That the Worse Attacks the Better

Philo of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the Greek

"And Cain said to Abel his brother, Let us go out into the plain. And it came to pass that while they were in the plain, Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him" (Genesis 4:8). What Cain intends is this: having drawn Abel into a dispute by provocation, he means to overpower him by plausible and specious sophistries. For the plain to which he urges him to come is, we say, a sign of rivalry and contention, inferring the unseen from what is evident.

For we observe that most contests, in war as in peace, take place on plains. In peacetime, those who compete in athletic contests pursue racecourses and open plains; and in war it is not customary to wage infantry or cavalry battles on hilly ground, for the unsuitability of such terrain would only increase the harm that enemies inflict on one another.

The greatest proof of this: when the practiced student of knowledge wages war against the opposing condition, ignorance, and in some manner shepherds the irrational powers within the soul, admonishing and disciplining them, this is seen taking place on a plain. "For Jacob sent and called Leah and Rachel to the plain, where the flocks were" (Genesis 31:4), making it plain that the plain is a sign of contentiousness. And why does he call them?

"I see the face of your father," he said, "that it is not toward me as yesterday and the day before; but the God of my father was with me" (Genesis 31:5). For this reason, I would say, Laban is not favorable toward you, because God is with you. For in whatever soul the perceptible external thing is honored as the greatest good, in that soul no noble reasoning is to be found; but in the soul in which God walks, the perceptible external good is not supposed to exist — which is precisely the meaning and the name of Laban.

And all who are set in order by a portion of the reasoning that advances after the pattern of the father teach the irrational impulses of the soul otherwise, choosing the plain as the fitting place for this. For it is said to Joseph: "Are your brothers not shepherding at Shechem? Come, let me send you to them." And he said, "Here I am." And he said to him, "Go and see whether your brothers and the flocks are well, and bring me word." And he sent him from the valley of Hebron, and he came to Shechem. And a man found him wandering in the plain; and the man asked him, "What are you seeking?" And he said, "I am seeking my brothers; tell me where they are pasturing." And the man said to him, "They have gone from here, for I heard them saying, Let us go to Dothan" (Genesis 37:13–17).

That it is on the plain that they take charge of the irrational powers within themselves is clear from what has been said. And Joseph is sent to them because he is unable to bear his father's more austere knowledge, so that he might learn from gentler instructors what is to be done and what is expedient. For he holds an opinion woven together out of disparate things, altogether varied and manifold — which is why the lawgiver says a coat of many colors was made for him (Genesis 37:3), showing that the doctrine he introduces is labyrinthine and hard to escape.

For, philosophizing more for the sake of a way of life than for the sake of truth, he brings together and links into one the three kinds of goods — external, bodily, and of the soul — things wholly different from one another in nature, insisting that each is in need of the others and all of all, and that the good which is truly whole and complete is what is compounded from the sum of them, while the parts out of which this is built up are, taken separately, merely portions or elements of goods, but not goods that are complete.

For just as neither fire nor earth nor any of the four elements out of which the universe was fashioned is itself the cosmos, but rather the coming-together and blending of the elements into one — so likewise happiness is not to be found by itself in external things alone, nor in bodily things alone, nor in things of the soul alone taken by themselves — for each of these has the character of a part or element only —

but in the aggregate composed of all of them together. It is to be instructed in this opinion, then, that he is sent to men who consider the good, in the strict sense, to be the noble alone — which belongs to the soul as soul — while regarding what is called external and bodily advantage as advantage only, not truly good. "For behold," it says, "your brothers are shepherding" and ruling every irrational part within themselves "at Shechem" (Genesis 37:13); Shechem, translated, means "shoulder," a sign of the labor of endurance; for those who love virtue bear the greatest burden — the resistance to the body and bodily pleasure, and again to external things and the delights that arise from them.

"Come, then, let me send you to them" (ibid.), that is, be summoned and approach with the mind, taking a willing impulse toward learning what is better. But up to now you only put on the appearance of one who has received true instruction; for not having yet admitted this to yourself, you say you are ready to be taught anew when you say "Here I am" — from which you seem to me to expose your own rashness and readiness rather than to declare a readiness for learning. The proof: a little later the true man will find you wandering on the road (Genesis 37:15) — which would not have happened if you had come to the practice from a sound resolve.

And indeed the father's exhortation places no compulsion on you, so that you might pursue what is better willingly and of your own accord; for he says, "Go and see" — behold and consider and examine the matter with great precision; for you must first know what you are about to labor over, and only then proceed to attend to it.

But when you have looked closely and, turning your eye about, surveyed the whole thing thoroughly, examine further those who have already set themselves to it and become its practitioners — whether, in doing this, they are "well" and not rather deranged, as pleasure-lovers think, mocking and jeering at them. And do not confirm to yourself either your view of the matter or your judgment about the practitioners being well, until you have "brought back word" and reported it to the father; for the opinions of those just beginning to learn are unstable and unsettled, while those of the advanced are firm, and it is from these that beginners must necessarily take their own steadiness.

In this manner, O mind, if you search into the words handed down as sacred oracles — words of God, yet laws given to men beloved of God — you will find yourself compelled to accept nothing base or unworthy of their greatness. For this very matter now under discussion — how could any sensible person accept it? Is it likely that Jacob, who had such abundance fit for a king, was in such want of servants or attendants that he had to send his own son into a foreign place to bring back news of his other sons — and, on top of that, of the flocks?

His grandfather, apart from the multitude of captives whom he brought back after defeating nine kings, had more than three hundred household slaves; and the household diminished not at all, but as time went on everything increased in every respect. Given such abundant service, then, he would not have thought fit to send the son he cared for most on an errand that even the meanest of servants could easily have accomplished.

But you see that he also records, with peculiar emphasis, the place from which he sends him — all but openly urging us to depart from the literal sense: "from the valley of Hebron" (Genesis 37:14). Hebron, meaning "partnership" and "companionship," is symbolically our body, since it is yoked to the soul and set in a kind of fellowship and friendship with it. And it has valleys — the organs of sense, great reservoirs of everything perceptible from outside, which pour in the vast multitude of qualities and, through those reservoirs,

flood the mind and drown it, making it a thing sunk in the depths. This is why in the law concerning leprosy, when greenish or reddish hollows appear in a house, it is directed that the stones in which they have occurred be removed and others put in their place (Leviticus 14:37ff.) — that is, when the differing qualities produced by pleasures and desires and the passions akin to them weigh down and press upon the whole soul, making it more hollow and more base than itself, the causes of this weakness are to be uprooted as reasonings, and healthy ones brought in instead through lawful training or right education.

Seeing Joseph, then, wholly sunk into the hollows of the body and the senses, he summons him to come out of his lairs and, drawing a breath of free endurance, to go to those who were once practitioners of it but are now its teachers. But he who supposed he had come forth is found instead wandering: "a man found him," it says, "wandering in the plain" (Genesis 37:15), showing that it is not labor as such, but labor joined with skill, that is good.

For just as it is fitting to practice music not unmusically, nor grammar without grammar, nor, in general, any skill without skill or with bad skill, but each skillfully — so too one must not practice prudence cunningly, nor temperance stingily and meanly, nor courage rashly, nor piety superstitiously, nor any other kind of virtuous knowledge without knowledge; for all these are, admittedly, ways off the road. And this is also why the law lays down that we are to "pursue justice justly" (Deuteronomy 16:20), so that we may pursue justice and every virtue by its own kindred works, and not by their opposites.

If, then, you observe someone abstaining from foods and vegetables out of season, or refusing baths and ointments, or neglecting the coverings of the body, or making use of sleeping on the ground and rough lodging, and then putting on the airs of self-mastery because of these things — take pity on his wandering and show him the true road of self-mastery; for what he has practiced consists of endless, unwearying toils that, through hunger and other afflictions, ruin soul and body alike.

Nor should anyone be counted among the pious who, while using sprinklings and purifications, defiles his own mind while making his body shine; nor again anyone who, out of abundance, erects a temple with the most splendid furnishings and expenditures, or offers hecatombs and never ceases from sacrificing oxen, or adorns the sanctuary with costly dedications, bringing in materials without stint and workmanship more precious than any silver or gold.

For this man too has wandered from the road toward piety, taking ritual observance for holiness, and giving gifts to the incorruptible one, who will never accept such things, and flattering the unflatterable — who welcomes genuine service (and genuine service is the soul's offering of truth alone and unadorned as its sacrifice), but turns away from the counterfeit; and counterfeit is every display made through external abundance.

