XXXII. " But of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall not eat." Therefore this tree is not in the Paradise. For God encourages them to eat of every tree that is in the Paradise. But when he forbids them to eat of this tree, it is plain that it is not in the Paradise; and this is in accordance with natural philosophy. For it is there in its essence, as I have said before, and it is not there in its power. For as in wax there are potentially many seals, but in actual fact only one which has been carved on it, so also in the soul, which resembles wax, all impressions whatever are contained poten- tially; but in really one single characteristic which is stamped upon it has possession of it; until it is effaced by some other which makes a deeper and more conspicuous impression.
Again, this, also, may be made the subject of a question. When God recommends men to eat of every tree in the Para- dise, he is addressing his exhortation to one individual: but when he forbids him to eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil he is speaking to him as to many. For in the one case he says, '" Thou mayest freely eat of all; " but in the second instance, " Ye shall not eat; " and " In the day in which ye shall eat," not "thou shalt eat;" and " Ye shall die," not •' Thou shalt die." We must, therefore, say this, — that the first good is rare, imparted to but few; but the evil is comprehensive. On this account it is a hard matter to find one single man wise and faithful, but the number of bad men is beyond all computation. Very appro- priately, therefore, God does not address his exhortation to ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 79 nourish one's self amid the virtues, to one individual, but he encourages many to abstain from extravagant wickedness; for innumerable men are addicted to it.
In the second place, for the due comprehension and adoption of virtue man requires one thing alone, namely reason. But the body not only does not co-operate in it at all, but rather impedes the progress of the reason towards it. For it may be almost called the peculiar task of wisdom to alienate itself from the body and from the corporeal appetites. But for the enjoy- ment of evil it is not only necessary for a man to have mind in some degree, but also senses, and reason, and a body. For the bad man has need of all these things for the completion of his own wickedness. Since how will he be able to divulge the sacred mysteries unless he has the organ of voice? And how will he be able to indulge in pleasures if he be deprived of the belly and the organs of sensation? Very properly, therefore, does Moses address reason alone on the subject of the acquisition of virtue, for reason is, as I have said before, the only thing of which there is need for the establishment of virtue. But for indulgence in vice a man requires many things — soul, and reason, and the external senses of the body; for it is through all these organs that vice is exhibited.
XXXIII. Accordingly God says, " In the day in which ye eat of it ye shall die the death." And yet, though they have eaten of it, they not only do not die, but they even beget children, and are the causes of life to other beings besides themselves. What, then, are we to say? Surely that death is of two kinds; the one being the death of the man, the other the peculiar death of the soul — now the death of the man is the separation of his soul from his body, but the death of the soul is the destruction of virtue and the admission of vice; and con- sequently God calls that not merely " to die," but " to die the death;" showing that he is speaking not of common death, but of that peculiar and especial death which is the death of the soul, buried in its passions and in all kinds of evil. And we may almost say that one kind of death is opposed to the other kind. For the one is the separation of what was pre- viously existing in combination, namely, of body and soul. But this other death, on the contrary, is a combination of them both, the inferior one, the body, having the predominance, and the superior one, the soul, being made subject to it 8 J PHILO JUDjEUS.
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When, therefore, God says, "to die the death," you must remark that he is speaking of that death which is inflicted as punishment, and not of that which exists by the original ordi- nance of nature. The natural death is that one by which the soul is separated from the body. But the one which is inflicted as a punishment, is when the soul dies according to the life of virtue, and lives only according to the life of vice.
Well, therefore, did Heraclitus say this, following the doc- trine of Moses; for he says, " We are living according to the death of those men; and we have died according to their life." As if he had said, Now, when we are alive, we are so though our soul is dead and buried in our body, as if in a tomb. But if it were to die, then our soul would live according to its proper life, being released from the evil and dead body to which it is bound.
THE SECOND BOOK OF THE TREATISE ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS, AFTER THE WORK OF THE SIX DAYS OF CREATION.
