Philo of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the Greek
"And he cast Adam out, and settled him opposite the garden of delight, and stationed the Cherubim and the fiery sword that turns every way, to guard the way to the tree of life" (Genesis 3:24). Now he says "cast out," but earlier he said "sent forth" (3:23) — not choosing his words carelessly, but knowing exactly which affairs each of them properly and precisely fits.
The one who is sent forth is not barred from finding his way back; but the one cast out by God endures exile forever. For to the person not yet firmly gripped by vice it is granted, once he repents, to come back down to virtue as to his native land, the land from which he fell. But the one who has been crushed and laid low by a violent and incurable disease must of necessity bear these terrors, undying, for the whole of time, flung out to the place of the impious, so that he may endure an unmixed and unbroken wretchedness.
For we see that even the middle education — the one that moves in the circle of general studies, Hagar — twice departs from Sarah, who rules as virtue, and once returns by the road she first took: on that occasion, having run away rather than been driven out, she is brought back by an angel who meets her, who is the divine Word, into her master's house (Genesis 16:6ff.); but the second time she is cast out with no possibility of return at all (Genesis 21:14).
We must state the causes both of the earlier flight and of the later, permanent exile. Up to the time when they had not yet had their names changed — which was the same as having the character-marks of their souls re-stamped for the better — Abram was still "father up on high," pursuing the philosophy that soars aloft concerning the things that occur in the air and the things that exist in the heavens, of which mathematics has been carved off as the finest branch of natural science; and Sara was a symbol of "my rule" — for she is called "my rule" —
for generic virtue had not yet come to be transformed — for every genus is imperishable — but was being tested in its particular, specific forms; and it was the very same thing that was prudence in me, and temperance, and courage, and justice, in like manner; but these were perishable, because the place that received them, I myself, was perishable — Hagar, the middle and general education —
and even if it strives to run away from the austere and severe life of those who love virtue, it turns back again to the same condition, being not yet able to hold the generic and imperishable heights, but still laying hold of things in their particular, specific forms, among which, before the extremes, the middle things are to be chosen.
But when Abram, instead of being a natural philosopher, becomes wise and a lover of God, his name changed to Abraham, which is translated "chosen father of sound" — for spoken reason resounds, and the father of this is the mind that has laid hold of what is excellent — and Sara, instead of being "my rule," becomes Sarah, whose title is "ruling" absolutely, which was equivalent to becoming, instead of a specific and perishable virtue, a generic and imperishable one, and when the race of happiness, Isaac, has also come to shine forth —
when the things of woman have failed and the passions have died away, and instead joy and gladness and play have come — not the play of children, but the divine play, pursued not without earnest effort — then the preparatory studies named for Hagar will be cast out, and cast out too
will be their sophist son, surnamed Ishmael. They will put on exile forever, God confirming their expulsion, when he commands the wise man to obey what Sarah says; for he says outright, "cast out the slave-girl and her son" (Genesis 21:10). And it is a good thing to be persuaded by virtue, especially when she teaches such a doctrine as this: that the most perfect natures stand at a vast distance from the middling states, and that wisdom is a stranger to sophistry. For sophistry has labored to produce plausibilities in order to build up false opinion, which corrupts the soul, whereas wisdom, through the practice of truths, has procured the great benefit of the understanding — knowledge of right reason.
Why then do we marvel that God has cast Adam's mind out entirely from the place of the virtues, once it had contracted folly, an incurable disease, and has not allowed it to come back down again — seeing that he drives out and puts to flight from wisdom and the wise man every sophist, and the mother of sophists too, the teaching of the preparatory studies, whose names he calls Abraham and Sarah?
Then too the fiery sword and the Cherubim take up their dwelling opposite the garden. Now "opposite" is used in one sense of what stands against something as an enemy; in another, of what suits those brought up for judgment, as the one on trial stands opposite the judge; and in another, as a friend stands opposite a friend, for the sake of being understood and becoming more closely attached through a more exact view of one another — as archetype pictures and statues stand opposite the painters and sculptors who work from them.
Of the kind ranged in opposition as against an enemy, the example is what is said of Cain, that "he went out from the presence of God and settled in the land of Nod, opposite Eden" (Genesis 4:16). Now Nod is translated "tossing," and Eden "delight" — the one a symbol of vice that convulses the soul, the other of virtue, which procures for it a good state of feeling and delight, not the softening brought by irrational pleasure and passion, but the effortless joy, free of hardship, that comes with great ease.
And it is inevitable that, when the mind departs from the vision of God — to which it was good and profitable for it to stay fastened — it is at once tossed this way and that, like a ship at sea when violent winds set against it, having drawn for its native land and home a portion of tossing and turmoil, which are the very opposite of the soul's proper state, the joy whose other name is Eden.
Of the kind opposed as for judgment, the example is that of the woman suspected of adultery through jealousy. "The priest," it says, "shall set the woman opposite the Lord and shall uncover her head" (Numbers 5:18). Let us inquire what this is meant to represent. What is required is often not carried out as required, and what is not fitting is sometimes done in a fitting way. For instance, the return of a deposit, when it is not done from a sound intention but for the injury of the recipient, or as a snare to deny some greater trust — this is a fitting act carried out unfittingly;
and when a doctor, having decided that a patient must be purged, or cut, or cauterized for his benefit, does not tell him the truth, so that the patient will not seize on the terrors beforehand and flee treatment, or lose heart and refuse it; or when a wise man lies to the enemy for the safety of his country, fearing that if he tells the truth he will strengthen the enemy's cause — this is an unfitting act carried out fittingly. For this reason Moses too says, "pursue what is just, justly" (Deuteronomy 16:20), implying that it is possible to pursue it unjustly as well, whenever the judge who attends to it does not do so from a sound intention.
