Address of Thanksgiving to Origen 6–13

And he, receiving us from the first day (the day truly first for me, the most precious of all days, if I must say so, when the true sun first began to rise for me), first, like hunters with wild beasts or fish or birds that have fallen into the nets or seines but are trying to slip out and escape, when we wished to withdraw from him to Berytus or to our homeland, devised every means to bind us, turning every argument and moving every rope (as the saying goes), and bringing forward all his powers. He praised philosophy and its lovers with long and many praises, saying that they alone truly live the life fitting for rational beings who practise living rightly, knowing themselves first, who they are, and then the truly good things that a man must pursue and the truly evil things from which he must run away. And he blamed ignorance and all the ignorant; and many are these, who, blind in mind like cattle, not knowing even this, what they themselves are, wander like irrational creatures, neither knowing nor wishing to learn what good or evil is at all, but rush and flutter toward money and glory and the honours of the crowd and the well-being of the body, as toward the good; setting great store, even everything, by these, and by all the arts that can procure them, and by the ways of life that will provide them: military service, legal practice, and the study of the laws. These things especially he said, very skilfully, which shook us: (that they had) neglected the most sovereign thing in us, reason. I cannot now say how many such speeches he sounded forth, urging us to philosophize, not on one day only but on many of the first days we came to him; struck by his word as by an arrow even from our first meeting (for it was somehow mixed with a sweet grace and persuasion and a certain compulsion), but still wavering and reasoning; persevering in philosophizing, but not yet wholly persuaded, and yet, I do not know how, unable to withdraw again; always drawn to him by his words as by greater necessities. For he said, and rightly, that it is not possible at all to be truly pious toward the Lord of all (this which, alone of all the living things on earth, man has been honoured and thought worthy to have, and to which everyone whatsoever, wise and ignorant, rightly holds, unless he has wholly lost his notions through some derangement), it is not possible at all, he said, to be pious without philosophizing; until, pouring on us many such words one after another, he at last brought us, as if bewitched by his arts, simply unable to move, and settled us beside him by his words, I do not know how, with a certain divine power. For he also struck into us a goad of friendship not easily resisted, but keen and most effective: (that of) his kindness and good disposition, which showed itself benevolent in the very words he spoke to us in conversation; not trying merely to get the better of us by argument, but with a kind and humane and most excellent purpose to save us and make us sharers in the goods that come from philosophy, and especially in those others which the Divine has given to him alone beyond most men, or perhaps beyond all men of the present: the teacher of piety, the saving Word, who visits many and subdues all whom he meets (for there is nothing that will stand against him, being and to be King of all), yet is hidden and not known, neither easily nor with difficulty, by most, so that when asked they could say anything clear about him. Like a spark falling into the midst of our soul, love was kindled and blazed up, both for the holy Word himself, the most lovely of all, who by his unspeakable beauty draws all most powerfully to himself, and for this man, his friend and advocate. Most deeply wounded by this love, I was persuaded to neglect all the affairs and studies that seemed to concern us, both the others and my fine laws themselves, my country and my family, both those present here and those from whom we had travelled away; and one thing was dear and beloved to me, philosophy and its leader, this divine man. "And the soul of Jonathan was knit to David." This I read afterwards in the sacred writings, but I experienced it before, no less vividly than it is said, though it is said most vividly in prophecy. For Jonathan was not simply knit to David, but the most sovereign things, the souls, which, even when the visible and seen parts of a man are separated, cannot be forced by any device to be separated, not at all against their will. For the soul is free, and in no way to be shut in, not even if you keep it confined in a cell. For by nature, in the first sense, it is where the mind is; and if it seems to you to be in the cell, it appears to you to be there in a second sense, not on that account hindered at all from being wherever it wishes; rather, it is able, and could rightly be believed, to be wholly and only there, where, and with whom, its own proper works are. Most plainly, then, (Scripture) showed in very few words what I experienced: that the soul of Jonathan was knit to the soul of David; which, as I said, can never be forced to be separated against their will, and will not easily wish it willingly. For the power of loosing these sacred bonds of friendship does not lie, I think, with the worse, which is changeable and more easily altered in purpose, and with which alone the binding did not lie at the beginning either; but with the better, which is stable and not easily shaken, with which the making of the bonds and of this sacred knot rather lay. So it is not the soul of David that is said by the divine word to have been knit to the soul of Jonathan; but conversely the soul of the inferior, this one, is said to be knit to the soul of David. For the better, being self-sufficient, would not choose to be knit to what is worse than itself; but the worse, needing help from the better, had to be bound and attached to the better; so that the one, remaining in itself, might receive no harm from fellowship with the worse, while what was disorderly in itself, bound and fitted to the better, might be overcome toward the better by the constraints of the bonds without harm. So the making of the bonds belonged to the superior, not to the inferior; while being bound belonged to the worse, in such a way that it had no power to be loosed from the bonds. With such constraints this David of ours holds us bound, both now and ever since, so that even if we wished we could not be loosed from his bonds. Nor, then, even if we go away, will he let our souls go, holding them so knit together, according to the divine writing.

