על צאצאי קין מ״זOn the Posterity of Cain and his Exile 47
א׳
1[162] And what need is there to be diffuse and go into each instance? For this was long ago agreed upon among the most approved of the learned men of former days, who said that nature is the mother of the irrational creatures, but the step-mother of men. They said this when they took note of the bodily weakness of the latter, and of the invariably surpassing bodily strength of the former. It was reasonable, then, that the expert master should grind down the calf, that is to say, should divide it into parts and make it evident that all the advantages pertaining to the body are far removed from that which is really good, and differ in no respect from what was sown upon the water.
ב׳
2[163] And this is why it has been placed on record that the calf when ground down was sown upon the water, as a sign that no genuine growth of good can ever sprout in perishable matter. A seed cast into the flow of a river or of the sea could never manifest its proper powers; for unless it were to use its roots as anchors and fasten firmly on to some fixed spot of ground, and so get settled there, it would be impossible for it either to put forth a shoot, even one hardly rising above the ground, to say nothing of a good tall one, or to bear fruits as the seasons came round; for the full and violent rush of the water washes it away and forestalls all the powers of expansion latent in the seed. Even so, before any of those advantages of the vessel of the soul, on which orators declaim and poets sing, can attain substantial shape, they are destroyed owing to the constant flow of bodily substance.
ג׳
3[164] For how did illnesses and old age and complete dissolution come upon men, if there was not a perpetual draining off of streams brought within our contemplation by reason? Thus, then, the sacred Guide would have us refresh our understanding, namely by burning up our pleasures, by grinding down and breaking up the complex of bodily goods into thin and useless dust, by making up our minds that from none of them did there ever shoot forth and bloom that which is truly beautiful, any more than from seeds sown upon the waters.