As for the man who found him wandering in the plain (Genesis 37:15), some say his proper name is not disclosed — and they themselves have, in a manner, wandered, being unable to see clearly the straight road of things. For if the eye of their soul had not been blinded, they would have known that the most fitting and most exact name for the man in the true sense is this very word, "man" — the name most proper to an articulate and rational mind.

This man, dwelling in the soul of each of us, is found now as ruler and king, now as judge and umpire of the contests of life, and sometimes, taking the position of witness or accuser, secretly convicts us from within, not even allowing us to open our mouths, but taking hold of us and, with the reins of conscience, checking the self-willed and unruly running course of the tongue.

This same conviction inquired of the soul, when it saw her wandering: "What are you seeking?" (Genesis 37:15). Prudence, is it? Then why do you walk the path of cunning? Temperance? But the path leads to stinginess. Courage? Rashness attends this path. Are you in pursuit of piety?

The road of superstition. And if she claims to be seeking the words of knowledge and to long for them as her nearest kin, her brothers, let us not altogether believe her; for she would not have asked "where they are grazing" (ibid. v. 16), but "where they are shepherding." For those who merely graze provide all perceptible things as food for the irrational and insatiable creature of the senses, on whose account we become powerless over ourselves and unhappy; but those who shepherd, having the power of rulers and leaders, tame what has grown savage, restraining the magnitude of the desires.

If, then, she were really seeking those who practice virtue in truth, she would look for them among kings, not among cupbearers or bakers or cooks; for the latter prepare things for pleasures, while the former rule over pleasures.

Therefore the man who perceived the deception rightly answers, ‘They have departed from here’ (Gen. 37:17). By this he indicates the bulk of the body, showing that all those for whom the labor of acquiring virtue is contested have abandoned the region of earth and resolved to roam the heights, drawing along none of the wax weights of the body. Indeed, he says he heard them saying:

‘Let us go to Dothan’ (ibid.) — which is translated ‘sufficient failing’ — showing that they have practiced not a moderate but an utter abandonment and failing of the things that do not cooperate toward virtue, just as it is said, ‘it had ceased to be with Sarah after the manner of women’ (Gen. 18:11); for the passions are female by nature, and their failing must be cultivated in favor of the male marks of good feeling. So it is ‘in the plain,’ that is, in a contest of arguments, that Joseph too is found — the introducer of a variegated doctrine, wandering toward what is useful for a constitution rather than toward the pattern of truth.

There are some competitors who, because of the good condition of their bodies, are crowned without a fight when their opponents withdraw, not even raising the dust themselves, having won first place through incomparable strength. Making use of such power with respect to the most divine part within us, the mind, Isaac ‘goes out into the plain’ (Gen. 24:63), intending to contend with no one, since all his rivals have cowered before the grandeur and the surpassing excellence of his nature in every respect, wishing only to be alone and to converse privately with God, his fellow traveler and guide both of the road and of the soul.

The clearest proof that no one conversing with Isaac is mortal is this: Rebecca, Endurance, will ask about the boy, seeing only one and forming an impression of only one: ‘Who is this man walking to meet us?’ (ib. v. 65). For the soul that abides in noble things is capable of apprehending self-taught wisdom, called by the name Isaac, but is not yet able to see God, the guide of wisdom.

And confirming beforehand that she cannot apprehend the invisible one who converses unseen, the servant says, ‘This is my lord’ (ibid.), pointing only to Isaac; for it is not likely, if two had appeared, that he would point to only one — rather, he did not see the one who cannot be pointed to, since he is invisible to all intermediate beings.

That the plain, then, into which Cain challenges Abel to come, is a symbol of contest and rivalry, I think has been sufficiently shown. Next we must inquire what subjects they take up for investigation once they have come forward. Clearly it is opposing and conflicting opinions: Abel refers every doctrine that loves God back to God, while Cain — for his name is translated ‘possession’ — refers a self-loving doctrine back to himself. Now the self-loving, whenever they strip and raise dust against those who honor virtue, do not stop wrestling in the all-out contest until they force them to give up or utterly destroy them.

For they move every stone, as the saying goes, asserting: Is not the body the house of the soul? Why then should we not take care of a house, so that it not fall into ruin? Are not the eyes and ears and the whole chorus of the other senses like bodyguards and friends of the soul? Should we not, then, honor allies and friends equally with ourselves? Did nature create pleasures and enjoyments and the delights that run through the whole of life for the dead, or for those who have never even come into being at all, rather than for the living? And what has come over us that we should not acquire wealth, reputation, honors, offices, and all such other things, from which not only safe but happy living results?

Life itself is witness to this: those called lovers of virtue are almost all without reputation, despised, lowly, lacking necessities, held in less honor than subjects or even slaves, filthy, pallid, wasted to skeletons, staring at starvation from lack of food, chronically ill, practicing how to die. But those who take care of themselves are famous, rich, rulers, praised, honored, healthy, well-fed, robust, living luxuriously, pampered, knowing no toil, living together with pleasures that pour in through all the senses upon the all-receiving soul

— bringing pleasant things. By stretching out some such long-distance race of argument, they seemed to defeat those unaccustomed to sophistry. But the cause of their victory was not the strength of the winners, but the weakness of their opponents in this area. For among those who practice virtue, some have stored up the good in the soul alone, becoming practitioners of praiseworthy deeds, without so much as dreaming of the trickery of arguments, while others have managed both: fortifying their thinking with good counsel and good works, and their arguments especially with the arts pertaining to them.

It is fitting, then, for these latter to meet the contentious contests of some people, since they have the means readily prepared with which to fend off their opponents; but for the former there is no safety at all. For how could the naked ever fight on equal terms against the armed, when even for the well-prepared the contest is unequal?

Abel, then, did not learn the arts of argument, but knows the good by mind alone. For this reason he ought to have declined the journey to the plain and disregarded the challenge of his ill-disposed brother; for any hesitation is better than defeat. This hesitation his enemies call cowardice, but his friends call it safety; and one must trust friends rather than enemies, since friends do not lie.

Do you not see that Moses declines the sophists in Egypt in the body, whom he calls sorcerers — for by the arts of sophistry and deceptions good character is in a manner drugged and corrupted — saying that he is not ‘eloquent’ (Exod. 4:10), which is equivalent to saying he is not naturally suited to the rhetoric that fashions plausible and persuasive speech; and then affirming next that he is not merely not eloquent but is entirely ‘without speech’ (Exod. 6:12)? He is ‘without speech’ not in the sense in which we say animals lack reason, but as one who does not think it right to make use of the audible speech produced through the vocal organ, but marks and seals with mind alone the doctrines of true wisdom, which stands opposed to false sophistry.

And he will not go into Egypt, nor come into a contest with its sophists, until spoken reason has been thoroughly trained, when God, through the ordination of Aaron, has brought forth and perfected every form of expression — Aaron, Moses’ brother, whom he habitually calls ‘mouth’ and interpreter and ‘prophet’ (Exod. 4:16; 7:1); for all these things pertain to reason (logos), which…

…is the brother of the mind. For the mind is a spring of words, and speech is its outlet, since it is through speech that all its thoughts flow forth and are poured out into the open, like streams from a spring. Speech is also the interpreter of what the mind has deliberated in its own council chamber, and moreover the prophet and oracle-giver of what it never ceases to utter as oracles from its inner sanctuary, invisible as it is.

It is useful, then, to oppose those who wrangle over doctrines in this manner; for once we are trained in the forms of argument, we will no longer collapse from inexperience in sophistic wrestling holds, but rising up and standing firm, we will easily slip free of their crafty entanglements. Those who are once found out will seem to display the strength of shadow-boxers rather than of real competitors; for such men win applause when practicing their gestures alone, but when they come to an actual contest, they lose their reputation badly.

But if someone has adorned his soul with every virtue yet has not practiced the arts of argument, by keeping quiet he will find safety as a prize free of danger; whereas if, like Abel, he steps forward into a sophistic contest before he is firmly braced, he will fall.

For just as in medicine some who know how to treat almost every affliction, disease, and infirmity are unable to give a true or plausible account of any of them, while others, on the contrary, are clever with words — excellent expositors of symptoms, causes, and treatments, the elements of which the art is composed — but are utterly incompetent at caring for the bodies of the sick, unable to provide even the least contribution toward a cure; in the same way, some who practice wisdom through deeds have often neglected words, while others who have been trained in the arts of speech have stored up no fine learning at all in the soul.

It is no surprise, then, that these people, using an unbridled tongue, are emboldened with recklessness, for they are only displaying the folly they practiced from the start; but for those others, who like physicians have learned the part that heals the diseases and afflictions of the soul, it is necessary to hold back, until God provides them too with the best interpreter, having rained down and revealed to them the springs of speech.

