On Drunkenness

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

What has been said by the other philosophers about drunkenness we recalled, as best we could, in the book before this one; now let us examine what the all-great and wise lawgiver thinks about it.

For in many places in his legislation he mentions wine and the vine, the plant that produces it; and to some he permits drinking it, to others he does not allow it, and sometimes to the very same people he prescribes the opposite — to use wine, and not to use it. These, then, are those who have made the great vow (Num. 6:2ff.), while unmixed wine is forbidden to those officiating as priests (Lev. 10:9), and countless others who partake of wine are among those most admired by him for their virtue.

But before beginning to speak of these matters, we must be precise about the points bearing on their groundwork. It is, I think, as follows:

Moses holds that unmixed wine is a symbol not of one thing but of several: of babbling and raving, of utter insensibility, of insatiable and ill-content desire, and of that gladness which embraces everything else and which appears in all the things mentioned — the nakedness which he says Noah, once drunk, displayed. These effects, then, are said to be the work of wine. But countless people, even those who have never touched unmixed wine, are caught while sober—

seized by like things: for one may see some of them acting foolishly and babbling, others gripped by utter insensibility, others never satisfied but always thirsting after unattainable things because they lack knowledge, others in turn beaming and rejoicing, and others truly stripped bare.

The cause of babbling, then, is harmful lack of education — by which I mean not ignorance of learning, but estrangement from it; the cause of insensibility is treacherous and blind ignorance; the cause of insatiability is desire, the most grievous of the soul's passions; the cause of gladness is the possession and, at the same time, the exercise of virtue; but of nakedness there are many causes: ignorance of opposites, guilelessness and simplicity of character, and truth, the power that leads to the unveiling of things kept in shadow, stripping virtue bare on the one hand and vice on the other, each in turn — for it is not possible at the same time

to strip off both, nor even to put both on; but whenever one casts off the one, of necessity he takes up and puts on the other in its place.

For just as, according to the ancient account, God joined pleasure and pain — things by nature at war — at a single summit, and produced the sensation of each not at the same time but at alternating times, decreeing that as the one departs the other should descend in its place, so too from a single root of the governing faculty the twin shoots of virtue and vice have grown up, neither budding nor bearing fruit at the same moment.

For whenever the one sheds its leaves and withers, the other begins to sprout again and put forth new green growth, so that one might suppose each shrinks back, resentful of the other's flourishing. For this reason Scripture, most naturally, presents Esau's entrance as following directly upon Jacob's exit: 'It happened,' it says, 'that as soon as Jacob went out, Esau his brother came in' —

(Gen. 27:30) — for as long as prudence lingers and walks about within the soul, every companion of folly is banished beyond its borders; but when prudence moves away, folly comes down rejoicing, since its hostile and unfriendly enemy, on whose account it was driven out and made to flee, no longer occupies the same territory.

What amount to the preliminaries of the passage, then, have been said sufficiently; we shall now supply the proofs for each point, beginning our instruction from the first. We said, then, that lack of education is the cause of babbling and erring, just as unmixed wine in quantity is the cause for countless fools.

For lack of education, to tell the truth, is the primal source of the soul's errors, the spring from which the deeds of life flow as from a fountain — a fountain that gives forth to no one any drinkable or saving stream at all, but a brackish one, the cause of sickness and ruin for those who draw from it.

So it is that the lawgiver rages against the uneducated and unruly as, perhaps, against no one else. Here is the proof: who are allies not by practice but by nature, both among human beings and among the other kinds of living creatures? Not even someone out of his mind would name any but parents; for by an untaught nature, that which has produced always cares for what has come to be, and takes thought for its

safety and its preservation into the future. So he made a point that those who exist by nature as allies should pass over into the rank of accusers, setting up as prosecutors the very ones who ought properly to be advocates, father and mother, so that a person might perish precisely at the hands of those by whom he would naturally expect to be saved. 'For if a man,' he says, 'has a disobedient and contentious son who does not heed the voice of his father and mother, and they discipline him and he does not listen to them, his father and his mother shall take hold of him and bring him out to the elders of his city, to the gate of his place, and shall say to the men of their city: This son of ours is disobedient and contentious, he does not heed our voice; he squanders money on feasting and is a drunkard. And the men of the city shall stone him, and you shall remove the evil one from among you' (Deut. 21:18–21).

The charges, then, are four in number: disobedience, contentiousness, contribution to feasts, and drunkenness. The last is the greatest, having grown out of the first, disobedience; for the soul, once it begins to kick against restraint, and having advanced through strife and love of quarreling, arrives at the final boundary — drunkenness, the cause of derangement and madness. It is necessary to examine the force of each charge, beginning from the first.

It is generally agreed, then, that yielding to and obeying virtue is noble and advantageous, so that disobedience, conversely, is shameful and considerably unprofitable; but contentiousness has gone beyond every extreme of wickedness. For the disobedient person is less depraved than the quarrelsome one: the former merely disregards what is commanded, while the latter has made it his business to attempt the opposite.

Come, let us see how this stands. Suppose the law commands, for instance, that one honor one's parents: the man who fails to honor them is disobedient, but the man who dishonors them is contentious. And again, since it is right to save one's homeland, the man who hesitates to do this is disobedient, but the man who has actually resolved to betray it must be called quarrelsome and contentious.

Likewise, the man who fails to grant a favor to someone, opposing him who says one ought to do good, is disobedient; but the man who, besides not granting favors, also inflicts all manner of harm, puffed up by contentiousness, commits an incurable sin. And indeed, the man who does not perform the sacrifices and the other observances that pertain to piety disobeys the commands which the law regularly gives concerning these matters; but he who turns to the opposite, impiety, and is provoked to it, is a proponent of godlessness.

Such was the man who said, 'Who is he that I should obey?' and again, 'I do not know the Lord' (Exod. 5:2). By the first statement he asserts that the divine does not exist; by the second, that even if it does exist, it is nonetheless unknown — which follows from its not exercising providence, for if it did exercise providence, it would also be known. Now, the bringing of contributions and collections, when it is for

a share in the best possession, prudence, is praiseworthy and advantageous; but when it is for the sake of the worst of all evils, folly, it is unprofitable and blameworthy.

The contributions toward the best, then, are longing for virtue, zeal for what is noble, continual study, persistent exercise, tireless and unwearied labors; but those toward the opposite are slackness, indolence, luxury, self-indulgence, and a complete abandonment of discipline.

One may also see those who strip down for excessive drinking, training every day and contending in the contests of gluttony, bringing in their contributions as though toward something profitable, yet forfeiting everything — money, bodies, and souls. For in contributing their money they diminish their estate; through their soft living they break down and enfeeble the powers of their bodies; and they flood their souls, like a river in flood, with an immoderate excess of food, forcing them to sink into the depths.

In the same way, those who bring collections toward the destruction of education forfeit the most sovereign thing within them, the mind, cutting away its saving faculties — prudence and self-control, and courage and justice as well. This is why he himself, it seems to me, uses the compound word 'squanders money on feasting,' to make his meaning clearer: because by bringing, as it were, contributions and collections for their assaults on virtue, they wound and cut apart and hack to pieces, until complete ruin, souls that are eager to listen and eager to learn.

Souls, then. Wise Abraham, we are told, returned 'from the slaughter of Chedorlaomer and the kings who were with him' (Gen. 14:17), while Amalek, conversely, 'cut down the rear' of the man of practice (Deut. 25:18) — and this follows the natural order, for opposites are hostile to one another and are forever bent on each other's destruction.

One might accuse the man who brings such contributions above all on this ground: that he has resolved not merely to do wrong himself but to share in wrongdoing with others, thinking it fit both to propose some things himself and to listen when others propose them — so that, erring both by nature and by learning, he leaves himself no sound hope of salvation, and this even though the law has expressly forbidden joining with the many in wickedness (Exod. 23:2).

For in truth, evil is abundant and most prolific in human souls, but the good is scanty and rare. So the most beneficial exhortation is not to associate with the many, with whom lies wrongdoing, but with the few, with whom lies just action.

Fourth, then, and greatest of the charges was drunkenness — not indulged loosely, but with utter intensity. For to be a wine-guzzler is equivalent to letting the drug that causes folly, namely lack of education, smolder, kindle, and blaze up, a fire that can never be quenched, but instead is forever setting the whole soul ablaze and consuming it with flame.

It is fitting, then, that justice should follow, purging every wicked disposition of the mind. For it is said, “You shall remove the wicked” — not from a city or a country or a nation, but “from among yourselves” (Deut.); for within us, lodged and lurking, are the culpable and reprehensible reasonings, which, whenever they prove incurable, it is necessary to cut off and destroy.

The disobedient man, then, fond of strife, who furnishes plausible arguments like a kind of contribution or collection aimed at tearing down the good, who blazes with unmixed wine and is thoroughly drunk on virtue, committing outrageous acts of drunken insolence against her — it was right that he should have as accusers those who are allies to others, father and mother, and should receive utter <destruction> as a warning and chastening to those still capable of being saved.

