Quod Deterius Potiori Insidiari Soleat

but I am not able to perceive that he is given, and it is said in the sacred scriptures, "I give thee as a God to Pharaoh," and yet what is given is the patient, not the agent; but he that is truly living must be the agent, and beyond all question cannot be the patient. [*](Genesis xii. 1. ) [*](Genesis xii. 7. ) [*](Exodus xxxiii. 7. ) [*]( Exodus iii. 14. )

What then is inferred from these facts? Why, that the wise man is called the God of the foolish man, but he is not God in reality, just as a base coin of the apparent value of four drachmas is not a four drachma piece. But when he is compared with the living God, then he will be found to be a man of God; but when he is compared with a foolish man, he is accounted a God to the imagination and in appearance, but he is not so in truth and essence.

Why then do you talk nonsense, saying, "If thou castest me forth from off the earth, and from thee I shall be hidden." For one might say on the contrary, if I remove thee from the earth by part of thee, then I will manifestly show thee my own image. And a proof of this is, thou wilt depart from before the face of God, but when thou hast departed thou wilt not the less inhabit thy earthly body. For Moses says, afterwards, "And Cain went forth from before the face of God and dwelt in the earth," [*](Genesis iv. 16. ) so that when thou art cast out from the earth, thou art not hidden from the living God; but when thou desertest him thou takest refuge on earth in a mortal country.

And indeed it will not be the case, that every one who findeth thee will hide thee, as thou sayest, speaking sophistically. For that which is found, is found in every case by two people, by one who resembles itself, or by one who is dissimilar. By one who resembles itself according to the kindred and relationship which exists in all things, and by him who is not like, according to the contrary unlikeness. The one, therefore, that is like, endeavours to preserve that which resembles itself, and that which is dissimilar endeavours to destroy that which differs from it.

And let them know that Cain, and all other wicked men will not be slain by any one who meets them, but that evil doers imitating their kindred and connected wickednesses, will become guardians and preservers of them; but all those who have cultivated prudence or any other virtue, will destroy them if they can, as irreconcileable enemies. For, in short, all bodies and all things are preserved by the things which are akin to and attached to them, but are destroyed by those that are alien and hostile to them.

On this account, also, the oracle which bears testimony against this pretended simplicity of Cain, says, "You do not think as you say." [*](Genesis xli. 5. GRC: This reference looks like a mistake. ) For you say, indeed, that whosoever finds out the [*](Genesis iv. 16. ) [*](Genesis xli. 5. GRC: This reference looks like a mistake. )

Therefore, one must suppose that all these things are said figuratively and allegorically; and perhaps what God means to set before us here is something of this sort.

The irrational part of the soul is divided into seven parts, the senses of seeing, of smelling, of hearing, of tasting, and of touch, the organs of speech, and the organs of generation. If, therefore, any one were to slay the eighth, that is to say, Cain, the ruler of them all, he would also paralyse all the seven. For they are all confirmed by the vigorous strength of the mind, and they all feel weak simultaneously with any weakness exhibited by the mind, and they all endure relaxation and complete dissolution in consequence of the destruction which complete wickedness brings upon them.

Now these seven senses are unpolluted and pure in the soul of the wise man, and here also they are found worthy of honour. But in that of the foolish man they are impure and polluted, and as I said before, punished, that is, they are worthy of punishment and chastisement.

At all events, when the Creator determined to purify the earth by means of water, and that the soul should receive purification of all its unspeakable offences, having washed off and effaced its pollutions after the fashion of a holy purification, he recommended him who was found to be a just man, who was not borne away by the violence of the deluge, to enter into the ark, that is to say, into the vessel containing the soul, namely, the body, and to lead into it "seven of all clean beasts, male and female," [*](Genesis vii. 2. ) thinking it proper that virtuous reason should employ all the pure parts of the irrational portion of man.

And this injunction which the lawgiver laid down, is of necessity applicable to all wise men; for they have their sense of sight purified, their sense of hearing thoroughly [*](Genesis vii. 2. )

And every one of the seven outward senses is in one respect male, and in another, female. For when they are stationary, or when it is in motion, they are stationary while quiescent in sleep, and they are in motion while they are energising in their waking state; and the one in accordance with habit and tranquillity, as being subject to passion, is called the female; and the one which exists according to motion and energy, as one that is only conceived in action, is called the male.

Thus, in the wise man, the seven senses appear to be pure; and on the contrary in the wicked man, they appear to be all liable to punishment. For how great a multitude of things do we imagine to be each day wrongly represented by our eyes, which go over to colours and shapes, and to things which it is not lawful to see? And how so great a multitude of things suffer similar treatment from the ears which follow all kinds of sounds? How many too are misrepresented by the organs of smelling and of taste, and by flavours and vapours, and other things led on according to innumerable variations?

I say nothing of that multitude of persons whom the unrestrainable impetuosity of an unbridled tongue has destroyed, or the incurable violence which leads man on to carnal connections with intemperate appetite. Cities are full, and all the earth from one side to the other, is full of these evils, in consequence of which, continual and unceasing and terrible wars are set on foot among men, even in times of peace, both publicly and privately.

On which account it appears to me that all men who are not utterly uneducated would choose to be mutilated and to become blind, rather than to see what is not fitting to be seen, to become deaf rather than to hear pernicious discourses, and to have their tongues cut out if that were the only way to prevent their speaking things, which ought not to be spoken.

At all events, they say that some wise men, when they have been tortured on the wheel to make them betray secrets which are not worthy to be divulged, have bitten out their tongues, and so have inflicted on their torturers a more grievous torture than they themselves were suffering, as they

Moses says in the next passage that the Lord God set a mark upon Cain in order to prevent any one who found him from slaying him; but what this mark is, he has not shown, although he is in the habit of explaining the nature of everything by a sign, as he does in the affairs of Egypt, where God changed his rod into a serpent, and withered the hand of Moses till it became like snow, and turned the river into blood.

Or may we not suppose that this mark was set upon Cain to prevent his being slain, as a token that he would never be destroyed? For he has never once mentioned his death in the whole of the law, showing enigmatically that, like that fabulous monster Scylla, so also folly is an undying evil, which never entirely perishes, and yet which as to its capability of dying receives all time, and is never wholly free from death. And I would that the opposite event might happen, that all evils might be utterly eradicated, and might endure total destruction; but as it is they are constantly budding forth, and inflict an incurable disease on all who are once infected by them.