It would therefore have been advantageous for Abel, making use of the saving virtue of caution, to have stayed at home, disregarding the challenge to a contentious and quarrelsome contest, imitating Rebecca, Endurance, who, when Esau, the devotee of vice, threatened to kill Jacob, the practitioner of virtue, instructs the one about to be plotted against to withdraw, until that man’s cruel rage against him should subside.

For he indeed holds out some unbearable threat, saying: ‘Let the days of mourning for my father draw near, so that I may kill Jacob my brother’ (Gen. 27:41); for he is praying that Isaac, the only form that is free from passion within created being — Isaac, to whom the oracle says, ‘do not go down into Egypt’ (Gen. 26:2) — should fall under irrational passion, so that, I suppose, he might be wounded by the stings of pleasure or grief or some other passion, showing that the one who is less perfect and makes progress only through toilsome effort will suffer not merely a wound but utter destruction. But the good God will neither make the unwoundable type of being susceptible to passion, nor hand over the practice of virtue to a murderous and demon-possessed man for its ruin.

Therefore the text that follows, ‘Cain rose up against Abel his brother and killed him’ (Gen. 4:8), suggests, on the surface impression, that Abel was killed; but on more careful examination, that it was Cain himself who was killed, by himself. So it must be read this way: ‘Cain rose up and killed himself,’ not another.

And reasonably so, for the soul that has destroyed within itself the doctrine that loves virtue and loves God has died to the life of virtue. So Abel — most paradoxically — has both been killed and lives: he has been killed as far as the mind of the fool is concerned, but he lives the happy life in God. The oracle that was spoken bears witness to this: in it he is found clearly using ‘voice’ and ‘crying out’ (Gen. 4:10) about what he suffered at the hands of his wicked partner — for how could one no longer existing be capable of speaking?

So the wise man, who seems to have died, lives the incorruptible life, though it seems he has died the perishable one; while the base man, though living, has died to the happy life amid his wickedness. For in the case of distinct living creatures, or bodies generally, it is possible and easy for the agent to be one thing and the patient another; whenever a father strikes his son to correct him, or a teacher strikes his pupil, the one who strikes and the one who is struck are different. But in the case of things united, where acting and being acted upon are found in the same subject, they occur neither at a different time nor as different things, but at the same time and in the same thing: whenever an athlete rubs himself down for the sake of exercise, he is certainly the one being rubbed; and if someone strikes or wounds himself, he is both striking and being struck; indeed the one who maims or kills himself is both maimed and killed. Now why have I said all this?

Because the soul, belonging not to the class of distinct things but to that of things united, must necessarily suffer what it seems to do — just as, indeed, in the present case too: for having thought to destroy the most God-loving doctrine, it has destroyed itself. Witness Lamech, the offspring of Cain’s impiety, who says to his wives — two thoughtless states of mind — ‘I have killed a man to my own wound, and a young man to my own bruise’ (Gen. 4:23).

For it is clear that if someone kills the reasoning of courage, he wounds himself with the opposite disease, cowardice; and if someone destroys strength renewed through the practice of noble things, he brings on himself blows and great outrages, along with no small shame. Endurance too says that if practice and progress are destroyed, one loses not a single offspring only but the others as well

she rejects, having accepted complete childlessness (Gen. 27:45). Just as the one who harms the good man has been shown to be harming himself, so too the one who claims for himself precedence over his betters procures a good—in word for them, but in fact for himself. Nature bears witness to my argument, as do the laws enacted in accordance with her; for it is stated plainly and clearly thus: 'Honor your father and your mother, that it may go well with you' (Exod. 20:12)—not, it says, with those honored, but 'with you'; for whether we hold in honor the mind as father of the composite being or sense-perception as its mother, we ourselves will fare well at their hands.

Honor for the mind consists in being served by what is advantageous rather than by what is pleasant—and everything that comes from virtue is advantageous—while honor for sense-perception consists in not being let loose to be carried along by a single impulse toward external sensible things, but in being reined in by the mind, which knows how to steer and drive the irrational powers within us.

If, then, both sense-perception and mind receive the honor I have described, the one who makes use of both must necessarily benefit me; but if he draws his reasoning far away from mind and sense-perception, and deems worthy of honor the Father who begot the cosmos and the Mother, Wisdom, through whom the universe was brought to completion, he himself will fare well; for neither the God who is full nor the utmost and complete knowledge has need of anything, so that the one who serves them benefits not those served—who lack nothing—but rather himself most of all.

Horsemanship and dog-training, being the science of caring for horses on the one hand and dogs on the other, supply the animals with what is useful to them, of which they have need; and if it fails to supply this, it would seem negligent. But piety, being the service of God, it is not right to call a supplying of things that will benefit the divine; for God is benefited by no one, since he is neither in need nor is there anything in nature superior to him capable of benefiting him; on the contrary, he benefits all things continuously and unceasingly.

So when we say that piety is the service of God, we mean a kind of ministry such as slaves render to masters, having resolved to do without hesitation what is commanded. But there will again be a difference, in that masters are in need of service, while God has no need; so that slaves render to their masters what will benefit the masters themselves, but to God they will offer nothing beyond a disposition devoted to their Master; for they will find nothing to improve, since all that belongs to the Master is from the beginning best, but they will greatly benefit themselves by taking care to be recognized by God.

I consider that enough has been said on these matters, directed against those who suppose they are doing good or harm to others; for they have been found to be doing each of these to themselves. Let us examine what follows. The question is this: 'Where is Abel your brother?' (Gen. 4:9), to which he answers, 'I do not know; am I my brother's keeper?' (ibid.). It is therefore worth raising the difficulty whether it is proper to say, in the strict sense, that God inquires; for one who asks or inquires about things he does not know asks and inquires seeking an answer, from which he will come to know what he does not know; but all things are known to God—not only present and past things but future ones as well.

What use, then, is an answer, if it is not going to give the questioner any understanding? But it must be said that such expressions are not properly spoken of the Cause; rather, just as one can utter a falsehood without being a liar, so too one can put forward a question or an inquiry without asking or inquiring. For what purpose, then, someone may perhaps say, are such things said? So that the soul that is about to give the answers may be tested by itself concerning the things it declares well or ill, using neither an accuser nor an ally other than itself.

Since indeed when he asks the wise man, 'Where is your virtue?' (Gen. 18:9)—I mean Abraham, concerning Sarah—he does not ask in ignorance, but because he thinks Abraham ought to answer, so as to set forth the praise arising from the very words of the speaker; for it says that he said, 'Behold, in the tent'—that is, in the soul. Is the answer praiseworthy? Behold, he says, I have virtue within myself like some treasure, and because of this I am at once blessed.

For blessedness lies in the use and enjoyment of virtue, not in mere possession alone; and I would not be able to use it, unless you, sending down seeds from heaven, made it pregnant, and it brought forth the offspring of blessedness, Isaac—for I understand blessedness to be the use of perfect virtue in a perfect life. For this reason too, admiring his purpose, God acknowledges that he will bring to fulfillment in due season what

he asked for. To this man, then, the answer brought praise, since he confessed that not even virtue by itself, without divine providence, is sufficient of itself to benefit; but to Cain, correspondingly, it brought blame for saying he did not know where the man he had treacherously murdered was; for he thought he would deceive the one listening, as though he did not see all things and had not already grasped the deceit he was about to employ; but lawless and outcast is everyone who supposes that the eye of God overlooks anything.

But he even plays the impudent youth, saying, 'Am I my brother's keeper?' (Gen. 4:9); for surely, I would say, he would have lived most wretchedly, if nature had appointed you guardian and keeper of so great a good. Or do you not see that the lawgiver entrusts the preservation and guarding of holy things not to random people but to the Levites, most sacred in disposition? Earth and water and air, and heaven too, and the whole cosmos, were judged an unworthy portion for them; only the Craftsman was found worthy, to whom genuine suppliants have fled for refuge, becoming his servants, displaying their devotion to their Master through continuous service and through the most unhesitating guarding of what has been entrusted to them

—displaying, that is, this guardianship. And not even all the suppliants were permitted to become guardians of holy things, but only those who attained the fiftieth number, which proclaims release and complete freedom and return to their ancient allotments. 'For this,' it says, 'is the law concerning the Levites: from twenty-five years old he shall enter to work in the tent of testimony, and from fifty years old he shall withdraw from service, and shall work no longer, but his brother shall minister; and he shall keep the watches, but he shall not perform works' (Num. 8:24-26).

Accordingly, to the half he grants the perfection—for the number fifty is a perfect number, and twenty-five is half of it—to work and perform the holy things, showing his good pleasure through works; and the beginning, as one of the ancients said, is half of the whole—while to the perfect one he no longer grants labor, but the keeping safe of whatever he acquired through practice and toil; for may I never become one who practices virtues and then fails, in turn, to guard them.

