Accordingly, God, having created the former kind of sensa- tion, that existing according to habit, when he was creating the mind (for he was furnishing that with many faculties in a state of rest), desires now to complete the other kind which exists according to energy. And this one according to energy is perfected when the one which exists according to habit is put in motion, and extended as far as the flesh and the organs * Exodus xii. 23. + Numbers xxxi. 26.
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of sense. For as nature is perfected when the seed is put in motion, so, also, energy is perfected when the habit is put in motion.
XI. "And he filled the space with flesh instead of it." That is to say, he filled up that external sense which exists according to habit, leading it on to energy and extending it as far as the flesh and the whole outward and visible surface of the body. In reference to which Moses adds that " he built it up into a woman: " showing by this expression that woman is the most natural and felicitously-given name for the exter- nal sense. For as the man is seen in action, and the woman in being the subject of action, so also is the mind seen in action, and the external sense, like the woman, is discerned by suffering or being the subject of action. And it is easy to learn this from the way in which it is affected in practice. Thus the sight is affected by these objects of sight which put it in motion, such as white and black, and the other colours. Again, hearing is affected by sounds, and taste is disposed in such or such a way by flavours; the sense of smell by scents; and that of touch by hardness or softness. And, on the other hand all the outward senses are in a state of tranquillity until each is approached from without by that which is to put it in motion.
XII. " And he brought her to Adam. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bone, and flesh of my flesh." God leads the external sense, existing according to energy, to the mind; know- ing that its motion and apprehension must turn back to the mind. But the mind, perceiving the power which it previously had (and which, while it was existing according to habit was in a state of tranquillity), now have to become a complete operation and energy, and to be in a state of motion, marvels at it, and utters an exclamation, saying that it is not unconnected with it, but very closely akin to it. For Adam says, " This now is bone of my bone;" that is to say, This is power of my power; for bone is here to be understood as a symbol of strength and power. And it is, he adds, suffering of my sufferings; that is, it is flesh of my flesh. For every thing which the external sense suffers, it endures not without the support of the mind; for the mind is its fountain, and the foundation on which it is supported.
It is also worth while to consider why Adam adde ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 91 word "now," for he says, "This now is bone of my bone." The explanation is, external sensation exists now, having its existence solely with reference to the present moment. For the mind touches three separate points of time; for it per- ceives present circumstances, and it remembers past events, and it anticipates the future. But the external sensations have neither any anticipation of future events, nor are they subject to any feeling resembling expectation or hope, nor have they any recollection of past circumstances; but are by nature capable only of being affected by that which moves them at the moment, and is actually present. As, for example, the eye is made white by a white appearance presented to it at the moment, but it is not affected in any manner by that which is not present to it. But the mind is agitated also by that which is not actually present, but which may be past; in which case it is affected by its recollection of it; or it may be future, in which case it is, indeed, the influence of hope and expectation.
XIII. " And she shall be called woman." This is equiva- lent to saying, On this account the outward sensation shall be called woman, because it is derived from man who sets it in motion. He says " she;" why, then, is the expression " she" used? Why, because there is also another kind of outward sensation, not derived from the mind, but having been created at the same moment with it. For there are, as I have said before, two different kinds of outward sensation; the one kind existing according to habit, and the other according to energy. Now, the kind existing according to habit is not derived from the man, that is to say from the mind, but is created at the same time with him. For the mind, as I have already shown, when it was created was created with many faculties and habits; namely, with the faculty and habit of reasoning, and of existing, and of promoting what is like itself, as also with that of receiving impressions from the outward senses. But the outward sensation, which exists according to energy, is derived from the mind. For it is extended from the outward sensation which exists in it according to habit, so as to become the same outward sense according to energy. So that this second kind of outward sense is derived from the mind, and exists according to motion. And he is but a foolish person who thinks that any thing is in true reality made out of the 92 PHILO JUD.EUS.
mind, or out of itself. Do you not see that even in the case of Rachel (that is to say of outward sensation) sitting upon th6 images, while she thought that her motions came from the mind, he who saw her reproved her. For she says, " Give me my children, and if you give them not to me I shall die/'* And he replied: " Because, 0 mistaken woman, the mind is not the cause of any thing, but he which existed before the mind; namely God." On which account he adds: " Am I equal to God who has deprived you of the fruit of your womb?" But tbat it is God who creates men, he will testify in the case of Leah, when he says, " But the Lord, when he saw that Leah was hated, opened her womb. But Rachel was barren. "f But it is the especial property -of man to open the womb.
