De Fuga Et Inventione

On one occasion Moses was urged on, by a desire of learning, to investigate the causes through which the most necessary of the things in the world are brought to perfection; for seeing how many things come to an end, and are produced afresh in creation, being again destroyed, and again abiding, he marvelled, and was amazed, and cried out, saying, "The bush (βάτος) burns, and is not consumed." [*](Exodus iii. 2. )

For he does not trouble his head about the inaccessible (ἄβατος) country as being the abode of divine natures. But now that he is about to undertake a labour which will have no success and no end, he is relieved by the mercy and providence of God, the Saviour of all men, who has given warning out of his holy shrine, "Do not approach near this place," which is equivalent to, Do not approach this consideration; for it is a business requiring more labour, and more energy, and care, and fondness for investigation than can be suited to human power. But be content with admiring what is created; and do not be over-curious about the causes why each thing is created or destroyed.

"For the place," says God, "on which thou standest is holy ground." [*](Exodus ii. 5. ) What kind of place is that? Is it not plain that it is that which relates to the principles of causes, which is the only one that he has adapted to the divine natures, not thinking any more competent to aim at a clear understanding of the principles of causes?

But he who, out of his desire for learning, has raised his head above the whole world begins to inquire concerning the Creator of the world who this being is who is so difficult to see and whose nature it is so difficult to conjecture, whether he is a body, or an incorporeal being, or something above these things, or whether he is a simple nature like a unit, or a compound being or any ordinary existing thing. And when he sees how difficult to ascertain, and how [*](Exodus iii. 2. ) [*](Exodus ii. 5. )

But nevertheless, though inquiring into the essence of the living God he has heard nothing. For, says God, "thou shalt see my back parts, but my face thou shalt not behold." [*](Exodus xxxiii. 23. ) For it is sufficient for the wise man to know the consequences, and the things which are after God; but he who wishes to see the principal essence will be blinded by the exceeding brilliancy of his rays before he can see it.

Having now said thus much concerning the third head of our subject, we will proceed to the fourth and last of the propositions we proposed to examine, according to which discovery sometimes comes to meet us without there having been any search. To this order belongs every self-taught and self-instructed wise man; for such an one has not been improved by consideration, and care, and labour, but from the first moment of his birth he has found wisdom ready prepared and showered upon him from above from heaven, of which he drinks an unmixed draught and on which he feasts, and continues being intoxicated with a sober intoxication with correctness of reason.

This is the man whom the law calls Isaac, whom the soul did not conceive at one time and bring forth at another, for says the scripture, "having conceived him she brought him forth," [*](Genesis xxi. 2. ) as if without any consideration of time. For it was not a man who was now being thus brought forth, but a conception of the purest character, beautiful rather in its nature than in consequence of any study; for which reason also she who brings him forth is said to have given up the usual manner of women, that is to say her usual, and reasonable, and human customs.

For the self-taught race is something new, and beyond any description, and truly divine, existing not by any human conceptions, but by some inspired frenzy. Are you ignorant that the Hebrews stand in no need of midwives for their delivery? But they, as Moses says, "bring forth before the midwives can arrive," by which is meant that they have nature alone for a coadjutor, without having any need of methods, or arts, or sciences. And Moses gives very beautiful and very natural definitions of what is taught a man by himself; one being such a thing [*](Exodus xxxiii. 23. ) [*](Genesis xxi. 2. )

accordingly, that which is taught by others requires a long time, but what is taught a man by himself is quick, and in a manner independent of time. And the one again has God for its expounder, but the other has man. Now the first definition he has placed in the question, "What is this that thou has found so quickly, O my son?" [*](Genesis xxvii. 20. ) But the other is contained in the answer to this question, "What the Lord God gave unto me."

There is also a third definition of what is taught a man by himself, namely that which of its own accord rises upwards. For it is said in the hortatory injunctions, "Ye shall not sow, neither shall ye reap those things which arise from the earth of their own accord." [*](Genesis xxv. 11 ) For nature has no need of any art since God himself sows those things, and by his agricultural skill brings to perfection, as if they grew of themselves, things which do not grow of themselves, except inasmuch as they stand in need of no human assistance whatever.

