On Drunkenness
על השיכרות
Loeb Classical Library, Harvard University Press, 1930
https://www.nli.org.il/en/books/NNL_ALEPH001216057/NLI

On Drunkenness

Introduction

ON DRUNKENNESS (DE EBRIETATE) ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION
This treatise like its two predecessors is founded on Gen. 9:20–29, particularly the last words, “And (Noah) drank of the wine and was drunken.” Philo, however, from the first breaks away from this text and, having discussed at the end of the <i>De Plantatione</i> the various philosophical views on drunkenness, proceeds to consider the views of Moses on the subject. He lays down that Moses uses wine as a symbol for five things: (1) foolishness or foolish talking; (2) complete “insensibility”; (3) greediness; (4) cheerfulness and gladness; (5) nakedness (1–5). He then gives a short introductory explanation of each of these, dwelling particularly on one aspect of “nakedness” as the truth which strips off all disguises from virtue and vice, and this leads to a short digression on the mutually exclusive nature of these two (6–10), a thought evidently suggested by Socrates’ fable of Pleasure and Pain in the <i>Phaedo</i>. He then proceeds to a detailed consideration of these five, though as a matter of fact only the first three are treated in what has come down to us.
I. First, “folly” or “foolish talking.” This with its digressions occupies from § 11 to § 153. Its chief cause is ἀπαιδευσία, that is defiance of or unsusceptibility to all educating influences (11–12). How abhorrent this is to Moses is shewn by the law in Deut. 21 that the parents of a rebellious and profligate son must bring him for judgement before the elders. The development of this illustration occupies sections 13–98. This rebellious son, the type of the ἀπαίδευτος, has four charges brought against him by his parents, disobedience, contentiousness, “riotous feasting” and wine-bibbing (13–14). The two first are distinguished as being the one passive, the other active (15–19). In dealing with the third Philo ignores the derived meaning—riotous feasting—of the obscure word συμβολοκοπεῖν and confines himself to what he supposes to be the original meaning. Of the two elements of which it is compounded he takes the first συμβολαί to represent “contributions” or “combinations” for evil, while the other (κόπτειν) shews the “cutting” or destructive force of these contributions (20–24), against which we are warned in the words, “Thou shalt not follow a multitude to do evil” (25). The fourth charge that he is “fired with wine” (οἰνοφλυγεῖ) represents a state in which the ἀπαιδευσία is inflaming the man’s whole nature (27). That his natural protectors, his parents, should be his accusers is the just punishment of such a one (28–29). But “parents” means more than the literal father and mother. In one sense our father is God and our mother God’s Wisdom, parents whose mercies and judgements alike are greater than we can receive (30–32). In another sense the father is “right reason” or philosophy, while the mother is custom, convention and secular education (33–34). This idea Philo proceeds to develop (33–92) in what is, in spite of minor extravagances, a really fine allegory and does much to redeem the general inferiority of this treatise. These parents have four kinds of children, (1) and (2) those who obey one parent but not the other, (3) those who obey both, (4) those who obey neither (35). We first deal with those who disregard the father and love the mother, <i>i.e</i>. the votaries of convention. They are typified, first by Jethro here, as always in Philo, “the man of superfluity” or “unevenness” (36). The special sayings of his selected here are his advice to Moses on the conduct of his business in Exod. 18 and his refusal to follow Israel in Num. 10, and even his saying, “Now I know that the Lord is great above all gods” is turned to his discredit on the grounds that “now” should be “always” and that he still ascribes reality to non-existent gods (37–45). The second example of this class is Laban, the admirer, as always, of the material and external, but his special error is his saying “it is not our custom to give the younger (Rachel) before the elder (Leah),” for the younger daughter, the learning of the schools, should precede in time the elder, philosophy—and Jacob’s reply to Laban is perversely construed to mean that he will never leave Leah (46–53). Some other texts are enlisted to shew the inferiority of the feminine element in mankind, as exemplified in Rachel, and her words about the “manner of women” in Gen. 31 (54–64), and we pass on to the next class, the father-lovers, the despisers of convention and followers of right reason only. These are especially represented by the Levites, who ignore and even as in Exod. 32 slay their kinsfolk and thus are murderers in the eyes of the conventional world, though not in the eyes of divine reason (65–67). The kinsfolk, etc., are interpreted to mean the body, the senses and rhetorical eloquence, all of which are sacrificed by the father-lover, and the final example of this class is Phinehas who slew the Midianitish woman (Num. 25) and whose story is interpreted in the same allegorical way with a short meditation on the rewards he received of “peace and priesthood” (73–76).
The class of those who reject both parents receives the appropriate denunciation (77–79) and we finally come to those who reverence both. Here we may be surprised to find that Philo after all regards this as the perfect way, in spite of his high praise of the pure philosopher (80–81). This obedience to both right reason and custom is held to deserve the name of Israel which supersedes that of Jacob (82–84), and Moses has approved this twofold excellence, in his institution of an external as well as an internal altar, and the two different robes for the priest. These robes are respectively simple and ornate, and the second shews us that life has many aspects (85–87). For true wisdom shews itself in various forms not only in religion, but also in the physical sciences, in ethics and politics and in social activities (88–92). That the two parents have other children besides the disobedient one is deduced from the phrase “this our son” and Philo takes various examples of such children from the great names of the Pentateuch (73–94).
Philo now once more denounces the wickedness of the disobedient son and compares him to the degenerate Israelites who worshipped the golden calf, and thus he is led to quote the words of Joshua on that occasion, “There is a voice of war in the camp …” And Moses’ reply, “that the sounds are not those of victory or defeat, but those of the wine-feast of men who shout over the wine that I hear” (95–96). This quotation carries Philo away at once to a disquisition on its various phrases. “There is a voice in the camp” signifies the tumult of passion in the camp of human life (97–104), and some illustrations of this thought are given (97–104). “It is not the voice of might (or “victory”)” suggests a comparison with the words of Abraham after his victory over the nine kings (<i>i.e</i>. the four passions and the five senses), and this involves an explanation of Abraham’s refusal to accept reward from the King of Sodom, as the wise soul’s refusal to accept from any but God and a rebuke to idolaters (105–110). Another song of victory is that of Moses over Pharaoh’s host (111) and the “Song of the Well” in Num. 21 (112–113) which in its turn leads to a discussion of the allegorical meaning of various phrases in the speech of the victorious captains in Num. 31, particularly of “each one gave what he had found” (114–120). The “voice of the defeated” is passed over rapidly as indicating weakness rather than wickedness, and contrasted with the voice of those who shout over (or “lead”) the wine, which voice indicates the deliberate madness of evil (121–123). Thus we are brought back for a moment to the main thought of drunkenness as moral folly, and reminded that freedom from this is true priesthood (124–126). This was the inner meaning of the command to Aaron to abstain from wine when he approached the tabernacle or the altar (127–129). In the literal sense this is sound enough, for what can be worse than a drunken worshipper (130–131), but in the deeper sense the tabernacle is the “idea” of incorporeal virtue, and the altar that of the particular virtues, and to him who approaches either of these folly is not so much forbidden as impossible (132–139). Similar morals are drawn from the concluding words of the same passages (140–143), and also from Samuel’s lifelong abstinence (143–144), and the mention of Samuel leads to some thoughts on the words of Hannah (<i>i.e</i>. Grace) to those who thought her drunk, “I have drunk no wine and I will pour out my soul before the Lord,” in which we have a parable of the truth that the “joy” of grace is as the Bacchant’s inspiration and that freedom from folly makes the soul a fitting libation to God (145–152). This concludes the discussion of drunkenness as spiritual folly produced by ἀπαιδευσία (153).
II. The second thing for which wine stood as a symbol was, we saw, “stupor” or “insensibility,” and in the mental or moral sphere this is ignorance, which stands to the mind as blindness or deafness to the body, while knowledge is the eye and ear of the soul (154–161). But we must distinguish two kinds of ignorance, one mere non-knowledge, the other the belief that we know, when we do not (162–163). This last is represented by Lot with his wife, who is “Custom” ever looking back upon the past, and his two daughters who are “Deliberation” and “Assent.” The statement that their daughters “gave their father wine to drink” means that the mind is hypnotized with the belief that it can by deliberation find out the truth and give a right judgement or assent, whereas in reality nothing of the sort is possible even to the educated (164–168). The fact that the same objects produce at different times different impressions on the mind shews that we cannot base certain judgements on these impressions (162–170). Philo then proceeds to enumerate the causes or rather “modes” of these uncertainties. The first is the difference in the habits and constitution of animals, which argues that they too receive different impressions from the same things, and with this he joins the changes which some of them, <i>e.g</i>. the chameleon and the elk, are supposed to exhibit in different environments (171–175). The second mode is the various feelings, likes and dislikes shewn by mankind, in which not only does one man differ from another, but even the individual from himself (175–180). The third mode is the optical illusions produced by the distances or situations of objects, such as “the straight staff bent in a pool” (181–183). The fourth is the observation that any two or more things, while remaining the same in substance, produce totally different results according to the proportions in which they are combined (184–185). The fifth is relativity, for since we only know one thing with reference to another, we cannot be said to know them at all (186–189). This is illustrated by the fact that colour, smell and the like are really the effect of the combination of something in the object with something in ourselves (190–191). Further, we are warned against forming moral judgements by the fact that on all such questions there is an infinite difference of opinion among various nations, states and individuals which forbids us to assert with certainty that any particular act is virtuous or not (192–197). Philo goes on to say that while he is not surprised that the vulgar should form positive judgements, he is surprised to find that philosophers can still be dogmatists and yet come to totally different opinions on vital questions, and he enumerates some of these, such as whether the universe is infinite or not, created or uncreated, ruled by providence or not, and whether morality is the only good or whether there are numerous goods (198–202). True indeed are the words of the text “he knew not when they (the daughters) slept and rose up,” for both the counsels and the assents of the mind are utterly untrustworthy (203–205).
III. The third idea suggested by wine or drunkenness, viz. greediness or gluttony, is treated by Philo in a comparatively literal manner. Such allegory as there is is chiefly drawn from the story of Pharaoh in Genesis (Egypt as usual representing the body), who on his birthday was reconciled with his chief butler, thereby representing the tendency of the sated sensualist to return to his excesses as soon as possible (206–209). From the statement (in the LXX) that all the three officers of Pharaoh’s table—the chief butler, the chief baker and the chief cook—were eunuchs, he draws the lesson that the ministers of pleasure are incapable of begetting wisdom, and this is also implied in the banishment by Moses of eunuchs from the congregation (210–213). Further the prefix of “chief” applied in Genesis to these three indicates the gourmand’s excessive indulgence as compared with simple living, and Philo takes the opportunity to give a rhetorical description of these refinements of luxury (214–220). Also it was the chief cupbearer (not the other two) with whom Pharaoh was reconciled, and this shews that the passion for wine is the most persistent form which bodily indulgence takes (220–221). A text which he quotes in connexion with this from the Song of Moses, in which the phrase “the vine of Sodom” occurs, brings him back to the allegorical view of drunkenness as the symbol of folly in general. For the fool’s “vine” or his foolish desires do not produce the gladness of true wine, but its roots are as ashes, and the treatise concludes with the prayer that our “vine” may be rather that of true and fruit-bearing instruction (222-end).





Chapter 1

[1] The views expressed by the other philosophers on drunkenness have been stated by me to the best of my ability in the preceding book. Let us now consider what the great lawgiver in his never-failing wisdom holds on this subject.
[2] In many places of his legislation he mentions wine and the plant whose fruit it is—the vine. Some persons he permits, others he forbids, to drink of it, and sometimes he gives opposite orders, at one time enjoining and at another prohibiting its use to the same persons. These last are those who have made the great vow (Num. 6:2), while those who are forbidden the use of strong drink are the ministering priests (Lev. 10:9); while of persons who take wine there are numberless instances among those whom he too holds in the highest admiration for their virtue.
[3] But before we begin to discuss these matters, we must carefully investigate the points which bear on our exposition. These points, I think, are the following.

Chapter 2

[4] Moses uses strong liquor as a symbol for more than one, in fact for several, things: for foolish talking and raving, for complete insensibility, for insatiable and ever-discontented greediness, for cheerfulness and gladness, for the nakedness which embraces the rest and manifests itself in all the qualities just mentioned, in which condition Noah was, we read, when intoxicated. All these we are told are produced by wine.
[5] Yet thousands of those who never touch strong drink and consider themselves sober are mastered by similar emotions. We may see them in some cases mad and foolish, in others under the dominion of complete insensibility, in others never filled but always thirsting for impossibilities through lack of knowledge, or on the other hand full of gladness and exultation, finally in the true sense naked.
[6] The folly is caused by indiscipline in its noxious form, by which I mean not the mere unacquaintance with discipline but aversion to it; insensibility is caused by ignorance (always) blind and (often) with a will for evil; greediness by that most painful of the soul’s passions, lust; while gladness arises both from the winning and the practice of virtue. Nakedness has many causes: incapacity for distinguishing between moral opposites, innocence and simplicity of manners, truth, that is, the power which unveils what is wrapped in obscurity. At one moment it is virtue that she uncovers, at another vice in its turn.
[7] For we cannot doff both of these at the same moment any more than we can don them. When we discard the one we necessarily adopt and assume its opposite.
[8] The old story tells us that God when He fastened the naturally conflicting sensations of pleasure and pain under a single head, caused them to be felt at different times and not at the same moment, and thus decreed that the banishment of the one should involve the restoration of the other. Just in the same way, from a single root in our dominant part spring the two shoots of vice and virtue, yet never sprouting or bearing fruit at the same moment.
[9] For when one sheds its leaves and withers, its opposite begins to exhibit new life and verdure, so that we might suppose that each shrinks and shrivels in resentment at the thriving of the other.
And so it is in full agreement with philosophical truth that Moses represents the outgoing of Jacob as being the incoming of Esau. “It came to pass,” he says, “that as soon as Jacob went out Esau his brother came in” (Gen. 27:30).
[10] For so long as prudence has its lodging and scene of action in the soul, so long is every friend of folly an outcast from her borders. But when prudence has changed her quarters, the other returns with glee now that the bitter enemy, who caused his expulsion and life of exile, no longer dwells where he did.

