XV. (52) Since, therefore, every city consists of houses and inhabitants, and laws, the houses, in Cain’s case, are the reasons which he alleges to prove his point; by which, as from a wall, he fights against the persuasive attacks of his enemies; inventing fabulous devices against the truth. The inhabitants are the companions of impiety, ungodliness, self-love, haughtiness, falsehood, vain opinions; the men wise in their own conceit, the men who know not wisdom as relating to truth, the men who are full of ignorance, and stupidity, and folly; and all the other similar and kindred evils. The laws are, lawlessness, injustice, inequality, intemperance, boldness, folly, insolence, immoderate indulgence in pleasure, and innumerable appetites in despite of nature. (53) Now of such a city as this, every impious man is found to be a builder in his own miserable soul, until God deliberately causes complete and great confusion to their sophistical Arts.{15}{#ge 11:4.} And this will be, when not only “they build a city and tower, the head of which will reach to heaven,” that is to say, […]{16}{there is a hiatus in the text here: Mangey translates it as if the deficiency were to be supplied by ton noun, “the mind.”} the mind or the reason of each individual as conversant about making great works, which they represent as having for its head a conception peculiar to itself, which is called in symbolical language heaven. For it is plain that the head and object of every reasoning must be the aforesaid mind; for the sake of which, long digressions and sentences are in the habit of being used by men who write histories.
XVI. (54) And to such a pitch of accursed impiety have they gone, that not only do they attempt to raise up such cities by themselves, but they even compel the virtue-loving multitude of Israel to join them, appointing superintendents and teachers of evil actions to govern them. For it is said that, when they were ill-treated by the superintendents, they built three cities for the prince of the country, Peithom, Rameses, {17}{#ex 1:11.} and On, which is Heliopolis. (55) And these cities, if taken symbolically, mean mind, the outward sense, and the faculty of speech, which are the three principal things in us; for Peithom means speech, because persuasion (to peithein) arises from speech; and the interpretation of Peithom is, a mouth-uttering, since the reasoning of the wicked man comes from without, and occupies itself with endeavouring to overturn all that is good: and Rameses is the inward sense; (56) for the mind is eaten out and destroyed by each separate one of the outward senses as by a moth, being shaken to pieces and lacerated; for the imaginations which enter it, not according to pleasure, make life itself mutilated and laborious. (57) But On is said to be a hill, and it means, symbolically, the mind; for all reasonings are stored up in the mind: and the lawgiver himself is a witness of this, calling On, Heliopolis, the city of the sun. For as the sun, when he rises, shows visibly the things which have been hidden by night, so also the mind, sending forth its own proper light, causes all bodies and all things to be seen visibly at a distance. (58) On which account, a man would not be wrong who called our minds the sun of our composition; as the mind, if it does not rise and shed its own light in man, who may be looked upon as a small world, leaves a great darkness diffused over all existing things, and suffers nothing to be brought to light.
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