Since, then, what is said or done is plainly known to all, but the intention from which the things said are said and the things done are done is not known — it being unclear whether it is healthy and pure or diseased and stained with many corruptions, and no created being being capable of discerning the thought hidden in an unseen intention, only God — for this reason Moses too says, "the hidden things belong to the Lord God, but the manifest things are known to created beings"
(Deuteronomy 29:29). It has been ordained for the priest and prophet — the Word — to "set the soul opposite God" with her head uncovered (Numbers 5:18); that is, having her chief doctrine stripped bare and the intention she employs unclothed, so that, judged by the most exact eyes of the incorruptible God, she may either be exposed as harboring a smoldering irony, a counterfeit coin, or, being free of all wickedness, may wash away the slanders against herself, calling as witness the only one able to see the soul
naked. Such, then, is the kind opposed as for judgment. As for the kind opposed as belonging to kinship, it is what is said of the all-wise Abraham: "he was still standing opposite the Lord" (Genesis 18:22); and the token of this kinship is what is added, that "he drew near and said" (18:23); for it belongs to one who has become estranged to withdraw and be separated, but to one who is akin to draw near.
And to stand, and to have acquired an unturning intention, is close to walking alongside the power of God, since the divine is unturning, while what has come into being is by nature subject to change. If, then, someone, through love of knowledge, has curbed the natural motion proper to what has come into being and, by force, made it stand still, let him not fail to notice that he is close to divine blessedness.
To the Cherubim and the fiery sword he fittingly assigns the city opposite the garden — not as though to enemies about to stand against it and do battle, but as to closest kin and dearest friends, so that from being seen together and continually gazed upon, the powers might come to feel longing for one another, the God who loves to give breathing into them a winged and heavenly love.
What it is that he darkly hints at through the Cherubim and the fiery sword that turns every way, we must now examine. Perhaps, then, he introduces, through veiled meanings, the motion of the whole heaven; for the spheres in heaven have been allotted motions opposite to one another, the one, the fixed sphere, moving in the same direction, to the right, the other, the wandering sphere, in the opposite direction, to the left.
The outermost sphere, then, that of the so-called fixed stars, is one, and it revolves in the same circuit from east to west; but the seven spheres within it, those of the planets, have both a voluntary and a compelled motion, holding at once two motions running counter to each other. And of these the involuntary motion is like that of the fixed stars, for they appear each day to move from east to west; but their own proper motion runs from west to east, and it is according to this motion that the circuits of the seven stars have also taken on lengths of time — those of equal course taking equal lengths, namely the sun, the morning star, and the one called the shining one (for these three of the planets move at equal speed), while those of unequal course take unequal lengths, though bearing a proportion both to one another and to those three.
One of the Cherubim, then, becomes the outermost vault, the farthest reach of the whole heaven, in which the fixed stars dance their truly divine dance, holding the same and unvarying order, never abandoning the arrangement in which the Father who begot them stationed them in the cosmos; the other Cherub is the sphere contained within, which he split into six parts, producing seven circles proportionate to one another, fitting each of the planets into them;
and just as one who sets a rider upon a mount, he set each star, mounted, in its own circle, but entrusted the reins to none of those he had mounted, fearing a disordered command, and instead hung them all from himself, believing that in this way the order of their motion would be most attuned to harmony; for whatever is done with God is altogether praiseworthy,
while what is done without God is blameworthy. The Cherubim, then, are allegorized in this one way; and one must suppose that the fiery, turning sword refers to their motion and to the eternal revolution of the whole heaven. But perhaps, on another interpretation, the Cherubim signify each of the two hemispheres; for he says that they face one another, inclining their wings toward the mercy-seat (Exodus 25:19), since these too are opposite one another, but incline down toward the earth, the midpoint of the universe, by which they are also divided;
The one part of the cosmos that stands permanently fixed the ancients rightly named Hestia (Hearth), so that the most harmonious revolution of each of the two hemispheres might occur around something firmly established. The fiery, whirling sword is a symbol of the sun; for being a condensation of much flame, it has become the swiftest-moving of all beings, so that it revolves around the whole cosmos in a single day.
But I once heard a weightier account as well, from my soul, which is accustomed to be possessed by God often and to prophesy about things it does not know; and this account, if I am able, I will recall and speak. It told me that, corresponding to the one God who truly is, there are two supreme and primary powers: goodness and authority. By goodness he begot the universe, and by authority he rules what has been begotten; and a third power stands between the two and brings them together—reason, the Logos—for it is by reason that God is both ruler and good.
The cherubim, then, are symbols of the two powers, rule and goodness, while the fiery sword is a symbol of reason, the Logos; for reason is most swift-moving and hot, above all the reason of the First Cause, since it outstrips everything, overtaking all things, being conceived before all things and appearing last of all.
Receive, then, mind, an unadulterated impression of each of the two cherubim, so that, clearly instructed about the rule and the goodness of the First Cause, you may reap a fortunate inheritance; for you will immediately understand also the union and blending of these unmixed powers, in which God is good even while the dignity of his rule shines through, and is ruler even while his goodness shines through—so that you may acquire the virtues born from these, benevolence and reverence toward God: neither exalting yourself in speech when you fare well, because of the greatness of the King's dominion, nor despairing of better hopes when you endure some unwished-for thing, because of the mildness of the great and generous God.
And the sword is fiery, because these two powers must be accompanied by reason, standing between them, hot and fiery, which never ceases moving with all eagerness toward the choice of what is good and the flight from what is contrary to it.
Do you not see that Abraham the wise, when he began to measure all things by God and to leave nothing to the created, took up an imitation of the fiery sword—‘fire and a knife’ (Gen 22:6)—longing to divide and burn away the mortal part from himself, so that with his mind stripped bare he might fly aloft to God?
Balaam, on the other hand, though he was a vain people armed for war, Moses presents as an unenlisted deserter, since he knew the sort of war it is fitting for a soul to wage over knowledge; for Balaam says to the donkey—the irrational choice of life on which every fool rides—‘If I had a sword, I would already have run you through’ (Num 22:29). And great thanks are owed to the Craftsman, that knowing the frenzy of folly, he did not put into its hands, as into the hands of a madman, a sword—the power of words—lest it work great and unjust destruction on all who encountered it.