Chapter 3

[11] So much then for what we may call the preliminaries of our treatise. I will now proceed to the demonstration of each head beginning with the first. Well, we agreed that indiscipline was the cause of folly and error, as wine when taken in large quantities is to so many foolish persons.
[12] Indiscipline is indeed the prime cause of the soul’s errors, and from it as from a spring flow those actions of our lives which give to none any sweet and salutary stream, but only briny waters fraught with plague and destruction to those who use them.
[13] Thus it is against the untrained and undisciplined more perhaps than against any other person that the lawgiver breathes slaughter. Here is our proof. Who play the part of protectors not so much by acquired habit as by nature amongst humankind and every other kind of animal? Surely it is the parents. Not even a madman would give a different answer. For nature ever instinctively prompts the maker to care for what he has made, and to take thought for its preservation and perpetual maintenance.

Chapter 4

[14] Now when Moses set up those who would properly plead the cause of an offender, namely his father and mother, to appear as his accusers, thus providing that those who might be expected to preserve him against all others should actually work his ruin, he shewed his desire that these natural supporters should be converted into enemies. “For if anyone,” he says, “has a disobedient and contentious son who does not listen to the voice of his father and mother, and they discipline him and he does not hearken to them, his father and mother shall take him and bring him forth to the assembly of the elders of his city and to the gate of his place, and shall say to the men of their city, ‘This our son is disobedient and contentious, he does not listen to our voice, he is a riotous liver and a wine-bibber,’ and the men of the city shall stone him with stones and thou shalt remove the evil one from among yourselves” (Deut. 21:18–21).
[15] We see then that the accusations are four in number, disobedience, contentiousness, participation in riotous feasting and drunkenness. But the last is the chief, rising to a climax from the first, disobedience. For when the soul has begun to cast off the reins and taken its onward course through strife and dissension, it reaches its utmost limit in drunkenness, which produces frenzy and madness. We must take these accusations one by one and observe their full meaning, beginning with the first.

Chapter 5

[16] We have it as a clear and admitted fact that submission and obedience to virtue is noble and profitable, and the converse follows, that disobedience is disgraceful and in a high degree unprofitable. But if contentiousness is added to disobedience, it involves a vast increase of the evil. The disobedient man is not on so low a moral level as the quarrelsome and strife-loving man, since he merely disregards the commands he receives and nothing more, while the other takes active pains to carry out what is opposed to these commands.
[17] Let us consider how this shews itself. The law, to take one instance, bids us honour our parents; he then who does not honour them is disobedient, he who actively dishonours them is a strife-lover. Again, it is a righteous action to save one’s country. He who shirks this particular duty is to be classed as disobedient, he who actually purposes to betray it as a man of strife and contention.
[18] So too one who fails to do a kindness to his neighbour, in opposition to another who tells him that it is his duty to give help, is disobedient. But one who, besides withholding his kindness, works all the harm he can is moved by the spirit of strife to deadly error. And again the man who fails to make use of the holy rites and all else that relates to piety is disobedient to the commandments which law and custom regularly prescribe in these matters, but rebellious or strife-stirrer is the name for him who turns aside to their direct opposite, impiety, and becomes a leader in godlessness.

Chapter 6

[19] Such was he who said, “who is He that I should obey Him,” and again, “I know not the Lord” (Exod. 5:2). In the first of these utterances he asserts that there is no God; in the second that even if there is a God he is not known to us, and this conclusion presupposes the assumption that there is no divine providence. For if there were such a thing as providence, God too would be known.
[20] As for contributions or club subscriptions, when the object is to share in the best of possessions, prudence, such payments are praiseworthy and profitable; but when they are paid to obtain that supreme evil, folly, the practice is unprofitable and blameworthy.
[21] We contribute to the former object by desire for virtue, by zeal for things noble, by continuous study therein, by persistent self-training, by unwearied and unflagging labour. We contribute to the opposite by slackness, indolence, luxury, effeminacy, and by complete irregularity of life.
[22] We can see indeed people preparing themselves to compete in the arena of wine-bibbing and every day exercising themselves and contending in the contests of gluttony. The contributions they make are supposed to be for a profitable purpose, but they are actually mulcting themselves in everything, in money, body and soul. Their substance they diminish by the actual payments, their bodily powers they shatter and enfeeble by the delicate living, and by excessive indulgence in food they deluge their souls as with a winter torrent and submerge them perforce in the depths.
[23] In just the same way those who pay their contributions only to destroy training and education are mulcting their most vital element, the understanding, and cut away therefrom its safeguards, prudence and self-control, and indeed courage and justice to boot. It was for this reason, I think, that Moses himself used a compound word, “contribution cutting,” to bring out more clearly the nature of the thing he was describing, because when men bring their efforts like contributions or club-money, so to speak, to bear against virtue, they wound and divide and cut in pieces docile and knowledge-loving souls, till they bring them to utter destruction.

Chapter 7

[24] Thus we read that the wise Abraham returned from the “cutting” of Chedorlaomer and his fellow kings (Gen. 14:17), while on the other hand Amalek “cuts the rearguard” of the Practiser (Deut. 25:18). Both these are in accordance with natural truth, for there is a hostility between opposites and they are always meditating destruction of each other.
[25] There is another charge, and that the greatest, which could be brought against the provider of the contributions. He purposes not only to wrong, but to join with others in wrongdoing. He consents to initiate evil himself, and also to comply with what others initiate, that thus he may leave himself no ray of hope that may serve for his redemption, since his sin lies both in his nature and in what he has learnt from others. And this in spite of the direct injunction of the law, not “to go with the many to do evil” (Exod. 23:2).
[26] For in very truth manifold are the aspects and the products of evil in men’s souls, while the good is narrowly confined and scanty. And so most excellent is the advice that we should not keep company with the many but with the few; for wrongdoing is the associate of the former, but right action of the latter.

Chapter 8

[27] The fourth and greatest charge was that of drunkenness—and drunkenness not of the milder but of the most intense sort. For the phrase here used, “fired with wine,” is as much as to say that the poison which causes folly, indiscipline, smoulders within the man, then bursts into fire and flame impossible to quench, and consumes the soul through its whole being with the conflagration.
[28] Naturally, therefore, will punishment follow, purging every base tendency out of the mind. For it says, “thou shalt remove the evil one,” not out of a city or a country or a nation but “out of yourselves” (Deut. 21:21). For it is in ourselves that the vicious and culpable thoughts exist and have their lair, thoughts which we must cut away and destroy when their state is incurable.
[29] We see then this man as disobedient, as strife-loving, as providing in the form of persuasive arguments “contributions” and “club-money” for the subversion of morality, and finally inflamed with strong drink and making drunken assaults on virtue and directing his monstrous orgies against her. Surely it were just that such a one as he should find his accusers in those in whom others find their allies, namely in his father and mother, and be visited with complete destruction, to admonish and bring to their senses those who can be saved.
[30] Now “father and mother” is a phrase which can bear different meanings. For instance we should rightly say and without further question that the Architect who made this universe was at the same time the father of what was thus born, whilst its mother was the knowledge possessed by its Maker. With His knowledge God had union, not as men have it, and begat created being. And knowledge, having received the divine seed, when her travail was consummated bore the only beloved son who is apprehended by the senses, the world which we see.
[31] Thus in the pages of one of the inspired company, wisdom is represented as speaking of herself after this manner: “God obtained me first of all his works and founded me before the ages” (Prov. 8:22). True, for it was necessary that all that came to the birth of creation should be younger than the mother and nurse of the All.

Chapter 9

[32] If <i>these</i> parents accuse, who is able to withstand their accusation, or even a mild threat or the lightest chiding? Why, even their gifts are so boundless in number that no one, not even, one may say, the world, can contain them, but like some small cistern it will quickly be filled to the brim by the influx from the fountain of God’s gracious boons, and discharge the rest in an overflow. And if we are unable to contain their benefits, how shall we endure the visitation of their powers to chastise?
[33] But in the present discussion, we must leave out of consideration the parents of the universe, and rather turn our eyes to the disciples, who have followed in their company, to whom has been committed the care and guidance of such souls as are not without training or incapable of culture. I suggest, then, that the father is reason, masculine, perfect, right reason and the mother the lower learning of the schools, with its regular course or round of instruction. These two stand to us in the relation of parents to children, and it is good and profitable to obey them.
[34] Now right reason, the father, bids us follow in the steps of nature and pursue truth in her naked and undisguised form. Education, the mother, bids us give ear to rules laid down by human ordinance, rules which have been made in different cities and countries and nations by those who first embraced the apparent in preference to the true.
[35] These parents have four classes of children. The first is obedient to both; the second is the direct opposite, and gives heed to neither, while each of the other two lacks its half. One of them is heartily devoted to the father and gives ear to him, but disregards the mother and her injunctions. The other, on the contrary, appears devoted to the mother, and serves her in every way, but pays no heed to the words of the father. Of these four the first will carry off the palm of victory over all comers, while the second its opposite will receive defeat accompanied by destruction. Each of the others will claim a prize, one the second, the other the third; the second belongs to the class which obeys the father, the third to the class which obeys the mother.

Chapter 10

[36] This last kind which loves the mother, which bows down to the opinions of the multitude and undergoes all manner of transformations in conformity with the ever-varying aspirations of human life, like the Egyptian Proteus, whose true form remained a matter of uncertainty through his power to become everything in the universe, is most clearly typified by Jethro. Jethro is a compound of vanity, closely corresponding with a city or commonwealth peopled by a promiscuous horde, who swing to and fro as their idle opinions carry them.
[37] See how he deals with Moses. He in his wisdom was recalling the whole people of the soul to piety and to honouring God, and was teaching them the commandments and holy laws. His words are, “when they have a dispute and come to me, I judge between each of them and instruct them in the commandments of God and His law” (Exod. 18:16). And then comes forward Jethro the seeming wise, who has never learnt the secrets of the divine blessings, but his concern has been with little else than things human and corruptible. He plays the demagogue, and the laws which he lays down contradict the laws of nature; for his eyes are fixed on semblance, while they relate to real existence.
[38] Yet even on him Moses has compassion, and pities him for his great delusion; he feels that he should teach him a better lesson, and persuade him to depart from his empty opinions and follow truth stedfastly.
[39] We have “removed,” he says in effect, and excised from the mind its empty vanity and are passing over to the place of knowledge, which is ours through the oracles and promises of God. “Come with us and we will do thee good” (Num. 10:29). For you will lose the most harmful of evils, mere seeming, and gain the most profitable of blessings, truth.
[40] But even to words of such charm as these Jethro will pay no heed, nor ever follow knowledge in any way, but will hasten to return to the empty vanity which is indeed his own. For we read that he said to Moses, “I will not go, but I will go to my land and my generation” (Num. 10:30); that is, to the unfaith of false opinion which is his kinsman, since he has not learnt the true faith, so dear to real men.

Chapter 11

[41] For when he wishes to make a shew of piety and says “now I know that the Lord is great beyond all the gods” (Exod. 18:11), he does but charge himself with impiety in the eyes of men who knew how to judge.
[42] They will say to him “Blasphemer! is it now that you know this, and have you never till now understood the greatness of the ruler of all? Did your past experience shew you anything more ancient or more venerable than God? Are not the excellences of the parents known to the children, before those of any others? Is not the Maker and Father of the Universe He who presided at its beginning? So if you say that you now know, not even now have you true knowledge, since it does not date from the beginning of your own existence.
[43] And you stand no less convicted of mere feigning, when you compare two incomparables, and say that you know that the greatness of the Existent is beyond all the Gods. For if you had true knowledge of that which IS, you would not have supposed that any other god had power of his own.”
[44] The sun when it rises hides from our sight the light of the other stars by pouring upon them the flood of its own beams; even so, when the rays of the Divine Day-star, rays visible to the mind only, pure from all defiling mixture and piercing to the furthest distance, flash upon the eye of the soul, it can descry nothing else. For when the knowledge of the Existent shines, it wraps everything in light, and thus renders invisible even bodies which seemed brightest in themselves.
[45] No one, then, could have the boldness to compare the true God with those falsely so called, if he had any knowledge of Him which was free from falsehood. But your ignorance of the One produced your opinion of the existence of the Many whereas in real truth they had no existence.

Chapter 12

[46] The same creed and rule is followed by everyone who has rejected the things of the soul and set his admiration on the things of the body, and outside the body, with shapes and colours rife, decked out to deceive the senses which are so easily seduced.
[47] Such a one is called by the lawgiver Laban, who, being blind to the true laws of nature, proclaims with false lips man-made law. “It is not so in our place,” he says, “to give the younger in marriage before the elder” (Gen. 29:26).
[48] For Laban thinks that he should maintain the order of time. He holds that older things should first be taken into our company, and younger things only later. But the Practiser of Wisdom, knowing that the timeless also exists in nature, desires what is younger first and the elder afterwards.
And the laws of human character as well as of nature agree with him in this; for Men of Practice must first take up with the younger culture, that afterwards they may be able to have secure enjoyment of that which is more perfect.
[49] And therefore to this day the lovers of true nobility do not attend at the door of the elder sister, philosophy, till they have taken knowledge of the younger sisters, grammar and geometry and the whole range of the school culture. For these ever secure the favours of wisdom to those who woo her in guilelessness and sincerity.
[50] But Laban with his sophistry will have it otherwise, and wishes us to wed the elder first, not that we may possess her in security, but that afterwards snared by the love-charms of the younger sister, we may abandon our desire of the elder.