Practice, then, is a middle state, not a perfect one, for it occurs in souls not yet perfect but reaching toward the summit; but guarding is complete, the handing over to memory of the truths practiced concerning holy things—a fair deposit of knowledge to a faithful guardian, who alone pays no heed to the manifold nets of forgetfulness; so that the one who remembers soundly and accurately what he has learned is rightly called a guardian.

This man, when he was earlier in training, was a disciple of another teacher; but when he became capable of guarding, he obtained the rank and function of a teacher, appointing his brother to the services of instruction—his own uttered word. For it is said that 'his brother shall minister' (Num. 8:26); so that the mind of the good man will be the steward of the doctrines of virtue, while his brother, speech, will minister to those pursuing education, expounding the doctrines and theorems of wisdom.

For this reason too Moses, in his blessings, after foretelling many wonderful things of Levi, adds: 'He guarded your oracles and kept your covenant'; and next: 'They will make known your judgments to Jacob and your law to Israel' (Deut. 33:9-10).

It is therefore clearly established that the good man is a guardian both of God's words and of his covenant; and it has likewise been shown that he is the best interpreter and expounder of his judgments and laws, interpretation being accomplished through the kindred instrument—the organ of speech, no doubt—while guarding is examined with respect to the mind, which, fashioned by nature as a great storehouse, has readily made room for the concepts of all bodies and things. It would indeed have profited even self-loving Cain to guard Abel; for if he had preserved him, he would have shared in a judged and moderate life, and not been filled with unmixed and unadulterated wickedness.

'And God said, What have you done? The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground' (Gen. 4:10). The words 'What have you done' express both indignation at an unholy act and mockery at the one who supposes he has committed murder. Indignation arises over his intention, that he resolved to destroy the noble; mockery, because he thought he had plotted against his better, but had plotted no more against him than against himself; for

the one who seems to have died is alive, as I said before, since he is found to be both a suppliant of God and one who uses a voice; while the one supposed to survive has died the death of the soul, having been cut off from virtue, apart from which alone it is worth living; so that 'What have you done' is equivalent to 'You have done nothing'—you have accomplished nothing.

For not even the sophist Balaam, an empty crowd of contrary and warring opinions, though he wished to lay curses and harm the good man, had the power to do so, since God turned the curses into blessing (Num. 23:8), so that he might both refute the wickedness of

the unjust man and set forth his own love of virtue. Sophists are by nature accustomed to use their own faculties as enemies against themselves—arguments of reasoning and reasonings of intention standing opposed and in no way whatsoever in harmony; at any rate they wear out our ears, declaring justice to be sociable, self-control advantageous, self-restraint noble, piety most beneficial, and every other virtue most healthful and salutary; and again declaring injustice implacable, licentiousness diseased, impiety lawless, and every other vice most harmful—

and yet, though they think the opposite of what they say, they do not stop; rather, whenever they sing the praises of prudence and self-control and justice and piety, it is then above all that they are found being most foolish, most licentious, most unjust, most impious, confounding and overturning, so to speak, all things human and divine.

To such people one might rightly say what the oracle said to Cain: What have you done? What good have you accomplished for yourselves? What benefit have your many words about virtue conferred upon your soul? What part of your life, small or great, have you set right? What then? Have you not rather gathered together, against yourselves, true accusations—that although you understand noble things and philosophize in word, you have become the best interpreters, yet are forever caught both thinking and practicing the most shameful things? Surely, then, has not the noble died in your souls, now that evils have been kindled anew?

For this reason none of you truly survives. For just as when some musician or grammarian dies, the musicianship and grammatical skill that were in the men perish along with them, yet the forms of these arts remain and in a sense live on, coeval with the cosmos, according to which both those now existing and those yet to come will become, through unending successions, musicians and grammarians in their turn—so too, if the prudent or self-controlled or courageous or just or, in sum, wise element in someone is destroyed, none the less, within the immortal nature of the universe, prudence stands immortal and virtue entire stands imperishably engraved, in accordance with which there are even now some who are good, and will again come to be.

Unless we are also going to say that the death of some individual human being works the destruction of humanity itself—which the seekers of proper names will recognize as either a genus, a form, a concept, or whatever else one ought to call it. A single seal, though it stamps its shape upon countless, indeed innumerable, substances, sometimes remains in its own nature undamaged and in place, even when all the impressions it made in those substances have faded away.

Are we then not to think that the virtues, even if all the characters they have stamped upon the souls that have come to them are effaced through a corrupt way of life or some other cause, will nonetheless keep their own pure and incorruptible nature forever? Those uninitiated in education, then, not knowing the differences between wholes and parts, or between genera and species, or the equivocations found among these, confuse and muddle everything indiscriminately.

For this reason let every self-lover, surnamed Cain, be taught that he has destroyed only the namesake of Abel—the form, the part, the imprinted copy—not the archetype, not the genus, not the idea, which he supposes, being imperishable, to have perished along with the living creature. Let someone say to him, then, in mockery and derision: “What have you done, wretched man? Does not the God-loving opinion you think you have destroyed live on with God? You have become the murderer of yourself alone, the one being you could have lived with blamelessly, whom you destroyed by ambush.”

Now the words that follow are spoken altogether beautifully, both for the elegance of their expression and for the discoveries of thought they contain: “The voice of your brother's blood cries out to me from the ground” (Gen. 4:10). The loftiness of the phrasing is plain to all who are not strangers to words; but let us examine, as far as we are able, the thoughts contained within it, beginning with the matter of the blood.

In many places of the legislation he declares that blood is the substance of the soul, saying outright, “For the soul of all flesh is blood” (Lev. 17:11). Yet when he first fashioned man, after the creation of heaven and earth and what lies between them, the Maker of living things says that “he breathed into his face the breath of life, and the man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7), thereby showing again that the substance of the soul is breath.

And indeed he is accustomed to keep the original premises always in view, judging it right that what follows should agree with what came before. He would not, then, having earlier said that breath is the substance of the soul, later call blood—an entirely different substance—the same, unless he were referring it to one of the most necessary and fundamental distinctions. What, then, is to be said?

Each of us, according to the nearest division, turns out to be two in number: a living creature and a human being. To each of these a kindred power of the soul has been allotted: to the one, the vital power, by which we live; to the other, the rational power, by which we have become rational beings. Of the vital power even irrational animals partake; but of the rational power they do not partake, while God, the source of the most venerable Reason, rules over it.

The power common to us and to irrational creatures, then, was allotted blood as its substance; but the power that flows from the rational source was allotted breath—not moving air, but a certain stamp and impression of divine power, which Moses, with a fitting name, calls “image,” showing that God is the archetype of rational nature, while man is a copy and likeness—not the two-natured living creature, but the best form of the soul, which is called mind and reason.

For this reason he says that the soul of flesh is blood, knowing that the nature of flesh has no share in mind, but partakes of life just as our whole body does; while he names the soul of man breath, calling “man”—not the composite creature, as I said—but that God-shaped creation by which we reason, whose roots he stretched up to heaven and fastened to the outermost vault of what are called the fixed stars.

For man alone of the things on earth God made a heavenly plant, fixing the heads of all other creatures downward toward the ground—for all of them face downward—but leading man's head upward, so that he might have Olympian and imperishable nourishment rather than earthly and perishable. Even in the case of our body, the part most devoid of perception he rooted to the earth, keeping it as far as possible from reasoning; but the senses that serve as the mind's bodyguard, and the mind itself, he settled as far as possible from the things of earth, binding them instead to the imperishable circuits of air and heaven.

Let us no longer wonder, then, we who are disciples of Moses, how man came to conceive a notion of the invisible God; for Moses himself, having learned the cause by revelation, explained it to us. He spoke thus: the Maker made no soul competent of itself to see its Maker, but reckoning that his creation would gain greatly if it received a notion of its Creator—for this is the very definition of happiness and blessedness—he breathed into it from above a share of his own divinity. The invisible imprinted its own stamps upon the invisible soul, so that not even the region of earth should go without an image of God.

The archetype was so entirely invisible that even the image made after it is not visible to sight. Yet, having been shaped according to that pattern, it received notions no longer mortal but immortal. For how could a mortal nature be able both to remain in place and to travel abroad at once, or to look upon things here and things elsewhere, to sail over the whole sea and traverse the earth to its farthest limits, or to lay hold of laws and customs, or, in general, of affairs and bodies—or, apart from earthly things, to grasp what lies on high: air, its changes, the peculiarities of the seasons, and all that is renewed each year in accordance with custom?

