On the Excellence of Monks

Those inexperienced in any art judge its works with great error, as one would expect; and those uninitiated in letters, when they judge speeches, pass a faulty judgment on them, not knowing the exact observation each requires, since knowledge does not advance to a settled habit except by detailed exercises. It is no wonder, then, if those who have not learned by experience how virtue is achieved condemn the monks who live in quiet in mountains and caves, saying that those who move among people and live in cities are more approved than those who have withdrawn, and by as much as, among athletes, those who grapple hand to hand with their opponents are the nobler. For not knowing the holds that lead to a fall, how many of the grips bring defeat, they judge only sins in act to be falls, and take no account of defeats and victories in thought. For the eye cannot see these, since they are secret and known only to God, who presides over the contest, and to the conscience of the contestant; to these two the knowledge of them is most useful, to the contestant for the sake of prizes and crowns, to God as the judge of the games who is to distribute rewards worthy of the labors. Such judges seem to me hardly to praise a soul adorned with hidden goods, but to admire a body shining with the bloom of its looks, and to praise fine clothing before the good health of the one who wears it, because their senses are deceived by what is seen and they will not fix their mind on the nature of things.

For just as the inside of the cup must surely be clean for the drinker's pleasure, so one must keep the heart … undefiled before the body, to please God, who wants to see it so. For the purity of the body follows on the purity of the heart, but the disposition of the soul does not necessarily match the tent of the body. For there is, as the Lord Jesus says, also a whitewashed tomb full of dead men's bones and all impurity, which has within no truth agreeing with its appearance. But our discourse does not call such a one into the comparison. Rather, the one who has practised the active life and the ethical virtues equally with the desert monks, this one too we shall find left far behind them, and as far removed from the monastic way of life as handwork alone is from methodical medicine. Handwork knows neither the causes of diseases nor of afflictions, how or whence they arise, nor their differences; it simply stands by the suffering part and treats it, and the disease knows how to return quickly, since the cause from which it began has not been removed: distensions and inflammations of the viscera, imbalances of the humors, the countless fevers in their various conditions, daily, seven-day and fourteen-day, or chronic, hectic and short-lived, some arising from yellow bile, others from black bile, others from phlegm, and others from an excess of blood; some coming on quietly, others announcing their arrival long in advance by languor, restlessness, or sleep constantly broken, signs of the disease.

In the same way, the impulse of sense usually produces a passionate thought; the thought, shameful desire; desire, pleasure; and pleasure again, consent, whose follower is sin in act. This must be stopped as it begins, at its first cause, by turning away the sight, which moves the things mentioned in sequence, before it comes in and makes escape difficult. For what has not been imprinted through seeing perhaps gives the mind no occupation or evil study; and what does not come into act has no room to be driven out … The tongue does not bring forth abuse when anger is lulled to sleep within; the eye does not look like a fornicator when reason holds the reins and keeps it from the unfitting sight; [the ear] does not take in a shameful word when the [chaste] mind guards that sense; none of the members acts amiss while the mind within is sober, steering the thoughts and holding the rod firmly against the starting point of the passions. And this mind is awake, having renounced [the things outside], and, as in a clear sky, with nothing troubling it, [orders] its counsels.