So, having taken us from the beginning and gone round us in every way, when the main part had been achieved and we seemed resolved to stay, from then on, like a good farmer with fallow land, either not good soil at all but salty and burnt, rocky and sandy, or not wholly barren or unfit but even very fertile, yet uncultivated and neglected, rough with thorns and wild bushes and hard to work; or like a gardener with a plant, either wild and bearing no cultivated fruit, yet not wholly useless—if one, by the gardener's art, brings and grafts in a cultivated shoot, splitting it in the middle, then fitting and binding them together until, their sap flowing together, both are nourished (for so you would see a mixed tree, a hybrid, yet fruitful from unfruitful, bearing the fruit of the good olive on wild roots); or a wild one, yet not useless to a skilled gardener; or even a cultivated one, otherwise fruitful, but again, through lack of skill, unpruned and unwatered and dry, choked by the many superfluous shoots growing out there, hindered by one another from coming to perfection in its growth and bearing its fruit: taking such as us, and going round us by his art of husbandry and surveying not only what is seen by all and lies on the surface, but digging up and probing the innermost parts, questioning and proposing and listening to our answers, when he perceived anything in us that was not useless and unprofitable and fruitless, he dug, turned it up, watered, moved everything, brought to bear all his art and care, and worked upon us. Thorns and thistles and every kind of wild weed or plant which our soul, running riot and agitated (being disorderly and rash), sent up and produced, he cut out and removed altogether by his refutations and restraints, laying hold of us, and quite in the manner of Socrates sometimes tripping us up with his argument, if he saw us altogether taking the bit between our teeth like wild horses, leaping out of the road and running all about, until by persuasion and a certain compulsion, as with the bridle of the word from his mouth, he made us quiet before him. This was hard for us at first and not without pain, since we were unaccustomed and not yet practised in following argument, when he applied his words; but he was purifying us nevertheless. And when he had made us fit and well prepared for receiving the words of truth, then, as on soil well worked and soft and ready to bring up the seeds put into it, he applied himself without stint, making the sowing of the seeds at the right time, and the rest of the care at the right time, working each thing fittingly. And with the proper (methods) of reason, whatever in the soul was dull and spurious (either so by nature or thickened by excessive feeding of the body), he sharpened and refined by the subtle arguments and modes of logical reasoning, which, starting from the simplest first (principles) and unrolled one upon another, and turning in various ways, advance to an intricate and hard-to-untangle complexity, rousing us as if we were asleep, and (teaching us) to hold fast always to what is proposed, never slipping away, whether through length or through subtlety. And whatever was undiscerning and rash in us, when we assented to whatever came along, whatever it might be, even if it was false, and often contradicted things even if what was said was true, this too he trained by the arguments mentioned and by other various ones (for this part of philosophy is manifold), accustoming us not to throw in our testimony, and again withdraw it, at random and as chance would have it, but to examine accurately not only what is obvious but also what is hidden. For many things that look reputable and solemn at first sight, running into our ears under seemly words as if true, though rotten and false, have carried us away and gained our vote for truth, and before long have been detected as unsound and untrustworthy, vainly feigning the truth; and they have easily shown us to have been ridiculously deceived and to have borne witness at random where we should least have done so. And again, other things, solemn and not boastful, or set out in words that did not win credence, strange and most incredible, rejected immediately as false and unworthily insulted, were afterwards, when we tracked them down and examined them exactly, perceived to be the truest of all and simply unassailable, though they had until then been thought worthless and to be rejected. Not, then, (attending) only to what is obvious and stands out, which is sometimes deceitful and sophistical, but searching out what is within and sounding each thing, lest anything ring hollow, and first establishing our own conviction about it, so he taught us to agree with others too and to declare our judgment about each thing. Thus the critical part of our soul concerning words and arguments was trained logically; not according to the judgments of fine rhetoricians, whether something is Greek or barbarous in expression (this small and unnecessary study), but in what is most necessary for all, Greeks and barbarians, wise and unlettered, and, in a word (not to be long by going through each art and occupation), for all men who have chosen any life whatever; since all who discuss anything whatever care and take pains not to be deceived.