Or again, to fly up from earth through the air to heaven and examine the natures found in heaven—how they exist, how they move, what limits of beginning and end their motion has, how they are fitted together with one another and with the whole by some rightful kinship; or to devise arts and sciences, those that fashion external things and those that concern themselves with body and soul, working out how each may be made better—and countless other things whose number and nature it is not easy to comprehend in speech?

For mind alone among the things within us, being the swiftest runner of all, outstrips and passes beyond even the time in which it seems to occur, touching by invisible powers, and beyond time, the whole and its parts and the causes of these. Already it has come not only to the boundaries of earth and sea but of air and heaven, and even there it did not stop, judging the world too small a limit for its continuous and unceasing course, but longing to advance still further and to grasp, if it can, the incomprehensible nature of God—insofar, at least, as the mere fact of his existence can be grasped.

How, then, is it likely that the human mind, being so small a thing, confined within small masses—the membrane of the brain or the heart—should encompass so vast a magnitude as that of heaven and the world, unless it were an undivided fragment of that divine and blessed soul? For nothing of the divine is cut off by separation; it is only extended. Hence, having received a share of the perfection found in the whole, whenever it conceives of the world it expands together with the limits of the whole, suffering no rupture; for its power is one of extension.

Let this suffice, then, as said briefly, concerning the substance of the soul. But as for the phrase “the voice of blood cries out” (Gen. 4:10), we shall explain it in what follows in this way. Of our soul, one part is voiceless, the other endowed with voice: the irrational part is voiceless, while the rational part alone has voice, and this alone has received a notion of God; for by the other parts we can grasp neither God nor anything intelligible.

Of the vital power, then, whose substance is blood, a certain portion received as its special privilege voice and reason—not the stream that flows through mouth and tongue, but the source from which the reservoirs of spoken speech are naturally filled. That source is the mind, through which we utter, partly willingly and partly unwillingly, our pleas and outcries to Him who Is.

He, being good and gracious, does not turn away suppliants, above all when they cry out, without pretense or deceit, groaning over the deeds and sufferings inflicted by the Egyptians. For then, Moses says, their words went up to God (Exod. 2:23), and He, having heard, rescued them from the evils that beset them.

And all this comes to pass, most paradoxically, when the king of Egypt dies. For one would expect that at the death of a tyrant those he tyrannized would rejoice and be glad; but instead they are said, at that very moment, to groan: “For after those many days the king of Egypt died, and the sons of Israel groaned” (ibid.).

Taken literally, then, the passage does not contain a reasonable sense; but with reference to the powers within the soul, its coherence is found. For when Pharaoh—the one within us who scatters and casts away right opinions about the good—is kindled to life and seems to be in good health, if indeed one may call any vice “healthy,” we then welcome pleasure, driving self-control beyond its proper bounds. But when he has been overpowered and, in a manner of speaking, dies—he who is the cause of a shameless and licentious life—having caught sight of the temperate life, we weep and groan over ourselves for our former way of living, because, having honored pleasure above virtue, we yoked a mortal existence to an immortal one. Then He alone who is gracious, taking pity on our continual lamentation, welcomes our suppliant souls and easily thrusts away the Egyptian thunderbolt of the passions that has been hurled against us.

But upon Cain, who does not accept repentance, He lays curses most fitting to the enormity of his fratricide. For first He says to him, “And now you are cursed from the earth” (Gen. 4:11), showing that he was accursed and defiled not first now, when he committed the murder in deed, but even earlier, when he plotted the killing—for the intention has power equal to the completed act.

So long as we merely conceive of shameful things in the bare imagining of the mind, we are not yet subject to judgment, for the soul may even turn to such things involuntarily; but once the deed is added to what was deliberated, the deliberation itself also becomes culpable, for it is above all by this that voluntary wrongdoing is distinguished.

He says that the mind will become accursed by nothing other than the earth; for among its harshest misfortunes is found the earthly cause attaching to each of us. The body, for instance, either through disease inflicts upon itself the ills of distress and anguish and so fills the mind with them, or, fattened beyond measure by the enjoyment of pleasures, blunts the mind's keenness for apprehension.

And indeed each of the senses is capable of causing harm: one man, seeing beauty, is wounded by the arrows of dread passion, love; another, hearing of the death of a kinsman, is bowed down by grief. Often taste, too, has brought a man low, tormenting him with unpleasant flavors or oppressing him with an excess of pleasant ones; and as for the frenzies driving toward intercourse, what need is there to mention them? These have destroyed whole cities and lands and vast regions of the earth—witnessed by almost the entire multitude of poets and writers.

The manner in which the mind becomes accursed from the earth he further describes, saying: “Which opened its mouth to receive the blood of your brother” (Gen. 4:11). For it is a grievous thing when the mouths of the senses are opened and widened so far that, gaping wide, the torrent of sensible things pours in upon them like a river in flood, with nothing to check its violent onrush; for then the mind, swallowed up in so great a wave, is found submerged in the depths, unable even to swim up and lift its head above the surface.

But one must use each of these faculties not for what it is capable of, but for what is best. Sight is capable of seeing every color and shape, but let it look at what is worthy of light, not of darkness; and hearing too is capable of taking in every sound, but let it be deaf to some of them, for countless things said are shameful. Nor, because nature has given you a share of taste, you vain-minded man, should you gorge on everything insatiably like a gull; for many things, not only unnourishing but superfluous, have bred diseases with grievous pain.

Nor, because you have been deemed worthy of the parts ordained for begetting, for the sake of preserving the universe, should you pursue seductions and adulteries and other unholy unions, but only those that lawfully sow and plant the human race. Nor, because you have been allotted a tongue and a mouth and organs of speech, should you blurt out everything, even what must not be said; for holding one's tongue is sometimes useful, and it seems to me that those who have learned to speak have also learned to be silent, since the same capacity produces both, while those who go on about what is unfitting display not power of speech but weakness of silence.

We must therefore take pains to bind each of the openings just named with the unbreakable bonds of self-control; for "whatever is not bound with a bond," says Moses elsewhere, "is unclean" (Num 19:15) -- as though the loosening, gaping, and slackening of the soul's parts were the cause of misfortune, while their being drawn together and constricted produced an upright life and an upright reason. Rightly, then, does he curse the godless and impious Cain, because, having thrown open the burrows of his compound nature, he gaped at everything outside, praying in his insatiable greed to receive it all and make room for it, to the destruction of Abel's God-loving creed.

"He shall work the earth" (Gen 4:12) -- he shall not farm it. For every craftsman is a worker of the earth, since farming too is a craft, but many untrained people till the ground without experience, merely to supply their needs; such people do much harm in what they do, having found no one to oversee them, and whatever they happen to do well, they achieve by luck, not by reason. But the works of farmers carried out with knowledge are of necessity wholly beneficial.

For this reason the lawgiver attached the art of farming to righteous Noah (Gen 9:20), teaching that just as the good farmer, among the wild growth, cuts away whatever shoots are harmful, planted there by the passions or the vices, but leaves standing whatever, though it bears no fruit, can serve as a fence -- a most secure defense for the soul in place of a wall -- and again tends the whole of the cultivated growth by differing methods, not the same ones for all, taking away from some plants, adding to others, increasing some to greater size, cutting others down to smallness --

-- and once, seeing a vine flourishing, he stretched its shoots along the ground, having dug trenches and then heaped the soil over them again; and before long these, whole plants instead of mere parts, mothers instead of daughters, came to be, the natural mother herself even shedding her old age in the process. For once she had ceased distributing and doling out nourishment to her many offspring, since they had become able to feed themselves, for which reason, being starved, she had grown weak, she was at last barely satisfied, so that, being fattened again, she grew young once more.

I have also seen another man who, noticing an ignoble shoot among the cultivated trees, cut away the part rising above the ground but left a small stub standing just at the roots, and then, taking a healthy branch from another, well-bred tree, pared it down on one side as far as the pith, and having cut into the stub near the roots -- not to any great depth, but only enough to open a gap -- fitted the pared branch into the gap and joined it there.

From the two of these a single united nature of tree comes to be, each part returning benefit to the other: the roots nourish the grafted branch and keep it from withering, while the branch gives the roots, in return for its nourishment, the gift of good fruit. There are countless other skillful works belonging to farming, which it would be superfluous to mention now; it was only to show the difference between a mere worker of the earth and a farmer that we have dwelt on this at such length.

Now the base man never ceases working, unskillfully, upon the earthly body and the senses akin to it and all the sensible things outside it, and in doing so he harms his own thoroughly wretched soul, and harms also the very thing he thinks he benefits most, his own body. But for the man of worth -- since he is experienced in the art of farming -- all this matter is handled skillfully and with reason.