Chapter 13

[51] And this or something very like it happens to many who have left the right path in their search for culture. For from the very cradle, we may say, they betake themselves to the most perfect of studies, philosophy, and afterwards deeming it wrong that they should have no tincture at all of the school subjects, bethink themselves to make a belated and painful effort to grasp them. And then having made their descent from the greater and older branch, philosophy, to the contemplation of the lesser and younger branches, they grow old in their company and thus lose all power of retracing their course to the place from which they started.
[52] And this, I think, is why Laban says, “bring to a consummation her week” (Gen. 29:27), meaning “let not the true good of the soul be thine unendingly, but let it have its term and limit, that so you may keep company with the younger order of goods in which are classed bodily beauty and glory and riches and the like.”
[53] But Jacob does not promise to bring her to a consummation, but agrees to “fulfil” (Gen. 29:28) her, that is never to cease pursuing what tends to her growth and completeness and always and everywhere to cleave to her, however great be the host of influences which draw and pull him in the opposite direction.
[54] That the rule of custom is followed by women more than men is, I think, quite clearly shewn by the words of Rachel, who looks with admiration only on that which is perceived by the senses. For she says to her father, “Be not wroth, sir; I cannot rise before thee, because the custom of women is upon me” (Gen. 31:35).
[55] So we see that obedience to custom is the special property of women. Indeed, custom is the rule of the weaker and more effeminate soul. For nature is of men, and to follow nature is the mark of a strong and truly masculine reason.

Chapter 14

[56] And how striking is the frank truthfulness of that soul who, discoursing with herself, confesses that she cannot rise up against apparent goods, but stands amazed before each of them, and honours them and continues to prefer them almost to her own self.
[57] For which of us stands up to oppose riches? Who prepares himself to wrestle with glory? How many of those who still live in the mazes of empty opinions have come to despise honour and office? Not a single one.
[58] So long, indeed, as none of these things is with us, we talk loftily as though our hearts were given to that frugal contentment which is the secret of a life completely self-sufficient and righteous, the life which befits the free and nobly born. But when we feel upon our cheeks the breath of hope for such things, though it be but the slightest breath and nothing more, we are shewn in our true colours, we straightway submit and surrender and can make no effort of resistance. Betrayed by the senses which we love, we abandon all comradeship with the soul; we desert and that no longer secretly, but without concealment.
[59] And surely that is natural. For the customs of women still prevail among us, and we cannot as yet cleanse ourselves from them, or flee to the dwelling-place where the men are quartered, as we are told that it was with the virtue-loving mind, named Sarah.
[60] For the oracles represent her as having left all the things of women (Gen. 18:11), when her travail was at hand and she was about to bring forth the self-taught nature, named Isaac.
[61] She is declared, too, to be without a mother, and to have inherited her kinship only on the father’s side and not on the mother’s, and thus to have no part in female parentage. For we find it said, “Indeed she is my sister, the daughter of my father but not of my mother” (Gen. 20:12). She is not born of that material substance perceptible to our senses, ever in a state of formation and dissolution, the material which is called mother or foster-mother or nurse of created things by those in whom first the young plant of wisdom grew; she is born of the Father and Cause of all things.
[62] And so, soaring above the whole world of bodily forms, and exulting in the joy that is in God, she will count as a matter for laughter those anxious cares of men which are expended on human affairs, whether in war or peace.

Chapter 15

[63] But we who are still under the sway of habit, the unmanly and womanish habit, whose concern is with the senses and the objects of sense and the passions, cannot stand up against phenomena in any form, but all of them, even those of the common sort, draw us on sometimes with our free will, sometimes without it.
[64] Yet if our battalion be unable to do service to the father’s commands and thus suffer defeat, it will none the less have an ally in the mother, the lower education, who enacts from city to city the ordinances which custom and opinion approve, her legislation differing with the different peoples.
[65] But there are also some who despise the mother’s bidding, but cling with all their might to the father’s words, and these right reason has judged worthy of the highest honour, the priesthood. And if we describe their deeds, for which they were thus rewarded, we shall perhaps incur the mockery of many, who are deceived by the semblances that lie ready before their eyes but do not descry the values which are unseen and wrapt in shadow.
[66] For they into whose charge the work of prayer and sacrifice and all the worship of the temple was given, are actually—strange paradox—homicides, fratricides, slayers of the bodies which are nearest and dearest to them, though they should have come to their office, pure in themselves and in their lineage, having had no contact with any pollution even involuntary, far less voluntary.
[67] For we read “slay each his brother and each his neighbour and each him that is nearest to him. And the children of Levi did as Moses spake, and there fell of the people on that day up to three thousand men” (Exod. 32:27, 28). And he praises those who had slain this great multitude with these words, “ye have filled your hands to-day unto the Lord, each in his son or in his brother, that blessing should be given upon you” (Exod. 32:29).

Chapter 16

[68] What, then, can we say but that such as these are condemned by the rules that obtain among men, for they have for their accuser their mother, custom, the politician and demagogue, but are acquitted by the laws of nature, for they have the support of their father, right reason?
[69] For it is not human beings, as some suppose, who are slain by the priests, not living reasoning animals composed of soul and body. No, they are cutting away from their own hearts and minds all that is near and dear to the flesh. They hold that it befits those who are to be ministers to the only wise Being, to estrange themselves from all that belongs to the world of creation, and to treat all such as bitter and deadly foes.
[70] Therefore we shall kill our “brother”—not a man, but the soul’s brother, the body; that is, we shall dissever the passion-loving and mortal element from the virtue-loving and divine. We shall kill, too, our “neighbour,” again no man, but the troop and company of the senses. That company is at once the close intimate and the enemy of the soul, spreading its gins and snares for her, in order that, overwhelmed by the flood of sense-perceived objects, she may never lift her head heavenwards nor welcome those natures whose divine forms are grasped only by the mind. Again we shall kill our “nearest”; and nearest to the understanding is the uttered word, which through the specious, the probable and the persuasive implants in us false opinions for the destruction of our noblest possession, truth.

Chapter 17

[71] Why, then, should we not at once take vengeance on him too, sophist and miscreant that he is, by sentencing him to the death that befits him—that is to silence, for silence is the death of speech? Thus will he no longer ply his sophistries within the mind, nor will that mind be led astray, but absolutely released from the pleasures of his “brother,” the body, and from the witcheries of the senses, the “neighbours” at his gates, and from the sophistries of the speech which is “nearest” to him, he will be able to devote his unhampered liberty to the world of mental things.
[72] It is this Mind who “says to his father and mother”—his mortal parents—“I have not seen you,” from the day when I saw the things of God; it is this Mind who no longer knows his sons, ever since he came to the knowledge of wisdom; it is this Mind who renounces his brethren (Deut. 33:9), ever since he was not renounced before God, but judged worthy of full salvation.
[73] It is this same Mind who “took the lance,” that is probed and searched the secrets of corruptible creation, which finds in food and drink the treasure-house of its happiness; who “entered,” as Moses tells us, “the furnace”—the furnace of human life, which burns so fiercely and unquenchably, fed with the exceeding multitude of our transgressions; who then received strength to “pierce” both the woman and the man—“the woman through the womb,” because she believed herself to be the cause of generation, though in reality her part is passive rather than active—“the man” as representing every thought which followed this belief—the belief which invests the natures which are but the subjects of God’s action with the dues which belong only to Him who alone is the cause of all that comes into being (Num. 25:7, 8).

Chapter 18

[74] Surely such a one must pass for a murderer in the judgement of the multitude, and be condemned by custom the woman-like, but in the judgement of God the all-ruling Father he will be held worthy of laud and praise beyond reckoning and of prizes that cannot be taken from him—two great and sister prizes, peace and priesthood (Num. 25:2, 13).
[75] For to be able to stay the fierce persistent warfare of the outward life which the multitude so eagerly pursues, and the intestine battling of lust against lust in the soul, and there establish peace, is a great and glorious feat. And to have learnt that nothing else, neither wealth, nor glory, nor honour, nor office, nor beauty, nor strength, nor all bodily advantages, nor earth nor heaven, nor the whole world, but only the true cause, the Cause supreme among causes, deserves our service and highest honour, and thereby to have attained the rank of priesthood—this is a privilege as marvellous as it is worthy of all our efforts.
[76] But when I called these two prizes sisters, I did not miscall them. I knew that none could be a true priest, who was still a soldier in that war of mortal men, in which the ranks are led by vain opinions, and that none could be a man of peace who did not worship in truth and sincerity that Being who alone is exempt from war and dwells in eternal peace.

Chapter 19

[77] Such are they who honour the father and what is his, but disregard the mother and what is hers. But the son who is at enmity with both his parents is shewn to us by Moses, when he represents him as saying, “I know not the Lord and I do not send Israel forth” (Exod. 5:2). Such a one, we may expect, will oppose both what right reason rules to be our duty to God and what training and education establish for our dealings with the world of creation; and thus he will work universal confusion.
[78] The human race has never purged itself of the wickedness which is unmixed with good, and there are still those whose will and purpose is to do no action whatever that can tend to piety or human fellowship, who on the contrary keep company with impiety and godlessness, and also keep no faith with their fellows.
[79] And these are the chief pests which haunt cities, controlling or, to speak more truly, upsetting private and public life with their restless intrigues. We might well treat them like some great plague or famine or murrain, or any other heaven-sent curse, and endeavour to avert them by prayers and sacrifices. For great is the havoc they work among those whom they meet. And therefore Moses sings of their destruction; how they fell through their own allies and were swallowed up by the heavy sea of their own imaginations.

Chapter 20

[80] Let us then speak next of those who are the enemies of these last, but have given due honour to both education and right reason, of whom those who attach themselves to one parent only were but halfhearted followers in virtue. This fourth class are valiant guardians of the laws which their father, right reason, has laid down, and faithful stewards of the customs which their mother, instruction, has introduced.
[81] Their father, right reason, has taught them to honour the Father of the all; their mother, instruction, has taught them not to make light of those principles which are laid down by convention and accepted everywhere.
[82] Consider the case of Jacob. The Man of Practice was now in the last bout of his exercises in virtue, about to exchange hearing for eyesight, words for deeds, and progress for perfection, since God in his bounty had willed to plant eyes in his understanding that he might see clearly what before he had grasped by hearing, for sight is more trustworthy than the ears. Then it was that the oracles rang out their proclamation, “Thy name shall not be called Jacob, but Israel shall be thy name, because thou hast been strong with God and mighty with men” (Gen. 32:28). Now Jacob is a name for learning and progress, gifts which depend upon the hearing; Israel for perfection, for the name expresses the vision of God.
[83] And what among all the blessings which the virtues give can be more perfect than the sight of the Absolutely Existent? He who has the sight of this blessing has his fair fame acknowledged in the eyes of both parents, for he has gained the strength which is in God and the power which avails among men.
[84] Good also, I think, is that saying in the Proverbs, “Let them provide things excellent in the sight of the Lord and men” (Prov. 3:4), since it is through both these that the acquisition of excellence is brought to its fullness. For if you have learnt to observe the laws of your father and not to reject the ordinances of your mother, you will not fear to say with pride, “For I too became a son obedient to my father and beloved before the face of my mother” (Prov. 4:3).

Chapter 21

Aye indeed, I would say to such a one, “How could you fail to win affection, if in your desire for human fellowship you observe the customs that hold among created men, and in your zeal and passion for piety observe also the ordinances of the Uncreated?
[85] And therefore Moses, God’s interpreter, will use the sacred works that furnished the tabernacle to shew us the twofold perfection. For it is not without a well-thought purpose for us that he covers the ark both inside and outside with gold (Exod. 25:10) and gives two robes to the high-priest (Exod. 28:4), and builds two altars, one without for the sacrificial ritual, the other within for burning incense (Exod. 27:1, 30:1). No, he wished by these symbols to represent the virtues of either kind.
[86] For the wise man must be adorned with the prudence that is more precious than all gold, both in the inward invisible things of the soul and in the outward which are seen of all men. Again, when he has retired from the press of human pursuits and worships the Existent only, he must put on the unadorned robe of truth which nothing mortal shall touch. For the stuff of which it is made is linen, not the produce of animals whose nature is to perish. But when he passes to the citizen’s life, he must put off that inner robe and don another, whose manifold richness is a marvel to the eye. For life is many-sided, and needs that the master who is to control the helm should be wise with a wisdom of manifold variety.
[87] Again, that master as he stands at the outer, the open and visible altar, the altar of common life, will seem to pay much regard to skin and flesh and blood and all the bodily parts lest he should offend the thousands who, though they assign to the things of the body a value secondary to the things of the soul, yet do hold them to be good. But when he stands at the inner altar, he will deal only with what is bloodless, fleshless, bodiless and is born of reason, which things are likened to the incense and the burnt spices. For as the incense fills the nostrils, so do these pervade the whole region of the soul with fragrance.