And not only this, which dialectic alone has been allotted to accomplish; but also the lowly part of our soul, when we were astonished at the great and wonderful works and the varied and all-wise craftsmanship of the world, and wondered without reason, and cowered in amazement, not knowing how to reason about anything, like irrational animals, he roused and set upright by other studies, those of nature: making plain each of the things that are and distinguishing them, and very clearly resolving them into their first elements, weaving them together in his discourse, and going through the nature both of the whole and of each part, and the manifold turning and change of things in the world; until, carrying us along by his clear teaching and by the arguments, some learned and some found out by himself, concerning the holy ordering of the universe and its blameless nature, he placed in our souls a rational wonder in place of an irrational one. This lofty and divine study the most lovely science of nature teaches all. What need is there to speak of the sacred studies, geometry, dear to all and indisputable, and astronomy that travels on high? Each of these he engraved on our souls, teaching or reminding, or I do not know what I should call it: the one, geometry, he made as the unshaken base of all, a safe foundation; and through astronomy he led us up even to the highest things, as by a ladder reaching to heaven, making heaven accessible to us by each of these studies.

But the things that are the very summit of all, for the sake of which the whole race of philosophers labours, gathering good fruits as from a varied planting of all the other studies and from long philosophy: the divine virtues concerning character, from which comes the untroubled and stable settlement of the impulses of the soul; these he meant should make us free of grief and passion toward all evils, well-ordered and stable and godlike, and truly blessed. And these too he laboured at with his own discourses, gentle and wise, and most necessary, about our characters and ways; and not with words only, but already in a way with deeds he steered our impulses, by the very contemplation and observation of the impulses and passions of the soul, through which above all, when it is understood, our soul is naturally set right out of discord, and brought from confusion to what is distinct and orderly, seeing itself as in a mirror (both the very beginnings and roots of evils, all its irrational part, from which absurd passions rise up in us, and its whole best part, the rational, under whose rule it remains of itself unharmed and free of passion); then, having observed these things in itself exactly, it should cast out and remove all that grows from the worse, which pours us out in licentiousness or contracts and stifles us in abjection, such as pleasures and desires, or griefs and fears, and the whole host of evils that follows these kinds, rising up against them while they are still beginning and just sprouting, and not letting them grow even a little, but destroying them and making them vanish; while the good things that spring up in us from the better it should nurture and preserve, nursing them from the beginning and guarding them until they are perfected. For so the divine virtues might come to the soul: prudence, which can first judge these very movements of the soul from themselves, when knowledge of the goods and evils outside us, if there are any, has come; temperance, the power of rightly choosing these things at their beginnings; justice, which assigns what is due to each; and courage, the preservation of all these. He did not accustom us by words merely spoken that prudence is the knowledge of goods and evils, or of what is to be done and not done (this empty and useless study, if the word is apart from deeds, and prudence does not do what is to be done and turn us from what is not, but only enables those who have it to know these things, as we see many to be); or again that temperance is a knowledge of what is to be chosen and not chosen. The other philosophers do not teach it at all in this way, especially the more recent ones, though they are vigorous and strong in argument (I have often wondered at them when they demonstrate that the virtue of God and of men is the same, and that the wise man on earth is first, equal to God); for they are unable to hand down prudence so that one does what belongs to prudence, or temperance so that one chooses what one has learned; and likewise with justice and courage. Not so did he go through what concerns the virtues with us in words; he exhorted us rather to deeds, and he exhorted more by his deeds than by what he said.

