導師 第 1 章 第 9/15 段

As, then, with beauty, so also the flower delights when it is beheld; and one ought, while enjoying beautiful things through sight, to glorify the Creator.

But the wearing of them is harmful, and it passes the more swiftly, being punished with repentance.

Indeed, their fleeting nature is at once and most plainly exposed;

for both wither away, the flower as well as beauty.

But even those who touch them—the one it chilled, the other it inflamed.

In a word, the enjoyment of these two apart from sight is an outrage, not a luxury;

It is fitting for us to luxuriate, as in paradise, soberly indeed, since we follow the Scripture in truth.

We must regard the husband as the wife's crown, marriage as the husband's crown, and the children of both as the flowers of marriage—the very flowers which the divine Husbandman gathers from the meadows of the flesh.

"Children's children are the crown of old men, and the fathers are the glory of children," Scripture says.

But for us, the Father of all is our glory, and Christ is the crown of the whole Church.

Just as roots and herbs do, so also the flowers have their own peculiar qualities—some beneficial, some harmful, and some indeed dangerous.

Ivy, for instance, cools, while the walnut gives off a drowsy vapour, as its very name shows when its etymology is traced.

The narcissus is a heavy-scented flower, and its name itself convicts it, for it produces a numbness (narke) in the nerves.

But the exhalations of roses and violets, being gently cooling, contract and relieve heaviness of the head.

But to us it is not permitted to join in any drunken revelry at all, nor even to indulge in wine.

Indeed, saffron and the flower of the henna gently lead one into untroubled sleep.

Many of these, when the brain is naturally cold, warm it again by their exhalations, dispersing the superfluities of the head by their subtlety.

Hence too the rose got its name, they say, because it sends forth a copious stream (rheuma) of fragrance.

And for this reason it also withers the more quickly.

But not even among the ancient Greeks was the use of crowns yet in vogue.

For neither the suitors nor the luxury-loving Phaeacians made use of them.

At the contests, first came the giving of the prizes, second the procession (and collection), third the showering of leaves, and last the crown—luxury having spread in Greece after the Persian Wars.

Those, then, who are trained by the Word abstain from crowns—not because they suppose that the crown binds and confines the reason seated in the brain, nor because the crown is a symbol of revelling insolence, but rather... because it has been dedicated to idols.

Sophocles, for instance, called the narcissus the ancient garland of the great gods, meaning the gods of the underworld.

And Sappho crowns the Muses with the rose.

for not from the beginning... of the roses from Pieria.

And they say that Hera delights in the lily, and Artemis in the myrtle.

For even though flowers were chiefly made for man's sake, yet the foolish, having received them, have misused them not for their own grateful enjoyment but for the thankless service of demons; therefore we must abstain from them for conscience' sake.

The crown is a symbol of untroubled freedom from care.

For this reason they crown the dead as well, and by the same reasoning the idols too—thus by their very act bearing witness to them that they are but dead.

For the Bacchic revellers do not even perform their orgies without crowns.

And when they have wrapped themselves about with flowers, they are inflamed toward the... rite.

For the fair crown of amaranth (the unfading flower) is laid up for the one who has lived well as a citizen.

This flower the earth has not the room to bear.

Heaven alone knows how to bring it to fruit.

Moreover, since we have heard that the Lord was crowned with thorns, it would be senseless for us, while reveling, to deck ourselves with flowers, thus insulting the solemn Passion of the Lord.

For the Lord's crown prophetically signified us, who were once fruitless, but are now set about Him through the Church, of which He is the Head.

But it is also a type of faith: of life because of the substance of the wood, of gladness because of the appellation "crown," and of peril because of the thorn.

For it is not possible... to approach the Word without bloodshed.

But this woven crown withers, and the plaiting of crookedness is undone, and the flower dries up.

For the glory of those who have not believed on the Lord fades away.

But they crowned Jesus as one lifted up, bearing witness against their own ignorance.