Father and mother share a common name, but their powers differ. The one, then, who fashioned this universe we shall at once rightly call both its maker and its father, and the knowledge of the maker we shall call its mother — with whom God consorted, not as a man, and sowed generation. And she who received the seeds of God, with birth pangs bringing them to term, brought forth his only and beloved perceptible son, this world.

Accordingly, wisdom is introduced, in the words of one from the divine chorus, speaking of herself in this way: “God acquired me as the very first of his works, and founded me before the age” (Prov. 8:22); for it was necessary that all things that came into being should be younger than the mother and nurse of the universe.

So who is capable of sustaining an accusation against these parents? Not even a moderate threat or the lightest reproach. For no one is capable of containing the boundless abundance of their gifts — perhaps not even the world itself, but like a small reservoir into which a great spring of God's graces flows, it will very quickly be filled to overflowing, so that it wells up and spills over. But if we are unable to receive their benefits, how shall we bear their punitive powers when these come upon us?

The parents of the universe, then, must be set aside from the present discussion; let us now instead examine those who, as their disciples and familiars, have been allotted the care and guardianship of souls — as many souls, that is, as are not uncultivated and uneducated. We say, then, that the father is the male, perfect, and right reason, and the mother is the intermediate, cyclical round of studies and education; and it is good and advantageous for their offspring, as children to those who begot them, to obey them.

The father's command, then — right reason's — is to follow and accompany nature, pursuing truth naked and unadorned; while education's, the mother's, is to attend to what is established by convention, the customs which the first people, embracing appearance in preference to truth, established city by city, nation by nation, and country by country.

These parents have four ranks of children: one obedient to both, another attending to neither — the opposite of the first — and the other two each half-complete. For one of them, having become an ardent lover of the father, attends to him but disregards the mother and her injunctions; the other, conversely, seeming to be a lover of the mother, serves her in everything but cares least of all for the father's concerns. The first, then, will carry off the prize of victory over all; the one opposed to it will receive defeat together with destruction; and of the remaining two, one will claim the second prize, the other the third — the second going to the one obedient to the father, the third to the one obedient to the mother.

Now the lover of the mother, yielding to the opinions of the many and, in keeping with the manifold pursuits of life, changing into shapes of every kind after the manner of the Egyptian Proteus — who, because everything that by nature comes to exist in the universe took on a form whose truth was never disclosed — the clearest type of this is Jethro, a figment of vanity most fitted for a city and constitution of a promiscuous, mixed rabble of people suspended on empty opinions.

For while Moses the wise was calling the whole people's soul back to piety and the honoring of God, and teaching them the ordinances and the most sacred laws — for he says, “Whenever a dispute arises among them and they come to me, I judge each case and make known the ordinances of God and his law” (Exod. 18:16) — Jethro, who merely seemed wise, came forward; uninitiated into divine goods but thoroughly practiced in things human and perishable, he plays the demagogue and writes laws contrary to those of nature, keeping his eye on what merely seems to be, whereas those laws are referred to what truly is.

And yet, taking pity and having compassion even on this man for his great error, Moses thinks it necessary to teach him better and to persuade him to abandon his empty opinions and follow truth steadfastly.

“Having removed,” he says — that is, we, having cut away from our understanding empty vanity, are migrating to the place of knowledge, which we receive by oracles and divine covenants — “come with us, and we will treat you well” (Num. 10:29); you will cast off the most harmful semblance, and acquire the most beneficial truth.

But, bewitched by such things as these, he will disregard what has been said and will in no way whatsoever follow after knowledge, but will retreat and run back to his own empty vanity; for it is said that he replied to him: “I will not go, but to my own land and my own kindred” (Num. 10:30) — that is, to his kindred unbelief, which holds false opinion, since he had not learned the faith that speaks truth, dear to men.

that faith, that is, he had not learned. For indeed, when, wishing to make a display of piety, he says, “Now I know that the Lord is great above all gods” (Exod. 18:11), he accuses himself of impiety before men who know how to judge.

For they will say to him: Now you know, unholy man? But before, did you not know the greatness of the ruler of the universe? Was there, then, something older than God, which you had encountered before him? Or is it not true that, for offspring, the virtues of their parents are, before all else, known first of all? Is not the creator and father of the universe, then, its founder? So that if you say you have now come to know, then not even now have you come to know — since it does not date from the beginning of your own coming into being.

You stand convicted no less for your affectation, when you compare the incomparable and say that you have come to know the greatness of the One who Is above all gods; for if you truly knew the One who Is, you would never have supposed any of the others to be a self-sufficient god.

For just as the sun, once it has risen, hides the stars from our sight by pouring out its own light all at once, so too, when the pure, unmixed, and most far-shining intelligible rays of the light-bringing God shine back upon the eye of the soul, it can perceive nothing else; for the knowledge of the One who Is, once it shines forth, irradiates all things, so that it darkens even those that seem, of themselves, to be most brilliant.

No one, then, would have endured comparing the true God to falsely named gods, if he had truly known him without deception; but ignorance of the One has produced belief in the many as though they existed, though in truth they do not.

Everyone is of the same disposition who has despaired of the things of the soul, but marvels at the things concerning the body and what is external, adorned with colors and shapes to deceive an easily led perception.

The lawgiver calls such a person Laban, who, not having perceived the true laws of nature, falsely records those current among men, saying: “It is not so done in our place, to give the younger before the elder” (Gen. 29:26).

For he thinks it necessary to preserve the order in time, holding it right that the elder be brought into partnership first and the younger only afterward. But the practitioner of wisdom, knowing that natures exist outside of time, aims at both the younger before and the elder after. And he has an argument suited to character in harmony with this: for it is necessary for those in training to encounter the younger education first, so that afterward they may be able to enjoy the benefit of the more perfect education securely.

For this reason, even to this day, lovers of nobility do not arrive at the doors of the elder philosophy before encountering the younger ones — grammar, geometry, and the whole of the cyclical branches of music; for these always procure wisdom for those who seek her guilelessly and purely.

But he argues sophistically to the contrary, wishing us to be led to the elder first — not so that we may hold her securely, but so that, enticed by the charms of the younger, we may in turn relax our longing for her.

But he schemes in turn, wanting to lead us to the elder wife first, not so that we might hold her securely, but so that, once enticed by the charms of the younger, we might again dissolve our longing for her.

And this is roughly what has happened to many who have taken a roundabout path toward education. For while still, so to speak, in swaddling clothes, they have gone straight to the most perfect pursuit, philosophy, without ever having judged it right to be initiated into the general studies at all; and later they thought to take hold of these only late and with difficulty. And then, having descended from the greater and elder study to the contemplation of the lesser and younger ones, they grew old among them, so that they no longer had the strength to run back up to where they had set out from.

For this reason, I think, he says: "Complete her seven years" (Gen. 29:27) — which is equivalent to saying: let the good of the soul not be endless for you, but let it have a limit and a boundary, so that you may also encounter the younger rank of goods, which has been allotted bodily beauty, reputation, wealth, and things of that kind.

But he does not promise to "complete" it; rather he agrees to "fulfill" her (Gen. 29:28), that is, that he will never fail in his efforts toward her increase and completion, but will always and everywhere hold fast to her, even if there are countless things pulling and dragging in the opposite direction.

It seems to me that the point that habits are practiced by women rather than by men is made quite plainly through the words of Rachel, who admires only what is perceptible to sense; for she says to her own father: "Do not be angry, my lord; I cannot rise before you, because the custom of women is upon me" (Gen. 31:35).

So then, being persuaded by habit is a property of women; and indeed habit truly belongs to a weaker and more feminine soul; for it is the nature of men, and of a vigorous

and truly masculine reasoning, to follow nature. And I am struck with amazement at the truthfulness of the soul who, in her own inner dialogues, confesses that she cannot rise up against the goods that appear to the senses, but is astonished at each of them and honors it, and all but ranks it above herself.

For which of us stands opposed to wealth? Who strains after reputation? Who has despised honor or office — of those, at least, who are still wallowing in empty opinions? Not a single one, altogether.

But as long as none of these things is present, we talk loftily, as companions of frugality, praising the most self-sufficient and just life, the one fitting for the free and the well-born; but whenever hope of one of these forbidden things, or even the merest breath of hope, blows upon us, we are exposed for what we are; for we yield at once and give way, unable to resist and hold our ground, and betrayed by our own dear senses we abandon the whole alliance of the soul, and no longer deserting in secret, but now openly, we go over to the enemy.

And perhaps not unreasonably; for the habits of women still prevail over us, since we have not yet been able to wash them off and run across to the men's quarters, as the account has it of the mind that loves virtue, whose name is Sarah.