Chapter 22

[88] This too we must not fail to know, that wisdom which is the art of arts seems to change with its different subject matters, yet shews its true form unchanged to those who have clearness of vision and are not misled by the dense and heavy wrappings which envelop its true substance, but descry the form impressed by the art itself.
[89] They say that the great sculptor Pheidias would take brass and ivory and gold and various other materials to make his statues, and yet on all these he so stamped the impress of one and the same art, that not only adepts, but those who were totally ignorant of such matters, recognized the artist from his work.
[90] For as nature so often in the case of twins by using the same stamp shapes likenesses which are almost identical, so too that perfect art, which is the copy and effigies of nature, may take different materials and yet mould them and impress on them all the same form, and this it is which chiefly makes the products of its work to be as kinsfolk, brothers, twins to each other.
[91] We shall find the same thing happening with the power which resides in the Sage. Under the name of piety and holiness it deals with the attributes of the Really Existent; under that of nature-study, with all that concerns the heavens and the heavenly bodies; as meteorology, with the air and the consequences which result through its changes and variations both at the main seasons of the year and those particular ones which follow cycles of months and days; as ethic, with what tends to the improvement of human conduct, and this last takes various forms; politic, dealing with the state; economic, with the management of a house; sympotic, or the art of conviviality, with banquets and festivities; and further we have the kingly faculty dealing with the control of men, and the legislative with commands and prohibitions.
[92] All these—piety, holiness, nature-study, meteorology, ethic, politic, economic, king-craft, legislator-craft and many other powers—find their home in him who is in the truest sense many-voiced and many-named, even the Sage, and in all he will be seen to have one and the same form.

Chapter 23

[93] After discussing the four classes of sons, we must not overlook the following point, which will be the clearest proof that our classification is based on a correct division. The son who is puffed up and carried away by his folly is denounced by his parents as “this son of ours,” and it is in these words that they indicate his disobedience and recalcitrance.
[94] By using the word “this” in thus indicating him, they suggest that they have other children, who are obedient either to one or both of their parents. Such are the reasonings of the naturally gifted, of which Reuben is a type; the docile scholar, as Simeon, for his name means “hearing”; the suppliants who take refuge with God, and this is the company of the Levites; those who raise the hymn of thankfulness with their hearts rather than with their voices, and the leader of that choir is Judah; those who have been judged worthy of rewards and prizes because of their own free will they have toiled in the acquisition of virtue, as Issachar; those who have abandoned the Chaldean research of the supra-terrestrial to engage in the contemplation of the Uncreated, as Abraham; those who have acquired virtue through no other voice but their own and no teacher but themselves, as Isaac; those who are full of courage and strength and are dear to God, as Moses the most perfect of men.

Chapter 24

[95] It is with good reason, then, that the dis-obedient and contentious man who “brings contributions,” that is contributes and adds sins to sins, great to small, new to old, voluntary to involuntary, and as though inflamed by wine drowns the whole of life in ceaseless and unending drunkenness, sodden with drinking deep of the unmixed cup of folly, is judged by the holy word to be worthy of stoning. Yes, for he has made away with the commands of right reason, his father and the observances enjoined by instruction, his mother, and though he had before him the example of true nobility in his brothers whom the parents honoured, he did not imitate their virtue, but contrariwise determined to be the aggressor in wickedness. And thus he made a god of the body, a god of the vanity most honoured among the Egyptians, whose symbol is the image of the golden bull. Round it the frenzied worshippers make their dances and raise and join in the song, but that song was not the sweet wine-song of merry revellers as in a feast or banquet, but a veritable dirge, their own funeral chant, a chant as of men maddened by wine, who have loosened and destroyed the tone and vigour which nerved their souls.
[96] For we are told that “when Joshua heard the voice of the people as they shouted, he said to Moses: ‘There is a voice of war in the camp, and he said ‘It is not the voice of men raising the shout through might, nor of those who raise it for being overcome, but it is the voice of men who raise the shout over the wine that I hear.’ And when he drew nigh to the camp, he saw the calf and the dances” (Exod. 32:17–19). Let us shew as well as we can what he shadows forth under this figure.

Chapter 25

[97] Our being is sometimes at rest, at other times is subject to impulses or, as we may call them, ill-timed outcries. When these are still we have profound peace, when it is otherwise we have relentless wars.
[98] To this there can be no testimony so certain as that of personal experience. Such a person hears the voice of the people shouting and says to the one who watches and observes the course of events, “There is a voice of war in the camp.” For so long as the unreasoning impulses did not stir and “shout” within us, the mind stood firm and stedfast. But when they begin to fill the region of the soul with manifold sounds and voices, when they summon the passions and rouse them to action, they create the discord of civil war.
[99] “The war is in the camp.” True indeed. For where else do we find contentions, combats, hostilities and all the works that go with bitter and persistent war, but in the life of the body which in his parable he calls the camp? That camp the mind is wont to leave, when, filled with the divine, it finds itself in the presence of the Existent Himself and contemplates the incorporeal ideas.
[100] For “Moses,” we read, “took his tent and pitched it outside the camp,” not near, but very far, “at a distance from the camp” (Exod. 33:7). Under this figure he suggests that the Sage is a pilgrim who travels from peace to war, and from the camp of mortality and confusion to the divine life of peace where strife is not, the life of reasonable and happy souls.

Chapter 26

[101] Elsewhere he says “When I have gone out of the city I will spread out my hands to the Lord and the sounds shall cease” (Exod. 9:29). Do not suppose that the person who speaks thus in a man—this compound animal in which soul and body are woven or twined or mingled (use any word you will). No, it is the mind pure and unalloyed. While it is cooped up in the city of the body and mortal life, it is cabined and cribbed and like a prisoner in the gaol declares roundly that it cannot even draw a breath of free air; but when it has gone out of this city, its thoughts and reflections are at liberty, like the hands and feet of the unbound prisoner, and it finds free scope and range for the employment of its active powers, so that the clamours of the passions are at once restrained.
[102] How shrill are the outcries of pleasure, wherewith it is wont to command what it wills! How continuous is the voice of desire, when it thunders forth its threats against those who do not minister to its wants! How full-toned and sonorous is the call of each of the other passions!
[103] Yet though each of them should have a thousand tongues and mouths with which to swell the war-shout, to use the poet’s phrase, yet it could not confuse the ears of the perfect Sage, who has passed elsewhere and resolved no longer to dwell in the same city as they.

Chapter 27

[104] When the subject of that experience says that he feels that in the camp of the body all the sounds are sounds of war, and that the quietness which is so dear to peace has been driven far away, the holy word does not dissent. For it does not say that the sound is not the sound of war but that it is not such a sound as some think it to be, such as would be made by the victorious or the defeated, but such as would proceed from those who are overpressed and weighed down by wine.
[105] For in the phrase “it is not the sound of those who raise the song through might” the last words mean “those who have been victorious in war.” For might is what causes victory.
Thus wise Abraham, when he had routed the nine kings, the four passions that is and the five sense-faculties, which were rising in unnatural rebellion, is represented as raising the hymn of thanksgiving in these words, “I will stretch forth my hand to the most high God who made heaven and earth, if I will take from a rope to a shoe’s latchet of all that is thine” (Gen. 14:22, 23).
[106] He points in these last words, I think, to the whole of creation, heaven, earth, water, the air we breathe, to animals and plants alike. To each of them he who has braced the activities of his own soul to stretch Godwards, and who hopes for help from Him alone, would rightly say, “I will take nothing from aught of thy creatures, not the light of day from the sun, nor the light of night from the moon and the other stars, nor rain from the air or the clouds, nor drink and food from water and earth, nor sight from the eyes, nor hearing from the ears, nor smell from the nostrils, nor taste from the juices of the palate, nor speech from the tongue, nor giving and receiving from the hands, nor moving forwards and backwards from the feet, nor respiration from the lungs, nor digestion from the liver, nor from the other inward parts the functions proper to each, nor their yearly fruits from the trees and seedlings, but I will take them all from the only wise Being who has extended His beneficent power every whither, and through them renders me help.”

Chapter 28

[107] He then who has the vision of the Existent knows Him who is the Cause, and honours the things of which He is the cause only as second to Him. He will use no words of flattery, yet acknowledges what is their due. This acknowledgement is most just. I will take nothing <i>from</i> you, but I will take from God, the possessor of all things; yet it may be that I will take <i>through</i> you, for you have been made instruments to minister to His undying acts of grace.
[108] But the man of no discernment, whose understanding, by which alone the Existent can be comprehended, is blinded, has never anywhere seen that Existence, but only the material contents of this world as shewn to him by his senses, and these material things he believes to be the causes of all that comes into being.
[109] And therefore he started fashioning gods and filled the inhabited world with idols of stone and wood and numberless other figures wrought in various materials, and decreed great prizes and magnificent honours public and private to painters and sculptors, whom the lawgiver had banished from the boundaries of his commonwealth. He expected to produce piety; what he accomplished was its opposite, impiety.
[110] For polytheism creates atheism in the souls of the foolish, and God’s honour is set at naught by those who deify the mortal. For it did not content them to fashion images of sun or moon, or, if they would have it so, of all the earth and all the water, but they even allowed irrational plants and animals to share the honour which belongs to things imperishable. Such persons did Abraham rebuke and we shewed that it was with this thought that he raised his hymn of victory.

Chapter 29

[111] So, too, with the song of Moses. He has seen the king of Egypt, the boastful mind with his six hundred chariots (Exod. 14:7), that is the six movements of the organic body, adjusted for the use of the princes who ride upon them (Exod. 15:4) who, though no created object can be stable, think it right to aver that all such are firmly established and unsusceptible of change. He has seen that mind suffer the penalty due to its impiety while the Votary of Practice has escaped the onset of his enemies and been brought with might to unlooked-for safety. So then he hymns God the righteous and true dispenser of events and the song which he raises is most fitting and suited to the occasion. “The horse and his rider He has thrown into the sea” (Exod. 15:1), that is, He has buried out of sight the mind which rode upon the unreasoning impulses of passion, that four-footed beast which knows not the rein, and has shewn Himself the helper and champion of the soul which can see, to bestow on it full salvation.
[112] Again Moses leads the song at the well, and this time his theme is not only the rout of the passions, but the strength invincible which can win that most beautiful of possessions, wisdom, which he likens to a well. For wisdom lies deep below the surface and gives forth a sweet stream of true nobility for thirsty souls, and that draught is at once needful and delicious above all things.
[113] But to none of those who in instruction are but of the common herd is it permitted to dig this well, only to kings, as he says “kings hewed it” (Num. 21:16–18). For it belongs to great leaders to search for and accomplish wisdom, not leaders who have subdued sea and land with arms, but those who through the powers of the soul have conquered the medley and confusion of the multitude which beset it.

Chapter 30

[114] These leaders prove to have followers and disciples in those who say “thy servants have taken the sum of the warriors who were with us. Not one of them is in discord. We have brought our gift to the Lord, every man what he found” (Num. 31:49, 50).
[115] It would seem that these too are raising a song of victory in their desire for the perfect powers that befit the leaders. For they say that they have taken the largest number, that which completes the sum, of the different aspects of courage. They are by nature combatants, marshalled to fight against two battalions of the enemy, one led by cowardice, a quality so difficult to cure, the other by rashness inspired by the frenzy of battle, and neither has any element of good judgement.
[116] Now it is a fine saying that “none is at discord” or thus failing to partake of courage perfect and complete. For as the lyre or any musical instrument is out of harmony if even a single note and nothing more be out of tune, but in harmony when, under a single stroke of the bow, the strings join in yielding the same symphony, so it is with the instrument of the soul. It is out of harmony when it is strained too far by rashness and forced to the highest pitch of the scale, or when it is relaxed too much by cowardice and weakened to the lowest. It is in harmony when all the strings of courage and every virtue combine to produce a single tuneful melody.
[117] The harmony and tunefulness in this case is mightily attested by the words which say that they have offered their gift to God, that is, that they have duly honoured the Existent by clearly acknowledging that this universe is His gift.
[118] For it says in words most agreeable to the truth of things, “what a man found, this he offered as a gift.” Each of us, that is, finds at our birth that great gift of God, the complete universe which He bestowed on itself and on its highest members.

Chapter 31

[119] There are also partial and particular gifts which it is fitting for God to give and for man to receive. These we shall find are the virtues and the activities which correspond to them. Our discovery of them one may almost say is timeless, because of the exceeding swiftness with which the Donor bestows His wonted gifts to the amazement of all,
[120] even of those who find nothing great in other things. Thus Isaac asks, “what is this which thou hast found quickly, my son?” marvelling at the speed with which the virtuous disposition has been attained. The receiver of God’s benefit answered rightly, “it is what the Lord God delivered to me” (Gen. 27:20). For the instructions and injunctions delivered through men are slow, but those that come through God are exceeding swift, outrunning even the swiftest movement of time.
[121] Now those described above are those who lead the song of prevailing might, the precentors of the choir which sings the hymn of victory and thanksgiving, while they who raise the song of weakness and defeat, leaders of the choir which sobs forth the wailing of the routed, are of another sort, men who deserve pity rather than reproaches, even as we pity those whose bodies are fatally stricken by nature, with whom the misfortune of their malady ever stands to prevent their finding health and safety.
[122] But some have failed not involuntarily, not because the nerves of their souls were feebler and because they were overpressed by the stouter might of their opponents, but because imitating those who hug their chains, they have voluntarily laid themselves at the feet of cruel masters, though they were born to freedom. And since in virtue of their free birth they could not be sold, they have—strange contrast—purchased and taken to them masters. Thus they are on a level with those who swill themselves insatiably with wine to the pitch of intoxication.
[123] For such deliberately and under no compulsion put the cup of strong drink to their lips, and so it is also with full deliberation that these men eliminate soberness from their soul and choose madness in its place. For so runs the text, “It is the voice of those who raise the song of wine that I hear,” that is, not the song of those on whom insanity has fallen through no will of their own, but of those who are possessed with the frenzy which they themselves have willed.