Now naturally virtue is hated by men. On which account God has honoured it, and gives the honour of bearing the first child to her who is hated. And in another passage he says: " But if a man has two wives, one of them being loved and one of them being hated, and if they bear him children, and if the first-born son be the child of her who is hated; he will not be able to give the honours of the birthright to the child of the wife whom he loves, overlooking the first-born son the child of her who is hated. "J For the productions of virtue which is hated, are the first and the most perfect, but those of pleasure, which is loved, are the last.
XIV. " On this account a man will leave his father and his mother and will cleave to his wife; and they two shall become one flesh." On account of the external sensation, the mind, when it has become enslaved to it, shall leave both its father, the God of the universe, and the mother of all things, namely, the virtue and wisdom of God, and cleaves to and becomes united to the external sensations, and is dissolved into external sensation, so that the two become one flesh and one passion. And here you must observe that it is not the woman who cleaves to the man, but on the contrary, the man who cleaves to the woman; that is to say, the mind cleaves to the external sen- sations. For when that which is the better, namely, the mind, is united to that which is the worse, namely, the external sensation, it is then dissolved into the nature of flesh, which • Gen. xxx. 1. t Gen. xxix. 31. i Dent. xxi. 15.
OX THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 93 is worse, and into outward sensation, which is the cause of the passions.
But when that which is the inferior, namely, the outward sensation, follows the better part, that is the mind, then there will no longer be flesh, but both will become one, namely, mind. And this is a thing of such a nature that it prefers the affections to piety. There is also another being called by an opposite name, Levi; he who says to his father and mother: " He saw you not, and he did not recognize his brethren, and repudiated his children."* This man leaves his father and mother; that is to say, his mind and the material of his body, in order to have as his inheritance the one God; " For the Lord himself is his inheritance."! And, indeed, suffering is the inheritance of him who is fond of suffering; but the inhe- ritance of Levi is God. Do you not see that " he bids him on the tenth day of the month bring two goats as his share, one lot for the Lord and one lot for the scape-goat." J For the sufferings inflicted on the scape goat are in real truth the lot of him who is fond of suffering.
XV. " And they were both naked, both Adam and his wife, and they were not ashamed; but the serpent was the most subtle of all the beasts that were, upon the earth, which the Lord God had made:"§ — the mind is naked, which is clothed neither with vice nor with virtue, but which is really stripped of both: just as the soul of an infant child, which has no share in either virtue or vice, is stripped of all coverings, and is completely naked: for these things are the coverings of the soul, by which it is enveloped and concealed, good being the garment of the virtuous soul, and evil the robe of the wicked soul. And the soul is made naked in these ways. Once, when it is in an unchangeable state, and is entirely free from all vices, and has discarded and laid aside the covering of all the passions. With reference to this Moses also pitches his tabernacle outside of the camp, a long way from the camp, and it was called the tabernacle of testimony. || And this has some such meaning as this: the soul which loves God, having put off the body and the affections which are dear to it, and having fled a long way from them, chooses a foundation and a sure ground for its abode, and a lasting settlement in § Gen. ii. '25; iii. 1. II Ex. xxxiii. 7.
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the perfect doctrines of virtue; on which account testimony is borne to it by God, that it loves what is good, " for it was called the tabernacle of testimony," says Moses, and he has passed over in silence the giver of the name, in order that the soul, being excited, might consider who it is who thus beareth witness to the dispositions which love virtue. On this account the high priest " will not come into the holy of holies clad in a garment reaching to the feet;* but having put off the robe of opinion and vain fancy of the soul, and having left that for those who love the things which are without, and who honour opinion in preference to truth, will come forward naked, with- out colours or any sounds, to make an offering of the blood of the soul, and to sacrifice the whole mind to God the Saviour and Benefactor; and certainly Nadab and Abihu,f who came near to God, and left this mortal life and received a share of immortal life, are seen to be naked, that is, free from all new and mortal opinion; for they would not have carried it in their garments and borne it about, if they had not been naked, having broken to pieces every bond of passion and of corporeal necessity, in order that their nakedness and absence of corporeality might not be adulterated by the accession of atheistical reasonings; for it may not be permitted to all men to behold the secret mysteries of God, but only to those who are able to cover them up and guard them; on which account Mishael and his partisans concealed them not in their own garments, but in those of Nadab and Abihu, who had been burnt with fire and taken upwards; for having stripped off all the garments that covered them, they brought their naked- ness before God, and left their tunics about Mishael. But clothes belong to the irrational part of the animal, which over shadow the rational part.
Abraham also w*s naked when he heard, " Come forth out of thy land and from thy kindred;"J and as for Isaac, he in- deed was not stripped, but was at all times naked and incor- poreal; for a commandment was given to him not to go down into Egypt, § that is to say, into the body.