For she is introduced by the oracles as one who "had ceased to have all the ways of women" (Gen. 18:11), at the moment when the self-taught race was about to be in labor and give birth — surnamed Isaac.

And she is said also to have become motherless, allotted kinship only through her father, not through her mother, having no share in the female line. For someone said somewhere: "for truly she is my sister, by my father, but not by my mother" (Gen. 20:12); for she is not sprung from that which is perceived by sense, which is forever coming to be and being dissolved, and which the poets — those in whom the shoot of wisdom first sprang up — called mother and nurse and nourisher, but from the cause and father of all things.

She, then, having risen above the whole realm of bodily things, and made radiant by the joy that is in God, will count as laughter all human earnestness, whether it concerns the affairs of war or of peace.

But we, still overcome by the unmanly and womanish habit that concerns the senses, the passions, and things perceptible, are unable to rise up against any of them, and are dragged by everything, even the most trivial things — some of us unwillingly, others even willingly.

And even if our whole company is caught unable to serve the father's commands, it will have as ally, no less, the mother, education that stands midway, writing down the customary and apparent standards of justice city by city, and legislating different things for different peoples.

But there are some who, looking down on the things of the mother, cling with all their strength to the things of the father — men whom right reason has judged worthy of the greatest honor, the priesthood. And if we go through the deeds by which they won this prize, we shall perhaps incur mockery among many who are deceived by superficial appearances and do not perceive the hidden and shadowed powers at work.

For those who have been entrusted with prayers and sacrifices and the whole sacred service of the temple are — most paradoxical of all — men-slayers, killers of their own brothers, murderers with their own hands of the bodies most akin and dearest to them, men who ought to be pure, and from pure stock, having touched no defilement — let alone a voluntary one, but not even an involuntary one — before being ordained.

For it is said: "Kill each man his brother, and each man his neighbor, and each man his nearest kin. And the sons of Levi did as Moses had spoken, and there fell of the people on that day about three thousand men" (Exod. 32:27–28). And those who had destroyed so great a multitude he praises, saying: "You have filled your hands today for the Lord, each in his son or his brother, so that a blessing may be given upon you" (Exod. 32:29).

What, then, must be said, except that such men are caught by the common habits of humankind — of which the accuser is that political, crowd-pleasing mother, custom — while they employ as ally the one who preserves nature, right reason, the father?

For the priests do not, as some suppose, destroy human beings — rational living creatures composed of soul and body — but they cut away from their own understanding whatever is akin and dear to the flesh, judging it fitting for those who are to become worshippers of the one who alone is wise to be alienated from everything that belongs to the realm of becoming, and to treat all such things as enemies and bitterest foes.

For this reason we shall kill "the brother" — not a human being, but the body, the brother of the soul — that is, we shall separate the passion-loving and mortal from the virtue-loving and divine. We shall kill also the "neighbor" — again not a human being, but the chorus and company of the senses; for this is both kin and hostile to the soul at once, setting baits and traps for it, so that, flooded by the sense-objects that pour in upon it, it may never lift its head toward heaven nor embrace the intelligible and godlike natures. We shall kill also "the nearest of kin" — and nearest to the understanding is spoken reason, which implants false opinions by means of plausible words, images, and persuasions, to the ruin of the most precious possession, truth.

Why, then, should we not take vengeance also on this reason, since it is a sophist and a defiled thing, condemning it to the death that suits it — silence, for silence is death to reason — so that the mind, no longer dragged along by its sophistries, may be able, once wholly freed from the pleasures that belong to the "brother" body, from the enchantments that belong to the "neighboring" and adjoining senses, and from the sophistries that belong to "the nearest" reason, released free and unbound, to devote itself purely to all things intelligible?

This is the one who "says to his father and his mother," to his mortal parents, "I have not seen you" — from the moment he saw the things of God — who "does not recognize his sons," from the moment he became known to wisdom, who "disowns his brothers" (Deut. 33:9), from the moment he was not disowned by God, but was judged worthy of complete salvation.

This is the one who "took the javelin" — that is, who sought out and hunted down the things of perishable generation, in which happiness is stored up in food and drink — and "entered into the furnace," as Moses says, entering into the human life that burns and blazes with the excess of wrongdoings and can never be quenched; and then, having gained the strength also to "cut open the woman through the womb," because she seemed to be the cause of begetting by being the one who is acted upon, in truth, rather than the one who acts, and cutting off every "man" and every reasoning that follows this opinion, which fastens upon passive substances the honor that belongs to God alone, the one cause of all things that come to be (Num. 25:7–8).

Would not this man too be thought by many a murderer — by those caught in the customs and habits of women? But before God, the ruler of all and father, he will be judged worthy of countless praises and commendations and prizes that cannot be taken away; and the prizes are great and akin to each other: peace and priesthood (Num. 25:12–13).

For to be able to put an end to the campaign that is hard to overcome in the life that most people pursue in earnest, and to the civil war of the desires within the soul, and so to secure peace, is a great and splendid achievement; and likewise, to judge nothing else worthy of true service and the highest honor — not wealth, not reputation, not honor, not office, not beauty, not strength, not any bodily advantage, nor even earth or heaven or the whole universe — but only the eldest of causes, and on that basis alone to receive the rank of the priesthood, is a wonderful thing and one worth contending for.

The rewards are also related, I said, and not beside the point, for I know that no one could still become a priest in the true sense while campaigning in the human and mortal campaign in which empty opinions serve as officers, nor could a man be peaceable who does not devote himself, without pretense and simply, to the sole thing that is untouched by war

and that leads to eternal peace. Such are those who honor the father and the father's concerns, but care least for the mother and hers. But the man who has made war on both parents he brings on stage saying, "I do not know the Lord, and I will not send Israel away" (Exodus 5:2); for this man seems to oppose both those who are governed toward God by right reason and those who are established toward becoming by education, and to throw everything into confusion in every way.

And there are even now — for the human race has not yet purged itself of unmixed vice — people who have resolved to do simply nothing that tends toward piety or toward fellowship, but on the contrary are companions of impiety and godlessness, and faithless toward their fellows.

These are the greatest plagues that go wandering about the cities, managing, or rather — if the truth must be told — overturning, both private and public affairs through their meddlesomeness; men one ought to avert by prayers and sacrifices as one would some great disease, famine, plague, or other god-sent evil, for they are great corruptions to those who encounter them. This is why Moses sings of their destruction, when they were caught by their own confederacy and, as it were by triple waves,

swallowed up in their own opinions (Exodus 14:27-28). Let us speak next, then, about those who are enemies to these but have honored education and right reason, among whom were those devoted to one of the two parents, half-perfected dancers in virtue's chorus. These, then, are the best guardians of the laws that the father, right reason, established, and faithful stewards of the customs that education, their mother, introduced.

They were taught by right reason, the father, to honor the Father of all, and by education, the mother, not to disregard what is held and deemed just among all by convention.

When, for instance, the practicer Jacob, contending in the contests of virtue, was about to exchange things heard by ear for things seen by eyes, and words for deeds, and advances for perfection — since the generous God wished to give his understanding eyes, so that he might see clearly what he had before received by hearing (for sight is more trustworthy than the ears) — the oracles rang out: "Your name shall no longer be called Jacob, but Israel shall be your name, because you have prevailed with God and are mighty with men" (Genesis 32:28). Jacob, then, is the name of learning and advancement, powers dependent on hearing, but Israel is the name of perfection,

for the name signifies "seeing God." And what could be more perfect among the virtues than to see That Which Truly Is? The one who has beheld this good is acknowledged by both parents as held in honor, having found strength that is with God and power that is among men.

It seems to me well said also in Proverbs, "providing good things before the Lord and before men" (Proverbs 3:4), since it is through both that the possession of the good is fully realized; for having been taught to keep the laws of the father and not to reject the ordinances of the mother, you will have the confidence to say with pride, "For I too became a son obedient to my father and beloved in the sight of my mother" (Proverbs 4:3). But you were not going to be loved, I would say to him, while keeping the customs established among created things out of longing for fellowship, and also keeping the ordinances of the Uncreated out of love and zeal for piety?

For this reason Moses too, the prophet of God, will show through the construction of the sacred things pertaining to the temple the perfection found in both: for it was not without forethought that he clothed the ark inside and out with gold (Exodus 25:10), nor gave the high priest two sets of robes (Exodus 28:4), nor made two altars, the one outside for the sacrificial victims, the other within for incense-burning (Exodus 27:1, 30:1), but wished through these symbols to represent the virtues appropriate to each kind.

For the wise man must be adorned, both in the invisible things within the soul and in the things that appear outwardly, with the wisdom that is more precious than all gold; and whenever he withdraws from human pursuits to serve only That Which Is, he must put on the unvarying robe of truth, which nothing mortal can touch — for it is made of linen material, born of none of the things by nature subject to death — but whenever he goes forth into public life, he must set aside the inner robe and take up another, most richly varied and most wonderful to behold; for since life is many-shaped, it needs the most versatile wisdom of the pilot who will steer it.