I ask the philosophers of the present day, as many as I have known myself and as many as I have heard of from others, and other men too, not to be indignant at what we are now saying. And let no one think … either out of friendship for the man, or as still hostile to the other philosophers (of whom, if anyone, I myself wish to be a lover because of their discourses, and I wish to praise them, and to hear others say the finest things about them; but things are such that even the name of philosophy is insulted to the utmost by nearly everyone, so that I all but chose to remain wholly unlearned rather than learn anything of what these men announce, to whom, because of the rest of their life, I thought it not worth even going, perhaps not thinking rightly in this). But let no one suspect that I say these things out of some ambition in praising the man, or out of that other ambition against the philosophers outside; but let him be persuaded that we are saying even less than his deeds, lest we seem to flatter: not providing ourselves with words and names and artful pretexts for encomia, I who even as a youth, when I was being taught popular rhetoric by a rhetorician, would not willingly endure to praise anyone or speak an encomium about him, if anything in it was not true. Neither now, then, having set out simply to praise him, do I think I should exalt him by finding fault with others; or else I would be speaking ill of the man, setting his blessed life alongside the failings of others so as to have something greater to say about him. We are not so foolish. But I will confess just what I have experienced, without any comparison or verbal trickery.

He first and alone urged me to philosophize also the philosophy of the Greeks, persuading me by his own character both to hear and to take up the discourse on morals, I who would not have been persuaded as far as the other philosophers were concerned (I confess it again), not rightly, but almost to my misfortune. Nor did I meet many at first, but some few who professed to teach … I shall not (speak of him), then, as an exact pattern, but as one wishing very much to make himself like it, striving with all zeal and eagerness, if I must say so, even beyond human power; and moreover to mould us into others like himself, masters not of words and knowledge about the impulses, but of the impulses themselves; leading us both to deeds and to words, and bringing to bear a not small portion of each virtue, perhaps even the whole of it, if we could take it in, in contemplation itself. He compelled us, if I must say so, to act justly, through attending to the soul's own business, to which he persuaded us to apply ourselves; drawing us away from the busybodiness of life and the troublesomeness of the marketplace, and lifting us up to look round at ourselves and truly to do our own business. That this is acting justly, and this the true justice, some of the ancient philosophers too have said (meaning, it seems to me, doing one's own business), and that it is more effective for blessedness both for themselves and for those who come to them; if indeed it belongs to this virtue to assign according to worth and to give each his own. For what else would be the soul's own? And what so fitting as for it to care for itself, not looking outside, nor busying itself with others' affairs, nor, in a word, wronging itself with the worst wrong, but turned inward toward itself, rendering itself to itself and acting justly? Thus he taught us to act justly, compelling us, if I must say so. And to be prudent no less: to be with oneself, and to wish and try to know ourselves. This is the best work of philosophy, which is even ascribed to the most prophetic of demons as an all-wise command: "Know yourself." That this is truly the work of prudence, and that this is the divine prudence, is well said by the ancients, being truly the same virtue of God and of man: the soul itself practising to see itself as in a mirror, and to behold the divine mind in itself as in a mirror, if it should become worthy of this fellowship, tracking out a certain ineffable way of this deification. Accordingly also (he taught us) to be temperate and to be courageous: temperate, preserving this prudence of the soul that knows itself, if ever this should come to it; for this again is temperance, being a kind of sound prudence; and courageous, persevering in all the practices mentioned and not falling away from them either willingly or under any compulsion, but guarding them and holding fast to what was said; and he taught that this virtue is a kind of preserver and guardian.