Chapter 32

[124] Now everyone who comes near to the camp “sees the calf and the dance” (Exod. 32:19), as Moses himself shews. For all of us who have the deliberate purpose to stand close to the camp of the body find themselves in the company of vanity and its band of revellers. Whereas those who yearn for the Vision and long to behold things incorporeal are practisers of simplicity, and therefore it is their custom to make their dwelling as far as may be from the body.
[125] Pray then to God that thou mayest never become a leader in the wine song, never, that is, voluntarily take the first steps on the path which leads to indiscipline and folly. Voluntarily, I say, for involuntary evils are but half evils and lighter matters, since they have not upon them the sheer weight of convicting conscience.
[126] But if thy prayers are fulfilled thou canst no longer remain a layman, but wilt obtain the office which is the greatest of headships, the priesthood.
For it is the task of priests and ministers of God alone, or of hardly any others, to make the offering of sobriety, and in stedfastness of mind to resist the wine-cup and everything which causes folly.
[127] For “the Lord spake unto Aaron,” we read, “saying, Wine and strong liquor ye shall not drink, thou and thy sons after thee, whenever ye enter into the tabernacle of testimony, or approach the altar, and ye shall not die. It is an everlasting ordinance unto your generations, to make a difference between the holy and the profane and between the clean and the unclean” (Lev. 10:8–10).
[128] Now Aaron is the priest and his name means “mountainous.” He is the reason whose thoughts are lofty and sublime, not with the empty inflated bigness of mere vaunting, but with the greatness of virtue, which lifts his thinking above the heaven and will not let him cherish any reasoning that is mean and low. And being so minded he will never willingly allow strong wine or any potion which breeds folly to approach him.
[129] For he must either himself enter the tabernacle in mystic procession to accomplish the unseen rites, or come to the altar and there offer sacrifices of thanksgiving for private and public blessings. And these need sober abstinence and a close and ready attention.

Chapter 33

[130] In a literal sense too, this command deserves our admiration. For surely it is seemly that men should come to prayers and holy services sober and with full control of themselves, just as on the other hand to come with both body and soul relaxed with wine is a matter for scorn and ridicule.
[131] We know that when servants are about to approach their masters, or sons their parents, or subjects their rulers, they will take careful thought to be sober that they may not transgress in word and deed, and thus either receive punishment for having shewn contempt for the dignity of their betters, or at the best become an object of scorn. And shall he who claims to serve the Lord and Father of all, instead of rising superior to food and drink and all other natural necessities, fall away to luxury and affect the life of the dissolute? Shall he, with his eyes heavy with wine and his head lolling and his neck bent awry, come belching from his intemperance, limp and flabby in every limb, to touch the holy water or the altars or the sacrifices? Nay, for such a one it were a sacrilege that he should even from a distance behold the sacred fire.
[132] But if we suppose that no actual tabernacle or altar is meant, that is the visible objects fashioned from lifeless and perishable material, but those invisible conceptions perceived only by the mind, of which the others are copies open to our senses, he will be still more lost in admiration at the ordinance.
[133] For since the Creator made both the pattern and the copy in all that He made, virtue was not excepted: He wrought its archetypal seal, and He also stamped with this an impression which was its close counterpart. The archetypal seal is an incorporeal idea, but the copy which is made by the impression is something else—a material something, naturally perceptible by the senses, yet not actually coming into relation with them; just as we might say that a piece of wood buried in the deepest part of the Atlantic ocean has a natural capacity for being burnt, though actually it will never be consumed by fire because the sea is around and above it.

Chapter 34

[134] Let us conceive, then, of the tabernacle and altar as “ideas,” the first being a symbol of incorporeal virtue, the other of its sensible image. Now the altar and what is on it can be easily seen. For it is constructed out of doors, and the fire which consumes the offerings is never extinguished, and thus by night as well as by day it is in bright light.
[135] But the tabernacle and all its contents are unseen, not only because they are placed right inside and in the heart of the sanctuary, but because anyone who touched them, or with a too curious eye looked upon them, was punished with death according to the ordinance of the law, and against that sentence there was no appeal. The only exception made is for one who should be free from all defects, not wasting himself with any passion great or small, but endowed with a nature sound and complete and perfect in every respect.
[136] To him it is permitted to enter once a year and behold the sights which are forbidden to others, because in him alone of all resides the winged and heavenly yearning for those forms of good which are incorporeal and imperishable.
[137] And so, when smitten by its ideal beauty he follows that archetype which creates by impress the particular virtues, beholding with ecstasy its most divine loveliness, or when he approaches some virtue which has received its impress, ignorance and the condition of the uninstructed are forgotten, and knowledge and instruction are at once remembered.
[138] And therefore he says “Wine and strong liquor ye shall not drink, thou and thy sons after thee, when ye enter into the tabernacle of testimony or approach the altar.” In these words he speaks not so much by way of prohibition as stating what he thinks will happen. If a prohibition were intended, it would have been natural to say “do not drink wine when you perform the rites”; the phrase “you shall not” or “will not” drink is naturally used, when the speaker is stating what he thinks. For it is impossible that anyone, whose study and association lie among the general and specific virtues, should let indiscipline, which is the cause of drunkenness and the symptoms which follow it in the soul, have entry to him.
[139] And he frequently calls the tabernacle “the tabernacle of testimony,” either because God who cannot lie gives His testimony to virtue, a testimony to which it is excellent and profitable to give ear, or because virtue implants constancy in the souls of men, eradicating with a strong hand the reasonings which doubt and waver, and thus witness-like revealing the truth in the court of human life.

Chapter 35

[140] Again, he says that he whose offerings are wineless shall not even die; meaning that instruction entails immortality, but its absence entails death. For as in our bodies disease is the cause of dissolution, while health preserves them, so in our souls the preserving element is prudence, which is, so to speak, mental health, while the destroying element is folly inflicting incurable malady.
[141] This, he says, is “an eternal statute,” and the words mean what they say. For he does hold that there is a deathless law engraved in the nature of the universe which lays down this truth, that instruction is a thing which gives health and safety, while its absence is the cause of disease and destruction.
[142] But there is also a further explanation in the words to this effect. A statute which is law in the true sense is thereby eternal, since right reason, which is identical with law, is not destructible; for that its opposite, the unlawful, is ephemeral and of itself subject to dissolution is a truth acknowledged by men of good sense.
[143] Again, it is the special task of law and instruction to “distinguish” the profane from the sacred and the impure from the pure, just as conversely it is the way of lawlessness and indiscipline to mix and confuse everything and thus force under the same head things which are in conflict with each other.

Chapter 36

Therefore Samuel too, the greatest of kings and prophets, “will never,” as the scripture tells us, “drink wine or intoxicating liquor till his dying day” (1 Sam. 1:11). For his place has been ordered in the ranks of the divine army, and through the providence of the wise commander he will never leave it.
[144] Now probably there was an actual man called Samuel; but we conceive of the Samuel of the scripture, not as a living compound of soul and body, but as a mind which rejoices in the service and worship of God and that only. For his name by interpretation means “appointed or ordered to God,” because he thinks that all actions that are based on idle opinions are grievous disorder.
[145] His mother is Hannah, whose name means in our language “grace.” For without divine grace it is impossible either to leave the ranks of mortality, or to stay for ever among the immortal.
[146] Now when grace fills the soul, that soul thereby rejoices and smiles and dances, for it is possessed and inspired, so that to many of the unenlightened it may seem to be drunken, crazy and beside itself. And therefore she is addressed by a “boy,” not meaning a single boy, but everyone whose age is ripe for restlessness and defiance and mockery of excellence, in these words: “How long wilt thou be drunken? put away thy wine from thee” (1 Sam. 1:14).
[147] For with the God-possessed not only is the soul wont to be stirred and goaded as it were into ecstasy but the body also is flushed and fiery, warmed by the overflowing joy within which passes on the sensation to the outer man, and thus many of the foolish are deceived and suppose that the sober are drunk.
[148] Though, indeed, it is true that these sober ones are drunk in a sense, for all good things are united in the strong wine on which they feast, and they receive the loving-cup from perfect virtue; while those others who are drunk with the drunkenness of wine have lived fasting from prudence without ceasing, and no taste of it has come to their famine-stricken lips.
[149] Fitly, then, does she answer the reckless one who thinks to mock her stern and austere life, Sirrah, “I a woman am the hard day, I have drunk no wine or strong drink, and I will pour out my soul before the Lord” (1 Sam. 1:15). How vast is the boldness of the soul which is filled with the gracious gifts of God!
[150] First, we see, she calls herself a “hard day,” taking the view of the varlet who thought to make a mock of her, for to him and to every fool the way to virtue seems rough and painful and ill to tread, and to this one of the old writers has testified in these words:
<small>Vice you may take by squadrons; but there lies <br>’Twixt you and virtue (so hath God ordained) <br>Sore travail. Long and steep the road to her, <br>And rough at first; but—reach the top—and she, <br>So hard to win, is now an easy prize.</small>

Chapter 37

[151] Secondly, she declares that she has not partaken of wine or strong liquor, glorying that her whole life has been one of unbroken abstinence. And rightly, for indeed it was a great and wonderful feat to follow reason, the free, the unshackled, the pure, which no passion inebriates.
[152] And the result of this is that the mind, which has drunk deep of abstinence unmixed, becomes a libation in its whole being, a libation which is poured out to God. What else was meant by the words, “I will pour out my soul before the Lord” but “I will consecrate it all to him, I will loosen all the chains that bound it tight, which the empty aims and desires of mortal life had fastened upon it; I will send it abroad, extend and diffuse it, so that it shall touch the bounds of the All, and hasten to that most glorious and loveliest of visions—the Vision of the Uncreated”?
[153] This, then, is the company of the sober who have set before them instruction as their head, while the former was the company of the drunken, whose leader was indiscipline.

Chapter 38

[154] But drunkenness, we saw, does not only signify folly, which is the work of this rejection of discipline, but it also signifies complete insensibility. In the body this is produced by wine, but in the soul by ignorance of things of which we should naturally have acquired knowledge. Consequently on the subject of ignorance I must say a few words, only just what is needful, by way of reminder. Now what we call ignorance is an affection of the soul.
[155] To what affection of the body can we liken it, but to the incapacitation of the sense-organs? All who have lost the use of eyes and ears can no longer see or hear and have no knowledge of day and light, which alone in truth make life desirable, but are surrounded by enduring darkness and everlasting night, thus rendered helpless in regard to every issue great or small. These persons are in common life generally and with good reason called “incapable.”
[156] For even if all the faculties of the rest of the body should attain the utmost limit of strength and capacity, yet if they are handicapped by the crippling of eyes and ears they fall, and great is that fall, making any reinstatement impossible. For, though we speak of the feet as the support which upholds the man, in reality that is done by the faculties of sight and hearing: possessed of these in their fullness, the man stands uprisen and erect; deprived of them, he gives way and is utterly prostrated.
[157] An exactly similar result in the soul is produced by ignorance, which destroys its powers of seeing and hearing, and suffers neither light, which might shew it realities, nor reason, which might be its teacher, to find their way in; but sheds about it profound darkness and a flood of unreason, and turns the soul’s fair and lovely form into a senseless block of stone.

Chapter 39

[158] Similarly knowledge, the opposite of ignorance, may be called the eyes and the ears of the soul. For it fixes the attention on what is said and contemplates what is, and allows no mis-seeing or mis-hearing, but surveys and observes all that is worthy to be heard and seen. And if it be necessary to travel or take ship, it makes its way to the ends of the earth or ocean, to see something more or hear something new.
[159] For nothing is so active as the passion for knowledge; it hates sleep and loves wakefulness. So it ever arouses and excites and sharpens the intellect, and compelling it to range in every direction makes it greedy to hear, and instils an incessant thirst for learning.
[160] Knowledge, then, provides that sight or hearing, to which we owe each case of right conduct. For he who sees and hears in the moral sense, knows what is good for him, and by choosing this and rejecting its opposite, finds himself benefited. But ignorance entails a more severe disablement to the soul than the disablement of the body, and thus is the cause of all its wrongdoing, since it cannot draw help from outside itself through the warnings which seeing and hearing might give it. Thus, standing utterly alone, and left unguarded and unprotected, it is a butt for the haphazard hostility of men and circumstances alike.
[161] Let us, then, never drink so deep of strong liquor as to reduce our senses to inactivity, nor become so estranged from knowledge as to spread the vast and profound darkness of ignorance over our soul.

Chapter 40

[162] Now ignorance as a whole is of two different kinds; one single, that is complete insensibility, the other twofold, that is when a man is not merely the victim of a want of knowledge, but also, encouraged by a false idea of his own wisdom, thinks he knows what he does not know at all.
[163] The former is the lesser evil, for it is the cause of less serious and perhaps involuntary errors, and the second is the greater, for it is the parent of great iniquities, not only those which are involuntary, but such as are actually premeditated.
[164] It was this especially which brought trouble to Lot—Lot who was the parent of daughters only and could rear no male or perfect growth within his soul. Two daughters he had and their mother was she who was turned into stone, whom we might call “custom,” if we gave her her right name; her nature is hostile to truth, and if we take her with us, she lags behind and gazes round at the old familiar objects and remains among them like a lifeless monument.
[165] The elder of these daughters will bear the name of Deliberation, and the younger of Assent. For assent follows deliberation, and no one who has given his assent continues to deliberate. The mind then taking his seat in his council begins to make his daughters busy. With the elder, Deliberation, he proceeds to discuss and examine every point; with the younger, Assent, he readily agrees to every suggestion, giving a friendly welcome to any however hostile, if what they have to give offers any enticement of pleasure however small.
[166] In its sober condition the mind does not tolerate this, only when it has succumbed to intoxication and is as though overcome by wine.