Whenever the senses run riot toward external sensible things, carried along with an uncontrollable rush, they are easily restrained by some device that art has devised; but whenever a throbbing, raw passion arises in the soul, producing itchings and ticklings from pleasure and desire, or again bitings and frights from fear and grief, it is brought to a head by a saving remedy prepared in advance; and indeed, if some spreading vice grows and lengthens -- a disease of the soul akin to the creeping sickness of the body -- it is cut away by the knife of reason working according to knowledge.

In this way, then, the growths of the wild matter are tamed. But all the plants of the tame and fruit-bearing virtues have our practices as their shoots and our noble actions as their fruit; each of these the farming art of the soul makes to grow, and, so far as lies within its own power, renders immortal through its care.

It has therefore been clearly shown that the man of worth is a farmer, while the base man is a mere worker of the earth. And would that the earthiness surrounding him, at least, added strength to the base man as he works it, rather than stripping away even the power he had; for it is said, "it will not continue to give you its strength" (Gen 4:12) -- what kind of man would one become who is always eating or drinking,

yet never filled, or one who takes the pleasures that follow the belly one after another and is still, besides, at full vigor for the appetites of intercourse? For want produces weakness, and being filled produces strength; but insatiability, amid an abundance of what is needed, joined to a dreadful lack of self-control, is itself a kind of famine. Wretched are those whose bodily bulk is full while their desires remain empty, and still thirsting.

But of the lovers of knowledge he says, in the Great Song, that God "brought them up upon the strength of the earth, and fed them with the produce of the fields" (Deut 32:13), showing that the godless man fails of his end, and so suffers all the more pain, since strength is not added to what he does but is rather taken from it, while those who pursue virtue, standing far above all that is earthly and mortal, count the power of such things as nothing, for all their abundance, since they have taken God as guide of their ascent -- God, who also offers the produce of the fields for their enjoyment and most beneficial use, likening the virtues to fields, and what the virtues bring forth to the field's produce, in keeping with how each comes to be; for from prudence comes the act of being prudent, from self-control the act of being self-controlled, from piety the act of being pious, and from

each of the other virtues its corresponding activity. These, properly speaking, are the food of a soul capable of nursing, as the lawgiver says: "honey out of the rock, and oil out of the solid rock" (Deut 32:13), meaning by "rock" the solid and unbreakable wisdom of God, the nurse and foster-mother and rearer of children for those who long for the incorruptible way of life.

For she, being as it were the mother of all that has come to be in the cosmos, at once brought forth food from herself for her offspring; yet not all were deemed worthy of divine food, but only those of her children who were found worthy of the one who bore them. For there are many whom the famine of virtue -- more grievous than the famine of food and drink -- has destroyed.

The spring of divine wisdom flows at times with a calmer, gentler current, and at other times again with a sharper speed and a greater rush and force. When it comes down gently, it sweetens like honey; when it comes with swiftness, it becomes, all at once, like oil for the light of the soul.

This same rock, elsewhere using a different name for it, he calls manna, the most ancient of all things, the divine Word, which is named "the something" -- the most generic thing there is -- from which two cakes come to be, one of honey, the other of oil: that is, two paths altogether inseparable and worthy of earnest pursuit, which at first produce a sweetness in the teachings of knowledge, and afterward flash forth the clearest light for those who take hold of what they love, not fickly, but with strength and firmness, through unbroken and continuous perseverance. These, then, as I said, "are brought up upon the strength of the earth" (Deut 32:13).

But to the godless Cain the earth adds nothing to give him vigor, even though he busies himself with nothing beyond working it. And so, consistently, he is found "groaning and trembling upon the earth" (Gen 4:12) -- that is, given over to grief and fear. Such is the life of the base man, ill-starred, allotted the more painful of the four passions, fear and grief, the one akin to groaning, the other to trembling; for such a man must either have some evil present or expect one to come. The expectation of what is to come breeds fear, and the experience of what is present breeds grief.

But the man who pursues virtue is found amid the corresponding good states of feeling; for he has either already gained the good, or he will gain it. The having of it produces joy, the fairest of possessions; the expectation of having it produces hope, the sustenance of souls that love virtue, through which, casting off hesitation, we meet noble deeds with a readiness that commands itself.

In whatever soul righteousness has begotten a male offspring -- right reasoning -- from that soul all painful things have been banished. The birth of Noah, whose name is translated "righteous," bears witness to this; of him it is said: "This one shall give us rest from our works and from the toils of our hands and from the earth which the Lord God has cursed" (Gen 5:29).

For it is the nature of righteousness, first, to produce rest in place of toil, by making one indifferent to the borderlands of vice and virtue -- wealth and reputation and offices and honors and all their kin, with which most of humankind busies itself -- and next, to remove griefs, which arise from our own actions (for Moses does not say, as some of the impious do, that God is the cause of evils, but rather our own hands, presenting our undertakings symbolically as "hands," and the willing turnings of the mind toward the worse); and, above all, to give rest "from the earth which the Lord God has cursed."

This is the vice that is established in the souls of the foolish, from which, as from a grievous disease, the righteous man is found to turn away, having obtained righteousness as a cure for all ills. And whenever he has thrust away evils, he is filled with joy, as Sarah was; for she says, "The Lord has made laughter for me," and adds, "for whoever hears will rejoice with me" (Gen 21:6).

For God is the craftsman of the virtuous man's laughter and joy, so that Isaac must be considered not a creature of ordinary generation but a work of the Unbegotten. For if Isaac is translated "laughter," and God, according to Sarah's truthful testimony, is the maker of laughter, then God may most rightly be said to be Isaac's father. He also gives a share of his own title to the wise Abraham, to whom he has granted rejoicing, an offshoot of wisdom, having cut away grief from him. If anyone, then, is capable of hearing God's creative work, he himself necessarily rejoices, and he rejoices together with those who have already, through listening, come to share in it.

In God's creative work you will find no fabrication of myth, but all the unblemished rules of truth set up like inscribed pillars, nor anything that charms the ear through music with measures of sound and rhythms and melodies, but rather the most perfect works of nature itself, allotted their own proper harmony. And just as the mind, when it listens to God's works, rejoices, so too does reason, being in tune with the thoughts of the mind, and in a certain way attending

For the oracle given to all-wise Moses will make this clear, in which these words are contained: "Is not Aaron your brother, the Levite? I know that he will speak for you; and see, he will come out to meet you, and when he sees you he will rejoice in himself" (Exodus 4:14). For the Craftsman says he knows that spoken word, which is the brother of the mind, speaks; for he made it as an instrument giving articulate sound for our whole composite being.

This word speaks and interprets our thoughts to me, to you, and to all people, and goes out to meet what the mind has reasoned. For whenever the mind, roused toward one of its proper objects, takes an impulse, whether moved from within by itself or having received impressions of a different kind from outside, it conceives and is in labor with its thoughts; and though it wishes to give birth, it is unable, until the sound that comes through the tongue and the other vocal organs, receiving them like a midwife, brings the thoughts forth into the light.

This sound is the clearest voice of our thoughts. For just as things stored away are hidden in darkness until a shining light reveals them, in the same way our thoughts are kept in an invisible place, the mind, until speech, shining upon them like light, uncovers them all.

It is beautifully said, then, that the word goes out to meet our thoughts, and indeed runs eagerly to seize hold of them, out of longing to disclose them. For to each thing its own proper work is most longed for; and the proper work of speech is to speak, toward which it hastens by a certain natural kinship. It rejoices and delights when, as though illuminated, it sees and grasps distinctly the sense of the matter being shown; for then, having taken hold of it fully, it becomes an excellent interpreter.

Those, then, who do not fully master their thoughts in the course of speaking, we reject as babblers and ramblers, stringing together empty and long and, properly speaking, lifeless utterances. The speech of such people, behaving disgracefully, would justly groan; so that, by contrast, the speech that comes from a thorough survey of one's thoughts, arriving adequately at the disclosure of what it has seen and firmly grasped, must necessarily rejoice.

This is known to nearly everyone from daily experience. For whenever we know perfectly what we are saying, our speech, rejoicing and delighting, grows rich in the most vivid and proper words, by which, with great abundance, it presents what is meant fluently, without stumbling, and moreover clearly and effectively. But whenever our grasp of the thought wavers between two possibilities, then, harassed by dire perplexity, it wanders about lacking clear and well-aimed words and speaks improperly; and so it becomes flooded and lost in unpleasantness and distress, and instead of persuading its hearers' ears

it forces them to suffer pain. Let not every speech, however, go out to meet every thought, but only the perfect Aaron to the thoughts of the most perfect Moses; for why else did he add to "See, Aaron your brother" the words "the Levite," if not to teach that it belongs to the Levite alone, the priest and excellent word, to disclose thoughts that are the offspring of a perfect soul?