How, then, is the one who is not defeated in action to be preferred to the one who does not stumble in thought? “Because,” he says, “when the city ascetic is provoked he is not bent by circumstances, and so he is more approved than the one whose desiring part is not stirred to longing by what he sees.” But if the desert monk knew nothing of the affairs of the world, he has no struggle with them; and if he did come to know them, he has memory stirring the material of the passions, as things seen stir it, and his wrestling goes on without a break, since in quiet the passions have more license than sight to trouble the one whose thought is distracted by nothing outside. For the one who lives among encounters has his sight duller toward what causes stumbling, since it is divided among many faces, and his reasoning scarcely manages at night to go through the day's encounters; but the other fights continually with a single form, whether of a sight that once pleased or of an image that grieved, the one still tickling desire, the other inflaming anger; and he devotes all his zeal to driving out the thought of what troubles him and blotting out the memory of what stirs the passions. And he will surely prevail in time, lessening every day the strength of his opponent and increasing his own by exercise, as it advances daily to greater vigor and grows used to mastering its adversaries. So custom passes into habit, and habit into nature, and it keeps the acquisition unchangeable for the one who acquired it. For those without experience, it is not possible to see the sand lying at the bottom of a running stream, but when the stream stops one necessarily sees it bare. In the same way, when sight floods the mind with other forms, it is not possible to take up a battle against a definite face or passion, nor for the reasoning ever to be cleansed, since those that come in blot out the impressions that came before and stamp their own types for a little while. These in turn are smoothed away by others coming in, and by this succession an everlasting tumult holds the interior, not allowing what troubles it to be recognized, because of the succession of changing images. For just now what has recently fallen in holds the reasoning, and after a little the present images too give way to the next, keeping it occupied, while it suffers harm enough even from vain thoughts, so that it even seems to suffer nothing from what they do to it, as they make the images of things passionate and shut out the more necessary and useful thoughts of reason.

If someone were to look at the senses that face outward, … the eyes seeing what is not lawful, the hearing beaten on every side by shameful words, anger meanwhile stirred up, desire enticed, pleasure provoked, glory fanned, grief …, he would surely find himself bruised as from a boxing match and covered with wounds, and would call blessed those who in quiet see or suffer none of these things. For what use is it to stir up the passions to battle by the very presence of things, and by exercising them to give them license to turn for the worse, when quiet naturally leads them to an untroubled state, and idleness [quenches] the strength of each little by little, as exercise rouses it to greater force? For anger, when at rest, becomes gentler, and desire, kept quiet, grows used little by little to stirring more mildly, and every passion simply, when it is not moved, advances day by day to greater moderation and later ceases altogether from its own activity, weakened by time; and only bare memories of things remain, once the passionate disposition has withdrawn.

And just as neither the sight nor the memory of very sweet dishes and drinks moves the appetite of one who has no desire for them, so none of the objects of sense, whether seen or heard, [stirs] the thought … coming to rest, since the settled habit no longer allows the one who has unlearned movement through long quiet to be moved toward passion. How, then, can one call the one who pursues ascetic practice without experience and at risk more approved than the one who pursues it methodically and safely? Who [wages] war better and subdues the enemy more easily: the one who rushes madly against those drawn up opposite him and throws himself face to face on the enemy's ranks, or the one who attacks them with more generalship, overthrows them easily by ambushes and snares, and raises a trophy by prudence, rather than the one who, with great toil and slaughter, withstands those who fight at close quarters? Who [shows] self-control and [courage] truly according to reason: the one who [exposes himself] to the rage of wild beasts, a fiery furnace and a raging sea, or the one who guards against their harm and stands clear of the dangers?

For as a body that finds itself among these things necessarily suffers what belongs to a body, so the senses, through the objects of sense, supply the passions with material against the soul, to harm it no less than the things mentioned. Nature is enough for the battle; it needs nothing from outside as an ally against ourselves. For desire has its own fire: let it not have brushwood, and it does not increase the flame. This is what the saying of the law hints at in a riddle: “If a fire goes out and finds thorns and sets a threshing floor alight, the one who kindled the fire shall make it good.” By the threshing floor it means the passions, by the fire the impulses of nature, by the thorns the objects of sense. Let these not come between, and the fire has no room to reach the threshing floor, finding no material through which to burn its way to it. For it will surely either be quenched altogether for lack of fuel and end in ashes, showing the utter weakness of what was once a tyranny and a passion, or it will remain smouldering in the ash, harming nothing, but teaching by its appearance that it could do harm if it ever flared into flame, should it obtain material suited to its present strength. For it does not at once seize on logs or split wood laid beside it; it needs chaff, straw and grass in order to master the coarser material as well. So we may learn exactly that small and trivial sins lead us on to greater ones, and that indifference toward them becomes a road to graver sins.