I. " And the Lord God said, It is not good for man to be alone: let us make him a help meet for him." Why, 0 pro- phet, is it not good for man to be alone? Because, says he, it is good, that he who is alone should be alone. But God is alone, and by himself, being one; and there is nothing like unto God. So that, since it is good that he who only has a real existence should be alone (for that which is about itself alone is good), it cannot be good for man to be alone. But the fact of God being alone one may receive in this sense; that neither before the creation was there anything with God, nor, since the world has been created, is anything placed in the same rank with him; for he is in need of absolutely nothing whatever.
But the better way of understanding this passage is the fol- lowing: God is alone: a single being: not a combination: a single nature: but each of us, and every other animal in the world, are compound beings: for instance, I myself am made ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 81 up of many things, of soul and body. Again, the soul is made up of a rational part and an irrational part: also of the body, there is one part hot, another cold; one heavy, another light; one dry, another moist. But God is not a compound being, nor one which is made up of many parts, but one which has no mixture with anything else; for whatever could be com- bined with God must be either superior to him, or inferior to him, or equal to him. But there is nothing equal to God, and nothing superior to him, and nothing is combined with him which is worse than himself; for if it were, he himself would be deteriorated; and if he were to suffer deterioration, he would also become perishable, which it is impious even to imagine. Therefore God exists according to oneness and unity; or we should rather say, that oneness exists according to the one God, for all number is more recent than the world, as is also time. But God is older than the world, and is its Creator.
II. But it is not good for any man to be alone. For there are two kinds of men, the one made according to the image of God, the other fashioned out of the earth; for it longs for its own likeness. For the image of God is the antitype of all other things, and every imitation aims at this of which it is the imitation, and is placed in the same class with it. And it is not good for either the man, who was made according to the image of God, to be alone: nor is it any more desirable for the factitious man to be alone, and indeed it is impossible. For the external senses, and the passions, and the vices, and innumerable other things, are combined with and adapted to the mind of this man. But the second kind of man has a help-meet for him, who, in the first place, is created; " For I will make him," says God, " a help-meet for him." And, in the second place, is younger than the object to be helped; for, first of all, God created the mind, and subsequently he pre- pares to make its helper. But all this is spoken allegorically, in accordance with the principles of natural philosophy; for external sensation and the passions of the soul are all younger than the soul, and how they help it we shall see ireafter, but at present we will consider the fact of their ing helpers younger than the object helped. III. As, according to the most skilful physicians and na ral philosophers, the heart appears to be formed before the 82 PHILO JUDiEUS rest of the body, after the manner of the foundation of a house or the keel of a ship, and then the rest of the body is built upon it; on which account, even after death, the phy- sicians say, that the heart still quivers, as having been created before the rest of the body, and being destroyed after it; so also does the dominant portion of the soul appear to be older than the whole of the soul, and the irrational part to be younger; the formation of which Moses has not yet men- tioned, but he is about to give a sketch of it, how the irrational part of the soul is the external sensation, aud the passions which spring from it, especially if the judgments are our own. And this assistant of God is younger, and created, being thus described with perfect propriety.
But now let us see how that part, which was postponed be- fore, acts as an assistant: how does our mind comprehend that such and such a thing is black or white, unless it employs sight as its assistant? and how does it know that the voice of the man who is singing to his harp is sweet, or, on the con- trary, out of tune, if it has not the assistance of the faculty of hearing to guide it? And how can it tell that exhalations are fragrant or foul-smelling, unless it makes use of the sense of • smell as its ally? How again does it judge of the different flavours, except through the instrumentality of its assistant, taste? How can it distinguish between what is rough and what is smooth, except by touch? There is also another class of assistants, as I have already said, namely, the passions: for pleasure also is an assistant, co-operating towards the dura- bility of our race, and in like manner concupiscence, and pain, and fear, biting the soul, lead it to treat nothing with indif- ference. Anger, again, is a defensive weapon, which has been of great sendee to many people, and so too have the other passions in the same manner. On which account Moses has said, with great felicity, " that he was an assistant to himself:" for he is in reality an assistant to the mind, as if be were its brother and near kinsman: for the external sensations and the passions are parts of one soul, and are its offspring.
IV. Now of assistants there are two kinds, the one consist- ing in the passions and the other in the sensations...* * A word or two are lost here. Pfeiffer thinks that several sentences are wanting; and there is a great want of connection between what follows and what has gone before.
ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 83 But the prior kind is that of generation, for Moses says, " And God proceeded and made all the beasts of the field out of the earth, and all the birds of heaven; and he brought them to Adam to see what he would call them, and whatever Adam called any living soul that became its name." You see here who are our assistants, the beasts of the soul, the passions. For after God had said, " I will make him a help- meet for him," Moses adds subsequently, " He made the beasts," as if the beasts also were assistants to us. But these are not, properly speaking, assistants, but are called so only in a catachrestic manner, by a kind of abuse of language, for they are found in reality to be enemies to man. As also in the case of cities, the allies turn out at times to be traitors and deserters; and in the case of friendship, flatterers are found to be enemies instead of companions; and Moses here speaks of the heaven and the field synonymously, describing the mind in this allegorical manner; for the mind, like the field, has innumerable periods of rising and budding forth; and, like the heaven, has brilliant, and divine, and happy characteristics of nature.
But the passions he compares to beasts and birds, because they injure the mind, being untamed and wild, and because, after the manner of birds, they descend upon the intellect; for their onset is swift and difficult to withstand; and the word " besides," as attached to " he made," is not super- fluous. Why so? because he has previously said, that the beasts were formed before the creation of man, and he shows it in the following words, which are an account of what was done on the sixth day.
" And God said, Let the earth bring forth living creatures after their kind, four-footed animals, and creeping things, and wild beasts." Why, then, is it that he makes other animals now, not being content with those already existing? now this must be stated according to the principles of moral phi- losophy. The species of evil are abundant in created man, so that the most evil things are continually produced in him; and this other thing must be affirmed on principles of natural philosophy. First of all, in the six days he created the differ- ent kinds of passions, and the ideas, but now, in addition to them, he is creating the species. On which account Moses says, " And besides he made..." and that what had been 84 PHILO JUD^EUS.
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previously created were genera is plain from what he says, '• Let the earth bring forth living souls," not according to species but according to genus. And this is found to be the course taken by God in all cases; for before making the spe- cies he completes the genera, as he did in the case of man: for having first modelled the generic man, in whom they say that the male and female sexes are contained, he afterwards created the specific man Adam.
V. This therefore he denominated the species of assistants, but the other part of the creation, the description, that is, of the formation of the external sensations, was postponed till he began to form the woman; and having put off this he then gives an account of the distribution of names; and this is an explanation, partly figurative and partly literal, which is worthy of our admiration. It is literal, inasmuch as the Law- giver has attributed the imposition of names to the first-born man; for those also among the Greeks, who study philosophy, say that they were wise men who first gave names to things: but Moses speaks more correctly in the first place, because he attributes this giving of names, not to some of those men who lived in early times, but to the first man who was created upon the earth; so that, just as he himself was created to be the beginning of creation to all other animals, he might also be considered the beginning of conversation and language: for if there were no such things as names there could be no such thing as language: and, secondly, because, if many dif- ferent persons gave names, they must have been different and devoid of all connexion, since different persons would have given different names: but if only one person did so, the name given by one was sure to be adapted to the thing: and the same name was likely to be a token to every one of the exist- ing things signified by it.
VI. But the moral meaning of this passage is as follows: — We often use the expression r/ instead of dux, ri; (why?) a3 when we say, why (n) have you washed yourself? why (ri) are you walking? why (ri) are you conversing? for in all these cases ri is used instead of dia, ri; when therefore Moses says, " to see what he would call them," you must understand him as if he had said dioc ri (why), instead of ri (what): and the mind will invite and embrace each of these meanings. Is it then only for the sake of what is necessary that the mor- ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 85 tal race is of necessity implicated in passions and vices? or is it also on account of that which is immoderate and super- fluous? And again, is it because of the requirements of the earth-born man, or because the mind judges them to be most excellent and admirable things; as for instance, is it necessary for every created thing to enjoy pleasure? But the bad man flies to pleasure as to a perfect good, but the good man seeks it only as a necessary; for without pleasure nothing whatever is done among the human race.