This man, in relation to the visible altar, or to that life which will seem to take great forethought for hide and flesh and blood and everything to do with the body — so as not to be hateful to the countless people who judge the goods of the body to hold second rank after those of the soul — will, in relation to the inner altar, make use only of things bloodless, fleshless, bodiless, things belonging to reason alone, which are likened to frankincense and the things burned as incense; for as the latter fill the nostrils, so the former fill the entire region of the soul

with fragrance. One must not fail to notice this too: that wisdom, being the art of arts, seems to change according to its different materials, but reveals its true form as unchanging to those who see keenly and are not drawn away by the mass of material poured around it, but discern the imprint stamped upon it by the art itself.

They say that the famous sculptor Phidias, taking bronze, ivory, gold, and other different materials, produced statues, and in all of them impressed one and the same art, so that not only the knowledgeable but even the utterly untrained recognized the craftsman from the things crafted;

for just as nature, using the same pattern in the case of twins, has often stamped likenesses that differ by only a hair, in the same way perfect art too, being an imitation and image of nature, when it takes up different materials, shapes and stamps the same form upon them all, so that the things produced become in this respect closely akin, brothers, and twins.

The same, then, will the power within the wise man display; for when it is occupied with the things of That Which Is, it is called piety and holiness; when with the heavens and the things pertaining to them, natural philosophy; meteorology when with the air and whatever naturally arises from its turnings and changes, both in the great yearly seasons as wholes and in their particular cycles of months and days; ethics when concerned with the correction of human character, whose forms are the political, concerned with the city, and the domestic, concerned with the management of households, and the convivial, concerned with banquets and feasts, and further the royal, concerned with oversight of men, and the legislative, concerned with commands and prohibitions.

For all these the truly many-voiced and many-named wise man has embraced — piety, holiness, natural philosophy, meteorology, character-formation, statesmanship, household management, kingship, legislation, and countless other powers — and in all of them he will be seen to have one and the same form.

Having discussed the four ranks among the offspring, we should not overlook this point either, which would be the clearest proof of the division and cutting of the main headings: for concerning the son who was puffed up and inflated by folly, the parents made this accusation, saying, "This son of ours" (Deuteronomy 21:20), pointing him out as the disobedient and stiff-necked one.

For by the demonstrative "this" they show that they also begot others: some obedient to one parent, others to both — well-natured reasonings, of whom Reuben is the example; others fond of listening and learning, of whom Simeon is one, for this name is interpreted "hearing"; suppliants and refugees of God, the company of the Levites; those who sing the hymn of thanksgiving not so much with audible voice as with the mind, whose leader is Judah; those who because of the acquisition of virtue through labor have been deemed worthy of willing wages and gifts, like Issachar; those who have migrated from Chaldean astronomical speculation to the contemplation of the Uncreated, like Abraham; those who have acquired virtue self-taught and untaught, like Isaac; those full of resolve and strength and beloved friends of God, like Moses, the most perfect.

It is fitting, then, that the sacred word condemns to be stoned the disobedient and provocative son who brings in contributions — that is, who joins and links sin to sin, great to small, new to old, willing to unwilling — and who, as though inflamed by wine, keeps his whole life drunk with an unceasing and uncheckable intoxication, and behaves drunkenly, because he has drained deep and unmixed the draught of folly; for he abolished both the commands of right reason, the father, and the lawful instructions of education, the mother, and though he had the example of virtue's noble brothers, held in honor by their parents, he did not imitate their excellence but on the contrary saw fit to go further still, so as to fashion a god of his own body, and to fashion a god of the vanity most honored among the Egyptians, whose symbol is the making of the golden bull, around which the demented dance in choruses and sing and lead the singing — not a drunken and revelrous song, such as is sweetest at feasts and festivities, but a true dirge as for the dead, sung to themselves, as men out of their wits, having relaxed and destroyed the very tone of their soul;

for it is said that "when Joshua heard the voice of the people shouting, he said to Moses, 'There is a sound of war in the camp.' But he said, 'It is not the sound of those who lead the shout in strength, nor the sound of those who lead the shout of rout, but a sound of those leading the shout of wine I hear.' And when he drew near the camp, he saw the calf and the dances" (Exodus 32:17-19). What he hints at through these things

let us set forth, as best we are able: the things around us are at one time at rest, and at another time behave, as it were, with untimely impulses and outcries; and the stillness of these is deep peace, while their opposite is truceless war.

The most truthful witness is the one who suffered it: for hearing the voice of the people shouting, he says to the one who observes and oversees affairs, "There is a sound of war in the camp." For as long as the irrational impulses within us were not stirred and had not cried out, the mind was established more firmly; but when the passions began to summon and rouse themselves and make the region of the soul full of many voices and many echoes, they produced civil sedition.

And that the war is "in the camp" is most fitting; for where else are strifes, battles, contentions, all the works of unquenchable war, except in the life lived with the body, which he allegorically calls the camp? This the mind is accustomed to leave behind, whenever, carried by God, it comes to be beside That Which Truly Is, beholding the bodiless forms; "taking,"

he says, "Moses pitched his own tent outside the camp," and not nearby, but very far off, "far from the camp" (Exodus 33:7). By this he hints that the wise man is a sojourner and emigrant from war to peace, and from the mortal and confused camp to the warless and peaceful, divine life of rational and blessed souls.

He also says elsewhere, “When I go out of the city, I will stretch out my hands to the Lord, and the voices will cease” (Exod. 9:29). Do not think that the one speaking here is a man, this weaving or plaiting or mixture of soul and body, or whatever this compound creature ought to be called, but rather the purest and most unmixed mind, which, while it is contained within the city of the body and of mortal life, is bound and confined, and, as if shut up in a prison, openly confesses that it cannot even draw a breath of free air; but when it goes out of this city, like prisoners released in their limbs, it will employ its own thoughts and reasonings with unshackled and liberated activity, so that the commands of the passions are at once restrained.

Or are not the cries of pleasure raised high, by which it is accustomed to command what pleases it; and is not the voice of desire unbreakable, uttering harsh threats against those who do not serve it; and is not the utterance of each of the other passions loud-sounding and great-voiced?

Indeed, not even if each of the passions used a thousand mouths and tongues, in that clamor spoken of by the poets, could it confound the hearing of the perfect man, who has already emigrated and resolved no longer to dwell in the same city as they.

When the one who has suffered this says that in the bodily camp all the voices happen to be voices of war, since peaceful quiet has been driven far away, the sacred word agrees; for it does not say that there is no voice of war, but not such a voice as some suppose—of those victorious or those overpowered—but such as would belong to those weighed down and oppressed by wine. For “there is no voice of those who lead off in strength”

is equivalent to “of those who have prevailed in the war”; for strength is the cause of mastery. Thus the wise Abraham, after the destruction of the nine kings—four passions and five perceptive powers that were moving contrary to nature—is introduced leading off the hymn of thanksgiving and saying this: “I will stretch out my hand to God Most High, who created heaven and earth, that I will take nothing of yours, from a thread to a sandal-strap” (Gen. 14:22–23).

This shows, as it seems to me, everything that has come into being—heaven, earth, water, air, and animals and plants alike; for each of these, the one who has directed the activities of his soul toward God and hopes for benefits from him alone would fittingly say: I will take nothing of yours—not the daylight from the sun, not the night's brightness from the moon and the other stars, not the rains from the air and the clouds, not drink and food from water and earth, not seeing from the eyes, not hearing from the ears, not smells from the nostrils, not tasting from the moisture within the mouth, not speech from the tongue, not giving and receiving from the hands, not approaching and withdrawing from the feet, not breath from the lung, not digestion from the liver, not from the other organs their several proper activities, not the yearly fruits from trees and crops—but all things from God alone, the only wise one, who extends his own gracious powers in every direction and through them confers benefit.

The one who sees Being, knowing the cause, has honored what is caused by him as second after him, acknowledging without flattery what belongs to these things. This acknowledgment is most just: from you I will take nothing, but from God, whose possessions all things are—though perhaps through you; for you have become instruments in service of his immortal graces.

But the reckless man, blinded in the understanding by which alone Being is apprehended, has in no way at all seen it, but has considered the bodies in the world, known through his own senses, to be the causes of all things that come to be.

...and having begun to fashion gods, he filled the inhabited world with statues and carved images and countless other dedications, wrought in workshops of every kind, by painters and sculptors whom the lawgiver of his own constitution drove beyond the borders—though he had voted them great prizes and excessive honors, both privately and publicly—he achieved the opposite of what he expected: impiety instead of holiness.

For polytheism produces atheism in the souls of the foolish, and those who deify mortal things dishonor the honor due to God. Not content with fashioning images of the sun and moon—and, had they wished, of the whole earth and all water—they went on to grant the honor due to the imperishable even to irrational animals and plants. The one who rebukes these was shown to be the one who leads off the hymn of victory.