And we must not give these things the guidance of habit, nor let them peep in shamelessly, but rebuke them as they begin, [cutting off] their future boldness: crushing the serpent's head before it seizes the heel, destroying the seed from Babylon, and dashing its infants against the rock, which, as the article added to it shows, is one rock. For when the head slips in, the whole length of the body comes in with it; the seed of tares, once rooted, naturally hinders the growth of cultivated plants; and infants, once grown, usually make the battle not bearable but hard-fought and strenuous. By these the passions are signified: in the beginning they are easily caught, but strengthened by habit they advance to their prime and become hard to defeat, after giving much toil in the wrestling. Moreover, they accuse our carelessness and terrible folly, since we raised up enemies against ourselves whom it was in our power to destroy easily while they were weak. For in this way the peace after the destruction of our adversaries would have had time … leading us to turn to contemplation and cultivate our own powers. For this is what one of the prophets says: “They shall beat their swords into ploughshares and their spears into sickles,” signifying the state that has passed beyond the things of war and has leisure for the works of peace.

And another says, “Your eyes will see those who lead you astray, and your ears will hear the words of those who led you astray behind you,” meaning that, after the confusion of battle has stopped, the enemies are seen and their deceits and practices clearly recognized. And the great Moses, in the second book of the law, earnestly reminds the Israelites of what happened in the desert during the exodus from Egypt, exhorting them to go over the past battles and engagements in memory and to make their unexpected victories an occasion for thanksgiving. The one who spends his time in wars, and who thinks he is giving protection to others, does not know these things, nor ever has leisure to learn them. He pursues a work that is good and useful to many, but compared with the one who takes care of his own soul and sets right what is within, he scarcely carries off the second prize, giving bodily help to the needy while leaving his own soul always uncared for. I know of farmers who spend every season on their own land, sailors who are always repairing their own ship, and travellers, merchants, craftsmen and hired laborers who are eager for what they think contributes to their own benefit; and none of them will consent to judge another's affairs more valuable than his own, or even equal to them. The sailor at sea steers his boat toward his own voyage; the farmer gives his own farm the care suited to the seasons; the trader gives himself to his own gain; and each, in short, thinking it vain to worry about the affairs of his fellow craftsmen, takes great thought and care that his own affairs go well.

And some of these people judge the one who is useful to himself in virtue less worthy of approval; they would surely praise a man who, while his house and all the property inside it were burning, obeyed friends urging him to come along to a betrothal or on an embassy, because he thought his friends' need more valuable than [putting out] the fire in his house. They honor him for this, whom, if they judged rightly, they ought to censure as deranged and out of his mind. Worse than a fire is the state of the mind to which each of the senses brings its material, if one does not refuse to go out: the senses carry nourishing fuel into the burning fire and heap it up like brushwood kindled by nature, while memory fans it with meditation as with a bellows and makes the blaze fiercer and harder to put out. And this, it seems, is what God, displeased with some people, says to the prophet; in his indignation he says, “Do you not see what they are doing in the cities of Judah and outside? Their sons gather wood, and their fathers kindle the fire, and their wives [knead dough] to make cakes for the host of heaven.” He means that sight gathers the provoking forms like brushwood, desire kindles a fierce fire in them, and memory kneads and softens them continually. For so sight, passing through the intermediate stages, advances into sin in act, completed by the parts named. And gathering straw for chaff, as in the brick-making in Egypt, belongs to those who wander about, not to those who live in quiet.