For this very thing the hard-hearted do not understand to be a cunningly devised prophecy fulfilled—the thing which they themselves call an outrage against the Lord.

The erring people did not know the Lord; they were not circumcised in their reasoning, they were not enlightened in their darkness, they did not see God, they denied the Lord, they forfeited their being Israel, they persecuted God, they hoped to insult the Word—and Him whom they crucified as a malefactor, they crowned as a king.

Therefore the very man on whom they did not believe, they shall come to acknowledge as the man-loving God, the Lord and the Righteous One.

For in that they provoked Him to display Himself as Lord, they have borne witness to Him as He was being exalted, binding about the one exalted above every name the diadem of righteousness... by means of the ever-living thorn.

This diadem, being hostile to those who plot against Him, kept them off; but being friendly to those who gather together with Him in the Church, it fenced and protected them.

This crown is a flower for those who have believed on the... glorified One, but it draws blood and chastises those who have disbelieved.

Indeed, it is also a symbol of the Master's mighty achievement, in that He bore upon His head and upon the ruling part of His body all our wickednesses, by which we were pierced.

For having by His own Passion delivered us from offences and sins and such thorns, and having brought the devil to nought, He fittingly said in His triumph:

"O death, where is thy sting?" And we, for our part, gather grapes from thorns and figs from brambles.

But there are those who are torn into wounds—those against whom He stretched out His hands toward a disobedient and fruitless people.

I could here tell you yet another mystical meaning.

For when the all-powerful Lord of all began to give His law by the Word, and willed that His power should be made manifest to Moses, a God-like vision was shown to him—of light taking shape upon a burning bush.

Now the bush is a thorny plant.

And when the Word ceased from lawgiving and from His sojourn among men, the Lord was again mystically crowned with the thorn, departing from here to that place whence He had come down, recapitulating the beginning of His ancient descent—so that He who first appeared in the bush, the Word, being afterward taken up by means of the thorn, might show all things to be the work of one power, being One as the Father is One, the beginning and the end of the age.

But I have wandered from the pedagogic style by bringing in the didactic mode; so now I return again to the matter before us.

We have shown, then, that the delight derived from flowers, and the benefit from perfumes and incense, is not to be rejected when used in the manner of a remedy for healing, and sometimes also for sober refreshment.

But if some should say, "What grace, then, is there in flowers for those who do not use them?"—let them know that perfumes are prepared from these very flowers and are most beneficial.

It stirs the bile and is softening.

And the oil of narcissus, made from the narcissus, is as beneficial as that of the lily.

And the myrtle oil, made from myrtle berries and the myrtle plant, is astringent, restraining the exhalations from the body.

And that made from... roses is cooling.

For in general these too have been created for our useful service.

"Hearken to me," Scripture says, "and bud forth like a rose planted by streams of waters; give forth fragrance like frankincense, and bless the Lord for His works."

And much might be said concerning these matters, since we maintain that flowers and aromatics have come into being for our necessary benefits, and not for the wanton excesses of luxury.

But if indeed something is to be conceded, let it suffice them to enjoy the scent of the flowers, but let them not crown themselves with them.

For the Father takes great care of man, and to him alone bestows His own art.

Water and fire and iron and milk, fine wheat flour and honey, the blood of the grape and oil and clothing—all these things are for good to the godly.

But that we may pass on from here to the subject of sleep, mindful of the precepts of temperance, this must now be said.

For after the feast, when we have blessed God for the sharing of these enjoyments and for the passing of the day, the Word must be summoned as we go to sleep—dismissing the extravagance of the bedding: the gold-spangled rugs and the gold-embroidered smooth coverlets, the purple robes of soft texture, the costly upper garments, the artistically made purple blankets, the woolly cloaks laid over them, and beds softer than sleep itself.

For besides the reproach of such voluptuousness, sleeping in downy plumes is harmful, since the bodies sink as into a yawning abyss owing to the softness of the bedding.