And Moses too, in keeping with this, when he saw the king of Egypt—the arrogant mind—together with his six hundred chariots, harmonized to the six motions of the instrumental body, mounted by their commanders, who think it necessary to declare, of everything born by nature, that nothing stands still, treating all things as though firmly established and admitting no change—when this king had paid the penalty worthy of his impiety, and the ascetic in turn had escaped the onslaughts of his enemies and been unexpectedly saved with full force, he hymns God as the just and true umpire, leading off the songs most fitting and most proper to what had befallen him, because “he threw horse and rider into the sea” (Exod. 15:1), destroying the mind that was carried along by the irrational impulses of the four-footed and unruly passion, and became helper and defender of the seeing soul, so as to grant it complete salvation.

The same man also leads off the song at the well, no longer only over the destruction of the passions, but also over gaining, unopposed, the fairest of possessions, wisdom, which he likens to a well; for it is deep and not shallow, sending up a sweet stream of nobility of character to souls that thirst, a drink both most necessary and most pleasant.

To no untrained person is it permitted to dig this well, but to kings alone, as it says: “kings quarried it” (Num. 21:16–18, 21). For it belongs to great leaders to seek out and accomplish wisdom—not those who have subdued land and sea by arms, but those who by the powers of the soul have overcome its versatile...

...and mixed and confused rabble. The disciples and associates of these turn out to be those who say: “Your servants have taken the count of the fighting men who were with us; not one of them is missing; we have brought as a gift to the Lord, each man, what he found” (Num. 31:49–50).

For these too seem, in turn, to lead off a song, aspiring to perfect and commanding powers—for they say that the one who compiled the count received the greatest number of words of courage—men who happen to be warlike by nature, arrayed against two opposing extremes, one led by hard-to-cure cowardice, the other by war-mad recklessness; and both are without share in good judgment.

It is beautifully said that not one was missing, with reference to a whole and complete possession of courage; just as a lyre, or any musical instrument, is out of tune even if only a single note in it is discordant, but is well-tuned when, struck as one, all its notes sound together producing the same harmony—in the same way the instrument of the soul is discordant whenever it is either strained too high by excessive boldness toward the sharpest pitch, or slackened too far by cowardice, beyond due measure, toward the deepest pitch, but is harmonious when all the tones of courage and of every virtue, blended together, produce one well-attuned melody.

A great proof of this concord and harmony is the bringing of the gift to God—that is, honoring Being as is fitting, by acknowledging in the clearest terms that this whole is his gift; for it speaks in the most natural terms:

“Each man brought as a gift what he found.” Each of us, as soon as we come into being, immediately finds the great gift of God, the whole ordered world, which he has bestowed on himself and on its best parts...

There are also partial gifts, which it is fitting for God to give and for men to receive. These would be the virtues and the activities that accord with them, whose discovery, being almost instantaneous because of the surpassing speed of the giver in the things he is accustomed to give, astonishes everyone in whom it occurs, and to whom nothing else has ever seemed great.

Hence he also asks: “What is this that you found so quickly, my child?” (Gen. 27:20), marveling at the swiftness of the eager disposition. And the one who has received the benefit answers directly and to the point: “What the Lord God delivered to me.” For transmissions and instructions given through men are slow, but those given through God are swiftest, outrunning even the swiftest motion of time.

Those, then, who by strength and power lead and command the chorus that sings the hymn of victory and thanksgiving are the ones just mentioned; but different are those who, through defeat and weakness, wail the dirge over their losses—whom one ought not so much to blame as to pity, like those who by nature have frail bodies, for whom even a chance occasion of illness is a great obstacle to being saved.

Some have fallen not because they used softer tones of soul, pressed unwillingly by the stronger force of their opponents, but rather, imitating men who choose slavery, they willingly threw themselves before bitter masters though free by birth; hence, being unable to be sold, most irrationally they themselves acquired masters by purchasing them—doing the same as those who insatiably fill themselves to the point of drunkenness with wine;

for those too take unmixed wine by choice, not under compulsion, so that by choice they cut off the sober part of the soul and choose the raving part; for it says, “I hear the voice of those who lead off in wine”—that is, of those who have taken on madness not involuntarily, but

through willing derangement, as if seized by Bacchic frenzy. And everyone who draws near the camp “sees the calf and the dances” (Exod. 32:19), as he himself makes clear by this; for we encounter vanity and the dancers of vanity, all of us who, in our judgment, suppose that we stand near the bodily camp; since for those who love true sights and long to see the incorporeal—being, as they are, practitioners of freedom from vanity—the custom is to be settled as far as possible from the habit of the body.

Pray, then, to God that you may never become a leader in wine—that is, that you may never willingly go ahead on the road that leads to lack of education and folly; for involuntary wrongs are half the evil, and lighter, since they are not weighed down by the pure reproach of conscience.

But once your prayers are fulfilled, you could no longer remain a private person; you will acquire the greatest of all offices of leadership, the priesthood. For it is the work of priests and servants of God alone, virtually speaking, to offer sober sacrifices, having risen up in firmness of mind above wine and everything that causes idle babbling.

For it says: "The Lord spoke to Aaron, saying: You and your sons after you shall not drink wine or strong drink whenever you enter the tent of testimony or approach the altar, so that you do not die — an eternal statute throughout your generations, to distinguish between the holy and the profane, and between the clean and the unclean" (Leviticus 10:8-10).

Aaron is the priest, and his name is interpreted "mountainous" — reasoning that thinks lofty and elevated thoughts, not swollen with the empty puffed-up mass of vain boasting, but through the greatness of virtue, which lifts the mind's aspiration beyond heaven and allows it to reckon nothing lowly. Disposed in this way, he will never willingly admit unmixed wine or any drug of folly.

For it is necessary either that he enter the tent bearing the sacred implements to perform the invisible rites, or that he approach the altar to bring up thank offerings on behalf of both his own affairs and the community's; and these require sobriety and exceptional shrewdness.

One might reasonably marvel, then, at the literal wording of the command. For how is it not solemn that people should approach prayers and sacred rites sober and in possession of themselves, since the opposite — both body and soul slack with wine — would be ridiculous?

Or is it this: house-servants and sons and subjects, when they are about to approach their mistress, their parents, or their rulers, will take care to be sober, so that they neither err in what they say and do, nor, as though despising the other party's dignity, be punished, or at the very least incur mockery — while someone who claims a duty to serve the Ruler and Father of the universe will not take care about food and drink and sleep and all the things nature requires, but will instead incline toward soft living and emulate the life of the profligate; and, his eyes weighed down by wine, his head lolling, his neck bent sideways, belching from excess, and his whole body dissolving, will he lay a hand on the water-basin, the altars, or the sacrifices? Such a person may not even be permitted to look upon the sacred flame from a distance.

If, however, one supposes that what is meant by "tent" and "altar" are not the visible things fashioned out of lifeless and perishable matter, but rather the invisible and intelligible realities of which these visible things are sensible images, one will be all the more struck by the guidance given here.

For since in everything one thing is the model and another the copy that the maker made from it, and since of virtue the maker fashioned an archetypal seal, and stamped from it a most closely resembling impression: the archetypal seal is a bodiless idea, while the impressed image is already a body, perceptible by nature but not actually coming into perception — just as one might say that the wood lying at the very depths of the Atlantic sea is by nature suited for burning, yet will never be consumed by fire, because of the sea's flooding over it.

Let us understand, then, the tent and the altar as ideas — the one a symbol of bodiless virtue, the other a symbol of its perceptible image. The altar and what is on it are easy to see, for it has its construction outside, and is consumed by an unquenchable fire..., so that it blazes not only by day but also by night —

whereas the tent and everything in it are unseen — not only because it is set up in the innermost recess, in the sanctuary, but also because whoever touches it, or through idle curiosity looks upon it with his eyes, is punished by the inescapable penalty of death according to the command of the law — unless one is whole and entirely complete, afflicted by no passion, whether great or small, but endowed by nature with a vigor that is sound, full, and utterly perfect in every respect.

For this man alone is permitted, entering once a year, to look upon what is unseen to others, since among all people he alone is the dwelling place of the winged, heavenly love of the bodiless and incorruptible goods.

Whenever, then, someone, struck by the idea, follows the seal that stamps the particular virtues, contemplating and marveling at its most godlike beauty, or approaches some soul that has received its impression, forgetfulness of ignorance and lack of education, and remembrance of education and knowledge, immediately arise in him.

For this reason it says: "You and your sons after you shall not drink wine or strong drink whenever you enter the tent of testimony or approach the altar." In going through these words it is not so much forbidding as declaring a judgment. For it would have been proper for one forbidding to say, "Do not drink wine when you perform the sacred rites," but for one declaring a judgment, "you shall not drink." For indeed it is impossible for one who practices and dances in step with the virtues, generic and specific alike, to admit ignorance, the cause of drunkenness and wine-soaked disorder in the soul.