Again, the bad man considers the acquisition of riches as the most perfect good possible; but the good man looks upon riches only as a necessary and useful thing. Very naturally, therefore, God desires to see and to learn how the mind de- nominates and appreciates each of these things, whether it looks upon them as good, or as things indifferent, or as evil in themselves, but nevertheless in some respects necessary. On which account, thinking that everything which he invited towards himself, and embraced as a living soul, was of equal value and importance with the soul, this became the name, not only of the thing which was thus invited, but also of him who invited it: as for instance, if the man embraced pleasure, he was called a man devoted to pleasure; if he embraced ap- petite, he was called a man of appetite; if he invited intem- perance, he himself also acquired the name of intemperate; if he admitted cowardice, he was called cowardly; and so on in the case of the other passions. For as he who has any dis- tinctive qualities according to the virtues, is called from that virtue with which he is especially endowed, prudent, or temperate, or just, or courageous, as the case may be; so too in respect of the vices, a man is called unjust, or foolish, or unmanly, when he has invited and embraced these habits of mind and conduct.
VII. " And God cast a deep trance upon Adam, and sent him to sleep; and he took one of his ribs," and so on. The literal statement conveyed in these words is a fabulous one; for how can any one believe that a woman was made of a rib of a man, or, in short, that any human being was made out of another? And what hindered God, as he had made man out of the earth, from making woman in the same manner? For the Creator was the same, and the material was almost inter- minable, from which every distinctive quality whatever was 86 PHILO JUD^EUS.
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made. And why, when there were so many parts of a man, did not God make the woman out of some other part rather than out of one of his ribs? Again, of which rib did he make her? And this question would hold even if we were to say, that he had only spoken of two ribs; but in truth he has not specified their number. Was it then the right rib, or the left rib? Again, if he filled up the place of the other with flesh, was not the one which he left also made of flesh? and indeed our ribs are like sisters, and akin in all their parts, and they consist of flesh. What then are we to say? ordinary custom calls the ribs the strength of a man; for we say that a man has ribs, which is equivalent to saying that he has vigour; and we say that a wrestler is a man with strong ribs, when we mean to express that he is strong: and we say that a harp- player has ribs, instead, of saying that he has energy and power in his singing.
Now that this has been premised we must also say, that the mind, while naked and free from the entanglement of the body (for our present discussion is about the mind, while it is as yet entangled in nothing) has many powers, namely, the possessive power, the progenitive power, the power of the soul, the power of reason, the power of comprehension, and part of others innumerable both in their genus and species. Now the possessive power is common to it with other inanimate things, with stocks and stones, and it is shared by the things in us, which are like stones, namely, by our bones. And natural power extends also over plants: and there are parts in us which have some resemblance to plants, namely, our nails and our hair: and nature is a habit already put in motion, but the soul is a habit which has taken to itself, in addition, imagi- nation and impetuosity; and this power also is possessed by man in common with the irrational animals; and our mind has something analogous to the soul of an irrational animal.
Again, the power of comprehension is a peculiar property of the mind; and the reasoning power is perhaps common to the more divine natures, but is especially the property of the mortal nature of man: and this is a twofold power, one kind being that in accordance with which we are rational creatures, partaking of mind; and the other kind being that faculty by which we converse.
There is also another power in the soul akin to these, the ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 87 power of sensation, of which we are now speaking; for Moses is describing nothing else on tins occasion except the form- ation of the external sense, according to energy and according to reason.
VIII. For immediately after the creation of the mind it was necessary that the external sense should be created, as an assistant and ally of the mind; therefore God having entirely perfected the first, proceeded to make the second, both in rank and power, being a certain created form, an external sense according to energy, created for the perfection and com- pletion of the whole soul, and for the proper comprehension of such subject matter as might be brought before it. How then was this second thing created? As Moses himself says in a subsequent passage, when the mind was gone to sleep: for, in real fact, the external sense then comes forward when the mind is asleep. And again, when the mind is awake the out- ward sense is extinguished; and the proof of this is, that when we desire to form an accurate conception of anything, we retreat to a desert place, we shut our eyes, we stop up our ears, we discard the exercise of our senses; and so, when the mind rises up again and awakens, the outward sense is put an end to.