And indeed, though he was very eager about it, he has not yet made us just and prudent and temperate or courageous, because of our slowness and sluggishness (we neither have, nor have yet come near to, any virtue whatever, human or divine, far from it; for these are very great and lofty, and neither is to be grasped by just anyone, unless God breathes power into him; and we are neither so fitted by nature nor do we yet confess ourselves worthy to attain them, not having done, through laziness and weakness, all that those who aim at the best and strive for the perfect must do). Just, then, or temperate, or possessed of any of the other virtues we are not yet; but lovers, loving with the keenest love, this wonderful man, the friend and advocate of the virtues, long ago made us, which perhaps lay in his power alone: implanting by his own virtue love of the beauty of justice, whose truly golden face he showed us; of prudence, desired by all; of the most lovely true wisdom; of godlike temperance, which is the stability of the soul and peace for all who possess it; of most wonderful courage; of patience, our (virtue); and above all of piety, which they rightly call the mother of the virtues. For this is the beginning and end of all the virtues; for, starting from it, the other virtues too would most easily come to us, if, desiring and hastening to acquire for ourselves what every man who is not godless or a lover of pleasure (should desire), to become a friend and advocate of God, we should take care of the other virtues; so that we may approach God not unworthy and filthy, but with all virtue and wisdom as with a good escort and a most wise priest. The end of all things, I think, is nothing else than this: being made like him in pure mind, to draw near to God and to abide in him. The proper name of this health is temperance, producing salvation for the prudent part within us.

With all his other diligence and zeal, how could I go through in my speech his teaching about theology and his reverence, entering into the very disposition of the man, with what mind and preparation he wished us to learn all the discourses about the Divine, guarding lest we should run any risk concerning the most necessary of all things, the knowledge of the Cause of all? For he thought it right that we should philosophize by reading with all our power all the writings of the ancients, both philosophers and hymn-writers, excluding nothing and rejecting nothing (for we were not yet able to judge), except whatever belonged to the atheists, who, rolling away together from human notions, say that there is no God or Providence (these it is not worth even reading, lest the soul, which is to be pious, be defiled even by chance by hearing words contrary to the worship of God. For not even those who go to the temples of piety, as they think them, touch anything profane at all. The writings of these, then, are not worth counting at all among men who have chosen to be pious); but all the others we should read and converse with, preferring no race and no philosophical school, nor rejecting any, neither Greek nor barbarian, but hearing all. This he did wisely and very skilfully, lest any one argument of these or of those, heard and honoured alone by itself, even if it should happen not to be true, should enter our soul as if alone true and deceive us, and, disposing us in its own favour, make us its own, no longer able to withdraw or wash ourselves clean, like wool dyed with a fast dye. For human speech is a terrible and versatile thing, varied in its sophistries, and quick to run into the ears, to stamp the mind and set its proposition before it, and, having persuaded those it has once seized, to be loved as true; and to remain within, even if it is false and deceitful, like a sorcerer in control, having the deceived man himself as its champion. And again the human soul is easily deceived by speech and quick to assent, ready, before it judges and examines in every way, through its own dullness and weakness, or through the subtlety of the argument, growing weary of exact examination, to hand itself over often too easily to false arguments and doctrines, which are themselves astray and lead astray those who hold them; and not only this, but even if another argument should wish to correct it, it no longer admits it or lets itself be persuaded otherwise, but clings to what holds it, as if an inexorable tyrant had mastered it.