He often calls it the "tent of testimony," either because the truthful God is a witness to virtue, whom it is good and advantageous to heed, or because virtue instills firmness in souls, utterly cutting away wavering and double-minded reasonings, and, as in a courtroom, uncovering the truth in the case of life.

He says that the one who offers sober sacrifices will not die, on the ground that ignorance brings death, while education brings incorruptibility. For just as in our bodies disease is a cause of dissolution and health a cause of preservation, in the same way, in souls too, that which preserves is prudence — for this is a kind of health of the mind — while that which destroys is folly, inflicting an incurable disease.

He declares that this is an "eternal statute," stating it outright: for he supposes that an immortal law is engraved into the very nature of the universe, containing this: that education is a healthy and saving thing, while lack of education is a cause of disease and destruction.

And he implies something further of this kind: what is lawful in truth is at once eternal, since right reason too — which indeed is law — is not perishable; whereas, conversely, the unlawful is agreed by sound-minded people to be, of itself, short-lived and easily dissolved.

It belongs to law and education to distinguish the profane from the holy, and the unclean from the clean, since to do the opposite is to force together things that are at war, bringing lawlessness and lack of education into the same category as their opposites, mingling and confusing everything. For this reason Samuel, the greatest of kings and prophets, as the sacred word says, "shall not drink wine or strong drink until his death" (1 Samuel 1:11); for he has been stationed in the ranks of the camp, which he will never abandon, thanks to the forethought of the wise commander.

Samuel was perhaps a man by birth, but he is taken up here not as a composite living being, but as a mind that rejoices only in the service and worship of God; for his name is interpreted "appointed to God," because he judges that all actions arising from empty opinions are a grievous disorder.

His mother was Hannah, whose name, translated, is "grace"; for without divine grace it is impossible either for mortal things to desert their post or to remain forever with the incorruptible things.

Whatever soul is filled with grace at once rejoices and smiles and dances; for it has been driven into a bacchic frenzy, so that to many of those uninitiated in the rites it would seem to be drunk, disorderly, and out of its mind. That is why some young boy — not one boy in particular, but everyone who has the vigor of youth for making trouble and mocking what is noble — says to her: "How long will you be drunk? Put away your wine" (1 Samuel 1:14). For it is characteristic of those possessed by God

not only that the soul is roused and, as it were, driven into a frenzy, but also that the body itself flushes and burns, as the joy within pours out and warms it, spreading its condition to the outside — a state through which many foolish people, deceived, have suspected that the sober are drunk.

And yet those who are sober are in a sense drunk, in that they have taken in the good things all at once and received their toasts from perfect virtue, while those who are drunk with wine, never having tasted prudence, have all along kept up a continuous fasting and famine of it.

It is fitting, then, that she answers the young troublemaker who holds her solemn and austere life up to ridicule: "Marvelous man, I am a woman whose day is hard, and I have not drunk wine or strong drink, but I am pouring out my soul before the Lord" (1 Samuel 1:15) — the utmost frankness of a soul filled with the graces of God!

First, she called herself a woman of "a hard day," with an eye toward the mocking boy — for to him, and to every fool, the road leading to virtue is reckoned rough, hard to travel, and most toilsome, just as one of the ancients bore witness, saying: "Wickedness, indeed, one may take in abundance and with ease. But before virtue the immortal gods have set the sweat of toil, and long and steep is the path to her, and rough at first; but when one reaches the summit, then, though it was hard, it becomes easy."

Next, she says she has not taken wine or strong drink, boasting that she is sober continuously and throughout her whole life; and indeed it was truly a great and admirable achievement to employ a reasoning faculty that is unrestrained, free, and pure, never made drunk by any passion.

From this it follows that the mind, filled with unmixed sobriety, becomes wholly and entirely a libation, and is poured out to God. For what was meant by “I will pour out my soul before the LORD” except: “I will consecrate the whole of it,” having loosed all the bonds by which it was formerly bound tight—bonds fastened on by the empty pursuits of mortal life—and having led it forth, stretched it out, and poured it out so far that it even touches the boundaries of the universe and hastens toward the all-beautiful and celebrated vision of the Uncreated?

This chorus, then, belongs to those who are sober, who have set education before them as their guide; the former chorus belonged to those who are drunk, whose leader was lack of education.

Since being drunk signified not only talking nonsense, whose maker was lack of education, but also being completely without sense-perception—and of insensibility, the maker in the case of the body is wine, while in the case of the soul it is ignorance of those things of which it was reasonable to have gained knowledge—we must also speak briefly about ignorance, recalling only the essential points.

To what, then, among bodily conditions shall we compare the affection in the soul called ignorance, if not to the maiming of the sense organs? Those who have been damaged in eyes and ears can no longer see or hear anything; they do not know day and light, for the sake of which alone, if the truth must be told, life is worth choosing, but dwell instead with long darkness and eternal night, deafened to all things both small and great—people whom life is accustomed, quite reasonably, to call disabled.

For even if all the powers of the rest of the body should reach the very limit of strength and vigor, they are tripped up by the maiming of eyes and ears and fall in a great collapse, so that they can no longer rise; for what supports and props up a man is, in word, his feet, but in reality his hearing and sight—having these whole, a person stands upright and is raised up, but deprived of them, he sinks down and is utterly brought low.

Something similar, then, ignorance certainly produces in the soul, ruining its faculties of sight and hearing and allowing neither light nor reason to enter in—the latter, so that it may not teach, the former, so that it may not show what exists—and by pouring over it deep darkness and much irrationality, it has turned the most beautiful form, the soul, into a mute stone.

Indeed, the opposite of ignorance, knowledge, is in a way the eyes and ears of the soul; for it pays attention to what is said and contemplates what exists, and endures neither to overlook nor to mishear anything, but surveys and looks all around at everything worthy of hearing and seeing, and even if it must travel by land or sail by sea, it reaches the very ends of earth and ocean, so that it may see something more or hear something newer.

For the love of knowledge is utterly tireless, an enemy of sleep, a friend of wakefulness; rousing, waking, and continually sharpening the mind, it forces it to roam everywhere, making it greedy for hearing and instilling an unceasing thirst for learning.

Knowledge, then, secures sight and hearing, through which come right actions; for the one who has seen and heard, having recognized what is advantageous, chooses the one thing and turns away from its opposite, and so is benefited. But ignorance, bringing upon the soul a maiming worse than that of the body, becomes the cause of all wrongdoing, since it can gain no help from outside, being unable either to foresee or to hear in advance; because of its great desolation, then, left unguarded and unprotected, it is plotted against by whatever people and circumstances happen along.

Let us, then, never drink unmixed wine to such an extent that it produces inactivity in our senses, nor become so estranged from knowledge that we pour ignorance—that great and deep darkness—over our own soul.

The kind of ignorance is twofold: the one simple, complete lack of understanding; the other double, whenever someone is not only gripped by lack of knowledge, but also thinks he knows what he does not know at all, being puffed up by a false opinion of wisdom.

The former evil, then, is the lesser—being the cause of lighter and perhaps unintentional faults—while the second is the greater; for it gives birth to great wrongs, not only unintentional ones but already premeditated acts of injustice.

It seems to me that Lot, the begetter of daughters, is especially afflicted about these matters, being unable to raise up in his soul a male and perfect plant; for he had two daughters by the woman who was turned to stone—whom, using a well-aimed name, one might call Habit, a nature hostile to truth, one that, whenever someone leads it forward, lags behind and keeps looking back at what is old and familiar, remaining fixed in their midst like a lifeless pillar.

Of the daughters, the elder will be called Deliberation, and the younger, Assent; for assent follows deliberation, but no one who has assented still deliberates. So the mind, seated in its own council-chamber, begins to set its daughters in motion: with the elder, Deliberation, to examine and investigate each matter; with the younger, Assent, to nod readily at whatever comes along and to embrace hostile things as if they were friendly, provided they offer some small bait of pleasure of their own accord.

Sober reasoning does not tolerate this, but reasoning held fast by drunkenness does, being, so to speak, out of its wine; that is why it is said, “they made their father drink wine” (Gen 19:33)—complete insensibility, to think it sufficient for the mind either to deliberate on its own about what is advantageous, or to assent to whatever appears in any way at all, as though such things held the truth fixed within themselves, when human nature is in no way whatsoever capable either of finding certainty by careful examination, or of choosing some things as true and advantageous while turning away from others as false and causes of harm.

For a great darkness, lying over things that exist, over bodies and events, does not allow the nature of each to be seen; but even if someone, forced by curiosity or love of learning, wishes to peer within, like those who are maimed, stumbling over what lies at his feet, before grasping anything he falls back and is left behind—or, groping with his hands, he merely guesses at what is unclear, gaining conjecture in place of truth.

