XXVI. (143) Having now spoken at sufficient length on this point also, let us proceed in regular order to consider the third head of our subject, in which the seeking existed, but the finding did not follow it. At all events Laban, who examined the entire spiritual house of the practiser of virtue, “did not,” as Moses says, “find the Images,”{40}{#ge 31:33.} for it was full of real things, and not of dreams and vain fantasies. (144) Nor did the inhabitants of Sodom, blind in their minds, who were insanely eager to defile the holy and unpolluted reasonings, “find the road which led to This”{41}{#ge 19:11.} object; but, as the sacred scriptures tell us, they were wearied with their exertions to find the door, although they ran in a circle all around the house, and left no stone unturned for the accomplishment of their unnatural and impious desires. (145) And before now some persons, wishing to be kings instead of doorkeepers, and to put an end to the most beautiful thing in life, namely order, having not only failed in obtaining the success which they hoped to meet with through injustice, but have even been compelled to part with that which they had in their hands; for the law tells us that the companions of Korah, who coveted the priesthood, lost both what they wished for and what they had: (146) for as children and men do not learn the same things, but there are institutions adapted to each age, so also there are by nature some souls which are always childish, even though they are in bodies which have grown old; and on the other hand, there are some which have arrived at complete perfection in bodies which are still in the prime and vigour of early youth. But those men will deservedly incur the imputation of folly who desire objects too great for their own nature, since everything which is beyond one’s power will vanish away through the intensity of its own vehemence. (147) And so Pharaoh also, when “seeking to kill Moses,”{42}{#ex 2:15.} the prophetic race, will never find him, although he has heard that a heavy accusation is brought against him, as if he has attempted to destroy all the supreme authority of the body by two attacks, (148) the first of which he made upon the Egyptian disposition, which was fortifying pleasure as a citadel against the soul; for “having smote him,” with an accidental instrument that came to hand, “he buried him in the Sand,”{43}{#ex 2:12.} thinking that the two doctrines, of pleasure being the first and greatest good, and of atoms being the origin of the universe, both proceed from the same source. The second attack he made upon him who was cutting into small pieces the nature of the good, and assigning one portion to the soul, another to the body, and another to external circumstances; for he wishes the good to be entire, being assigned to the best thing in us, the intellect alone, as its inheritance, and not being adapted to anything inanimate.