For neither does it support those who turn over while resting in them, because of the bank-like rising of the bedding on either side of the body.

Nor does it allow the food to be digested, but rather burns it up, which indeed corrupts the nourishment.

But rollings about on even beds, being as it were a natural exercise of sleep, contribute to the proper assimilation of food.

And those who are able to roll about on even beds, having this as a natural exercise of sleep, more easily assimilate their food and render themselves better prepared for the circumstances of life.

Furthermore, silver-footed couches are loud accusers of much ostentation, and the ivory on the bedsteads—the soul having departed from the body—is a foppish contrivance of repose unbecoming to holy men.

We must not, then, be eager about such things.

For the use of them is not forbidden to those who possess them, but rather the studied pursuit of them is what is prohibited.

For happiness does not consist in these things.

Again, it is a mark of Cynic vainglory to make a practice, like Diomedes, of sleeping thus: "and beneath was spread the hide of an ox of the field"—except, perhaps, when circumstances compel it.

And Odysseus propped up with a stone the leg of his bridal bed that wobbled.

Such frugality and self-reliance were practised not only among ordinary folk but even among the leaders of the ancient Greeks.

But why do I appeal to these examples? Jacob slept on the ground, and a stone served him as a pillow;

and it was then that he was counted worthy to behold the vision that surpasses man.

We, then, in keeping with the Word, are to use a plain and simple bed that provides comfort in due measure—in summer, shade; in cold, warmth.

Let the bed be free of frippery and have smooth legs;

for the elaborate turnings of carved work sometimes become runways for crawling creatures, which wind themselves around the grooves of the craftsmanship and do not slip off.

Above all, the softness of the couch must be tempered in a manly way and kept within measure.

Therefore I say that sleep should be taken not for the sake of indolence, but for rest from one's labours.

So one should drowse off in a way ready to wake.

"Let your loins be girded," Scripture says, "and your lamps burning;

and be yourselves like men who wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding feast, so that when he comes and knocks they may open to him at once."

"Blessed are those servants whom the lord, when he comes, shall find watching."

For a sleeping man is of no more use than a dead one.

Therefore one ought often to rise from bed even during the night and bless God;

for blessed are those who keep watch unto Him, likening themselves to the angels whom we call "the watchers."

A man asleep is worth nothing to anyone, no more than one who is not alive;

but he who has the light is awake, and the darkness does not overtake him, nor indeed does sleep, since it is no darkness.

The enlightened man, then, is awake toward God, and such a one truly lives;

for "that which came to be in Him was life."

"Blessed is the man," says Wisdom, "who will hearken to me, and the man who keeps my ways, watching daily at my doors, keeping guard at the posts of my entrances."

"Let us not, then, sleep as do the rest," says the Scripture, "but let us watch and be sober."

"For those who sleep, sleep by night, and those who are drunk are drunk by night"—that is, in the darkness of ignorance—"but we, being of the day, let us be sober."

"For you are all sons of light and sons of the day;

we are not of the night, nor of the darkness."

But He who is for us the most caring guardian of true life and of genuine understanding kept watch for as long as possible, allowing only so much sleep here as is useful for His health;

and that is not much, when one rightly brings it into habit.

Diligent practice in discipline, born of toil, begets a perpetual wakefulness.

Let not our food weigh us down, then, but let it be light, so that we may as far as possible suffer no harm from sleep—just as among swimmers those who are weighed down sink, but on the contrary the temperate man's sobriety may lift us, as it were out of the abyss below, up to the surface of wakefulness.

For the onset of sleep resembles death, being carried down into insensibility through unconsciousness, cutting off the light by the closing of the eyelids.

Let us, then, the sons of the true light, not shut this light out of doors, but turning it inward upon ourselves—illuminating the eyes of the hidden man within, beholding truth itself and partaking of its streams—let us clearly and prudently uncover the true meanings of our dreams.