Jacob also was fond of the nakedness of the soul, for his smoothness is nakedness, " for Esau was a hairy man, but ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 95 Jacob," says Moses, " was a smooth man,"* on which account he was also the husband of Leah.
XVI. This is the most excellent nakedness, but the other nakedness is of a contrary nature, being a change which involves a deprivation of virtue, when the soul becomes foolish and goes astray. Such was the folly of Noah when he was naked, when he drank wine.f But thanks be to God, that this change and this stripping naked of the mind according to the deprivation of virtue, did not extend as far as external things, but remained in the house; for Moses says, that " he was stripped naked in his house:" for even if a wise man does commit folly, he still does not run to ruin like a bad man; for the evil of the one is spread abroad, but that of the other is kept within bounds, and therefore he becomes sober again, that is to say, he repents, and as it were recovers from his disease.
But let us now more accurately examine the statement, " that the stripping of him naked took place in his house." When the soul, being changed, only conceives some evil thing and does not put it in execution, so as to accomplish it in deed, then the sin is only in the private domain and abode of the soul. But if, in addition to thinking some wickedness it proceeds also to accomplish it and carry it into execution, then the wickedness is diffused over the parts beyond his house: and on this account he curses Canaan also, because he related the change of his soul abroad, that is to say, he ex- tended it into the parts out of doors, and gave it notoriety, adding to his evil intention an evil consummation by means of his actions: but Shem and Japhet are praised, because they did not attack his soul, but rather concealed its de- terioration.
On this account also the prayers and vows of the soul are invalidated when " they are made in the house of one's father or one's husband, X while the reasoning powers are in a state of quiescence, and do not attack the alteration which has taken place in the soul, but conceal the delinquency; for then also " the master of all things " will purify it: but he hears the prayer of the widow and of her who is divorced without revoking it; for " whatever," says he, " she has vowed against her own soul shall abide to her," and very reasonably; for if, * Gen. xxv. 25. t Gen. ix. 21. J Num. xxx. 4.
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after she has been put away, she has advanced as far as the parts out of the house, so that not only is her place changed, out that she also sins in respect of deeds that she has per- fected, she remains incurable, having no communion of con- versation with her husband, and being deprived also of the advocacy and consolation of her father.
The third description of stripping naked is the middle one, according to which the mind is destitute of reason, having no share in either virtue or vice; and it is with reference to this kind of nakedness which an infant also is partaker of, that the expression is used which says, " And the two were naked, both Adam and his wife;" and the meaning of it is this, neither did their intellect understand, nor did their outward senses perceive this nakedness; but the former was devoid of all power of understanding, and naked; and the latter was destitute of all perception.
XVII. And the expression, " they were not ashamed," we will examine hereafter: for there are three ideas brought for- ward in this passage. Shamelessness, modesty, and a state of indifference, in which one is neither shameless nor modest Now shamelessness is the property of a worthless person, and modesty the characteristic of a virtuous one; but the state of being neither modest nor shameless, is a sign of a person who is void of comprehension, and who does not act from any settled opinion; and it is of such a one that we are now speaking: for he who has not yet acquired any comprehension of good or evil, is not able to be either shameless or modest, therefore the examples of shamelessness are all the unseemly pieces of conduct, when the mind reveals disgraceful things, while it ought rather to cover them in the shade, instead of which it boasts of and glories in them. It is said also in the case of Miriam, when she was speaking against Moses, "If her father had spit in her face, ought she not to keep herself retired for seven days? "* For the external sense, being really shameless and impudent, though considered as nothing by God the father, in com- parison of him who was faithful in all his house, to whom God himself united the Ethiopian woman, that is to say, unchange- able and well-satisfied opinion, dared to speak against Moses and to accuse him, for the very actions for which he deserved * Numbers xii. 14.
ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 97 to be praised; for this is his greatest praise, that he received the Ethiopian woman, the unchangeable nature, tried in the fire and found honest; for as in the eye, the part which sees is black, so also the part of the soul which sees is what is meant by the Ethiopian woman. Why then, as there are many works of wickedness, does he mention one only, namely, that which is conversant about what is shameful, saying, " they were not ashamed:" but were they not doing wrong, or were they not sinning, or were they not acting indecorously? But the cause is at hand. No, by the only true God, I think nothing so shameful as to suppose that I comprehend with my intellect, or perceive by my outward sense. Is my mind the cause of my comprehending? How so? for does it even comprehend itself, and know what it is, or how it came to exist? And are the outward senses the cause of man's per- ceiving anything? How can it be said to be so, when it is neither understood by itself nor by the mind? Do you not see, that he who fancies that he comprehends is often found to be foolish in his acts of covetousness, in his drunkenness, in his deeds of folly? Where then is his intellectual capacity shown in these actions?