What Balaam did, everyone who is unpurified and forever given to vanity somehow does too, whether he has pursued a life of trade or farming or some other money-making occupation: as long as things turn out favorably from each pursuit, he mounts it gladly and rides upon it, and having gripped hold of it, refuses outright to let it go; and toward those who tell him to withdraw and to set limits on his desires, because the future is unknowable, he levels charges of malice and envy, claiming that they propose this not out of goodwill—
—but when some unwished-for misfortune occurs, he then welcomes them as good prophets, most capable of guarding against what is to come, while he lays the blame entirely on things that are the cause of no evil at all—farming, trade, the other
occupations which he saw fit to use for making money; and these, though they lack organs of speech, will break forth in a voice through the very facts themselves, a voice clearer than that of the tongue, saying: ‘Tell me, you slanderer, are we not the very ones on whom you rode, haughty-necked, as upon beasts of burden? Surely we have not out of arrogance worked you some misfortune of our own accord’ (cf. Num 22:30). Look instead at the Word of God, armed and standing opposed to you as an adversary angel (ib. 31), through whom both good fortune and its opposite come to their completion—
—do you not see? Why, then, do you now blame us, when before, when your affairs went sweetly for you, you found no fault? For we remain the same, not having changed our own nature by even a moment's degree; but you, using unsound criteria, thrash about senselessly. For if from the start you had learned that it is not whatever you pursue that is the cause of your share in good or evil things, but rather the divine Word, the overseer and pilot of the universe, you would bear what befalls you more easily, once you had stopped slandering us and charging us with things we are not capable of.
If, then, that Word again puts down the war and scatters the anxieties and gloom attending it, and proclaims peace of life, you will joyfully and gladly clasp our hand, though we remain just as we were; but we are neither puffed up by your goodwill nor disturbed if you are ill-disposed, for we know ourselves to be the cause neither of good things nor of evil, even if you form such opinions about us—unless one must also blame the sea for a fair voyage or for the shipwrecks that occur, rather than the differing winds that blow upon it, sometimes gently, sometimes with the most violent onrush.
For since all water by nature possesses stillness of itself, whenever a favoring wind arises astern, with every rope shaken taut, ships run under full sail all the way to harbor; but whenever a wind suddenly rushes down against the prow from the opposite direction, it raises great surging and turmoil and capsizes them. And the sea, which is the cause of nothing that happens, bears the blame for it, though it is plainly the slackening or the violence of the winds that makes it either calm or heave with waves.
Through all these examples, then, I think it has been sufficiently shown that nature, having fashioned reason as the most powerful ally for humankind, has made the one who can rightly use it truly fortunate and rational, and the one who cannot, irrational and unfortunate.
‘And Adam knew his wife, and she conceived and bore Cain, and she said, “I have acquired a man through God.” And she went on to bear his brother Abel’ (Gen 4:1-2). Now those to whom the lawgiver has borne witness of virtue—Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, and whoever else rivals them—he never presents as ‘knowing’ their wives.
For since we say that ‘woman,’ figuratively, stands for sense-perception, and knowledge is constituted by an estrangement from sense-perception and the body, he will show the lovers of wisdom rejecting sense-perception rather than choosing it. And this is surely reasonable; for the women who live with these men are, in name, wives, but in reality, virtues: Sarah is ruler and leader; Rebecca is perseverance in noble things; Leah is she who has turned her face away and grows weary in the continuance of her discipline, a discipline that every fool turns his face from and rejects, refusing it; and Zipporah, Moses' wife, is she who runs up from earth to heaven and contemplates the divine and blessed natures there—and she is called 'little bird.'
But so that we may speak of the conceiving and travail of the virtues, let the superstitious stop up their ears or else remove themselves; for we are teaching divine mysteries to initiates worthy of the most sacred rites, and these are they who practice the true and genuinely unadorned piety without vain pretension. To those possessed by an incurable disease—pretension over words, a fastidiousness over names, and the trickery of customs—we will not reveal our sacred rites, nor by any other
—standard for what is sacred and holy do they measure it. Let the rite, then, begin here. A man comes together with a woman, following nature, to bring about the intercourse that leads to the begetting of children—a male human being with a female human being. But for the virtues, who bear many perfect offspring, it is not lawful to obtain a mortal man as husband; yet unless they receive seed from some other source, they will never conceive from themselves alone.
Who, then, is it that sows what is good in them, except the Father of all beings, the unbegotten God who begets the universe? He sows, then, but the offspring he has sown, being his own, he gives away as a gift; for God begets nothing for himself, since he is in need of nothing, but he begets everything for the one who needs to receive.
I will offer as an adequate guarantor of what I say the most sacred Moses himself; for he presents Sarah as conceiving at the very moment when God visits her in her solitary state (Gen 21:1), yet she bears the child no longer to the one who made the visitation, but to the one who longs to attain wisdom—and this one is named Abraham.
He teaches this more clearly still in the case of Leah, saying that God opened her womb (Gen 29:31)—for to open a womb is a man's own function—yet once she had conceived, she bore the child not to God (for he alone is sufficient and wholly self-sufficient to himself), but to Jacob, who takes upon himself toil for the sake of what is noble; so that virtue receives the divine seeds from the First Cause, but bears the child to one of her own lovers, whichever is judged superior among all her suitors.
Again, when Isaac the all-wise entreated God, Rebecca, who is perseverance, becomes pregnant by the one entreated (Gen 25:21). And without any entreaty or supplication, Moses, having taken Zipporah, the winged and soaring virtue, as his wife, finds her pregnant, though by no mortal whatsoever (Exod 2:22).
You initiates whose ears have been purified, receive these things into your own souls as truly sacred mysteries, and reveal them to none of the uninitiated; but store them away and guard them within yourselves as a treasure—not one in which gold and silver, perishable substances, are laid up, but the finest of all existing possessions: the knowledge concerning the First Cause, and virtue, and the offspring that is third, born of the two. And if you meet anyone who has been initiated, press close and hold fast to him earnestly, in case he happens to know some newer rite and is keeping it hidden, until you have been clearly instructed in it as well.