For not even if education, carrying its torch, were to escort the mind, having kindled its own light, toward the sight of what exists, could it do more good than harm; for a small light is naturally quenched by a great darkness, and once it is quenched, all sight is useless.

One who prides himself either on his ability to deliberate, or on being sufficiently capable of choosing some things and avoiding others, must be reminded of the following: if the same unvarying impressions always happened to arise from the same objects, it would perhaps be necessary to admire the two criteria naturally furnished within us, sense-perception and mind, as free from falsehood and incorruptible, and, hesitating about nothing, to trust the things that have once appeared and, on that basis, choose some and turn away from the opposite others.

But since we find ourselves moved differently by these same things, we could say nothing certain about anything, since what appears does not remain fixed but undergoes changes of many kinds and many forms; for when the impression is unstable, the judgment based upon it must necessarily be unstable too.

There are many causes of this. First, the countless differences among living creatures, not in one respect but in almost every respect: differences in their origin and constitution, in their food and ways of life, in their preferences and aversions, in their sense-activities and movements, in the peculiarities of their innumerable bodily and psychic affections. For, apart from those who judge, some also of the things judged—

such as the chameleon and the octopus: the one, they say, changes its color to match the ground over which it is accustomed to crawl, while the other matches the rocks under the sea which it happens to grasp—nature, provident for their safety, having perhaps granted them this change into many colors as a remedy averting harm to their capture.

And have you not observed the neck of the dove, in the rays of the sun, changing through countless varieties of color? Does it not take on crimson and dark blue, fiery and coal-like, and again pale and red and every kind of splendid color, whose very names it is not even easy to remember?

They also say that among the Scythians called the Geloi, a most astonishing creature occurs—rarely, but it does occur—called the tarandros, not inferior in size to an ox, and most similar to a deer in the shape of its face. It is said that this animal is always changing the color of its hair to match the regions, the trees, and simply everything near which it happens to stand, so that, because of the resemblance of color, it escapes the notice of those who encounter it, and is hard to hunt because of this rather than because of any bodily strength.

These facts, then, and others like them, are clear proofs of the impossibility of certain apprehension; and next come the varieties that occur, no longer among all living creatures generally, but among human beings individually in relation to one another, concerning everything.

These facts, then, and others like them, are clear proofs of our incapacity to grasp things. And beyond the differences among all animals, there is also the private variation of human beings among themselves about everything.

For it is not only that the same people judge the same things differently at different times, but different people judge them in opposite ways, taking pleasure and displeasure in the very same things but in reverse — what displeased some delighted others, and conversely, what some drew to themselves as friendly and welcomed as their own, others cast far away as foreign and hostile.

I have often, for instance, been present in the theater and seen how, at a single melody sung by one of the tragic or lyric performers competing on stage, some were so moved that, as though roused from sleep, they joined unwillingly in the chant of praise, while others sat so unaffected that they might be judged to differ in no way from the lifeless benches on which they were seated, and still others were so alienated that they got up and left the performance altogether, even shaking out both ears with their hands, for fear that some lingering echo might work an unpleasant reverberation upon souls so difficult and hard to please. But why do I say this?

Each single person, taken by himself — and this is the most paradoxical thing — undergoes countless changes and turns in both body and soul, at one time choosing and at another rejecting the very same things, though they have not changed at all but remain constituted by nature exactly as they were.

For the same things do not tend to affect us the same way when we are healthy and when we are sick, nor when we are awake and when we are asleep, nor in youth and in old age. And indeed a person standing still and a person in motion receives different impressions, likewise one who is confident and one who is afraid, and further one who is grieving and one who is rejoicing, one who loves and, conversely, one who hates. And why should I go on at length troubling over these things?

To put it briefly: every motion of body and soul, whether according to nature or contrary to nature, is the cause of the unstable flux in what appears to us, since conflicting and discordant impressions assail it.

And this instability in our impressions arises not least from position, from distance, and from the places in which each thing is contained.

Do we not see fish in the sea, when they swim about with their fins spread, always appearing larger than they really are? And oars, too, however perfectly straight they may be, appear bent when seen through water.

Indeed, false impressions cast upon things at the greatest distance regularly deceive the mind: lifeless things have sometimes been suspected to be living creatures, and conversely living things lifeless; things standing still have seemed to move, and things in motion to stand still; things approaching have seemed to withdraw, and things withdrawing to approach again; the longest things have seemed the shortest, and many-sided things round. And countless other falsehoods are painted by plain sight, none of which a sensible person would sign off on as certain.

And what of quantities in things that are compounded? For according to more or less, harms and benefits arise, as with countless other things and especially with the drugs used in the medical art.

For quantity in mixtures is measured by fixed limits and rules, within which it is not safe to fall short, nor beyond which to advance — for the lesser amount weakens, and the greater overstrains the potency; and each is harmful, the one unable to act through weakness, the other harming by forcing through excessive strength — and likewise with smoothness and roughness, density and compaction, and, conversely, looseness and dispersal, this clearly establishes the same test for what helps and what harms.

But surely no one is unaware of this too, that almost nothing among existing things is understood from itself and by itself alone, but is judged by being set beside its opposite — the small beside the great, the dry beside the wet, the hot beside the cold, the heavy beside the light, the black beside the white, the weak beside the strong, the few beside the many.

In just the same way, whatever pertains to virtue or to vice is recognized: the beneficial through the harmful, the noble by contrast with the shameful, the just and generally good by comparison with the unjust and the bad, and indeed all the beautiful things one might find in the world, if one considers them, take on the same pattern of judgment — for each thing by itself is beyond our grasp, but seems to be known through comparison with something else.

And whatever cannot bear witness to itself, but needs the advocacy of something else, is unstable as grounds for certainty; so that on this score too, those who readily affirm or deny anything whatsoever stand refuted.

And what wonder is there in this? For anyone who goes further into the matter and examines things more purely will come to know this, that not one single thing presents itself to us in its own simple nature, but all things display the most intricate blendings and mixtures.

Take colors, for instance — how do we perceive them? Is it not together with air and light, external things, and with the moisture in the eye itself? And how is sweetness or bitterness tested? Is it not by means of the fluids native to our own mouths, whether natural or unnatural? Surely so. And again, do the scents that come from things burned as incense not present the simple and pure natures of the bodies themselves? Or rather do they present natures blended from those bodies together with the air, and sometimes also with the fire that melts the bodies and with the faculty at work in the nostrils?

From this it follows that we perceive neither colors as such, but the blend composed from the underlying things and the light; nor scents as such, but a mixture formed from what streams off the bodies and the all-receiving air; nor flavors as such, but what arises from the thing tasted meeting the moist substance in the mouth.

Since matters stand this way, it is fitting to condemn as foolishness, rashness, or boastfulness those who readily venture to affirm or deny anything whatsoever. For if the simple potencies are out of reach, while the mixed ones, blended from several, lie open before us, and it is impossible both to see the invisible elements and, through the blended compounds, to discern individually the character of each ingredient that went into the mixture — what is left, then, but the necessity of suspending judgment?

And do not the following facts urge us not to place too much trust in things unclear — facts spread, so to speak, across nearly the whole inhabited world, common to Greeks and barbarians alike, bringing with them the slipperiness that comes from judging? What, then, are these facts? Surely the upbringings from childhood, the ancestral customs, and the ancient laws, not one of which is agreed to be the same among all peoples, but which vary by region and nation and city, or rather even by village and by each individual household — man and woman and infant child are utterly distinguished in this respect.

Things shameful among us are noble among others, and things fitting are unseemly, and things just are unjust, and things unholy are holy, while things lawful are unlawful, and further things blameworthy are praiseworthy and things liable to punishment are worthy of honor, and so with all the other things people hold in ways opposite to one another.

And why should I speak at length, drawn away as I am by other more pressing matters? Yet if someone wished, without being led off by any newer spectacle, to spend his time on the topic proposed and go through the customs, habits, and laws of each region, nation, city, place, subject peoples and rulers, famous and obscure, free and enslaved, laymen and experts — not for one day or two, nor even for a month or a year, but should wear out his whole life at it, and use the whole span of an age, he would nonetheless leave behind, no less than before, many things unexamined, unconsidered, and unspoken.

Since, then, things among different peoples differ not by a small margin only but are utterly at odds, so as to stand in opposition and conflict with one another, it is necessary that the impressions that strike us

also differ, and that judgments be at war with one another. Given this, who is so out of his mind and so deluded as to declare firmly that such-and-such a thing is just, or wise, or noble, or advantageous? For whatever this person defines, another, trained from childhood in the opposite view, will invalidate.