Chapter 41

And so we read, “They gave their father wine to drink” (Gen. 19:33).
Now this is complete insensibility, that the mind should think itself competent to deliberate by itself on what is to its interests, or to assent to presentations of any kind as though they were a vehicle of solid truth, for human nature is ever quite unable, either by circumspection to discover certainty, or to choose some things as true and profitable, and to reject others as false and injurious.
[167] For the vastness of the darkness which overspreads the world of bodies and affairs forbids us to see the nature of each; and though curiosity or love of learning may give us the wish to force our way and peer through the curtain, we shall like blind men stumble over the obstacles before us, lose our footing and miss our object, or if our hands do lay hold of it, we are but guessing at uncertainties and it is not truth but conjecture that is in our grasp.
[168] For even if instruction, torch in hand, should go before the mind, shedding her own particular light to give it sight of realities, it would do more harm than good. For its little beam is bound to be extinguished by the vast darkness, and when it is extinguished all power of sight is useless.
[169] He who prides himself on his judgement in deliberation, or flatters himself that he is competent to choose this and shun that, should be brought to a recollection of the truth by the following thoughts. If it were always the case that the same objects produced the same impressions on the mind without any variation, it would perhaps be necessary that the two instruments of judgement which nature has established in us, sense and mind, should be held in high esteem as veracious and incorruptible, and that we should not suspend our judgement on any point through doubt but accept a single presentation of two different objects, and on the faith of this choose one and reject the other.
[170] But since we prove to be differently affected by them at different times, we can say nothing with certainty about anything, because the picture presented to us is not constant, but subject to changes manifold and multiform.

Chapter 42

Since the mental picture is variable, the judgement we form of it must be variable also. There are many reasons for this.
[171] In the first place there are the innumerable differences in living creatures, differences concerned not with a single aspect, but practically with all; differences in birth, in structure and equipment; differences in food and mode of life; differences in predilections and aversions; differences in their sense-activities and sense-movements; differences in the peculiarities which arise from the innumerable ways in which body and soul are affected.
[172] For leaving out of sight for the moment those who form judgements, consider examples among the objects of such judgements. Take for instance the chameleon and the polypus. The former, we are told, changes its colour and grows like the kinds of soil over which it is its habit to crawl; the latter grows like the rocks to which it clings in the sea, and we may fairly suppose that this power of changing to various colours is given them by protecting nature as a remedy against the danger of capture.
[173] Again, have we not seen the dove’s neck change in the sun’s rays into a thousand different hues, sometimes scarlet and dark blue, or fiery or like red-hot coal, again yellow and then ruddy, and all other kinds of colour, so numerous that it would be difficult to give even their names in full?
[174] Indeed it is said that in the land of the Scythians who are known as the Geloans a most extraordinary animal is actually, though no doubt rarely, found called the elk, in size equal to an ox, but with a face shaped very like a deer. The account given of this creature is that it always changes the colour of its hair into that of the places, trees, or any imaginable thing near which it stands, and owing to this similarity of colour, we are told, it is not observed by passers-by, and this fact rather than its bodily strength makes it difficult to catch.
[175] These and similar phenomena are clear proofs of the impossibility of apprehension.

Chapter 43

Secondly, there are the diversities on all subjects which, to pass from animals in general, we find also in men in particular.
[176] Not only do their judgements on the same objects vary at different times, but different persons receive different impressions of pleasure or its reverse from the same things. For what is disliked by some is enjoyed by others, and contrariwise what some receive with open arms as acceptable and agreeable to their nature is utterly scouted by others as alien and repugnant.
[177] For example, I have often when I chanced to be in the theatre noticed the effect produced by some single tune sung by the actors on the stage or played by the musicians. Some of the audience are so moved, that in their excitement they cannot help raising their voices in a chorus of acclamation. Others are so unstirred that, as far as this is concerned, you might suppose them on a level of feeling with the senseless benches on which they sit. Others, again, are so repelled that they are off and away from the performance, and indeed, as they go, block their ears with both hands for fear that some echo of the music should remain to haunt them and produce a sense of discomfort to irritate and pain their souls.
[178] But it is needless to quote such cases as these. Every single individual in his own person is subject, extraordinary though it be, to numberless changes and variations in body and soul, and chooses at one time and rejects at another things which do not change, but retain the natural constitution which they have had throughout.
[179] The same feelings are not experienced in health as in sickness, in wakefulness as in sleep, in youth as in age. And people receive different mental impressions according as they are standing or moving, confident or affrighted, sad or joyful, loving or hating.
[180] And why tediously pursue the subject? For to put it shortly, our bodies and souls are in a state of motion, natural or unnatural, which considered as a whole produces that ceaseless change in the mental pictures presented to us which makes us the victim of conflicting and incongruous dreams.

Chapter 44

[181] But the inconstancy of impressions is particularly caused by the positions and surroundings of the several objects and their distances from the observer.
[182] We see that fishes in the sea, when they swim with their fins stretched, always look larger than nature has made them, and oars, however straight they are, appear bent below the water. Still more—the mind is often misled by distant objects which create false impressions.
[183] Sometimes we suppose lifeless objects to be living objects or the converse. And we have similar illusions about things stationary and moving, advancing and receding, short and long, circular and multilateral. And numberless other distortions of the truth are produced even when sight is unimpeded, which no sane person would accept as trustworthy.

Chapter 45

[184] What again of quantities in prepared mixtures? Their powers of benefiting or injuring depend on the relative quantity of the various ingredients, as we see in numberless cases and particularly in the drugs used by medical science.
[185] For quantity in compounds is measured by regular standards, and we cannot with safety stop short of or go beyond what they prescribe; for anything smaller or greater than this respectively overweakens or overstrains the force of the preparation. In both cases harm is done. In the former case the medicine is incapable through its weakness of producing any effect, while in the latter its high degree of potency makes it a force of active mischief. And again according to its roughness or smoothness, and its density and compactness on the one hand, or its sponginess and dilatation on the other, it exhibits clearly the means of testing its power of helping or harming.
[186] Again, everyone knows that practically nothing at all which exists is intelligible by itself and in itself, but everything is appreciated only by comparison with its opposite; as small by comparison with great, dry with wet, hot with cold, light with heavy, black with white, weak with strong, few with many. The same rule holds with all that concerns virtue and vice.
[187] We only know the profitable through the hurtful, the noble by contrast with the base, the just and the good in general by comparison with the unjust and evil. And indeed if we consider we shall see that everything else in the world is judged on the same pattern. For in itself each thing is beyond our apprehension, and it is only by bringing it into relation with something else that it seems to be known.
[188] Now that which is incapable of attesting itself and needs to be vouched for by something else, gives no sure ground for belief. And it follows that on this principle we can estimate at their true value lightly-made affirmations and negations on any subject whatever.
[189] Nor is this strange. For anyone who penetrates deeper into things and views them in a purer light, will recognize that no single thing presents itself to us in its own absolute nature but all contain interlacings and intermixtures of the most complicated kind.

Chapter 46

[190] For instance, how do we apprehend colours? Surely by means of the externals, air and light, and the internal moisture in the eye itself. How do we discriminate between sweet and bitter? Can we do so without the juices in the mouth, both those which are in accord with nature and those which are not? Surely not. Again, do the odours produced by burning incense present to us the natures of the substances in a pure and simple form, or in a combination, in which themselves and air, or sometimes also the fire which dissolves the material, are joined with the faculty possessed by the nostrils?
[191] From this we deduce that we do not apprehend colours, but only the combination produced by the light and the material substances to which the colours belong, nor smells, but only the mixture of the emanation from the substances with the all-admitting air; nor flavours, but only the something produced by the application of what we taste to the moisture in our mouths.

Chapter 47

[192] Since these things are so, those who do not shrink from facile affirmation or negation of anything whatsoever deserve to be held guilty of folly or rashness or imposture. For if the properties of things by themselves are beyond our ken, and if it is only the mixture formed by the contribution of many factors which is open to our vision; if, once more, it is as impossible to discern through the combinations the particular form of each of the contributing factors as it is to see them in their invisibility, what course is left to us but to suspend our judgement?
[193] And are we not warned against giving over-ready credence to uncertainties by other considerations? I allude to certain facts, the evidence for which is found practically over the whole world as known to us—facts which entail on Greek and barbarian alike the universal tendency to error which positive judgement brings. By these I mean of course ways of life from boyhood upwards, traditional usages, ancient laws, not a single one of which is regarded in the same light universally, but every country, nation and city, or rather every village and house, indeed every man, woman and infant child takes a totally different view of it.
[194] As a proof of this we see that what is base with us is noble with others, what is seemly and just with us is unseemly or unjust with them, our holy is their unholy, our lawful their unlawful, our laudable their blameworthy, our meritorious their criminal, and in all other matters their judgement is the opposite of ours.
[195] And why prolong the subject when our attention is called elsewhere by more vital matters? Still if anyone undistracted by some newer subject of contemplation should care to devote his leisure to the subject which has been before us, and to examine the ways of life, usages and customs of different countries, nations, cities and places, subjects and rulers, high and low, freemen and slaves, ignorant and learned, it will occupy not only a day or two, not only a month or a year, but his whole lifetime, even though his years be many, and all the same he will leave behind him many such questions, which he knows not of, unexamined, unconsidered and unheard.
[196] Since then the divers customs of divers persons are not distinguished merely by some slight difference, but exhibit an absolute contrast, amounting to bitter antagonism, it is inevitable that the impressions made upon the mind should differ and that the judgements formed should be at war with each other.

Chapter 48

[197] In view of these facts, who is so senseless and deranged as to assert positively that any particular thing is just or prudent or honourable or profitable? For what one determines to be such, will be repudiated by another who has practised the opposite from childhood.
[198] Now I for my part do not wonder that the chaotic and promiscuous multitude who are bound in inglorious slavery to usages and customs introduced anyhow, and who are indoctrinated from the cradle with the lesson of obedience to them, as to masters and despots, with their souls buffeted into subjection and incapable of entertaining any high or generous feeling, should give credence to traditions delivered once for all, and leaving their minds unexercised, should give vent to affirmations and negations with out inquiry or examination. But I do wonder that the multitude of so-called philosophers, who feign to be seeking for exact and absolute certainty in things, are divided into troops and companies and propound dogmatic conclusions widely different and often diametrically opposite not on some single chance point, but on practically all points great or small, which constitute the problems which they seek to solve.
[199] When some assert that the universe is infinite, others that it is finite, and some declare it to be created, others uncreated; when some refuse to connect it with any ruler or governor, but make it dependent on the automatic action of an unreasoning force, while others postulate a marvellous providence, caring for the whole and each part, exerted by a deity who guides and steers it and makes safe its steps, it is impossible that the substance of things should be apprehended by them in the same form.
[200] Again, when the nature of the good is the subject of inquiry, do not the ideas which present themselves compel us to withhold judgement rather than give assent? For some hold that the morally beautiful is the only good and make the soul its repository, while others split up the good into subdivisions and extend it to include the body and things outside the body.
[201] These persons say that fortunate circumstances are the guards and attendants of the body, and that health and strength and soundness and exactness of perception in the sense-organs and all other things of the kind serve the same purpose to the sovereign soul. The nature of the good, they hold, divides itself into three classes, of which the third and outermost protects the weakness of the second, which again proves to be a strong bulwark and safeguard of the first.
[202] And with regard to these, as well as to the relative value of different ways of living, and the ends to which all our actions should be referred, and numberless other points, which are included in the study of logic, ethics and physics, a host of questions have arisen on none of which hitherto have the inquirers arrived at unanimity.

Chapter 49

[203] We see then that the mind is fitly represented as labouring under absence of knowledge, when its two daughters, Deliberation and Assent, are in contact with it and become its bed-fellows. For we are told, “He knew not when they slept and rose up” (Gen. 19:33, 35).
[204] The mind, it seems, does not grasp clearly or firmly either sleeping or waking, or yet rest or motion, but it is just when it thinks it has shewn its powers of deliberation at their best, that it proves to be most lacking in that power, for the issue of events bears no resemblance to its expectations.
[205] And again when it has been pleased to subscribe to anything as true, it earns the condemnation passed on reckless thinking, for it appears that what it once believed in and thought to be most firmly established is really untrustworthy and insecure. The conclusion is that since things so often turn out the opposite of what we expect, the safest course is to suspend judgement.

Chapter 50

[206] This topic has now been sufficiently discussed. Let us turn our discussion to what follows next. We said that one thing signified by drunkenness is that gluttony whose great power for mischief is so widespread and constant, which leaves those who indulge in it, as we may see, with a void in their desires, even though they have every vacant place in their bodies filled.
[207] Such persons, when glutted and satiated by the quantities they have engorged, may for a while like weary-limbed athletes give their bodies a breathing-space, but ere long they make themselves ready to take part in the same encounter.
[208] So we see the King of Egypt, that is of the body, though he seemed to be angry with the cup-bearer who ministered to his drunkenness, represented in the holy books as being reconciled to him after a short time. He remembered the passion which excited his desires on his birthday—the day of his birth into a being destined to perish—not on the day of the light, which has no birth, a day which perishes not. For we are told that it was Pharaoh’s birthday (Gen. 40:20) when he sent for the chief cup-bearer from the prison to pour the cup of reconciliation.
[209] It is characteristic of the friend of passion that things created and perishable seem to him bright and shining, because in relation to knowledge of things imperishable, he dwells in night and profound darkness, and therefore at once he welcomes the drunkenness which brings pleasure in its train and him who is the minister of drunkenness.