For may speech never become the interpreter of divine doctrines if it belongs to a base person—for it disgraces their beauty with its own stains—nor, conversely, may licentious and shameful things ever be disclosed through the utterance of a person who is excellent; but let the recounting of holy things always be performed by holy and sacred words.

In one of the best-governed cities, they say, there is a custom of this kind: whenever someone who has not lived rightly attempts to bring forward a proposal to the council or the assembly, he himself is forbidden to do this in person, but is compelled to refer the proposal to one of the officials, to one of the noble and good men; then that man, standing up, recounts what he has heard, the mouth of the one who taught him having been sewn shut, appearing as a pupil suddenly transformed, and displaying discoveries not his own, not even claiming for the one who conceived them the rank of a hearer or a spectator. In this way some people refuse to be benefited even by wrongdoers, considering the shame that follows to be a greater harm than the benefit that would result

would be worth. This teaching Moses, the most holy, seems in some way to have taught in advance; for such is the meaning of Aaron the Levite meeting his brother Moses and, upon seeing him, rejoicing in himself (Exodus 4:14). And rejoicing "in himself" reveals, apart from what has already been said, a doctrine more applicable to civic life as well, the lawgiver showing the genuine joy most proper to a human being.

For, properly speaking, one cannot rejoice over an abundance of money or possessions, nor over the brilliance of reputation, nor in general over anything external, being both lifeless and unstable and receiving corruption from itself; nor indeed over strength and vigor and the other advantages of the body, which are common even to the basest people and have often brought inescapable ruin upon those who possess them.

Since, then, unadulterated and unfalsified joy is found only in the goods of the soul, every wise person rejoices in himself, not in what is around him. For the things within oneself are the virtues of the mind, on which it is fitting to take pride, while the things around oneself are bodily well-being or abundance of external goods, over which one should not boast greatly.

Having shown, then, as far as was possible, through the most truthful witness Moses, that rejoicing is proper to the wise, let us in turn show that hoping is too, using no other witness. For the son of Seth, named Enosh—which is translated "man"—... hope: "This man was the first to hope to call upon the name of the Lord God" (Genesis 4:26), speaking soundly; for what could be more proper to a human being, with regard to truth, than hope and expectation of obtaining good things from God alone, the lover of giving? This is, if the truth must be told, the only genesis of human beings properly speaking, since those who do not hope in God have no share in a rational nature.

For this reason, after first saying of Enosh that "this man hoped to call upon the name of the Lord God," he expressly adds: "This is the book of the genesis of humankind" (Genesis 5:1), speaking earnestly; for it is inscribed in God's book that only the one full of good hope is a human being, so that conversely the one devoid of hope is not a human being. The definition of our composite nature, then, is a rational, mortal living being, but the definition of the human being according to Moses is a disposition of soul that hopes in the truly existing God.

Let the refined, then, who have obtained joy and hope as a happy inheritance, either possess or expect only good things; but let the base, whose companion is Cain, being in griefs and fears, reap either a share of evils or the most grievous expectation of them, groaning over the painful things at hand, trembling and shuddering over the fearful things expected (cf. Genesis 4:12).

But let this suffice on these matters; let us examine what follows. "And Cain said to the Lord," it says, "My guilt is greater than can be forgiven" (Genesis 4:13). What this means will become clear from similar cases. If a helmsman were to abandon a ship at sea, would it not be inevitable that the ship goes astray in its voyage? And what if a charioteer abandons a four-horse team in a chariot race—would it not be inevitable that the team's course becomes disorderly and faulty? And what, when a city is abandoned by its rulers or its laws—for laws, surely, are enrolled among the rulers—is it not destroyed by anarchy and lawlessness, the greatest of evils? And indeed the body naturally perishes from the absence of the soul, the soul from the absence of reason, and reason from want of virtue.

But if each of the things I have mentioned brings loss to those abandoned by them, with how great a misfortune must we recognize that those abandoned by God are afflicted, whom he has turned away from and banished like deserters from the most sacred ordinances, having judged them unworthy of his own oversight and rule? For altogether one must know that a person let go by the one who is better and beneficial falls under the gravest charges and accusations.

For when would you say a person unskilled in a craft is most harmed? Is it not when he is left utterly without expert knowledge? And when the ignorant and thoroughly uneducated person? Is it not when teaching and learning declare an abandonment of him? And when do we count the foolish most unfortunate? Is it not when prudence rejects them altogether? And the licentious or unjust? Is it not when temperance and justice vote for their perpetual exile? And the impious? Is it not when piety bars them from its own rites?

For this reason it seems to me that those who are not utterly incurable would pray to be punished rather than let go; for release will most easily overturn them, like ships without ballast and without a pilot, while punishment will set them right.

Or are not those who are rebuked by tutors for their errors better off than those without tutors, and those reproved by teachers when they fail in their arts better off than those unreproved, and are not those who are more fortunate and better off than youths left without guardians those who have been granted, above all, the natural oversight and rule that parents obtain over their children—or, failing that, at least those who have obtained secondary guides, whom pity for orphanhood is accustomed to appoint as guardians, to fulfill in every respect the office of parents

Let us then, who are convicted by conscience of our own wrongdoings, beg God to punish us rather than let us go; for one whom he lets go he no longer regards as his own gracious slave, but hands over to merciless generation, while one whom he punishes, being kind, he will correct with gentleness and mildness, sending into the mind that reproof which chastens—his own word—by which, having shamed and rebuked it for its errors, he will heal it.

For this reason the lawgiver says that "whatever a widow or a divorced woman has vowed against her own soul" shall remain binding upon her (Numbers 30:10); for we will rightly say that God, as husband and father of all, provides the sowing and the genesis of all things, while the mind is divorced and widowed of God when it either has not received divine seed, or, having received it, has of its own will miscarried again.

Therefore whatever such a mind determines, it determines against itself, and these things will remain wholly incurable; for how could it not be an evil to be shunned, for a nature so utterly unstable and unsettled to determine something and pronounce it fixed about itself, ascribing to itself the virtues of its maker? Of these virtues one is that by which each thing is determined without hesitation and without wavering.

Therefore it will not only be widowed of knowledge, but will also be cast out; and this is what it means: the soul that is widowed but not yet cast out from the beautiful can, by persevering, somehow find terms of reconciliation and agreement with right reason as its lawful husband; but the soul once separated and put away, as irreconcilable, is shot forth for the whole of time, unable to return to its ancestral home.

Let this suffice, then, concerning "my guilt is greater than can be forgiven"; let us consider what follows. "If you cast me out today from the face of the earth," he says, "I shall also be hidden from your face" (Genesis 4:14). What are you saying, my good man? If you are cast out from the whole earth, will you still be hidden? In what way? For could you even live?

Or did you not know this, that nature has given to living creatures different places, and not the same ones, for their continuance -- the sea to fish and every kind of water creature, the land to all land creatures? And man, at least by the composition of his body, is a land creature. For this reason, when each kind exchanges its proper region and comes, as it were, into a foreign land, it easily dies -- land creatures by sinking beneath the water, water creatures by swimming up onto dry land.

If then you, being a man, should be cast out from the earth, where will you turn? Will you swim beneath the water, imitating the nature of water creatures? But you will die at once, submerged. Or will you grow wings and raise yourself aloft, wishing to walk on air, changing your land-nature into that of a winged creature? But if you can, go ahead and remold and recoin the divine currency -- but you will not be able to. For the higher you raise yourself aloft, the more swiftly, from a greater height and with greater force, to your own proper place, on earth, you

will be carried. Could a man, or anything that has come to be, be able to hide from God? Where -- from him who has reached everywhere, who looks to the very ends, who has filled the universe, of whose beings not even the smallest is left destitute? And what is strange in this, if it is not possible for anything that has come into being to hide from the One who Is, when it is not even possible to escape the material first principles themselves, but whoever flees one must pass over into another?

If the One who Is, by the same art with which he made amphibious creatures, wished also to fashion anew a creature that would live everywhere, this creature -- if the heavy ones fled from earth and water, it would go over to the naturally light elements, air and fire; and conversely, if while dwelling among the things aloft it sought to migrate from them, it would change to the opposite region. For it was altogether necessary for it to appear in some one part of the world, since it was impossible to run outside the whole -- and besides, the Craftsman left nothing outside, having spent the four elements entirely, whole through whole, on the constitution of the world, so that from perfect parts he might complete the most perfect whole.