For I too, though initiated by Moses, beloved of God, into the great mysteries, nevertheless, when I later saw the prophet Jeremiah and recognized that he was not only an initiate but also a hierophant of ability, did not hesitate to attend upon him. And he, being frequently possessed by inspiration, uttered an oracle from the very person of God, speaking these words to virtue, most peaceful of all: ‘Have you not called me your house, and father, and the husband of your virginity?’ (Jer 3:4). By this he most vividly shows that God is both a house—the incorporeal place of incorporeal Forms—and the father of all things, since he has begotten them, and a husband of wisdom, casting seed of blessedness into the good and virgin earth for the mortal race.
For it is fitting that God should converse with a nature that is unstained, untouched, and pure—truly virgin—but the opposite is true for us; for among human beings, intercourse for the begetting of children turns virgin women into wives. But when God begins to keep company with a soul, though it was formerly a wife, he makes it a virgin once again, since he removes far away the base and unmanly desires by which it was made effeminate, and brings in their place its native and undefiled virtues. Sarah, at any rate, God will not converse with until all the ways of women have ceased in her (Gen 18:11), and she has run back up into the state of a purely chaste virgin—
But perhaps it is possible for even a virgin soul, defiled by unrestrained passions, to be put to shame. That is why the oracle guards its language and speaks not of a virgin — for a virgin is subject to change and death — but of God's "virginity" (Jer. 3:4), the form that always remains the same and in the same state. For while the qualities that admit of coming-to-be and passing-away belong to particular things by nature, the powers that stamp them have received an incorruptible portion as their lot.
It would not be fitting for the ungenerated and unchangeable God to sow the forms of immortal, virgin virtues into a virginity that ever changes into the shape of a woman. What then, O soul? Though it is your duty to remain a virgin in the house of God and to hold fast to knowledge, you desert these and embrace instead sense-perception, which unmans and defiles you. And so you will bear a mongrel and utterly ruinous offspring, the brother-murdering and accursed Cain — "possession," a possession not worth possessing; for Cain means "possession."
One might marvel at the manner of interpretation which the lawgiver often employs in many places, departing from ordinary usage. For after those born from the earth, when he begins to speak of the first person born from human beings — concerning whom he has said nothing at all up to this point, as though he had already stated his name many times over rather than now introducing it for the first time in his discourse — he says that she bore Cain. What sort of craftsman are you, to speak of one whom you have never before revealed in even the smallest or greatest particular?
And yet you are not ignorant of the proper placing of names; further on, in fact, describing the same person, you say that "Adam knew Eve his wife, and she conceived and bore a son and named him Seth" (Gen. 4:25). So it was far more necessary, in the case of the firstborn — who was the beginning of the generation of human beings from one another — first to declare the nature of the one born, that it was male, and only then to give the proper name, Cain, say.
Since, then, it is clear that it was not from any lack of the ways in which names ought to be given that he set aside customary usage in the matter of Cain, we must consider for what reason he named those descended from the first pair by using the pattern of narration rather than of naming. The reason, as it appears to me on reflection, is this.
All the rest of humankind gives names to things that differ from the things themselves, so that the things that exist are one thing, and the names given to them are another; but in Moses the placing of names is the clearest possible manifestation of the things themselves, so that the thing itself is necessarily, from the start, identical with the name, and the name differs in no way from that to which it is given. You may learn this more clearly from the passage set before us.
When the mind within us — let it be called Adam — encounters sense-perception, by which living creatures seem to live — called Eve — and, desiring union with her as an equal, draws near to her, and she conceives, as it were, catching and hunting by nature the sensible object outside: color through the eyes, sound through the ears, scent through the nostrils, flavor through the organs of taste, and through touch the whole body — having conceived, she becomes pregnant, and at once is in labor and gives birth to the greatest evil of the soul, self-conceit. For it conceived that all things it saw, heard, tasted, smelled, and touched were its own possessions, and supposed itself to be the discoverer and craftsman
of them all. And this it suffered not without reason; for there was once a time when the mind held no converse with sense-perception, nor possessed sense-perception at all, being set far apart from creatures that live in herds and flocks, resembling instead the solitary and unsocial animals. At that time, examined by itself alone, it had no contact with body, possessing no single instrument gathered about itself with which to hunt what lay outside; rather it was blind and powerless — not in the sense the many mean when they behold one whose eyes are maimed, for such a person, deprived of one sense, retains great abundance of the rest;
but that mind, cut off from all the powers of perception, was truly powerless, half of a complete soul, lacking the faculty by which bodies are naturally apprehended, a fragment cut off by itself from what naturally belongs with it — no fortunate state — without even the staffs, so to speak, of the perceptive organs, on which it might have leaned securely while trembling. For this reason a deep darkness was poured out over all bodies, none able to appear; for the sense by which it was to be known did not exist.
God, then, wishing to grant it apprehension not only of incorporeal things but also of solid bodies, filled out the whole soul, weaving together with the part already fashioned the other part, which he called, in common speech, woman, but by proper name Eve, thereby hinting at sense-perception.
She, as soon as she came to be, poured a sudden light into the mind through each of her parts as though through openings, and, scattering the mist, prepared it to see, brilliantly and with utter clarity, the natures of bodies, as though gazing on them as its master.
And the mind, as though lit up by sunlight flashing forth after night, or roused from a deep sleep, or like one blind suddenly given sight, encountered all at once everything that has come into being — heaven, earth, water, air, plants, animals, their conditions, qualities, powers, states, dispositions, movements, activities, actions, changes, and destructions; and some things it saw, some it heard, some it tasted, some it smelled, some it touched; and toward those to which it was inclined it produced pleasures, while from those it turned away it produced pains.
Looking about, then, this way and that, and surveying both itself and its powers, it dared to boast the very same boast as Alexander, king of the Macedonians. For they say that he too, when he thought he had fastened his grip upon Europe and Asia, standing in a commanding spot and surveying everything around him, said, "All this here and all this there are mine" — displaying the levity of a truly childish, infantile, and altogether common soul, not a royal one.
The mind, being first to kindle the perceptive faculty and, through it, to hunt down every form of body, became puffed up, filled with irrational conceit, so as to suppose that all things were its own possessions and that nothing whatever belonged to anyone else.
