XIV. (56) But I marvel at the sincerity and truth of the soul which, in its conversation, confesses that it is unable to rise up against apparent good things, and nevertheless admires and honours every one of them, and all but prefers them to itself. (57) Since who of us does resist wealth, and who of us enters the lists against glory? And who despises honour or authority, who, I may say, of almost all those who are still stained by vain opinions? No one whatever. (58) But as long as we have none of these things we talk loudly and proudly, as if we were men of small wants, and companions of frugality, which renders life all-sufficient for itself, and just, and suitable for free and nobly born men. But when there is hope of any of the things which I have enumerated, or when only the slightest breeze of such hope blows upon us, then we are found out, for we at once yield, and submit, and are unable to hold out or resist; and being betrayed by the outward senses, which are so dear to us, we abandon the whole alliance of the soul, and we desert not in a concealed manner, but openly and undisguisedly. And perhaps this is not more than is reasonable to expect. (59) For the customs of women are still predominant in us, while we are not as yet able to wash them off, or to rise and cross over to the hearth of the men’s chamber, as is related of the mind which loved virtue, by name Sarah; (60) for she is represented in the sacred oracles as having ceased to be influenced by the customs of women, {13}{#ge 18:11.} when she was about to be in travail and to bring forth the self-taught offspring, being by name Isaac. (61) And she is said not to have had a mother, having received the inheritance of relationship from her father only, and not from her mother, having no share in the female race; for some one has said somewhere, “And yet, in truth, she is my sister, the daughter of my father, but not the daughter of my Mother.”{14}{genesis 20:12.} For she is not formed of the material perceptible by the outward senses, which is always in a state of formation or of dissolution, which is called the mother, and nurse and bringer up of created things; among which, first of all, the tree of wisdom sprang up, but rather of the cause and father of all. (62) She, therefore, having emerged out of the whole corporeal world, and exulting from the joy which is in God, laughs at the pursuits of men, which are conversant about either war or peace.
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