff.).
How, then, might one believe God? If one learns that all other things are subject to change, and he alone is unchanging. God, then, inquires of the wise man what there is in the practical life of his soul; for the hand is a symbol of action. And he answers, education — which he calls a ‘rod.’ Hence Jacob too, the supplanter of the passions, says, ‘For with my rod I crossed this Jordan’ (Gen. 32:10); and Jordan is interpreted as ‘descent’; and to the lower, earthly, and perishable nature belong the things of vice and passion. The mind in training crosses these by means of education; for it is a lowly thing merely to wait and expect,
that he crossed the river simply by holding a staff. Well, then, does the God-beloved Moses answer; for truly the actions of the man of worth are propped up by education as by a rod, steadying the tossing and tumult of the soul. This rod, when thrown down, becomes a serpent — fittingly so; for if the soul throws away education, it has become a lover of pleasure instead of a lover of virtue. Hence Moses too flees from it; for the lover of virtue runs away from passion and pleasure.
Yet God does not approve of this flight. For you, O understanding, not yet made perfect, it is fitting to practice flight and escape from the passions; but for Moses, the perfect one, it is fitting to remain in the war against them, to stand against them and fight them to the end. Otherwise, gaining boldness and license, they will climb up to the very citadel of the soul, and like a tyrant will besiege and plunder the whole soul.
Hence God also commands, ‘take hold of the tail’ — that is, do not let the contentious and untamed part of pleasure frighten you, but rather take hold of this very thing, grasp it, and master it completely; for once again, in place of the serpent, there will be a rod — that is, in place of pleasure, education will come to be in your hand.
It will come to be in the hand, in the action of the wise man, and this is indeed true. But it is impossible to take hold of pleasure and master it unless the hand is first stretched out — that is, unless the soul acknowledges that all its actions and advances belong to God, and attributes nothing to itself. The one who truly sees has resolved to flee from this serpent, but fashions another, the serpent of self-control, that bronze one, so that whoever is bitten by pleasure may look upon self-control and live the true life.
Jacob prays that Dan may become such a serpent, and speaks thus: ‘Dan shall judge his own people, as one tribe of Israel, and let Dan become a serpent on the road, lying in wait on the path, biting the heel of the horse, so that its rider falls backward, awaiting the salvation of the Lord’ (Gen. 49:16–18). Issachar is the fifth true-born son of Jacob by Leah, or seventh when the two sons by Zilpah are counted together; but Dan is the fifth son of Jacob by Bilhah, the maidservant of Rachel. We shall discover the reason for this elsewhere, in its proper place. Now we must consider Dan further.
The soul carries two kinds of offspring, the one divine, the other perishable. The better kind she has already brought to birth, and she stands still upon it; for once the soul had the strength to make confession to God and to yield up all things to him, she no longer had any better possession to gain. For this reason she ceased bearing children after bringing forth Judah, the disposition of confession. But she now begins to shape the mortal kind.
The mortal kind rests upon swallowing; for taste, which is the cause of the persistence of living creatures, is like its foundation. Now Bilhah is interpreted as ‘swallowing’; from her, then, is born Dan, who is interpreted as ‘judgment’; for this kind judges and separates the immortal from the mortal. Jacob therefore prays that Dan may become a lover of self-control, but he does not pray this for Judah, since Judah already possesses confession and the pleasing of God. ‘Let Dan,’ he therefore says, ‘become a serpent on the road.’
Our road is the soul. For just as on roads one can see a variety of things — lifeless and living, irrational and rational, worthy and worthless, slave and free, younger and older, male and female, foreign and native, sick and healthy, maimed and whole — so too in the soul there are movements that are lifeless, imperfect, diseased, slavish, feminine, and countless others besides, full of blemish; and, on the contrary, movements that are truly living, whole, masculine, free, healthy, mature, worthy, legitimate, and native.
Let the principle of self-control, then, become a serpent upon the soul as it journeys through all the affairs of life, and let it lie in wait upon the path. What does this mean? The region of virtue is untrodden, for few walk it, but that of vice is well-worn. He urges the serpent to sit in wait, to lie in ambush, upon the well-worn road — that is, upon passion and vice, in which
the reasonings that are fugitives from virtue wear away their lives. ‘Biting the heel of the horse.’ Fittingly, the disposition that shakes the footing of the created and perishable is a ‘heel-supplanter.’ The passions are likened to a horse; for passion too, like a horse, has four legs, is impulsive, full of self-will, and skittish by nature. The principle of self-control loves to bite, wound, and destroy passion; and when passion has been tripped at the heel and has stumbled, ‘the rider shall fall backward.’ The rider must be understood as the one mounted upon the passions, who falls off the passions when he has reasoned them through and tripped them at the heel.
It is well said that the soul does not fall forward; for let it not go ahead of the passions, but lag behind them, and it will be brought to self-control. What is said here also carries a doctrine: for if the mind, having set out to do wrong, lags behind and falls backward, it will not commit the wrong; but if, moved toward an irrational passion, it does not run out ahead but stays behind, it will reap that finest fruit, freedom from passion.
That is why, after accepting this fall backward among the vices, he adds: "waiting for the salvation of the Lord." For the one who falls away from the passions and lags behind their activity is truly saved by God. May my soul fall with such a fall, and never rise up again to that horse-like and skittish passion, so that by waiting for God's salvation it may find true happiness.
This is also why Moses, in the Song, hymns God because "he threw horse and rider into the sea" (Exod. 15:1) — the four passions, and the wretched mind that is carried on them, into the destruction of material things and the bottomless depth. And this, more or less, is the sum of the whole Song, to which everything else is referred, and it runs like this: if freedom from passion takes hold of the soul, it will attain complete happiness.
We must ask why Jacob says that "the rider will fall backward" (Gen. 49:17), while Moses sings that the horse and its rider were sunk in the sea. We must answer that the one sunk in the sea is the Egyptian disposition, which, even when it flees, flees under the water — that is, under the current of the passions — whereas the rider who falls backward does not belong to the lovers of passion. The proof is that the one is called a horseman, the other a rider.
For it is the horseman's task to master the horse and to bridle it when it grows unruly, but the rider's task is simply to be carried wherever the animal leads. And at sea it is the helmsman's task to steer the vessel, to keep it straight and upright, while the passenger's task is only to suffer whatever the ship undergoes. This is why the horseman who masters the passions is not sunk, but dismounts from them and waits for the salvation of his master.
The sacred word, indeed, in Leviticus advises us to eat "of the creeping things that go on four legs, which have legs above their feet, so that they can leap with them" (Lev. 11:21) — among which are the locust-grub, the wingless locust, the ordinary locust, and fourth, the snake-fighter. And rightly so. For if serpentine pleasure is a thing that gives no nourishment and does harm, then the nature that fights against pleasure would be most nourishing and salutary of all; and this nature is self-mastery.
Fight, then, you too, O mind, against every passion, and above all against pleasure. For indeed "the serpent was the most cunning of all the wild beasts on the earth that the Lord God had made" (Gen. 3:1); for pleasure is more cunning than all things. Why?
Because all things are slaves of pleasure, and the life of worthless people is mastered by pleasure. At any rate, the things that produce it are discovered through every kind of cunning: gold, silver, glory, honors, offices, the matter of sense-perceptible things, the vulgar crafts, and all the other very varied contrivances of pleasure. And we do wrong for the sake of pleasure, and wrongdoing never comes without the utmost cunning.
Set the snake-fighting resolve, then, in opposition, and fight through this most noble contest, and strive to be crowned, in victory over the pleasure that conquers all others, with a beautiful and glorious crown — one that no human festival has ever bestowed.