This is the character which Moses, giving it its distinctive stamp, named within us Cain, which is interpreted "possession" — a character full of folly, or rather of impiety; for instead of considering all things possessions of God, it supposed them its own, though it cannot even hold itself securely, nor does it know at all what its own being is. Yet if it has trusted the senses as sufficient to hunt down the object of perception outside, let it say how it will still be able to avoid erring, whether by seeing wrongly, hearing wrongly, or through some other sense.
And indeed these slips must necessarily befall each one of us continually, however precisely we happen to use our instruments; for it is difficult, or rather impossible, ever to strip off entirely the natural afflictions and the involuntary wandering, since countless things productive of false opinion exist within us, around us, and outside us in every mortal kind. It is not, then, sound reasoning to suppose all things one's own possessions, even while one struts about with head held high.
Laban, the one bound to qualities, seems to me to provide broad laughter for Jacob, who before all this beheld the qualityless nature, when Laban dared to say to him, "the daughters are my daughters, and the sons are my sons, and the cattle are my cattle, and all that you see is mine and my daughters'" (Gen. 31:43) — for at every point he adds "mine," speaking of himself and never ceasing his solemn boasting.
The daughters, tell me — they are the arts and sciences of the soul — do you call them your own daughters? In what way? Did you not first receive them from the mind that taught them to you? And are you not also apt to lose them, as you might lose other things — either forgetting them because of the weight of other concerns, or through grave and incurable bodily illnesses, or through the disease that old age brings upon the elderly and that admits no cure, or through countless other causes whose number is impossible to find? And what of this?
In calling the sons — the sons are the particular reasonings of the soul — your own, are you in your right mind, or mad to hold such opinions? For your fits of melancholy, your derangements, your states of mental ecstasy, your unstable conjectures, your false imaginings of things, your empty notions resembling dreams, your compulsions and convulsions arising from these, and forgetfulness, the disease that lives always with the soul, and much more besides all that has been said, strip you of the security of your mastery and show that these are the possessions of someone else, not yours.
And how do you dare to call the cattle — the cattle are the senses, for sense-perception is irrational and beastlike — your own? Tell me, do you not blush, you who are forever seeing wrongly and hearing wrongly, sometimes taking sweet flavors for salty and, conversely, bitter for sweet, and who are accustomed, in every sense, to err more often than to judge rightly — yet you exult and are puffed up as though you employed all the powers and activities of the soul without a single misstep?
But if you change and gain a share of the understanding you need, you will say that all things are possessions of God, not of yourself — your thoughts, your sciences, your arts, your theories, your particular reasonings, your senses, and the activities of the soul that come through them and apart from them. But if you leave yourself forever untrained and untaught, you will be a slave for all time to harsh mistresses: conceit, desire, pleasure, injustice, folly, and false opinions.
"For," it says, "if the servant should answer and say, I have loved my master and my wife and my children, I will not go out free" — when brought to the judgment seat of God and having obtained him as judge, he will have secure possession of what he asked, once his ear has first been pierced with an awl (Exod. 21:5-6), so that he may not receive the divine hearing for the sake of the soul's freedom.
For it belongs to a reasoning that is truly a mere infant, one rejected and disqualified as though from a sacred contest, to make solemn boast that it has loved the mind and considers the mind its own master and benefactor, and that it holds sense-perception in high affection and regards it as its own possession and the greatest of goods, along with the children of these two: of the one, thinking, reasoning, reflecting, deliberating, conjecturing; of the other, seeing, hearing, tasting, smelling, touching — in a word, perceiving.
Yet it is necessary that one who has made these his own should not even dream of freedom; for it is only by fleeing and estranging ourselves from them that we lay claim to security. And another, adding to self-love a display of madness, says that even if someone should take from me what is mine, I shall struggle for it as for my own and carry off the victory: "I will pursue," he says, "I will overtake, I will divide the spoils, I will fill my soul; I will destroy with my sword, my hand will have mastery" (Exod. 15:9).
To him I would say: it has escaped you, fool, that everyone who seems to be pursuing in the realm of coming-to-be is himself being pursued; for sicknesses and old age and death, together with the whole multitude of other evils, voluntary and involuntary, drive, whirl, and pursue each one of us, and the one who thinks he is overtaking or gaining mastery is himself overtaken and mastered; and one who hoped to carry off plunder and was already apportioning shares of spoil has been defeated and become the captive of enemies who have gained the mastery over him, receiving emptiness instead of fullness and slavery instead of dominion for his own soul, and being destroyed instead of destroying, suffering with full force all that he had devised to do to others.
For this man was truly an enemy of right reason and of nature itself, claiming for himself everything involved in acting, while no longer remembering anything of what belongs to being acted upon—as if he had wholly stripped off the fates that attend each mortal thing.
“For,” it says, “the enemy said, ‘I will pursue and overtake’” (Exod. 15:9). Who, then, could become a more hostile foe to the soul than the one who, out of vainglory, claims for himself what belongs to God alone? For it is God’s own to act, which it is unlawful to ascribe to anything created; and it is the created thing’s own to be acted upon.
Whoever has grasped beforehand that this is proper and necessary to him will easily bear whatever befalls him, even if it is very heavy; but whoever supposes it foreign to him, crushed by an endless weight, will undergo a punishment like that of Sisyphus, unable even to lift up his head, but laid low beneath everything that rushes upon him and grips him by the throat, yielding and giving way to each blow—the passions of an ignoble and unmanly soul. For one ought to endure, and to stand and press back against it, fortifying one’s judgment and barricading it with one’s own endurance and steadfastness, the mightiest of virtues.
For just as being shorn is twofold—one kind by way of resistance, in which one pushes back, the other by way of submission, in which one simply yields (a sheep, or its fleece, or what is called the wool, does nothing on its own but merely undergoes the shearing at another's hands, whereas a man cooperates, arranging and positioning himself and making himself fit for it, blending acting together with being acted upon)—so too is being struck.
One kind is what befalls a household slave, or a free man, who deserves blows for wrongdoing, or one stretched upon the wheel for some misdeed, or any lifeless thing—for stones and timber and gold and silver are struck, and whatever materials are hammered or cut apart in a bronze-smith's workshop; the other is what befalls an athlete contending in boxing or the pankration for victory and the crown.
