על אברהם כ׳On Abraham 20
א׳
1[99] I have also heard some natural philosophers who took the passage allegorically, not without good reason. They said that the husband was a figure for the good mind, judging by the meaning given for interpretation of this name that it stood for a good disposition of soul. The wife, they said, was virtue, her name being in Chaldean Sarah but in our language a sovereign lady, because nothing is more sovereign or dominant than virtue.
ב׳
2[100] Now in a marriage where the union is brought about by pleasure, the partnership is between body and body, but in the marriage made by wisdom it is between thoughts which seek purification and perfect virtues. Now the two kinds of marriage are directly opposed to each other.
ג׳
3[101] For in the bodily marriage the male sows the seed and the female receives it; on the other hand in the matings within the soul, though virtue seemingly ranks as wife, her natural function is to sow good counsels and excellent words and to inculcate tenets truly profitable to life, while thought, though held to take the place of the husband, receives the holy and divine sowings. Perhaps however the statement above is a mistake due to the deceptiveness of the nouns, since in the actual words employed νοῦς has the masculine, and ἀρετή the feminine form.
ד׳
4[102] And if anyone is willing to divest facts of the terms which obscure them and observe them in their nakedness in a clear light he will understand that virtue is male, since it causes movement and affects conditions and suggests noble conceptions of noble deeds and words, while thought is female, being moved and trained and helped, and in general belonging to the passive category, which passivity is its sole means of preservation.