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| Evil, then consists essentially in the choice of what is lower in preference to what is higher.
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§5. Evil, then consists essentially in
the choice of what is lower in preference to what is higher.
But the audacity of men, having regard not to
what is expedient and becoming, but to what is possible for it, began
to do the contrary; whence, moving their hands to the contrary, it made
them commit murder, and led away their hearing to disobedience, and
their other members to adultery instead of to lawful procreation; and
the tongue, instead of right speaking, to slander and insult and
perjury; the hands again, to stealing and striking fellow-men; and the
sense of smell to many sorts of lascivious odours; the feet, to be
swift to shed blood, and the belly to drunkenness and insatiable
gluttony110
. 2. All of which things are a vice and
sin of the soul: neither is there any cause of them at all, but only
the rejection of better things. For just as if a charioteer111
| 111 Cf.
Plato Phædrus 246 C, 248 A, 253 E, 254. | , having mounted his chariot on the
race-course, were to pay no attention to the goal, toward which he
should be driving, but, ignoring this, simply were to drive the horse
as he could, or in other words as he would, and often drive against
those he met, and often down steep places, rushing wherever he impelled
himself by the speed of the team, thinking that thus running he has not
missed the goal,—for he regards the running only, and does not
see that he has passed wide of the goal;—so the soul too, turning
from the way toward God, and driving the members of the body beyond
what is proper, or rather, driven herself along with them by her own
doing, sins and makes mischief for herself, not seeing that she has
strayed from the way, and has swerved from the goal of truth, to which
the Christ-bearing man, the blessed Paul, was looking when he said,
“I press on toward the goal unto the prize of the high calling of
Christ Jesus112
:” so that the holy man, making
the good his mark, never did what was evil.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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