This athlete shakes off the blows aimed at him with either hand, and by turning his neck this way and that guards himself from being struck; often, too, rising on the very tips of his toes and lifting himself up, or crouching down and drawing himself together again, he forces his opponent to strike into empty air, doing something rather like shadow-boxing. But the slave, or the bronze, offering no resistance in return, is simply thrown open to suffer whatever the one dealing the blows intends to do.
This passive kind of suffering, then, let us never accept, either for the body and still less for the soul; but that other kind, the one of resistance—since what is mortal must suffer—let us accept, so that we may not, like womanish men who are broken and slack and collapse in advance, grow weak through the enervation of the soul's powers, but rather, being strong with the tensions of the mind, may have the strength to lighten and ease the weight of the terrors that hang over us.
Since, then, no mortal has ever shown himself the firm and secure master of anything, and those who are called “lords” are named so only in opinion, not in truth, and since it is necessary that, as there is a subject and a slave, so there be a ruler and lord over the universe, the one who is in reality ruler and leader would be God alone, of whom it would be fitting to say that all things
are his possessions. And how magnificently and how befittingly of God he sets this forth, let us consider: “All are mine,” he says. And “all” are what he calls “gifts and offerings and fruit-offerings, which you shall keep and bring to me at my feasts” (Num. 28:2), making it very clearly plain that, of existing things, some have been deemed worthy of an intermediate grace, which is called a gift; others of a better grace, whose proper name is a bestowal; and others still have come to be such that they are able not merely to bear the fruits of virtue, but already to have grown, through and through, into edible fruit itself, by which alone the soul of the lover of contemplation is nourished.
Whoever has been taught these things, and is able to keep and guard them in his mind, will bring to God, in feasts not of mortals, an unblemished and most beautiful offering: fidelity. For God has reserved the feasts for himself, laying down a doctrine most necessary for the initiates of philosophy.
And the doctrine is this: God alone keeps festival without falsehood. For he alone truly rejoices, he alone is glad, he alone delights, and he alone enjoys a peace wholly unmixed with war. He is free of grief and free of fear, untouched by evils, unyielding, without pain, in his prime, filled with unmixed happiness. His nature is utterly complete—or rather, he himself is the summit and end and boundary of happiness, God, sharing in nothing outside himself for his own betterment, but imparting his own goodness to all the particular things that draw from the fountain of beauty that is himself. For the beautiful things in the world could never have come to be such as they are, had they not been modeled after an archetype—the truly beautiful, the unbegotten, blessed, and incorruptible.
And for this reason Moses says, in many places throughout the Law, that the “Sabbath”—which is translated “rest”—belongs to God (Exod. 20:10 and elsewhere), not to human beings, touching here on a necessary point of natural philosophy: for the one thing among beings that truly rests, if the truth must be told, is God alone. And he does not call “rest” inactivity, since the cause of all things is by nature active and never ceases doing the most beautiful things; rather he calls it an activity free of all hardship, carried out with the greatest ease and without toil.
For as to the sun and moon and the whole heaven and the world, since they are not self-governing but are continually moved and carried along, it is proper to say that they labor; and the clearest evidence of their toil is the yearly seasons. For the most all-encompassing bodies in heaven alternate their motions, at one time making their revolutions toward the north, at another toward the south, at another in yet other directions; and the air, growing warm and growing cold and undergoing every kind of change, is proved by its own experiences to be laboring, since the most all-encompassing cause of change is toil.
It would be foolish to speak at length about creatures of the land or of the water, tracing out in full their changes both general and particular; for these, it is likely, admit far more weakness than the heavenly bodies do, since they partake most fully of the lowest, earthy substance.
Since, then, things subject to change are by nature such as to alter through toil, and God is unchanging and unalterable, he must by nature be in his prime; and being without any share in weakness, even though he does all things, resting through eternity, he will never cease. So resting belongs most properly to God alone. And it has also been shown that keeping festival applies to him; therefore the sabbaths and the feasts belong to the Cause alone, and to no human being whatsoever.
Come, then, if you wish, and examine together with me our own celebrated festal gatherings. All those that have arisen among barbarian and Greek nations alike out of mythic fabrications, differing from people to people and ending in nothing but empty vanity, let us set aside; for not even the whole life of mankind would suffice to detail precisely the absurdities inherent in each of them. But what one might say, in place of many things, choosing a few points that fit the occasion and apply to them all, must be said.
Of every feast and festal gathering among such people, these are the marvelous and eagerly contested achievements: license, laxity, truce from restraint, drunkenness, drunken violence, revelry, luxury, softness, all-night carousing outdoors, all-night vigils, indecent pleasures, daytime weddings, the most violent acts of outrage, exercises in intemperance, studies in folly, pursuits of shameful things—utter corruption of the good, nighttime risings for insatiable desires, sleep in the daytime when it is time to be awake, a complete reversal of nature's proper works.
At such times virtue is laughed at as harmful, and vice is seized upon as beneficial; at such times the things one ought to do are held in dishonor, and the things one ought not to do are held in honor; at such times music and philosophy and all education—the truly divine images of the divine soul—fall silent, while the arts that pimp for and procure pleasures for the belly, and for what lies below the belly, hold forth in speeches.
Such are the festivals of those called happy. And so long as they misbehave in profane houses or fields, they seem to me to sin less; but when, like the flood of a winter torrent spreading everywhere, it presses even against the holiest of sacred things and overwhelms them, it at once casts out everything pure within them, so as to produce sacrifices that are unholy, victims that are unconsecrated, prayers that fail of their purpose, initiations without true initiates, rites without true mysteries, a spurious piety, a counterfeit holiness, an unclean purity, a falsified truth, a scurrilous service of God.
And besides this, they wash their bodies clean with baths and lustrations, but the passions of the soul, by which life is defiled, they neither wish nor care to wash away; and they are eager to walk into the sacred places clothed in white, wearing spotless garments, while they feel no shame at bringing a mind stained with defilement even into the innermost sanctuary.
