Surely when the Practiser submitted to “shepherd the sheep of Laban” (Gen. 30:36), of him, that is, whose thoughts are fixed on colours and shapes and lifeless bodies of every kind, he felt that it was a task most congenial to virtue. And note that he does not tend all the sheep, “but those that were left” ( ibid. ). What does this mean? Unreasonableness is of two kinds. One is the unreasonableness that defies convincing reason, as when men call the foolish man unreasonable. The other is the state from which reason is eliminated, as with the unreasoning animals. The first of these, the unreasoning movements of the mind, I mean the activities which defy convincing reason, are the charge of the sons of Laban, who were “three days’ journey away” ( ibid. ), a parable which tells us that they were severed for all time from a good life; for time has three divisions, compounded as it is of past, present and future. But the forces which are unreasonable in the other sense, not those which defy right reason, but merely lack reason (and in these the unreasoning animals participate), the Man of Practice will not disdain to tend. He feels that error has befallen them not so much through sinful wickedness, as through untutored ignorance. Ignorance is an involuntary state, a light matter, and its treatment through teaching is not hopeless. But wickedness is a wilful malady of the soul, and its action is such that to remove it is hard, if indeed it is not hopeless. Thus Jacob’s sons, trained under an all-wise father, may go down into Egypt the passion-loving body, and meet with Pharaoh the disperser of the good, who deems himself the sovereign of the animal and the composite; yet they will not be dazzled by his lavish pomp and splendour, but will confess that they are shepherds of sheep, and not only they, but their fathers also (Gen. 47:3).
On the Sacrifices of Abel and Cain 11
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