De Plantatione

We cannot therefore raise any question as to why it was ordained that all the different species of animals should be collected in the ark which was made at the time of the great deluge, while more were brought into the Paradise. For the ark was an emblem of the body, which of necessity therefore contained all the most tameable and ferocious evils of the passions and vices; but the Paradise contained only the virtues: and the virtues do not receive anything savage or in short anything destitute of reason.

And Moses also speaks very carefully, not representing the man who was made after God’s own image, but the man who was formed of clay, as the one who was placed in the paradise. For the one who was made after the image of God, and stamped with the truth of God, does, as it appears to me, in no respect differ from the tree which bore as its fruit everlasting life. For they are both imperishable, and have both been thought worthy of the most central position in the dominant part of man. For it is said that "the tree of life is in the midst of the Paradise." But the other man, he of the composite and more earthly body, who has no justification in uncreated and simple nature, the cultivator of which is the only person who knows how to dwell in the house and in the courts of the Lord. For Jacob is represented "as a plain man dwelling in a house," [*](Genesis xxv. 27, where the expression, however, is "dwelling tents." ) having a disposition full of ingenuity, and compounded and made up of all kinds of materials.

It was natural therefore to place and firmly root the mind in the middle of the paradise, that is, of the universal world, having in itself faculties which draw it in contrary directions, so that it should be kept in a state of doubt when called upon to discriminate as to what it should choose and what it should avoid, since if it chose the better part it would reap [*](Genesis xxv. 27, where the expression, however, is "dwelling tents." )

Such then are the trees which the only wise God has planted in rational souls. But Moses, pitying those who were exiled and compelled to quit the paradise of the virtues, addresses a prayer to the absolute authority of God and to his merciful and propitious powers, entreating that in the place from which the earthly mind, Adam, was banished, there a people capable of seeing the truth might be planted.

For he says, "Bring them in and plant them in the mountain of thy inheritance which thou dost give them; thou hast made them to sit in thy seat, O Lord; in the sanctuary, O Lord, which thy hands have made. The Lord shall shall be king of ages, for ever and ever." [*](Exodus xv. 17. )

Therefore he had learnt, as plainly as any man that ever lived, that God, having fixed the roots and seeds of everything down in the earth, is the cause also of the greatest of all plants, namely this world, shooting up; which world he here seems to speak of enigmatically in the song which I have just quoted, where he calls it the mountain of his inheritance; since that which is made is the most appropriate possession and inheritance, of him who has made it.

Therefore he prays that we may be planted in it, not in order that we may become irrational and unmanageable in our natures; but that, in due obedience to the arrangement of the all-perfect governor, imitating his perpetual and undeviating consistency, we may live a temperate and innocent life. For to be able to live in a strict uniformity with nature, is what the men of old have defined as the end of happiness.