But the belchings of the wine-heavy and of those crammed with food, their snortings, the snoring tangled up in the bedclothes, and the rumblings of distended bellies—these bury the soul's discerning eye, as the mind is filled with countless phantoms.

The cause is excessive food, which drags the reasoning faculty down into insensibility.

For much sleep brings no benefit either to our bodies or to our souls, nor is it at all fitting for the very pursuits that concern the truth, even if it be according to nature.

And righteous Lot—for I now pass over the interpretation of the divine economy in the regeneration—would never have been led into that unlawful union had he not been made drunk by his daughters and stupefied with sleep.

If, then, we cut away the causes of heavy sinking into sleep, we shall sleep more soberly;

for those who have the watchful Word dwelling within them ought not to slumber all night long.

One should rouse oneself by night, especially when the days are growing shorter;

as for the daytime, it is far from right to permit much sleeping to those who reserve even the greater part of the night for wakefulness.

Listlessness, drowsiness, stretchings, and yawnings are the discontents of an unsteady soul.

One must also know this above all: that it is not the soul which has need of sleep—for it is ever in motion—but the body, which when supported by intervals of rest grows slack, since the soul no longer acts through the body, but contemplates by itself;

wherefore, to one who reasons rightly, the true dreams are the reasonings of a sober soul, which at that time is undistracted by the body's sympathetic affections and counsels itself toward what is best.

But the soul's ruin is for it to be brought to stillness.

Therefore, ever pondering God through continual communion, and instilling wakefulness into the body, it makes man equal to the angels by grace, gaining the eternity of life from the practice of being awake.

What is to be determined concerning the begetting of children.

The proper time for intercourse is left for the married alone to consider; and for the married the aim is the begetting of children, and the end is good offspring—just as for the farmer the reason for sowing the seed is the provision of food, but the end of his husbandry is the gathering in of the crops.

But by far the better farmer is he who sows a living field;

for the one tills out of longing for seasonal food, but the other in providence for the continuance of the whole; and the one plants for his own sake, the other for the sake of God.

For "Be fruitful and multiply," He has said, and we must obey;

and in this man becomes the image of God, inasmuch as man works together in the bringing forth of a man.

Not every soil, then, is fit to receive seed; and even if every soil were fit, yet not for the same farmer.

Nor indeed should one sow upon rock, nor outrage the seed, which is the originating substance of generation, having sown together within it the rational principles of nature;

and to disgrace these natural principles irrationally by diverting them into unnatural channels is utterly godless.

See, then, how the all-wise Moses somehow symbolically rejects barren sowing, saying, "You shall not eat the hare nor the hyena."

He does not wish man to partake of their quality, nor indeed to taste of the like wantonness;

for these animals are exceedingly frenzied about copulation.

And they say that the hare yearly increases its means of evacuation, acquiring openings equal in number to the years it has lived;

and thus the prohibition against eating the hare signifies the turning away from pederasty.

And as for the hyena, they say it alternately changes from male to female each successive year, and that this hints that the one who abstains from the hyena ought not to rush into adultery.

Now that we ought not to be made like these animals, by means of the foregoing prohibition the all-wise Moses, I admit, does indeed hint—this I too affirm;

yet I do not assent to this particular interpretation of what was said symbolically.

For nature could never be forced into transformation, and that which has once been formed cannot lawfully be re-formed into its opposite by a passion;

passion is wont to counterfeit, not to remodel, the original formation.

For even if many birds are said to change both their colour and their voice with the seasons—as the blackbird turns from black to tawny, and from songful to harsh-chattering;

and likewise the nightingale changes both its colour and its song with the turnings of the year—yet they do not in any way alter their very nature, so as to become female from male by transformation;

rather, the fresh growth of feathers, like a new garment, brings forth a certain bloom of colour in the plumage, but a little later it fades away under the threat of winter, like a flower whose hue withers;

and the voice itself in like manner, worn down by the cold, fades away;

for as the surface is compressed by the surrounding air, the arteries about the throat, being squeezed and contracted, press hard upon the breath, and this, being greatly constricted and as it were choked, gives forth the sound.