Chapter 51

[210] The weak-willed incontinent soul has three servants who provide its feasts, the chief baker, the chief butler and the chief cook, whom our most admirable Moses mentions in these words, “And Pharaoh was wroth with his two eunuchs, with the chief butler and the chief baker, and he put them in prison under the chief gaoler” (Gen. 40:2, 3). But the chief cook is also a eunuch, for we have in another place, “and Joseph was brought down into Egypt and became the property of the eunuch of Pharaoh, the chief cook” (Gen. 39:1), and again “they sold Joseph to the eunuch of Pharaoh, the chief cook” (Gen. 37:36).
[211] Why is it that not a single one of these offices is entrusted to a real man or woman? Is it not because nature has trained men to sow the germs of life and women to receive them, and the mating of these two is the cause of generation and of the permanence of the All, while on the other hand it is the nature of the soul which is impotent and barren, or rather has been made so by emasculation, to delight in costly bakemeats and drinks and dishes elaborately prepared? For such a soul is neither able to drop the truly masculine seeds of virtue nor yet to receive and foster what is so dropped, but like a sorry stony field is only capable of blighting the successive growths, which were meant to live.
[212] In fact we have a doctrine laid down most profitable to us all, that every craftsman whose work is to produce pleasure can produce no fruit of wisdom. He is neither male nor female, for he is incapable of either giving or receiving the seeds whence spring the growth that perishes not, and the base craft he practises is aimed against human life. He destroys the indestructible and quenches the unquenchable ever-abiding lamps of nature.
[213] None such does Moses permit to enter the congregation of God, for he says, “He who has lost the organs of generation shall not come into the congregation of the Lord” (Deut. 23:1).

Chapter 52

For what use can he find in listening to holy words, who can beget no offspring of wisdom, when the knife has cut away the power of faith, and the store of truths which might best profit human life he cannot keep in his charge?
[214] Now mankind, as we have seen, has three caterers, the baker, the cup-bearer and the cook. This is natural enough since we desire the use and enjoyment of these three things, bread, flesh and drink. But some desire only the bare necessities, the use of which is needed to keep life from being unhealthy and sordid; while others seek them in luxurious forms, which excite the cravings of the appetite, and in extravagant quantities, which oppress and overload the receptacles of the body, and often produce grave disorders of every kind.
[215] The first of these classes who are not specialists in pleasure or voluptuousness or passion are like the ordinary public in a city who live an inoffensive and innocuous life, who have few wants and therefore do not require versatile and highly-skilled artists to serve them, but only those who attempt no more than a plain and simple form of service, just cooks, cup-bearers and bakers.
[216] But the second class, holding that pleasant living is sovereignty and kingship, and judging all things great and small by this standard, consider it their due to employ chief cooks, chief butlers, chief bakers, that is those who have worked up to a high pitch of refinement the arts which they severally profess.
[217] Milk cakes, honey cakes, numberless other kinds of bakemeats in the greatest possible variety, elaborately calculated to beguile the eye as well as the palate, not only with diversities of material, but also by the way in which the constituents are proportioned and the shapes in which they appear, engage the care and attention of the master-hands in confectionery.
[218] As for wine, whether it is such as is quickly digested and leaves no headache, whether on the other hand it has a fine bouquet and fragrance, whether it needs a small or great dilution to fit it for a fierce and heated carousal or a mild and quiet festivity, these and all such questions are the study of chief butlers, who have reached the very summit of their art.
[219] Again, the skilful dressing and preparation of fishes, birds and the like, and the flavouring of other savoury dishes, is a task readily accomplished by highly scientific professionals, whose constant drill and practice in catering for the life, which all its voluptuous luxury cannot make worth living, has given them the ingenuity to invent hundreds of other delicacies besides those which they have seen and heard of.

Chapter 53

[220] Observe that while all these three were shewn to be eunuchs and unable to beget wisdom, it was the butler with whom the mind, whose kingdom is the belly, made his compact of peace. For the passion for wine is extraordinarily strong in mankind, and is unique in this, that it does not produce satiety. For whereas everyone is satisfied with a certain amount of sleep and food and sexual intercourse and the like, this is rarely so with strong drink, particularly among practised topers.
[221] They drink but do not slake their thirst and, while they begin with smaller cups, as they advance they call for the wine to be poured in larger goblets. And when they get mellow and well warmed, they lose all control of themselves, and put beakers and cans and whole basins to their lips and drain them at a draught until either they are overcome with deep sleep, or the influx of the liquor fills up the cavities and overflows.
[222] But even then the insatiable craving within them rages as if it were still starving. “For their vine is of the vine of Sodom,” as Moses says, “and their tendrils of Gomorrah, their grapes are grapes of gall, a cluster of bitterness to them. Their wine is the wrath of dragons and the incurable wrath of asps” (Deut. 32:32, 33). Sodom is indeed by interpretation barrenness and blindness, and Moses here likens to a vine and its produce those who are under the thrall of wine-bibbing and gluttony and the basest of pleasures.
[223] His inner meaning is of this kind. No plant of true gladness grows in the soul of the wicked, since it has no healthy roots, but such as were burnt to ashes, when God passed well-deserved sentence upon the impious, and the heavens rained instead of water the unquenchable flames of the thunderbolt. In such a soul all that grows is the lust which is barren of excellence, and blinded to all that is worthy of its contemplation, and this lust he compares to a vine; not that which is the mother of kindly fruits, but a vine which proves to be the bearer of bitterness and wickedness and villainy and wrath and anger and savage moods and tempers, the vine which stings the soul like vipers and venomous asps, and that sting none can cure.
[224] Let us pray that these may be averted, and implore the all-merciful God to destroy this wild vine and decree eternal banishment to the eunuchs and all those who do not beget virtue, and that while in their stead He plants in the garden of our souls the trees of right instruction, He may grant us fruits of genuine worth and true virility, and powers of reason, capable of begetting good actions and also of bringing the virtues to their fullness, gifted too with the strength to bind together and keep safe for ever all that is akin to real happiness.