But this is not so much a positive exhortation as an announcement of his opinion, for if he had been giving a positive recommendation he would have said, "Do not sow, and do not reap:" but as he is only giving his opinion, he says, "Ye shall not sow, neither shall ye reap." For as to those things with which we meet by the voluntary bounty of nature, of these we cannot find either the beginnings or the ends in ourselves as if we were the causes of them: therefore the beginning is the seed-time and the end the harvest time.

And it is better to understand these things thus: every beginning and every end is spontaneous, that is to say, it is the work of nature and not of ourselves. For instance; what is the beginning of learning. It is plain that it is a nature in the person who is taught which is well calculated to receive the particular subjects of meditation submitted to him. Again what is the beginning of being made perfect? If we are to speak plainly without keeping anything back, it is nature. Therefore he who teaches is also indeed to effect improvement, but it is God alone, the most excellent nature of all, who is able to conduct one to supreme perfection.

He who is bred up among such doctrines as these has everlasting peace, and is released from wearisome and endless [*](Genesis xxvii. 20. ) [*](Genesis xxv. 11 )

Very properly, therefore, is it said, "And the sabbath of the law shall be food for you," speaking figuratively. For the only thing which is really nourishing and really enjoyable is rest in God; which confers the greatest good, undisturbed peace. Peace, therefore, among cities is mixed up with civil war; but the peace of the soul has no mixture in it of any kind of difference.

And the lawgiver appears to me to be recommending most manifestly that kind of discovery which is not preceded by any search, in the following words, "When the Lord thy God shall lead thee into the land which he swore to thy fathers that he would give to thee, large and beautiful cities which thou buildest not, houses full of all good things which thou filledst not, cisterns hewn out of the quarries which thou hewedst not, vineyards and olive gardens which thou plantedst not." [*](Deuteronomy vi. 10. )

You see here the ungrudging abundance of all the great blessings which are ready, and poured forth for man’s possession and enjoyment. And the generic virtues are here likened to cities, because they are of the most comprehensive kind; and the specific virtues are likened to houses, because they are contracted into a narrower circle; and the souls of a good disposition are likened to cisterns, which are well inclined to receive wisdom, as the cisterns are calculated to receive water; and the improvement, and growth, and production of fruit, are compared to vineyards and olive gardens; and the fruit of knowledge is a life of contemplation, which produces unmixed joy, equal to that which proceeds from wine; and a light appreciable only by the intellect, as if from a flame of which oil is the nourishment.

Having now said thus much on the subject of discovery, we will proceed in due order to what comes next in the context. Moses proceeds, "Therefore the angel of the Lord found her sitting by a fountain of water." Now a fountain is spoken of in many senses; in one manner our mind is meant by a fountain, in another the rational habit and instruction; in a third sense a bad disposition is intimated; in a fourth sense a good disposition, the contrary of the preceding; in a fifth sense, the Creator and Father of the universe is himself thus spoken of in a figure; [*](Deuteronomy vi. 10. )

and there are passages written in the sacred scriptures which give proofs of these things. What they are we must now consider. Now in the very beginning of the history of the law there is a passage to the following effect: "And a fountain went up from the earth, and watered all the face of the earth." [*](Genesis ii. 6. )

Those men, then, who are not initiated in allegory and in the nature which loves to hide itself, liken the fountain here mentioned to the river of Egypt, which every year overflows and makes all the adjacent plains a lake, almost appearing to exhibit a power imitating and equal to that of heaven;

for what the heaven during winter bestows on other countries, the Nile affords to Egypt at the height of summer; for the heaven sends rain from above upon the earth, but the river, raining upward from below, which seems a most paradoxical statement, irrigates the corn-fields. And it is starting from this point that Moses has described the Egyptian disposition as an atheistical one, because it values the earth above the heaven, and the things of the earth above the things of heaven, and the body above the soul;