Then again, growing like to the surrounding air and relaxing with the spring, the breath is freed from its constriction and travels through the now-widened arteries that had been closed before;

and no longer does the withered melody warble feebly, but their voice now blossoms clear and pours forth more amply, and the song becomes, as it were, the springtime of the birds' voice.

By no means, therefore, is it to be believed that the hyena changes its nature;

for the same animal does not possess both sets of genitals at once, of male and of female, as some have supposed, telling tall tales of hermaphrodites and inventing this third "androgynous" nature in between female and male.

They are thoroughly deceived, having failed to perceive the ingenuity of all-mothering, life-engendering nature;

for since this animal, the hyena, is the most lustful of creatures, there has grown beneath its tail, in front of the orifice of excretion, a certain fleshy protuberance closely resembling in shape the female pudendum;

but this formation of flesh has no passage—I mean, none terminating in any functional organ, neither into a womb nor into a rectum.

It has only one large cavity, by which it receives the empty lust, when the passages that are occupied with bearing offspring are turned away from giving birth.

Now this same organ grows in the hyena, both in the male and in the female, because of its excessive lustfulness.

For the male too is mounted; whence it is exceedingly rare to catch a female hyena.

For pregnancies do not occur continuously in this animal, since the unnatural sowing of seed abounds fearlessly among them.

It seems to me that Plato too, in the Phaedrus, in repudiating pederasty, called it a beast, because those lustful ones who are given over to pleasures, biting on the bit, walk after the manner of four-footed creatures and attempt to beget children.

But God gave the godless over, as the apostle says, to passions of dishonour.

For their women exchanged the natural use for that which is against nature; and likewise also the men, leaving the natural use, were inflamed in their lust toward one another, men with men working unseemliness, and receiving in themselves that recompense of their error which was due.

And yet, not even to the most lustful of animals has nature granted that the passage of excrement be sown with seed.

For urine is secreted into the bladder, the liquefied food into the belly, the tear into the eye, blood into the veins, wax into the ears, and mucus is discharged down the nostrils.

And the seat is continuous with the end of the rectum, through which the excrements are voided.

Only in the case of the hyenas, then, has manifold nature devised this superfluous member for their superfluous matings.

Therefore it is hollow up to a certain point, to serve the itching members, but from there the cavity becomes blind.

For it was not fashioned for generation.

Hence it is plainly evident to us that we must by common consent renounce intercourse with males, fruitless sowings of seed, unnatural mountings from behind, and the incongruous androgynous unions, following nature herself, who forbids them through the very construction of the members, having made the male suited not for receiving seed but for emitting it.

And when Jeremiah—that is, the Spirit through him—says, 'My house has become a hyena's den,' loathing the food taken from dead bodies, by a wise allegory he denounced idolatry.

For the house of the living God must truly be pure of idols.

Again Moses forbids the eating of the hare.

The hare mounts at every season, and covers the female who sits, approaching her from behind.

It conceives monthly and conceives again upon a prior conception.

It is at once covered by whatever hare it chances upon.

And it conceives again while still suckling.

For it has a forked womb.

And not the emptiness of the womb alone becomes for it a stimulus to copulation.

For everything empty desires to be filled.

It happens, when they are pregnant, that one part of the womb is held by desire and swells with passion.

For this reason superfetations occur in them.

The prohibition of this riddle therefore counsels us to abstain from violent appetites, from repeated intercourse, from relations with pregnant women, from mutual mountings, from corrupting children, from adultery, and from lewdness.

Thus, openly and no longer in riddles, the same Moses forbade it with uncovered head, saying: You shall not commit fornication, you shall not commit adultery, you shall not corrupt children.