And if any one of the animals reared for sacrifice is found not entirely whole and sound, it is driven away outside the sprinkling-basins, not permitted to be brought near the altars—even though it has suffered all its bodily blemishes involuntarily. But men whose souls are wounded through with grievous sicknesses, which the resourceless power of vice has inflicted on them—or rather, who have had cut away from them the most beautiful things, prudence, endurance, justice, piety, and all the other virtues that the human race is by nature capable of possessing—and who have taken on these injuries by their own deliberate choice, nevertheless dare to perform sacred rites, supposing that the eye of God, aided by the sun's light, sees only what is outward, and does not, before the things that are manifest, look upon the things that are hidden, using a light that is its own.
For the eye of the Existing One has no need of another light in order to perceive; being itself the archetypal radiance, it sends forth countless rays, none of which is perceptible by sense, but all by mind alone. That is why God, who is perceived by mind alone, uses them alone, and no one who has a share in becoming does so; for what has come into being is perceptible by sense, while the
nature perceived by mind cannot be grasped by sense. Since, then, this region of the soul enters unseen, let us prepare that place, as best we can, in the most beautiful way, that it may become a worthy dwelling for God to inhabit; otherwise, unnoticed, he will move away to another house, whichever seems to him to have been better built.
For if, when we are about to receive kings, we make our own houses more splendid, sparing nothing that contributes to their adornment but using everything without fear or grudging, aiming that their lodging be both most pleasant and befitting their dignity—then for the King of kings and Ruler of all things, God, who out of his gentleness and love for mankind has deigned to visit what has come into being, and has come down from the ends of heaven to the furthest bounds of earth for the benefit of our race, what sort of house must we prepare?
Of stones, or of timber? Away with the thought—it is not even lawful to say so. For not even if the whole earth were suddenly to be transformed into gold, or into something more precious than gold, and were then to be spent by the craftsmen's arts in building colonnades and gateways and men's chambers and forecourts and shrines, would it become
But a fitting and adequate house is the soul. Speaking rightly, then, and in accordance with the Law, we shall say that the invisible soul is an earthly house of the invisible God. And so that the house may be secure and most beautiful, let natural aptitude and instruction be laid down as its foundations; let virtues, together with good actions, be built up upon it; and let its adornments be the acquisition of the general branches of preliminary education.
For from natural aptitude spring quickness of perception, persistence, and memory; from instruction spring aptness to learn and attentiveness — like the roots of a tree destined to bear cultivated fruit, without which it is impossible for the understanding to be brought to completion.
And from the virtues, and from the actions that accord with them, comes the firmness and stability of a secure foundation, sufficient to prevent a soul that has come to know the good from being uprooted, put to flight, or driven into exile, however strong the force brought against so great a strength.
From the study of the general branches of preliminary education comes what pertains to the adornment of the soul, as it were of a household. For just as plasterwork, paintings, wall-panels, and arrangements of costly stones — with which people decorate not only walls but floors as well — and all such things as these, which contribute nothing to strength but only provide pleasure to the inhabitants,
so too the knowledge of the general studies furnishes and adorns the whole household of the soul: grammar, by investigating poetry and pursuing the history of ancient deeds; geometry, by securing proportional equality; music, by curing what is unrhythmical, unmeasured, and discordant within us through rhythm, measure, and melody by means of a refined art; and rhetoric, by examining the particular skills required in each case and fitting to everything its proper expression, providing intensity and pathos and, conversely, relaxation and pleasures, together with fluency and the proper functioning of the tongue and the organs of speech.
Once such a house has been built among mortal kind, all things on earth will be filled with good hopes, expecting the descent of the powers of God. And these powers, bringing laws and ordinances from heaven for the sake of consecration and sanctification, will arrive at the command of their Father. Then, becoming fellow-dwellers and fellow-diners with souls that love virtue, they sow in them a happy offspring — just as they granted to the wise Abraham, as the most perfect favor for his hospitality, the gift of Isaac.
And there is nothing in which the purified mind rejoices more than in acknowledging the Ruler of all as its Master. For to be a slave of God is the greatest boast, more honorable than freedom itself, and than wealth, and rule, and everything else that mortal kind embraces.
The oracle is a true witness to the sovereignty of the One who Is, speaking as follows: 'And the land shall not be sold in perpetuity, for all the land is mine, because you are strangers and sojourners before me' (Lev. 25:23). Does this not most clearly establish that all things belong to God in ownership, but to created being only in use?
'For nothing among the things that have come into being,' he says, 'shall be sold to anyone in perpetuity,' since there is one alone to whom the ownership of all things truly and securely belongs. For God has lent all created things to one another, having made no single part complete in itself, so that each, of necessity needing something else, might of necessity draw near to whatever is able to supply it — that thing to this one, and both to each other.
For in this way, exchanging and mingling with one another like a lyre tuned from dissimilar notes into partnership and harmony, they were destined to sound together, all things enduring a kind of mutual giving and receiving through one another, toward the fulfillment of the whole cosmos.
In this way lifeless things are akin to living things, irrational to rational, trees to men and men to plants; tame things to wild and wild to tame; male to female and female to male; and, to put it concisely, land creatures to water creatures, water creatures to air-borne ones, and winged creatures to all the aforementioned; further, heaven belongs to earth and earth to heaven, air to water and water to breath; and again, the intermediate natures desire one another and the extremes, and the extremes desire the intermediate ones.
Winter indeed needs summer and summer needs winter, and spring needs both, and autumn needs spring, and each needs each; and, so to speak, all things are in need of and require all things, so that the whole of which these are parts — this cosmos — might be a work complete and worthy of its Maker.
Having thus composed these things, God attached mastery over all of them to himself, but distributed their use and enjoyment to his subjects, both toward themselves and toward one another — for we too have use both of ourselves and of whatever pertains to us. I, at any rate, composed of soul and body, and seeming to possess mind, reason, and sense-perception, find none of these to be my own.
For where was my body before it came into being? And to what place will it depart when it has passed away? And where are the differences of the ages of life, which seem to subsist? Where is the infant, where the child, where the boy just before youth, where the one just reaching puberty, where the young man with his first beard, where the youth, where the mature man? And from where did the soul come, and to what place will it depart, and for how long will it remain our fellow-dweller? Can we say what its essence is? And when did we acquire it? Before our birth? But we did not yet exist. After death? But we shall no longer be composite beings of a certain quality together with bodies — rather, being composite beings of a certain quality together with things bodiless, we shall set out toward a new birth.
