On Sobriety 13

¹So much for the “widening.” But we must also consider who is meant, when he prays that “he” should dwell in the houses of Shem. For this is not clearly shewn. On the one hand, we may suggest that “he” is the Ruler of the universe. For what more worthy house could be found for God throughout the whole world of creation, than a soul that is perfectly purified, which holds moral beauty to be the only good and ranks all others which are so accounted, as but satellites and subjects? ²But God is said to inhabit a house not in the sense of dwelling in a particular place, for He contains all things and is contained by none, but in the sense that His special providence watches over and cares for that spot. For every master of a house must needs have the care of that house laid on him as a charge. ³Verily let everyone on whom the goodness of God’s love has fallen as rain, pray that he may have for his tenant the All-ruler who shall exalt this petty edifice, the mind, high above the earth and join it to the ends of heaven. ⁴And indeed the literal story seems to agree with this interpretation. For in Shem we have the foundation, the root, as it were, of noble qualities and from that root sprung up wise Abraham, a tree yielding sweet nutriment, and his fruit was Isaac, the nature that needs no voice to teach him but his own, and from Isaac’s seed again come the virtues of the laborious life in which Jacob exercised himself to mastery, Jacob trained in the wrestling-bout with the passions, with the angels of reason to prepare him for the conflict. ⁵Once more Jacob is the source of the twelve tribes, of whom the oracles say that they are “the palace and priesthood of God” (Exod. 19:6), thus following in due sequence the thought originated in Shem, in whose houses it was prayed that God might dwell. For surely by “palace” is meant the King’s house, which is holy indeed and the only inviolable sanctuary. ⁶Perhaps, however, the words of the prayer refer to Japhet also, that he may make the houses of Shem his resort. For it is well to pray on behalf of him who holds bodily and external advantages to be forms of the good, that he should return to one only, even that which belongs to the soul, and not throughout his whole life fail to gain the true conception, nor think that health or wealth or the like, which are shared by the most wicked and abominable of men, are true goods. No, such participation in the good as is real and true is never found in association with what is worthless, for good by its very nature can have no partnership with evil. ⁷And that is why this treasure is laid up in one place only—the soul—for in beauty of soul none of the foolish has part or lot. ⁸This is the prayer which the prophetic scripture declares should be the prayer of the man of worth for anyone of those who are his familiars—even “return to me” (Gen. 49:22)—the prayer that he may return to the mind of him who prays, and, welcoming moral beauty as the only good, leave behind him in the race those conceptions of the good which are voiced by the perversely minded. Let him then dwell in the houses of the soul of him who holds that moral beauty is the only good, and merely sojourn in the houses of the others, who value also bodily and external things. ⁹One point further. It is with good reason that Moses writes down the fool as the slave of them who lay claim to virtue, either that promoted to serve under a higher control he may lead a better life, or that, if he cling to his iniquity, his masters may chastise him at their pleasure with the absolute authority which they wield as rulers.