Since then it is impossible to escape the work of God as a whole, how is it not all the more impossible to flee from its Maker and Ruler? Let no one, then, adopting the ready-to-hand reading of the text, fasten his own foolishness onto the Law without examination; rather, let him look closely and discern clearly what it hints at through underlying meanings.

Perhaps, then, what is signified by 'If you cast me out today from the face of the earth, I shall be hidden from your face' is this: if you do not provide me the good things of earth, I do not accept those of heaven either; and if there is no use and enjoyment of pleasure, I renounce virtue as well; and if you do not give me a share of human goods, keep the divine ones too.

For these are, in our view, the necessary, honored, and truly genuine goods: to eat, to drink, to be clothed, to be delighted through sight by varieties of colors, to be charmed through hearing by melodies of all kinds of sounds, to be gladdened through the nostrils by fragrant exhalations of scents, to indulge to satiety in all the pleasures of the belly and those beyond the belly, not to neglect the acquisition of silver and gold -- let him wrap himself also in honors and offices and whatever else contributes to reputation. But as for prudence, or endurance, or the austere dispositions of justice that prepare a laborious life, let us leave those aside; and if indeed one must make some use of them, it should not be as of goods complete in themselves, but as of things productive of good.

So you, ridiculous man, say that once stripped of bodily and external advantages you will not come into the sight of God? But I tell you that, if you are stripped of them, you will surely come into it. For once released from the unbreakable bonds of the body and those around

the body, you will form an image of the Unbegotten. Do you see that Abraham, having 'left behind his land and kindred and his father's house' (Gen 12:1) -- that is, the body, sense-perception, and reason -- begins to encounter the powers of the One who Is? For when he has gone forth from the whole household, the Law says that 'God appeared to him' (Gen 12:7), showing that he appears clearly to the one who has stripped off mortal things and has run up into a soul incorporeal in relation to this body.

For this reason Moses too, 'taking his own tent, pitches it outside the camp' (Exod 33:7) and settles it far from the bodily encampment, hoping that only in this way would he become a perfect suppliant and servant of God. And he says this tent is called 'of testimony,' very carefully so, in order that it may belong to the One who Is, and not merely be so called. For of the virtues, that of God is truly established in accordance with being, since God alone subsists in being. For this reason it will be necessarily said of him: 'I am the One who Is' (Exod 3:14), as though those after him did not exist in accordance with being, but were thought to subsist only in appearance. But the tent of Moses, being symbolically the virtue of a man, will be deemed worthy of being called so, not of actually existing so -- being an imitation and copy of that divine one.

In keeping with this is also the fact that Moses, when he is appointed 'god of Pharaoh,' has not truly become so, but is only supposed to be so in appearance. For I know God as giver and bestower, but I cannot conceive of him as given. Yet it is said in the sacred books: 'I give you as god to Pharaoh' (Exod 7:1), the one given being acted upon, not acting; whereas that which truly Is must be active, not passive. What then is gathered from this?

That the wise man is called god of the fool, but is not truly God, just as a counterfeit four-drachma coin is not really a four-drachma coin. But when he is compared with the One who Is, he will be found to be a man of God; when compared with a foolish man, he is thought of as god in appearance and semblance, not in truth and reality.

Why then do you speak vainly, saying 'If you cast me out from the earth, I shall be hidden from you' (Gen 4:14)? On the contrary, if he drives you away from what is earthly, he will show his own image clearly. Here is the proof: you will be removed from the face of God, but once removed you will nonetheless dwell in your earthly body just the same. For it says again: 'Cain went out from the face of God and dwelt in the land' (Gen 4:16). So it is not that, cast out from the earth, you have hidden the One who Is, but that, turned away from him, you have taken refuge in the earth, the region of mortality.

And indeed it is not true that 'everyone who finds you will kill you,' as you cleverly argued (Gen 4:14). For what is found is found by one of two things, either the like or the unlike -- by the like and kindred because of the affinity and fellowship present in all things, by the unlike because of its opposing alienness. Now the like is protective of what resembles it, while the unlike is destructive of what differs from it.

Let Cain, then, and anyone else who is wicked, know that he will not be destroyed by everyone he meets, but that the reckless, who have cultivated vices akin and related to his, will become his guards and protectors, while those who have labored at prudence and every other virtue will, if they can, destroy him as an implacable enemy. For, so to speak, all bodies and all affairs are preserved by their own kin and friends, but destroyed by aliens and enemies.

For this reason the oracle also, bearing witness against the pretended simplicity of Cain, says: 'You do not think as you speak' (Gen 4:15). For you say that everyone who discovers the tricks of your art will destroy you, but you know that it is not everyone -- since countless are ranged on your side as allies -- but only the one who is a friend to virtue and an implacable enemy to you.

'But whoever kills Cain,' it says, 'shall release seven acts of vengeance' (Gen 4:15). What sense this bears in relation to the literal interpretations, I do not know. For it has not made clear what the seven are, nor how they are avenged, nor in what way they are released and discharged. So it is necessary to think that all such things must be understood more figuratively, through underlying meanings.

Perhaps, then, what it wishes to represent is something like this: the irrational part of the soul is distributed into seven divisions -- sight, hearing, smell, taste, touch, speech, and the generative faculty. If, then, one should destroy the eighth, the mind that governs these -- Cain -- he will also release the seven. For by the strong vigor of the intellect all are strengthened together, but they grow weak together with its weakness, and through the corruption that vice brings they suffer complete collapse and dissolution.

These seven, in the soul of the wise man, are found undefiled and pure, and for this reason worthy of honor as well; but in the soul of the fool they are impure and polluted -- which is what is meant by 'avenged,' equivalent to 'deserving judgment and punishment.'

At any rate, when the Craftsman intended to purify the earth with water, and for the soul to receive a cleansing from its countless wrongs by washing away and rinsing off its stains in the manner of sacred purification, he counsels the man who was shown to be righteous, who was not swept away by the onrush of the flood, to bring into the ark -- which was the vessel of the soul, the body -- 'seven of the clean animals, male and female' (Gen 7:2), deeming it right that virtuous reasoning should make use of all the clean parts of the irrational.

And what the lawgiver has determined here necessarily accompanies all wise men. For they have a purified sight, and a well-tested hearing, and every sense purified; and they have, moreover, an unstained speech and impulses toward intercourse that are not lawless.

Each of the seven becomes male in one respect and female in another. For since it is either at rest or in motion -- at rest when quiet during sleep, in motion when already active in waking -- that which is according to state and quiescence, as being subject to being acted upon, is called female, while that which is according to motion and activity, as being conceived of in acting, is named male.

Thus in the wise man the seven are seen to be pure, but conversely in the base man all are, on the contrary, subject to vengeance. For how great a multitude do we suppose betrayed each day by the eyes, deserting to colors and shapes and things it is not lawful to see? How great a multitude by the ears, following after every kind of sound? How great a multitude, through the organs of smell and taste, led away by scents and other things in their boundless varieties?

I tell you further of the multitude that the unchecked stream of an unbridled tongue has destroyed, or the incurable frenzy for intercourse driven by unrestrained desire. The cities are full, and the whole earth, from end to end, is full of these evils, from which arises the continuous, unceasing, and greatest of wars -- the one waged, in the midst of peace, against the human race, both privately and in common.

For this reason it seems to me that those who are not utterly uneducated would choose rather to be blinded than to see what they should not, and to be made deaf rather than hear improper words, and to have their tongues cut out rather than utter any of the unspeakable things.

At any rate they say that some of the wise, when broken on the wheel to make them reveal secrets, have bitten off their own tongue, thereby devising against their torturers a torment more severe than the torturers'—who were unable to learn what they longed to know. It is better, too, to be castrated than to rage after lawless unions. All such acts, since they plunge the soul into irremediable disasters, would fittingly meet with the utmost justice and punishment.

Next he says, "The Lord God set a sign on Cain, so that anyone who found him would not kill him" (Gen. 4:15); and he has not made clear what this sign is, although he is accustomed to show the nature of each thing by means of a sign, as with the events in Egypt, when he changed the rod into a serpent, and Moses' hand into the form of snow, and the river into blood.

Perhaps, then, this very thing is the sign given to Cain against being murdered: that he should never be destroyed at all. For nowhere throughout the whole legislation has he disclosed Cain's death, hinting that, like the Scylla of myth, folly is an undying evil—one that does not undergo the ending that comes with dying, but instead admits every kind of dying for the whole of time. Would that the opposite were true, so that base things might be removed from our path by undergoing complete destruction! But as it is, they are forever being kindled afresh and inflict their undying disease on those who have once been caught by them.

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