For one who mixes indiscriminately with crowds gathers, even against his will, the materials that produce sin, and shapes the idle clay of passion into a pot; the clay is shapeless in itself and takes a distinct form through meditation on things [received] through the senses. For passion only moves the natural impulse, and does so more weakly when it is not helped by materials from outside; but when it takes on alluring and deceptive forms, it holds the reasoning fettered by the definite features of objects of sense. Anger and desire, for example, and pleasure and grief, are powers at rest and without form until they obtain material that rouses them to their proper activity. But if sense brings in the suitable form, of someone who has caused grief for anger, of someone who has given delight for desire, and so for each of the others, it gives them work and endless occupation, as they look at the images of what provokes them and makes the memory passionate and very troublesome. That is why quiet is good: what harms is not seen; what is not seen the mind does not receive; what has not entered the mind does not stir the memory by imagination; what does not stir the memory does not [stir] the passion; and when passion is not stirred, the interior has deep calm and peace. For this reason Moses, the all-wise, though he had the care and charge of the people of the Jews, pitched his own tent outside the camp and mostly at a distance, fleeing as far as possible the unfitting [noise] and giving his reasoning quiet to consider and know what is useful for the soul.

For this reason Joshua the son of Nun did not go out of the tent, avoiding the untimely injuries of sight. For this reason Elijah [and Elisha] left Judaea for Carmel, and John fled Jerusalem and lived in the desert of the Jordan. And Jeremiah, held by the necessity of prophecy and unable to bear life with the lawless multitude, said in lament, “Who will give me a lodging, the farthest one, in the desert, and I will leave this people and go away from them?”, choosing rather to live with beasts that do no wrong to the soul than the harm that creeps in from one's own kind … And, greatest of all, for this reason the Lord Jesus, who was above all harm, withdrew from the crowd whenever he found free time and spent it in desert places, showing by his deed the usefulness of quiet to those able to see it, so that it might be plain on every side that, compared with those who have chosen the gregarious and mixed life, even if they excel, those who have chosen the monastic and solitary life are to be preferred. They lull to sleep in quiet the passions which the others, by what they see, sharpen to greater severity, no longer perceiving the harm, because time has gradually made it habitual to them, like a fever that no longer abates and secretly consumes the strength. So someone who at first goes barefoot cannot bear even ordinary roughness without pain when he treads on the ground; but once his feet are calloused he feels no pain, even if thorns, stakes and sharp nails stick into them, since none reaches the living flesh, for the hardened skin has lost its feeling no less than a dead one.

Why, then, do they think that those are not wronged who, through long habit of being wronged, no longer perceive the harm done by those who wrong them? For where does the mind find time to know [this harm], when sight constantly distracts it with what it sees, since it needs much leisure to reckon it up? Just now it receives these forms, after a little others, and then others again, and after them whatever happens to come along; and since it delights in all or most of them, which delight will it consider harm, and when will it have leisure to wipe off the defilement, never able to see that it has been defiled? Does not the grieving man forget his grief, the sick man his distress, and the one in pain his pain, while he is distracted by encounters during the day, and yet each, left alone at night, becomes aware of his own suffering, since quiet gives it leisure to stir and does not then let him forget it? And just as the appetite of a glutton who eats continually has no satiety, but is always moved to longing, unsated and insatiable, so the passions are somehow idle while the senses are occupied with their objects, hindered from their own impulse. But when the senses gain release from outside disturbance, then, as want after satiety produces hunger, the passions rise up very vigorously against the one at rest, stirring up a great tumult of what has become habitual and arming against him for battle the very forms he thought he passed by harmlessly when he saw them, since he had no time to recall their harm. He perceives this harm only when he has leisure to know it and sees its power, when he is taken captive to absurd thoughts and forced to think thoughts full of shame. Then he openly admits the deception that crept in, calls blessed those who did not come to know these things by sight as he did, and rightly pities himself, because he himself gave his enemies weapons against himself and is justly warred upon, having in great folly given strength to his foes.

For then the things that fell in like seeds through sight, through hearing and through the other senses begin to sprout like thorns, and as they grow little by little they cause great labor; or rather, like the hydra of the poets' myths, they raise head after head, tormenting the wretch with countless pains. For the face that was seen appears radiant before him, and costly adornment, loose laughter, an affected posture, softness and luxury contrived to capture, a wandering nod, a mischievous glance, a studied movement, a melodious voice and a more feminine way of speaking; and not only these, but also an artless character, simple dignity, need, a word, a sympathetic lament and the cry of a grieving soul: in the end these stir up a great struggle. Even the woman who was pitied and enjoyed his care, her memory [brings] danger: she was in need, and later she wars on him, having moved his pity and mercy in her need, and produces the stings of erotic desire. Which, then, is better: to show mercy and avoid the stumbling blocks, or, while showing mercy to others, to become entangled in nooses hard to escape through wanting to help them? [It is good] to give a hand to one who is [drowning], if one can do it without perishing with him; but if, by seeming to suffer with him, one will suffer oneself, one must be zealous for one's own good, since no one is as near to another as each is to himself.

