Again, do we not think that the virtues, even if all the characters which they have impressed upon the souls of those who have sought them should become effaced by wicked living, or by any other cause, would nevertheless preserve their own unadulterated and imperishable nature? Therefore, they who have not been duly initiated in instruction, not knowing anything about the differences between wholes and parts, or between genera and species, or about the homonymies which are incidental to these things, mix up all things together in a confused mass.

On which account every one who is a lover of self, by surname Cain, should learn that he has destroyed the namesake of Abel, that is to say species, individuality, the image made according to the model; not the archetypal pattern, nor the genus, nor the idea, which he thinks are destroyed together with animals, though, in fact, they are indestructible. Let any one then say to him, reproving and ridiculing him, What is this that thou hast done, O wretched man? Does not the God-loving opinion which you flatter yourself that you have destroyed, live in the presence of God? But it is of yourself that you have become the murderer, by destroying from out of its seat the only quality by which you could live in a blameless manner.