Appendix

APPENDIX TO DE EBRIETATE
§ 2. <i>Sometimes he gives opposite orders</i>. In Numb. 6:3 the Nazarite during the period of his vow is forbidden wine. In v. 20 the LXX has “he shall drink it,” which Philo takes for a command.
§ 4. The MS. text, as Adler points out, gives better sense than Wendland’s correction (following Mangey). It is difficult to give any meaning to “the gladness which embraces the rest,” and below ἐπιθυμία is the cause of ἀπληστία, not, as Wendland would make it, a synonym.
§ 12. For the reading ἐκδιδοῦσαι see Adler, <i>Wiener Studien</i> 44, p. 220. Apart from its superior MS. authority, it makes better sense; ἀπαιδευσία is not the source of all actions, as the other reading implies.
§ 14. <i>Riotous liver</i>. The odd word συμβολοκοπῶ, which is apparently only found in the LXX and Apocrypha, is rightly enough traced by Philo to the συμβολαί or contributions which the feaster paid. The origin of the depreciatory suffix -κοπ … is obscure. Philo attempts to account for it after his usual manner in 23. Other similar formations are φαντασιοκοπεῖν, δωροκοπεῖν, πορνοκοπεῖν.
§ 21. <i>Complete irregularity of life</i>. Philo several times uses ἐκδιαίτησις and its verb for the rejecting of what is required by the moral sense of the community. Thus the setting up of the golden calf is felt by the tribe of Levi to be an ἐκδιαίτησις, <i>De Spec. Leg.</i> iii. 126, and violation of the Sabbath may become ἀρχὴ τῆς περὶ τὰ ἄλλα ἐκδιαιτήσεως, <i>De Som</i>. ii. 123. The verb has occurred in <i>De Gig.</i> 21.
§ 30. “<i>Father and mother</i>,” etc. <i>I.e</i>. the terms may be used in the figurative sense given in this section, or in the other figurative sense given in 33, as well as literally. Or possibly the meaning of the sentence may be that, while in the text from Deuteronomy the father and mother are grouped together, as acting in concert, their functions are really different.
§ 31. <i>Obtained</i>. The LXX has ἔκτισε instead of ἐκτήσατο. Ryle (<i>Philo and Holy Scripture</i>, p. 296) points out that Philo’s word is a more accurate translation of the Hebrew and is actually used by Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion. He suggests that ἔκτισε may have resulted from a corrupt ἐκτίσατο.
§ 33. <i>The disciples, who have followed in their company</i>. The parable implied is that God and His wisdom are in the truest sense the parents of mankind (as included in the All). Reason and convention have been trained by the divine Pair to be the educators of mankind and thus stand to them in a sense as parents also.
§§ 36–64. The depreciation of the “feminine” element of convention in these sections cannot altogether be reconciled with the high estimate of it in 80–92. The best we can say for it is that Philo regards this “maternal” influence as good or bad, according as it is supported and regulated, or not, by the “paternal.”
§ 42. <i>Is not the Maker</i>, etc. The argument is “God should be known to us from the beginning” (1) because He is the father of all, (2) because He presides at (belongs to) the beginning. It would be stated more logically if we transposed ἀρχηγέτης and ὁ κτίστης, “Is not the Maker of the Universe its ἀρχηγέτης and Father?” Indeed this meaning might be got, though somewhat unnaturally, out of the text as it stands, if we take καὶ πατὴρ αὐτοῦ with ἀρχηγέτης as predicate instead of coupling it with ὁ κτίστης.
§ 48. <i>The timeless also exists in nature</i>. Literally “there are also timeless natures.” Philo is here as often (<i>e.g.</i> <i>De Plant.</i> 120) contrasting the “physical” (in his sense) with the ethical. But the thought is obscure. Perhaps it is something as follows. The dealings of God (here identified with nature) are timeless and therefore the “Practiser” will neglect time-order and look to order in value and thus desire to pass from the lower to the higher (νεώτερος and πρεσβύτερος passing as often from the sense of precedence in time to that of precedence in value).
<i>Ibid. The laws of human character</i>. Or the department of thought which deals with human conduct; ἠθοποιός, literally “forming conduct” seems here to be used for ἠθικός. <i>Cf</i>. ἠθοποιίαν 92. Wendland wished to read ἠθικός, but the usage, though perhaps rare, is natural enough, as Greek philosophy holds that right conduct must be based on ethics, and conversely that a knowledge of ethics will produce right conduct.
§ 51. This section seems to mean that Philo was familiar with cases where those whose education in the Encyclia had been neglected were at pains to repair the loss in later life. This is perhaps not surprising. The Encyclia, or at least its most important elements γραμματική and rhetoric, were more studied by adults and entered more into the life of the upper classes than our school subjects do with us, and a man might well feel at a loss in good society without them. That Philo regards such a return to the Encyclia as a retrograde step follows from his peculiar view of them. Taken at the proper time, <i>i.e</i>. in boyhood, they are almost indispensable as an introduction to philosophy. Taken later, they are mere vanity and thus at the end of 52 they are equated with “external goods.”
<i>Ibid. Left the right path</i>. Or “missed their way,” “gone where no road is.” The phrase ἀνοδίᾳ χρῆσθαι has occurred in <i>De Agr.</i> 101.
§ 56. <i>Discoursing with herself</i>. Rachel’s answer to Laban is regarded as symbolizing the admission which every reflecting soul must make to itself of its inability to rise up against the “outward goods” which Laban represents. In using διαλόγοις thus, Philo may have been influenced by Plato, <i>Soph</i>. 263 F ὀ μὲν ἐντὸς τῆς ψυχῆς πρὸς αὐτὸν διάλογος ἀνεὺ φωνῆς γιγνόμενος τοῦτʼ αὐτὸ ἡμῖν ἐπωνομάσθη διάνοια.
§ 70. <i>The uttered word</i>. For the Stoic distinction between λόγος προφορικός (speech) and λόγος ἐνδιάθετος (thought) see note on <i>De Gig.</i> 52. The latter, not the former, distinguishes men from animals, for ravens and parrots speak (<i>S.V.F.</i> ii. 135); still speech is nearer to the mind than the senses are.
§ 73. The treatment of the story differs considerably from that in <i>Leg. All</i>. iii. 242, <i>De Post.</i> 183, <i>De Mut.</i> 108. There the woman is pleasure or passion and the man is ignored; and the piercing through the “mother-part” is to prevent her engendering further evil. Here the woman is the belief which ascribes causation to creation itself, the man the ideas or reasonings based on this belief, and the piercing through the womb is to show that no real power of bearing belongs to creation. Philo is of course assisted by δόξα being feminine, and λογισμός masculine.
§ 74. Adler aptly supports the MS. reading by τοῖς κοίνοις ἀνθρώπων ἔθεσιν ἁλίσκονται 68. But it must be admitted that this use of πρός for “belonging to” “like” is strange, if not, as Wendland says, impossible. Such phrases as πρὸς γυναῖκός ἐστι (regularly followed by the verb “to be,” expressed or understood) are hardly parallel.
§ 84. <i>For if you have learnt … mother</i>. Adler points out that these words also as well as the quotation which follows are reminiscent of Proverbs. <i>Cf</i>. 1:8, “My son, hear the instructions of thy father and forsake not the laws (LXX μὴ ἀπώσῃ θεσμούς) of thy mother.”
§ 88. <i>Art of arts</i>. So ἀρετή is a τέχνη περὶ ὅλου τοῦ βίου (<i>S.V.F.</i> iii. 560, where we have the Stoic doctrine that the wise man does all things which he undertakes well).
§ 95. <i>Aggressor in wickedness</i>. The exact meaning of προσεπιβαίνειν is doubtful; clearly it is an antithesis to imitating their virtue. Perhaps “to go further and trample on them.” Mangey translated it by “praevaricari.”
<i>Ibid. Vanity most honoured among the Egyptians. I.e</i>. Apis, which Philo identifies with the Calf of Ex. 32. He is also thinking of Aaron’s words in v. 4. The phrase “vanity of the Egyptians” recurs several times in Philo, generally with allusion to this incident.
§ 96. <i>And he said. I.e</i>. Moses, as the interpretation shows; see next note.
§ 98. <i>Personal experience … the one who watches the course of events</i>. In this interpretation Joshua and Moses apparently represent two aspects of the man’s self. He <i>feels</i> the inward tumult, and then the reasoning side of his nature (the Moses in us) interprets the true cause. This reasoning side is identified with the Holy Word in 104.
§ 113. The full text of Numb. 21:17–18 should be compared with Philo’s interpretation. ἐξάρχετε αὐτῳ φρέαρ· ὤρυξαν αὐτὸ ἄρχοντες, ἐξελατόμησαν αὐτὸ βασιλεῖς ἐθνῶν ἐν τῇ βασιλείᾳ αὐτῶν, ἐν τῷ κυριεῦσαι αὐτῶν. The ἐξάρχετε of this is reproduced by ἐξάρχει in the previous section, and a comparison with <i>De Vita Mosis</i> i. 256 suggests that he interprets ὤρυξαν by searching for or finding wisdom (ἀναζητῆσαι, in V.M. εὕρεσις) and ἐλατόμησαν by building it up (κατεργάσασθαι, in V.M. κατασκευή), while “conquered” represents ἐν τῷ κυριεῦσαι αὐτῶν.
§§ 114–118. In the original the captains have made the roll-call of their men and no one has failed to answer (διαπεφώνηκεν). In the allegory the aspirants to spiritual power (this is based on the description of them as καθεσταμένοι εἰς τὰς χιλιαρχίας τῆς δυνάμεως, v. 48) make themselves masters (εἰλήφασι) of the opposing forces of false courage. These, under the influence of the higher nature, are reduced to the mean, <i>i.e</i>. true courage, and thus none “is at discord.” This, which, though not the meaning of the LXX, is the natural meaning of the word, serves to connect the passage with the other songs of victory. <i>Cf. De Conf. 55</i>.
This rendering assumes the “captains” to be the antecedent of οὕς. It would make better sense to make λόγους the antecedent, for then πολεμικούς would be equated with the πολεμιστῶν of Numbers. We should have, however, then to take δυσὶν ἀντιτεταγμένους τέλεσιν as “arranged <i>in</i> two battalions”—an unnatural use of the dative.
§ 115. <i>Two battalions</i>. Combined with this military sense of τέλος there is perhaps the thought of the philosophical sense “purposes,” “motives.”
§ 132. <i>Copies</i>. It will be observed that εἰκόνες is used in a different sense to that of 134. The literal tabernacle and altar are both εἰκόνες (or symbols) of their spiritual counterparts. The spiritual altar is an εἰκών of the spiritual temple in the philosophical sense of the theory of ideas. But perhaps ταῦτα stands for the phenomenal world in general, in which case we have the philosophical use or something like it.
§ 134. This section seems to the translator to raise difficult questions which he is unable to answer with any confidence, and leaves to some more accomplished Platonist. The tabernacle is generic virtue, the altar is the particular virtues, which one would naturally suppose to be the ordinary four, justice, temperance, etc. In what sense are these (<i>a</i>) perceptible by the senses yet (<i>b</i>) never actually perceived by them? The answer to (<i>a</i>) may perhaps be that by the particular virtues he does not mean the specific virtues in the abstract, but the manifestations of them in particular persons. This will agree with <i>De Cher.</i> 5, where the particular and specific virtues (ἐν μέρει καὶ κατʼ εἶδος) are contrasted with generic virtue, and then these particular virtues are defined as “virtues in the I,” and therefore perishable, because the “I” is perishable! If this is so, what is the answer to (<i>b</i>)? Is it that while these virtues are conceivable in the individual, they are never realized? This hardly seems satisfactory.
The question between ἰδέας acc. plur. (Wendland and Cohn) and ἰδέας gen. sing. (Adler) may be argued as follows. For the acc. it may be said that Philo uses the word in a loose sense for the νοητὰ θεωρήματα of 132. Both generic and specific virtues belong to a different order of things from the material altar and tabernacle. Or again, if Philo means the specific virtues in the abstract, are not these also ἴδεαι, as well as the generic, which is their ἰδέα? On the other hand, the genitive is strongly suggested by the antithesis to αἰσθητὴ εἰκών and the similar antithesis in 137.
§ 142. <i>Right reason which is identical with law</i>. This glorification of νόμος is definitely Stoic; see <i>S.V.F.</i> iii. 613.
§ 146. παρακινεῖν. As Adler points out, Philo is thinking of <i>Phaedrus</i> 249 D, where the truly inspired (ἐνθουσιάζων) is reproved by the many as παρακινῶν.
§ 150. <i>Hard day</i>. Adler’s suggestion that ἡμέρα means “(and at the same time) easy” finds some support in the quotation from Hesiod. But there is no such suggestion in the varlet’s words. It must be remembered that Philo found the phrase in the LXX and did not invent it. We need not suppose that he gave ἡμέρα any definite meaning, or again he may have interpreted it as “a day’s journey.” And if he really found in it any such edifying suggestion, as Adler supposes, he would surely have enlarged upon it.
§ 157. <i>Reason … unreason</i>. The translator is baffled, as often, by the way in which Philo combines and intertwines λόγος as “reason” or “thought” with λόγος as “speech.” He is working out the idea of soul-sight (intuition) and soul-hearing (learning by instruction). The latter may be equated with λόγος “reason,” but as we learn through words it may also be equated with λόγος “word” and this is indicated by the antithesis of τοῖς λεγομένοις and τὰ ὄντα in § 158.
§ 158. <i>Mis-seeing or mis-hearing. Cf.</i> <i>S.V.F.</i> iii. 548 ἀλλʼ οὐδὲ παρορᾶν οὐδὲ παρακούειν νομίζουσι τὸν σοφόν.
§ 170. <i>There are many reasons for this</i>. Here begins Philo’s version of the “tropes of Aenesidemus,” see <i>Anal. Intr</i>. pp. 314 f. It should be noted that Philo omits two of the ten tropes, as they are stated by Sextus Empiricus (<i>Pyrrh. Hyp</i>. i. 36 f.) and Diogenes Laertius ix. 79–88. These two are (<i>a</i>) the differences in the sensations produced by different senses in the same individual, <i>e.g</i>. honey is pleasant to the taste, but unpleasant to the eye, (<i>b</i>) the different feelings produced by the same recurrence according to its rarity or frequency, <i>e.g</i>. when earthquakes are common they do not cause any excitement.
<i>Ibid. In the first place</i>. The first trope is called by Sextus (<i>Pyrrh. Hyp</i>. i. 36) “that of the variety in animals” (ὁ παρὰ τὴν τῶν ζῴων ἐξαλλαγήν), the argument being that, as animals are constructed so differently, we must suppose that the impressions which the same object gives them are different.
§ 172. <i>Those who form judgements</i>. The tropes were classified according as the difference of impressions arises from something in the subject who forms the impression (τὸ κρῖνον) or from the object which creates the impression (τὸ κρινόμενον), or from both combined (Sextus, <i>ibid</i>. 38). The first, second, and third as given by Philo belong to the first class, the fifth to the second, and the other four to the third.
§§ 172–174. The introduction of these examples, which have no parallel in Sextus or Diogenes, is quite illogical. Clearly there is no suggestion that the polypus, chameleon, and elk receive different impressions. If germane at all they should come under the trope of “position” etc. (181) But with the exception of the dove’s neck, the examples have no bearing on the argument, since these changes of “camouflage” are supposed to be actual changes. Philo, or the source from which he drew, was attracted by the interest of these supposed changes in the animal world and could not refrain from noticing them in a passage which deals with animals. That the illogicality did not altogether escape him is shown by his remarking that they belong to the κρινόμενα, not to the κρίνοντα.
§ 173. <i>The dove’s neck</i>. A common example with the “bent oar” of an illusion (see Reid on <i>Acad</i>. ii. 79). Sextus (<i>ibid</i>. 120) and Diogenes ix. 86 rightly give it under “position,” but ascribe the change to the way the neck is turned (Lucr. ii. 801, like Philo, to the sun’s ray).
§ 175. <i>Impossibility of apprehension</i>. This leading term of the Sceptics, properly speaking, applies to the object which cannot be apprehended, but came to signify their general doctrine. Hicks (Diog. Laert. ix. 61) translates it “agnosticism.”
<i>Ibid. Secondly</i>. The second trope, called by Sextus ὁ παρὰ τὴν τῶν ἀνθρώπων διαφοράν (<i>ibid</i>. 79). While the variety in animals was a <i>prima facie</i> ground for thinking that the animal man was liable to a similar instability of impressions, this is supposed to need special proof, which this trope gives.
<i>Ibid. Not only do their judgements. I.e</i>. of the same people. Wendland’s proposed insertion of οἱ αὐτοὶ in contrast to ἕτεροι is unnecessary, though “the same” is implied. The changes in animals just mentioned being all in the same animal, suggest that there are analogous mental changes in individual men. This, however, belongs to the third trope and is only mentioned in passing, before we pass to the subject of the second trope.
§ 176. ἑπισπασάμενοι seems elsewhere, as in <i>De Gig.</i> 44, to suggest using influence or force to attract. Adler’s ἀσπασάμενοι would be more natural; but there is hardly sufficient reason for the change. Perhaps ἐπασπασάμενοι. The word is only quoted from the 6th century A.D., but there are such things as ἅπαξ εἰρημένα in Philo.
§ 178. The third trope (Sextus’s fourth), called by him ὁ παρὰ τὰς περιστάσεις, <i>ibid</i>. 100.
§ 181. The fourth trope (fifth in Sextus, who uses the same phrase as here, ὁ παρὰ τὰς θέσεις καὶ τὰ διαστήματα καὶ τοὺς τόπους), <i>ibid</i>. 119. For positions or attitudes (θέσεις), <i>i.e</i>. of the object itself, Sextus gives the dove’s bent neck, and Philo’s swimming fish perhaps come under this head. For surroundings (τόποι), Sextus gives the bent oar and also the faintness of candle-light in the sun. For distances from the observer (διαστήματα), Sextus gives the varying appearance of a ship at sea.
§ 184. The fifth trope (Sextus’s seventh, <i>ibid</i>. 129, his sixth being taken by Philo in 190). Sextus calls it ὁ παρὰ τὰς ποσότητας καὶ σκευασίας τῶν ὑποκειμένων. It would perhaps be better to translate ἐν τοῖς σκευαζομένοις by “preparations” simply and to omit “relative” and “in the various ingredients” in what follows; also to render συνθέσεσι by “aggregations” rather than “compounds.” Sextus explains that by σκενασίας he means συνθέσεις in general and the examples show that these need not be of more than one substance.
§ 186. The sixth trope (Sextus’s eighth, ὁ ἀπὸ τοῦ πρός τι), <i>ibid</i>. 135.
§ 190. The seventh trope (Sextus’s sixth, ὁ παρὰ τὰς ἐπιμιξίας), <i>ibid</i>. 124.
<i>Ibid. Those which are in accord with nature</i>, etc. <i>I.e</i>. apparently, pleasant or unpleasant. <i>Cf</i>. the definition of pleasure and pain in <i>Timaeus</i> 64 D. But the epithet would naturally be applied to the χυλοί in the sense of flavours, as in 191, rather than to the “juices of the mouth.” The following point may perhaps be worth consideration. In the parallel in Sextus these mouth-juices are ὕλαι ἐν τοῖς γεύσεως τόποις ὑποκείμεναι. If we read here ἐνστομίων &lt;ὑλῶν&gt; χυλῶν ὅσοι κτλ., <i>i.e</i>. “can we, without the substances in the mouth, tell what flavours are natural and what unnatural?” we should have a text which would easily lend itself to corruption.
§ 193. The eighth and last trope (Sextus’s tenth, stated by him as ὁ παρὰ τὰς ἀγωγὰς καὶ τὰ ἔθη καὶ τοὺς νόμους καὶ τὰς μυθικὰς πίστεις καὶ τὰς δογματικὰς ὑπολήψεις), <i>ibid</i>. 145. The first two of them are repeated by Philo in the same words, and the δογματικαὶ ὑπολήψεις appear in 198 ff. But there is nothing corresponding to the μυθικαὶ πίστεις, <i>i.e</i>. the popular superstitions which with the scientific theories of the philosophers are represented by the Sceptics as having such a total want of agreement as to put the coping-stone on the accumulation of evidence for human ἀκαταληψία.
<i>Ibid. Ways of life</i>. We might take ἀγωγαὶ αἱ ἐκ παίδων to mean “systems of education,” but Sextus explains it as αἱρέσεις βίου ἢ πραγμάτων περὶ ἕνα ἢ πολλούς, illustrating it by Diogenes’ asceticism and Spartan discipline.
§ 198. Here begin the δογματικαὶ ὑπολήψεις. The first part of the section bears a considerable resemblance to “Longinus,” <i>De Sublimitate</i> xliv. 3, 4, describing the tyranny of custom, from the cradle (ἐνεσπαργανωμένοι) and the buffeted (κεκονδυλισμένον) condition of the multitude.
§ 199. The opinions here mentioned may be roughly classified as following:
Infinite (Epicurean)—Finite (Stoic).
Created (Stoics and Epicureans)—Uncreated (Peripatetic).
No providence (Epicurean)—Providence (Stoic).
One “good” (Stoic)—Three “goods” (Peripatetic).
§ 206. <i>Gluttony</i>. This represents the ἀπληστία of 4 and 6.
§ 208. <i>Cup of reconciliation</i>. The phrase ἐπὶ σπονδαῖς combines the idea of pouring wine as cup-bearer (Gen. 40:21) and the common meaning of “on the conditions of a truce.”
§ 213. <i>Lost the organs of generation</i>. For the literal meaning see A.V. ἐκτετμημένῳ πίστιν interprets ἀποκεκομμένος, and παρακαταθήκην etc. interprets θλαδίας.
§ 218. <i>Fine bouquet</i>. The adj. ἄνθιμος or ἄνθινος is explained by Hesychius and the Scholiast as meaning (<i>a</i>) flavoured with herbs or flowers, (<i>b</i>) smelling like flowers. The latter is more suitable here.
§ 221. <i>Cavities</i>, or “stomachs,” a use of ὄγκος not given in the dictionaries, but found in Plutarch, <i>Mor</i>. 652 E and elsewhere (see Wyttenbach’s index).