For my part I am not surprised that a mixed and jumbled crowd, an inglorious slave to whatever customs and laws happen to have been introduced, learning from its very swaddling clothes to obey them as masters or tyrants, its soul beaten down and unable to attain a great and youthful boldness of thought, puts its trust in what has been handed down once for all and, leaving its mind untrained, deals in unexamined and unquestioned assents and denials. But what is surprising is that even the multitude of so-called philosophers, who pretend to hunt after clarity and truth among existing things, are split into bands and companies holding discordant doctrines, often even contrary ones, not about some one chance question but about nearly everything, small and great, on which their inquiries turn.

For those who maintain that the universe is infinite are opposed by those who say it is finite; those who declare the cosmos ungenerated are opposed by those who assert it is generated; and those who kindle an irrational, self-generating motion with no overseer or guide are opposed by those who suppose there is a wondrous providence and care over the whole and its parts, exercised by a God who guides and steers it without stumbling and to its preservation — how, then, could such people arrive at the same grasp of the very same underlying realities? And do not the impressions concerning the inquiry into the good likewise compel us to suspend judgment rather than to agree, since some hold that the good is the noble alone and store it up in the soul, while others parcel it out into several kinds, extending it even to the body and to external things?

These people say that strokes of fortune are the bodyguards of the body, while health, strength, wholeness, and precision of the senses, and whatever else is of that kind, belong to the ruling soul. For since the nature of the good is arranged in three ranks, the third and outermost is a champion for the second, which yields to it, while the second has become a great bulwark and safeguard for the first.

And concerning these very matters — the difference among ways of life, the ends to which all our actions ought to be referred, and countless other things contained in logical, ethical, and physical inquiry — there have arisen innumerable speculations, not one of which has to this day been agreed upon by all the Skeptics.

It is not without reason, then, that the mind is introduced using ignorance of knowledge concerning his two daughters, Counsel and Consent, once they had been joined to him and had lain with him. For it is said, "He did not know when they lay down and when they rose" (Gen. 19:33, 35).

For he seems to grasp neither sleep nor waking, neither state nor motion, clearly and firmly; rather, precisely when he seems to have deliberated best, it is then above all that he is found to be most bereft of counsel, since the outcome of events does not match what was expected.

And whenever he thought fit to set his signature to certain things as true, he reaps the condemnation that comes from rashness, since the very things he had earlier trusted as most secure prove to be untrustworthy and unstable. So, since events tend to turn out contrary to what one has suspected, the safest course is to suspend judgment.

Having discussed these matters sufficiently, let us turn to what follows in our argument. We said that drunkenness reveals gluttony as well, which often does great harm to many, in whose devotees one can observe that even when they have filled up all the receptacles of the body, their desires still remain empty.

These people, even when they become glutted from the abundance of what they have stuffed themselves with, and, like athletes, let their bodies catch their breath for a short while, strip again for the same contests.

At any rate the king of the land of Egypt, having become angry, as it seemed, with his cupbearer, the minister of the body's drunkenness, is introduced in the sacred books not long after being reconciled with him, having been reminded of the passion that bursts open the desires, on the day of a perishable birth, not in the imperishable light of the unborn. For it is said, "It was Pharaoh's birthday" (Gen. 40:20), on which he sent for the chief cupbearer out of the prison, for a libation-feast.

For it is characteristic of the passion-lover to consider generated and perishable things splendid, because of his deep use of night and darkness in relation to the knowledge of imperishable things. For this reason he immediately narrates the drunkenness that leads off pleasure, and its minister.

There are three who serve as household stewards and attendants of the licentious and unrestrained soul: the chief baker, the chief cupbearer, and the chief cook, whom the most admirable Moses recalls in these words: "And Pharaoh was angry with his two eunuchs, the chief cupbearer and the chief baker, and put them in custody with the chief jailer" (Gen. 40:2-3). And the chief cook, too, is a eunuch; for it is said elsewhere, "Joseph was brought down into Egypt, and a eunuch of Pharaoh, the chief cook, acquired him" (Gen. 39:1), and again, "They sold Joseph to Pharaoh's eunuch, the chief cook" (Gen. 37:36).

Why, then, is neither a man nor a woman entrusted with any of the tasks mentioned at all? Is it not because men are by nature trained to sow seed, and women to receive it, and their union has come to be the cause of generation and of the permanence of the universe, whereas a soul that is barren and sterile — or rather, made a eunuch — by expensive foods and drinks and elaborately seasoned delicacies, rejoices in these, being unable either to sow the truly male seeds of virtue or to receive and rear what has been sown, but is by nature fit, like a poor and stony field, only for the destruction of things meant to live forever. Hence he lays down a most universal doctrine:

namely, that the artisan of pleasure is barren of wisdom, being neither male nor female, since he is capable neither of giving nor of receiving the seeds that lead to imperishability, but practices instead the most shameful practice against life — destroying imperishable things and quenching the ever-burning lamps of nature that are meant to remain.

None of such persons does Moses permit to come into the assembly of God. For he says, "He who is crushed or cut off shall not enter the assembly of the Lord" (Deut. 23:1). For what benefit is there to one barren of wisdom in listening to sacred words, when he has been cut off from the faculty of preserving the trust and deposit of the most life-benefiting doctrines?

There are, then, three caretakers of the human race: the chief baker, the cupbearer, and the caterer — reasonably so, since we desire the use and enjoyment of three things: solid food, delicacies, and drink. But some of us use only what is necessary, which we require by necessity in order to live healthily and without servility, while others use what is immoderate and utterly superfluous, things which tend to burst open the appetites and, by weighing down and pressing the body's receptacles with their bulk, breed great and manifold diseases.

Now those who are private individuals with respect to pleasure, desire, and passion — like the common people in cities — live an unenvied and untroubled life, since they need little; they have no need of the art of elaborate and fussy servants, but make use of a plain kind of service: cooks, cupbearers, bakers.

But those who consider living pleasantly to be lordship and kingship, and refer everything, small and great alike, to this end, think it fitting to employ chief cooks, chief cupbearers, and chief bakers as their servants — that is, men who have brought each of the arts they were trained in to its utmost perfection.

For the most accomplished bakers practice the most varied kinds of unleavened cakes, honey-cakes, and other unfermented pastries, elaborated not only in the different materials used but also in the manner of preparation and in their shapes, so as to deceive not only the sense of taste but also that of sight.

And the concerns of the chief cupbearers have to do with the examination of wine — whether it is quickly absorbed and does not cause headache, or, on the contrary, is flowery and most fragrant; whether it takes a great or a small mixture with water for a drink suited to vigorous and intense occasions, or to a gentle and relaxed one; and all such practices as belong to those who have arrived at the very end of their art.

As for fish and fowl and similar things, and however many other delicacies there are to season pleasantly, the caterers who are exceedingly skilled in this knowledge are ready at hand, devising countless things beyond what they have heard or seen, but out of continuous practice and rehearsal in matters of luxury—

and dissolute and enfeebled — clever at devising an unlivable life. But indeed all these have been shown to be eunuchs, barren of wisdom; whereas the one with whom the king of the belly, the mind, makes his reconciling libations, was the cupbearer. For the human race is by nature fond of wine, and with respect to this alone especially insatiable, since while no one is completely unsated by sleep, food, intercourse, and the like, nearly everyone is by unmixed wine, and most of all those in whom the practice is cultivated.

For having drunk, they are still thirsty, and they begin from the smaller cups, but as they proceed they order the wine to be poured from lesser jugs; and when, having become somewhat heated, they grow warm, no longer able to master themselves, they bring out the wine-ladles and the bumpers and whole mixing-bowls, and gulp down the unmixed wine all at once, until they are either overcome by deep sleep or, once their capacity is filled, what is being poured in overflows.

But even then their insatiable craving still rages within them like a ravenous hunger. "For their vine is of the vine of Sodom," says Moses, "and their branch of Gomorrah; their grape is a grape of gall, their cluster is bitterness to them; their wine is the fury of dragons, and the incurable fury of asps" (Deut. 32:32-33). Now Sodom is interpreted as barrenness and blindness, and he likens to the vine and its produce those who are enslaved to wine-drunkenness, gluttony, and the most shameful pleasures.

What he darkly signifies is this: no plant of true joy has grown in the soul of the base person, since it has not made use of healthy roots, but roots that have been burnt and reduced to ash — when, instead of water, heaven rained down the unquenchable fiery bolts of God, who justly executed judgment against the impious. And the unrestrained desire, which is barren of noble things and blind to everything worth beholding, he has likened to the vine — not the mother of cultivated fruits, but the vine that has become the bearer of bitterness, wickedness, villainy, wrath, fury, and the most irascible tempers, biting the soul like venomous vipers and asps, in ways wholly incurable.

May we pray that God, the master of all, in his mercy avert these things from us, so that he may destroy this wild vine, and vote for the eunuchs and all who are barren of virtue a most fitting exile, and in their place plant in our souls the cultivated trees of right instruction, and grant us noble and truly manly fruits and words, capable of sowing noble deeds, capable of increasing the virtues together, and sufficient to hold together and forever preserve the whole kinship of happiness.

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