But now, while we live, we are ruled rather than ruling, and known rather than knowing. For the soul, though not known by us, knows us, and issues commands which we are compelled to obey as servants obey a mistress. And whenever she wishes to depart to her ruler, having settled her accounts, she will migrate, leaving our house empty of life; and even if we try to force her to remain, she will dissolve — for her nature is so fine that she affords the body no handhold.
Is the mind, then, my own dwelling-place — the mind that fashions falsehoods, that wanders, that imagines, that goes astray, that is found mindless in ecstasy, in melancholy, and in extreme old age? But is reason my possession — or the organs of speech? Has not a slight pretext of illness paralyzed the tongue, sewn shut the mouth even of the most eloquent? Has not the mere expectation of some terror struck countless people speechless?
And indeed I do not find myself the master even of my own composure, but rather perhaps a slave following wherever it leads me — toward colors, toward shapes, toward sounds, toward smells, toward tastes, toward other bodies. Through all this, I think it has been shown that we make use of possessions belonging to another, and that we possess as our own neither reputation, nor wealth, nor honors, nor offices, nor anything proper to body or soul — no, not even life itself.
Having the use of things, if we recognize this, we shall take care of them as possessions of God, having first grasped that it is the law of the Master to reclaim his own whenever he wishes; for in this way we shall lighten the grief that comes with their removal. But as it is, most people, thinking that everything is their own possession, are immediately overwhelmed with passion at the absence or lack of any of it.
It is therefore not only true, but among the things most conducive to consolation, that the cosmos and the works within the cosmos are both the works and the possessions of the One who begot them. And what he possesses as his own work, the Possessor has given as a gift, because he has no need of it; but the one who uses it does not thereby own it, since there is one Lord and Master of all things, who will most rightly say: 'All the land is mine' — equivalent to saying, 'everything that has come into being is mine' — 'and you are strangers and sojourners before me' (Lev. 25:23).
For in relation to one another, all who have come into being have the standing of natives and of noble birth, all enjoying equal honor and equal rights; but in relation to God, they have the standing of newcomers and sojourners. For each of us has arrived at this cosmos as at a foreign city, in which he had no share before his birth, and having arrived, he sojourns in it until he has drained the portion of life allotted to him.
At the same time, this also introduces a most wise teaching: that God alone is, in the proper sense, a citizen, and that everything that has come into being is a sojourner and a newcomer, and that those who are called citizens are so named rather by an abuse of the term than in truth. It is a gift sufficient for wise men, when measured against God, the only true citizen, to be granted the rank of newcomers and sojourners — since for the foolish, no one becomes even so much as a newcomer or sojourner in the city of God, but is found altogether an exile — as the oracle also declared most authoritatively when it added: 'It shall not be sold,' he says, 'the land, in perpetuity' — yet by whom it was left unstated, so that from what is left unspoken one not uninitiated in the study of nature might gain understanding.
You will find, then, if you examine the matter, that all who are said to give favors are rather selling them than giving them, and that those we suppose to be receiving favors are in truth buying them. For those who give, hunting after a return of praise or honor, seeking a repayment of favor, are, under the fair-sounding name of a gift, properly engaged in a sale — since it is also customary for sellers to receive something in return for what they provide; while those who accept the gifts, intending to repay and repaying at the right time, do what buyers do, for they too know both how to receive and how to repay.
But God is no trader, cheapening his own possessions, but a giver of all things, pouring forth ever-flowing springs of favor, seeking no return; for neither is he himself in need, nor is any created being capable of repaying him in kind for his gift.
Since, then, all things are agreed to be possessions of God, both by true accounts and by testimonies which it is not lawful to convict of false witness — for the oracles which Moses recorded in the sacred books are the witnesses — the mind must be rejected which, in its union with sense-perception, supposed the offspring born to be its own possession, and called him Cain, saying, 'I have gotten a man through God,' and in this it went astray.
Why is this? Because God is a cause, not an instrument; and what comes to be through an instrument comes to be, in every case, under a cause. For the coming-into-being of anything requires the concurrence of many things: that by which, that from which, that through which, and that on account of which. And the cause is that by which; the matter is that from which; the instrument is that through which; and the purpose is that on account of which.
Consider: if someone were to ask what must converge for a house, or any city at all, to be constructed, would it not be a builder, and stones and timber, and tools? What, then, is the builder but the cause by which? What are the stones and timber but the matter from which the construction is made? What are the tools but the things through which? And for what purpose — for nothing but shelter and safety, this being that on account of which the thing exists.
Passing on, then, from particular constructions, look at the greatest house or city, this world: for you will find that its cause is God, by whom it came to be; its matter, the four elements, from which it was blended together; its instrument, the Word of God, through which it was constructed; and the reason for its construction, the goodness of the Craftsman. This is the discernment of those who love truth and reach after knowledge that is genuine and sound; but those who say that they have acquired something 'through God' suppose the cause — the Craftsman — to be an instrument, and the instrument — the human mind — to be a cause.
Right reason would find fault also with Joseph for saying that the clarification of the dreams would be found 'through God' (Gen 40:8) — for he ought to have said that the unfolding and precise disclosure of hidden things would properly come to be 'by him,' as cause. For we are instruments, through which the several activities occur, being drawn tight and let loose, while the craftsman is the one who brings about the striking of the powers of both body and soul, the one by whom all things are moved.
Those, then, who are unable to distinguish the differences between things must be taught, as being ignorant; those who, out of love of strife, interchange the proper ranking of what these terms signify must be avoided, as contentious; but those who, after a careful search into what is involved, assign to each of their findings its own proper place must be praised, as pursuing a philosophy that holds to no falsehood.
Moses, at least, says to those who feared that they would be destroyed while the wicked man pursued them with his whole army: 'Stand and see the salvation that comes from the Lord, which he will work for you' (Exod 14:13) — teaching thereby that being saved comes to pass not 'through God' but 'from him,' as cause.