For this reason, when the Pentapolis was being burned by fire from heaven, the angel said to righteous Lot, who was devoted to hospitality, “Save your own life; escape to the mountain, lest you be swept away with them”; that is, care for your own salvation before those who are perishing. For “Do not look behind you” taught him to take no account of those perishing, since it was surely not holy to wish to perish together with the perishing, nor to wish to put care for oneself on the same footing as care for others in cases where sympathy, which profits those being punished nothing, does the greatest wrong to those who share their suffering, harming the very salvation that all people alike desire. For it is humane, dear to God and fitting for us, and indeed necessary, that each should counsel, strive for and pray for good things for each … For such a disposition is truly [unreasonable], and to strive for oneself less than for others in necessary things is not only unacceptable but deserves the greatest condemnation. How, then, is the one who takes great care of his own state, trains his character to good order in quiet, and for the most part converses with God at leisure, not better fitted for pleasing God, as one who lives more soberly, than the one who never has time to take note of his own thoughts, or of passions he does not even recognize because of his occupation outside?

Or shall we not say that Mary, whom the Lord preferred because she was free of distraction, was better than the one who was distracted by bodily service and anxious about serving the flesh? The Lord speaks, not to Mary but to the one who thought she was doing something great and therefore needed exhortation, correcting her mistaken notion: “Martha, Martha, you are anxious and troubled about many things, but one thing is needful; Mary has chosen the good part, which will not be taken from her.” And yet her bustle came from zeal for serving him; but she was not praised for that eagerness. She was blamed because she left off sitting, like Mary, beside the word and the benefit of the soul, and was anxious that nothing needed should be lacking for the munificence of the meal and that the table of hospitality should be set out splendidly, beyond the usual and costly. For in doubling the name when about to censure her zeal as unfitting, and saying, “Martha, Martha,” he was perhaps showing displeasure and shaking his head at the bustle she mistakenly thought necessary, knowing that what she neglected mattered more for the achievement of godliness than what she was busy with.

So too the Levites were set above all the people, being free from every worldly occupation and serving God continually with pure reasoning; and those who vowed the great vow, to consecrate themselves to God with attention, renouncing outside disturbances, kept within the precincts of the then holy temple the quiet that belongs to the purity they sought, persuaded that this was what made them pure. Witnesses to the harm that lies outside are Abel, the son of the first-formed man, and Dinah, the patriarch's daughter: the one went out into the plain and was killed by Cain; the other was defiled by [the son of] Hamor, having gone out untimely to see the women of the land. They would not have suffered this had they stayed quietly at home. … choosing quiet, which is safe for all and especially for the perfect, because for the perfect it keeps the settled habit unshaken, and it brings forward those who are advancing in this discipline. And Jeremiah, warning not to go out into the field because the enemies' sword is all around, and Peter, saying, “Our enemy the devil goes about and prowls,” testify to all the harm outside. And the one who exhorts us to hide from the destroyer, and the one who says, “Shut your door for a little while, until the wrath of the Lord passes,” and the one who stays in the house, and the one who commands to hold the door against the son of the murderer when he comes: all proclaim the safety within, showing expressly that the one way of life is admittedly easily harmed and the other is without doubt safe.