The ordinance of the Word must be kept with all our strength, and in no way whatever may it be transgressed, nor may the commandments be annulled.

For the name of evil desire is insolence (hubris), and Plato called the horse of desire insolent, when he read: 'You have become to me lust-maddened horses.'

The angels who came to Sodom will make known to you the penalty for insolence.

These, when men wished to attempt and shame them, burned them up together with their very city, sketching this fire as a clear example, the fruit of lewdness.

For the calamities of the ancients, as we have said before, have been recorded for our admonition, that we may not be entangled in the same things, but may guard against falling into the like.

We must regard children as sons, and look upon other men's wives as our own daughters, and master the pleasures of the belly, and what is most kingly, to rule also over what is below the belly.

For if the Word does not permit the wise man to move even his finger at random, as the Stoics agree, how much more must those who pursue wisdom rule over the organ of copulation? In this way, it seems to me, it was named the 'pudendum' (aidoion), because above all one must use this part of the body with modesty (aidos).

For nature, just as with food, so also with lawful marriages, permitted us whatever is proper, useful, and seemly, and permitted us to desire the begetting of children.

But those who pursue excess offend against what is according to nature, harming themselves through unlawful unions.

For hold rightly above all that the young must never be associated with for sexual intercourse as if they were women.

Therefore, says the philosopher derived from Moses, do not sow upon rocks and stones, lest the seed, having taken root contrary to its nature, fail to become fruitful.

Indeed, very plainly through Moses the Word commanded:

'You shall not lie with a male as with a woman, for it is an abomination.'

Moreover, to abstain from every 'female field' except one's own—Plato too, the noble one gathering from the divine Scriptures, counseled this, having taken the precept from there:

'And you shall not give your bed of seed to your neighbour's wife, to be defiled with her.'

Unhallowed and bastard are the seeds of concubines.

Do not sow where you would not wish the sown seed to grow up for you.

Nor indeed to touch anyone at all except one's own wedded wife, from whom alone it is right to reap the pleasures of the flesh for the sake of legitimate succession.

For these alone are lawful according to the Word.

Indeed, those who have partaken of a divine, creative portion must not cast away seed, nor outrage it, nor sow it as on barren soil.

This same Moses also forbids approaching even one's wedded wives, if they happen to be detained by their monthly purifications.

For it is not yet reasonable to defile the most generative part of the seed—which after a little becomes a human being—with the body's excretion, nor to wash it away with the foul flowing stream of matter and excretion, while the seed of a well-formed birth is deprived of the furrows of the womb.

He led the Hebrew to go in to his own wife when she was pregnant.

For mere pleasure, even if taken within marriage, is unlawful, unjust, and irrational.

On the contrary, Moses leads husbands away from pregnant women until they have given birth.

For in fact the womb, lying beneath the bladder and resting upon the intestine called the rectum, extends its neck between the shoulders into the bladder, and the mouth of the neck, by which it receives the seed, when filled is closed, and again is emptied as it is purged after conception; and having laid down its fruit, it then again receives the seed.

It is not shameful for us, for the benefit of our hearers, to name the generative organs, whose creation God was not ashamed to make.

Thirsting then for the begetting of children, the womb receives the sowing, and refuses the blameworthy aspect of intercourse, after the sowing shutting out entirely all wantonness with closed mouth.

And its appetites, which till then were stirred up toward affectionate embraces, being turned away, busy themselves within with the begetting of children, and cooperate with the Creator.

It is by no means lawful to disturb nature further while she is at work, indulging in excess unto insolence.

And insolence (hubris), of many names and many forms, whenever it strays in this department of disorder, that concerning Aphrodite, is called lewdness—vulgar, common, and unclean, the headlong rush after copulations, as the name itself shows; and from these, when they grow, the great multitude of diseases ensues: love of food, love of wine, love of women, and indeed prodigality and every love of pleasure, over which desire tyrannizes.