Again, is not the outward sensation often deprived of the power of exercising itself? Are there not times when seeing we do not see, and hearing we do not hear, when the mind has its attention ever so little drawn off to some other object of the intellect, and is applied to the consideration of that? As long as they are both naked, the mind naked of its power of exciting the intellect, and the outward sense of its power of sensation, they have nothing disgraceful in them; but the moment that they begin to display any comprehension, they become masked in shame and insolence: for they will often be found behaviug with simplicity and folly rather than with any sound knowledge, and this not only in particular acts of covet- ousness, or spleen, or folly, but also in the general conduct of life: for when the outward sense has the dominion the mind is enslaved, giving its attention to no one proper object of its intellect, and when the mind is predominant, the untoward sense is seen to be without employment, having no compre- hension of any proper object for its own exercise.
XVIII. " Now the serpent was the most subtle of all the H 98 PHILO JUD^US.
beasts which are upon the earth, which the Lord God made."* Two things having been previously created, that is, mind and outward sense, and these also having been stripped naked in the manner which has already been shown, it follows of necessity that pleasure, which brings these two together, must be the third, for the purpose of facilitating the comprehension of the objects of intellect and of outward sense: for neither could the mind, without the outward sense, be able to compre- hend the nature of any animal or of any plant, or of a stone or of a piece of wood, or, in short, of any substance whatever; nor could the outward sense exercise its proper faculties with- out the mind. Since, therefore, it was necessary for both these things to come together for the due comprehension of these objects, what was it which brought them together except a third something which acted as a bond between them, the two first representing love and desire, and pleasure not ob- taining the dominion and mastery, which pleasure Moses here speaks of symbolically, under the emblem of the serpent. God, who created all the animals on the earth, arranged this order very admirably, for he placed the mind first, that is to say, man, for the mind is the most important part in man; then outward sense, that is the woman; and then proceeding in regular order he came to the third, pleasure. But the powers of these three, and their ages, are different only in the night, for in point of time they are equal; for the soul brings for- ward everything at the same moment with itself: but some things it brings forward in their actuality, and others in their power of existing, even if they have not yet arrived at the end. And pleasure has been represented under the form of the serpent, for this reason, as the motion of the serpent is full of many windings and varied, so also is the motion of pleasure. At first it folds itself round a man in five ways, for the plea- sures consist both in seeing, and in hearing, and in taste, and in smell, and in touch. But the most vehement and intense are those which arise from connection with woman, through which the generation of similar beings is appointed by nature to be effected. And yet this is not the only reason why we say that pleasure is various in appearance, namely, because it folds itself around all the divisions of the irrational part of the * Genesis ILL 1.
ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 99 eoul, but because it also folds itself with many windings around each separate part. For instance, the pleasures derived from sight are various, there is all the pleasure which arises from the contemplation of pictures or statues; and all other works which are made by art delight the sight. So also do the different stages through which plants go while budding and flowering and bearing fruit; and likewise the diversified beauty of the different animals. In the same manner the flute gives pleasure to the sense of hearing, as does the harp, and every kind of instrument, and the harmonious voices of the irrational animals, of swallows, of nightingales; and likewise the melody of such rational beings as nature has made musical, the tune- ful voice of the harp-players, and of those who represent comedy, or tragedy, or any other histrionic performance.
XIX. Why need we enlarge on the pleasures of the belly? For we may almost say that there are as many varieties of pleasure as there are of gentle flavours which are presented to the belly, and which excite the outward sense. Was it not then, with great propriety that pleasure, which is derived from many varied sources, was presented to an animal endowed with varied faculties? On this account, too, that part in us which is analogous to the people, and which acts the part of a multi- tude, when it seeks " the houses in Egypt,"* that is to say, in its corporeal habitation, becomes entangled in pleasures which bring on death; not that death which is a separation of soul and body, but that which is the destruction of the soul by vice. For Moses says, " And the Lord God sent among the people deadly serpents, and they bit the people, and a great multi- tude of the children of Israel died."f For in real truth there is nothing which so much bringeth death upon the soul as an immoderate indulgence in pleasures. And that which perishes is not the dominant portion in us but the subject one, that which acts the part of the multitude; and it receives death up to this point, namely, until it turns to repentance, and confesses its sin,: for the Israelites, coming to Moses, say, "We have sinned in that we have spoken against the Lord and against you; pray, therefore, for us to the Lord, and let him take away the serpents from us." It is well put here, not wo have sinned because we have spoken against the Lord, but because we were inclined to sin we have spoken against the * Numbers xxL. 5. + Numbers xxi. 6.
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Lord, for when the mind sins and departs from virtue, it blames divine things, imputing its own sins to God.