And so it is, and not otherwise, that the truth usually stands. Those who live the solitary life grapple with an enemy who is also unarmed, for things are the weapons of the passions; but those who mix with crowds in the city have many attackers on every side all the time, all fenced with full armor, who inflict mortal blows whenever they can wound. And it is utter folly to make one's life fearful and full of struggle when it is in one's power to have it free of dread and fear, and to neglect the safety that is possible and necessary. For who that has withdrawn from those who plot against him and set himself far from mixing with them is not afterwards free of care, no longer suspecting harm from any quarter? And who that lives among them is not always in fear, expecting plots from all sides, since all of them are always busy plotting, like enemies against an enemy? How, then, is life with wrongdoers better than a peaceful and untroubled way of life? And how has the road that has robbers and barbarians on it seemed, or how does it seem to some, more desirable than one travelled without fear? The one has murderers and clothes-stealers, and a traveller must surely either be killed or lose his cloak; the other, free from all such suspicion, makes the journey free of loss and pain for those who travel it, and they keep their goods unplundered and finish the road cheerfully and gladly.

… avoiding the rough and hard paths, even if they are short cuts, [and choosing] the level highways, which are longer … and need more time to complete. And … how is the steep and hard road, long and dangerous, haunted by beasts and home to robbers, full of nooses, stumbling blocks, ambushes and many injuries, judged preferable to the bearable, short and level one? The sight of a woman, wealth, power and glory stir the emulous part; some things rouse anger, others desire; some produce dissipation, others humiliation; some produce dejection and confusion, others joy, good feeling and delight, and others displeasure. When the passions are smouldering and fanned like this every day by what is seen and heard, how will they not one day rise up into a bright flame, and by continual exercise [come] to a habit that cannot be broken, and make change either laborious or perhaps even impossible? For custom, which holds no less than a fetter, does not permit withdrawal: it yields a little to the impulse and then draws back to itself the one who tries to get away. But the one who is separated from worldly affairs, who has withdrawn his senses from their objects and lives quietly by himself, if he has memories, is soon [rid of] them, since time, which makes all things old, gradually works forgetfulness of these too; and if he has received none of the images that make war, he has to wrestle only with the bare natural reminders, which are easy to defeat and easily led away, since the mind readily moves them and turns them aside, when the enemy cannot entice it with any allurement from outside.

For by these things the passions are naturally anointed, and they make the wrestling laborious and toilsome for those who contend. For desire is not so strong without material as it is when the objects of desire lie close by, nor anger when the one who provokes it is not present; and pleasure rises up when the form [kindles] longing through sight. Their [movements] are weak and slack when imagination does not trouble them, [the mind] as it were keeping thought asleep and holding the reasoning to itself … and remaining. It is as when a pleasing sight holds the eye fixed by its allure, not letting it turn anywhere or allowing the will to shift to anything else, even if someone tried to drag it away, overcoming the efforts of one who strives to turn the eye aside. But for one troubled only by memories, release is easy and rising up very easy: by meditation and exercise in spiritual words and by intense prayer the mind withdraws from what does not please God and passes over to what is pursued according to God, delighting in these and forgetting the others. But to shut the eye completely to what is seen is impossible, as it is to close the hearing to voices, or to avoid their harm always by reasoning; for the injuries from every side are many and hard to guard against. One who walks into mud cannot help soiling his foot, and one who lives in a pestilential climate cannot help suffering what the surroundings inflict; so it is impossible for one who spends his time among worldly things not to take on some of the stains of the world, even if he does not perceive the harm, having grown used in time to what harms him.