Let us now consider another point, namely, how the mind goes to sleep: for when the outward sense is awakened and has become excited, when the sight beholds any works of painting or of sculpture beautifully wrought, is not the mind then without anything on which to exercise its functions, con- templating nothing which is a proper subject for the intellect? What more? When the faculty of hearing is attending to some melodious combination of sound, can the mind turn itself to the contemplation of its proper objects? by no means. And it is much more destitute of occupation, when taste rises up and eagerly devotes itself to the pleasures of the belly; on which account Moses, being alarmed lest some day or other the mind might not merely go to sleep, but might become ab- solutely dead, says in another place, " And it shall be to you a peg in your girdle; and it shall be, that when you sit down you shall dig in it, and, heaping up earth, shall cover your shame."* Speaking symbolically, and giving the name of peg to reason which digs up secret affairs; and he bids him to • Deuteronomy xxiii. 1 3.
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bear it upon the affection with which he ought to be girded, and not to allow it to slacken and become loosened; and this must be done when the mind, departing from the intense con- sideration of objects perceptible by the intellect, is brought down to the passions, and sits down, yielding to, and being guided by, the necessities of the body: and this is the case when the mind, being absorbed in luxurious associations, for- gets itself, being subdued by the things which conduct it to pleasure, and so we become enslaved, and yield ourselves up to unconcealed impurity.
But if reason be able to purify the passion, then neither when we drink do we become intoxicated, nor when we eat do we become indolent through satiety, but we feast soberly with- out indulging in folly. Therefore, the awakening of the out- ward senses is the sleep of the mind; and the awakening of the mind is the discharge of the outward senses from all occu- pation. Just as when the sun arises the brightness of all the rest of the stars becomes invisible; but when the sun sets, they are seen. And so, like the sun, the mind, when it is awakened, overshadows the outward senses, but when it goes to sleep it permits them to shine.
IX. After this preface we must now proceed to explain the words: " The Lord God," says Moses, " cast a deep trance upon Adam, and sent him to sleep." He speaks here with great correctness, for a trance and perversion of the mind is its sleep. And the mind is rendered beside itself when it ceases to be occupied about the things perceptible only by the intellect which present themselves to it. And when it is not energizing with respect to them it is asleep. And the expres- sion, " it is in a trance," is very well employed, as it means that it is perverted and changed, not by itself, but by God, who presents to it, and brings before it, and sends upon it the change which occurs to it. For the case is this: — if it were in my own power to be changed, then whenever I chose I should exercise this power, and whenever I did not choose I should continue as I am, without any change. But now change attacks me from an opposite direction, and very often when I am desirous to turn my intellect to some fitting sub- ject, I am swallowed up by an influx contrary to what is fitting; and on the other hand, when I conceive an idea respecting something unseemly, I discard it by means of ON THE ALLEGORIES OF THE SACRED LAWS. 89 pleasant notions while God by his own grace pours into mv soul a sweet stream instead of the salt flood. It is necessary therefore, that every created thing should at times be changed. For this is a property of every created thing, just as it is an attribute of God to be unchangeable. But of these beings who have been changed, some remain in their altered state till their final and complete destruction, though others are only exposed to the ordinary vicissitudes of human nature; and they are immediately preserved.
On which account Moses says that " God will not suffer the destroyer to enter into your houses to smite them."* For he does permit the destroyer (and change is the destruction of the soul) to enter into the soul, in order to exhibit the pecu- liar characteristic of the created being. But God will not permit the offspring of the seeing Israel to be changed in such a manner as to be stricken down by the change; but he will compel it to emerge and rise up again like one who rises up from the deep, and so he will cause it to be saved.
X. " He took one of his ribs." He took one of the many powers of the mind, namely, that power which dwells in the outward senses. And when he uses the expression, " He took,'' we are not to understand it as if he had said, " He took away," but rather as equivalent to " He counted, He examined; " as he says in another place, " Take the chief of the spoils of the captivity."f What, then, is it which he wishes to show? Sensa- tion is spoken of in a twofold manner; — the one kind being according to habit, which exists even when we are asleep, and the other being according to energy. Now, in the former kind, the one according to habit, there is no use: for we do not com- prehend any one of the objects presented to our view by its means. But there is use in the second, in that which exists according to energy; for it is by means of this that we arrive at a comprehension of the objects perceptible by the outward senses.