For some, too, who taste poison a little at a time, are not harmed at first, because the quantity is not proportioned to the strength of the poison so as to kill; but as the constitution grows used to it by small additions, they later even make the destructive power of the food into nourishment, nature learning little by little over time to appropriate what harms. Who has not learned from divine Scripture the exactness of blessed David in all things? Who does not know by hearsay his achievements? How, boasting not from love of display but from love of others, so that others too might do what he had done, he recounts his own good deeds: sometimes he says, “I walked in my innocence”; sometimes, “If I repaid those who repaid me with evil”; sometimes, “Without lawlessness I ran and kept my course straight”; at other times, “There is no deceit in my tongue”; at other times, “I was well-pleasing in your truth.” The saint recounts more than these, and at last says, “Lord, my heart was not exalted, nor were my eyes lifted up.” Yet, because of the settled habit of the virtues he had practised, he neglected prayer a little and let his eye roam quite freely. By it he was drawn to the beauty of another man's wife, and he received the sight into his heart as a fiery arrow; it drove him, goaded, to adultery, and adultery forced him to dare murder and the unjust killing of a man. And the evil that began from a sight travelled through so many evils and finally drove him into such ruin. So sin, peeping out from a small cause, knows how to carry one down to the very last limit of perdition. For if, according to the wise author of Proverbs, “one must not be a companion of a [wrathful] man,” lest one surely share in his passion through the fellowship (since passion usually creeps unnoticed from those in its grip to the healthy), how is it not still more necessary and useful for those who wish to guard against imitating them to flee those who suffer from greater and more grievous diseases?

For company with such people produces this, and one does not know how life with them makes one like the wicked, and how those who do not wish to be such for the present become little by little the very thing they strive not to become. A woman's sandal ensnared Holofernes, a warlike man who was ravaging Judaea, in a mad love, and took him captive. For the history says that the sandal of Judith ravished the eye of Holofernes, and the seizure of his eye [led him] to death. For she, finding him subdued by passion, deceived him for a long time in various ways when he demanded the intercourse of marriage, until she found a suitable moment to behead the wretch, who neither obtained the woman he still desired and perished by a most pitiable death. These people too suffer many such things … which they do not know. For delight [deceives] them … a comely [body] often delights them, the material of wealth affects them likewise, and honor and grief; a fragrant vapor [stirs] the sense of smell, and the seasoning of dishes the taste, to longing by their quality. And where is such a battle useful for the foolish, who rashly consent to walk into dangers, and do not allow passions that could be quiet ever to rest, nor give them leave to rest while they exercise the mind for its profit?

For the mind, being by nature always in motion, when it is free of care for vain things, turns its care to profitable ones: it reckons up what is fitting and gives itself wholly to its own care, converses with God through prayer, [is nourished] with divine words in reading, considers the things of creation and glorifies the Creator for the variety of his workmanship; it sees the passions shrinking and its character set in order, marks its daily progress for the better, beholds its whole state steady and untroubled, and gives thanks for these continually to him who [gave] this grace and a life full of [joy] and gladness. And the one is not like him who does not even know what his own [state] is, and gives his reasoning no time for examining it, so as to know how the passions are moving and whether he is better disposed today than yesterday. These things need much leisure for understanding their movement and their daily course: how they creep in, lessening part by part, or again increasing, through zeal and through laziness, … intensified and relaxed, at rest and rising up; eating grass like oxen, or craving flesh; some tamed, others made wild and raging.

For just as venomous reptiles, resting through the winter season, stay motionless and do not show their harm because they are numbed by the cold, so the passions that lie idle because of distractions have not ceased but are [numbed] for the time being, and stir when they find license and leisure to show in the thoughts what they are made for, like wild beasts coming out of their holes in the warmth of the sun. For this reason it is told that one of those who watch their thoughts, who had lived in quiet for a long time in the desert and wanted to learn his daily progress by experience, picked up pebbles from the desert sand and kept them in his bosom. When his reasoning was moved to a good thought, he set one of the pebbles on his right; when to a shameful one, on his left; and he did this from dawn to evening, adding one pebble on this side or that as his thoughts prompted him. Then, when evening came, he counted the one heap and the other, and in this way learned how much progress toward the good, if any, he made each day; and the convenience of his leisure gave him time to do this. But for one [beset] by daily disturbances, which are more than the hours of the day and overcome the time by their number, when will any of the things so pursued ever be known? For the mind does not wish to have another care when something necessary is set before it for consideration, nor is it naturally able to, even if it wishes, to think of something else besides what it is anxious about, just as the eye looks at one thing and has no natural power to divide its sight among several.

How, then, is the one who lives perilously better than the one who lives safely, even if he is the same in other respects? For even if they seem to travel the same road of virtue, they do not travel it in the same way. The one, as in quiet, looks around at everything and knows its hard and easy places, and travels it without stumbling, avoiding rocks and turning away from cliffs; the other, as at night, in the darkness of distractions, falls into pits and is shattered on rocks, and, like a blind man, [stumbles] on every obstacle. For the praise of those who see his work weakens him; the glory of his achievements puffs him up to madness; the contempt of those who did not admire his virtue grieves him as though it were insensibility; and seeming to have something more than others in the good lifts him up to boasting. And he is necessarily sometimes puffed up and sometimes dejected, despondent and shrunk. But the solitary does not know these states, nor those who praise or [blame] him; he is alone with God alone, who [sees] his labor, knowing his own work, and [examining] himself for the most part … since it is possible for someone to become his own praiser at times, made light by childish and rash thinking, and to be harmed by himself in the very way he would have been harmed by others when admired.

“Those who call you blessed lead you astray” has been well said by divine Scripture of those who do good in the sight of others. But who will deceive by blessing into conceit the one who is not seen, who has deliberately fled such people, so that he may not lessen the wage from God by the praises of men; who, according to the Lord's exhortation, hides from the left hand every action of the right, so that it may see that the work has been done but know nothing of the display, he himself escaping his own notice with the half of himself that boasts? For this is how the left hand knows the work of the right: it is a vainglorious transmitter, publishing what the right hand hides, in the hunt for glory. For this reason the name-givers of old aptly named those who practise asceticism in cities doves, and those who live in deserts and trackless places turtle-doves: the former pursue virtue before spectators and defile it, willingly or unwillingly, robbed by the praises of the many, or often putting their virtue on show supposedly to benefit those who watch, which, even if it is not man-pleasing, has surely defiled it and proportionally empties the labor of its reward, like a real dove that broods and gives its chicks to people for slaughter; while the latter send on to God whole and unharmed all that they do, suffering no loss, like turtle-doves that release their young alive from the nest into the air. For such is what is done secretly to please God: it lives and is the unfailing possession of the one who labored for it; but what wants the eyes of people as witness is like a garment that both breeds the moth of vainglory and is eaten by it.

And suppose that one who [lives] wholly among people, or rather associates with them, does nothing [amiss], suffers none of the passions he must suffer, and endures no harm from those who are used to harming, as has been said (let the argument grant what the truth does not grant): still he surely sees the things done unlawfully by the powerful to the humbler, by wrongdoers to the wronged, by tyrants to their victims, by robbers to the robbed, and suffers with the sufferers. He is divided in his disposition between the one side and the other: indignant at the oppressors and pitying the oppressed, filled with anger and bent to mercy, provoked and wounded in his heart, and sometimes even blaming God for his long-suffering toward them. The prophet shows that he once suffered this, and shows those who suffer what he suffered, saying, “Why did you show me toils and troubles? For the ungodly overpowers the righteous, and you have made people like the fish of the sea,” as they swallow one another; he accuses God, with a fiery zeal but boldly, of treating this forbearance and permission as anarchy. And what necessity forces one who can do nothing, and sins besides, to be present at the evils of others? Even if it is nothing great, at least to be troubled by what others do wrong, when the mind ought to be at peace: in this way those in the crowd sin through others' sins, while those separated from the crowd do not; and those in the crowd lose the wages of their labors for the sake of human glory. For even if they say ten thousand times that they admire these no more than those who live in quiet because they are among the crowd, they plainly show that they are held by this bond, by the very fact that they choose to live in places that harm them, crying out against themselves with a piercing voice without any accuser. So too those separated from the people who would praise them testify clearly by their deeds that they [despise] the glory the many admire. For them fasting does not fall away, vigil is not lost, prayer and endurance are not plundered, nor is any other virtue robbed; for there is no praise present that can strip them of their labors. God alone sees them, who is present with them, anointing their eagerness for greater contests and rewards, giving them his help now, and after their departure from this life, eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ, to whom be glory and power for ever and ever. Amen.