ON HUSBANDRY (DE AGRICULTURA) ANALYTICAL INTRODUCTION

GEN 9:20 F. quoted at the beginning of De Agricultura is the text of this and the two following treatises. The part of it dealt with in the one before us is the words, “And Noah began to be a husbandman” or “gardener.”

Having pointed out that this connotes scientific gardening, Philo describes scientific gardening in the literal sense (1–7), and then goes on to soul-gardening. This ministers to the Mind. Its aim is the fruit of virtue, and it is only for the sake of this that it occupies itself first with rudimentary subjects. What is harmful it prunes away. What is not fruit-bearing it uses for fencing. It deals in this way with mere theorizing, forensic speech, dialectics, and geometry, which all sharpen the intellect without improving the character (8–16). Soul-gardening sets out its programme (17 ff.). As such a soul-gardener righteous Noah is contrasted with Cain, who is a mere “worker of the earth” in the service of Pleasure (21–25).

There must surely be other pairs of opposites similar to this of the scientific tiller and the mere worker of the soil. Yes; there is the shepherd and the rearer of cattle. The organs of the body are the cattle of each one of us. A careless Mind is unfit to guard them; it will not check excess, or exercise needful discipline. These things a shepherd will do. So honourable is his calling that poets call kings “shepherds,” and Moses gives this title to the wise, the real kings. Jacob was a shepherd. So was Moses; and he prays God not to leave Israel unshepherded, i.e. to save it from mob-rule, despotism and licence. Well may each of us make his prayer our own on behalf of our inner flock. God, the Shepherd and King of the Universe, with His Word and Firstborn Son as viceroy, is extolled in the Psalm “The Lord shepherds me.” Only by the One Shepherd can the flock be kept together. This is our sure hope, and our sole need. So all who were taught by God made the shepherd’s science their study, and their pride; like Joseph’s brethren who, though bidden by him to tell Pharaoh that they were “rearers of cattle,” answered that they were “shepherds,” shepherding, i.e. the faculties of the soul; for Pharaoh, with royal and Egyptian arrogance, would have looked down on keepers of literal goats and sheep. The fatherland of these soul-shepherds is Heaven, and (as they told the King) they were but “sojourners” in Egypt, the land of the body and the passions (26–66).

We find in the Law a third pair of opposites. A sharp distinction is to be drawn between a “horseman” and a “rider.” The mere “rider” is at the horse’s mercy; the horseman is in control like the man at the helm. The horses of the soul are high spirit and desire, and their rider the Mind that hates virtue and loves the passions. Israel’s “Song by the Sea” celebrates the disaster that befalls the “four-footed throng of passions and vices.” It is clear that Moses’ words about horses are symbolic, for so great a soldier as he must have known the value of cavalry. Again, though literal racehorse breeding is a poor business, those who ply it have the excuse that the spectators of a race catch the fine spirit of the horses; whereas the figurative trainer, who sets an unqualified jockey on the back of vice and passion, is without excuse (67–92).

A glance at the prayer of Moses in Gen. 49:17 f. will shew how different the “horseman” is from the “rider.” To understand that prayer we must note that “Dan” means “judgement,” and that the “dragon,” which he is or has, is Moses’ serpent of brass. (Of course neither Moses’ serpent nor Eve’s can be literal. Serpents do not talk, tempt, or heal.) So Moses prays that Dan (or his serpent) may be on the road ready to assail Pleasure, and “bite the horse’s heel,” i.e. attack and overturn the supports which hold up Passion (94–106).

Here we come upon a piece of interpretation very characteristic of Philo. The biting of Passion’s heel brings about the horseman’s fall. So far from being daunted by this, our author positively revels in it. It is a fall which implies victory, not defeat. For, should Mind ever find itself mounted on Passion, the only course is to jump or fall off. Yes, if you cannot escape from fighting in a bad cause, court defeat. Nay, do not stop there. Press forward to crown the victor. The crown at which you are aiming is not won in contests of pitiless savagery, or for fleetness of foot, in which puny animals surpass men, but in the holy contest, the only true “Olympic” games, the entrants for which, though weaker in body, are strongest in soul (108–119).

Having noted the difference between the members of each of these three pairs of opposites, suggested to him by the word γεωργός in his text, Philo turns to the word ἤρξατο, “began” (124).

“Beginning is half the whole.” Yes, if we go on to the end. But good beginnings are often marred by failure to make proper distinctions. For instance, one says that “God is the Author of all things,” whereas he should say “of good things only.” Again, we are very scrupulous about rejecting priests or victims on the ground of physical blemish. We ought to be equally scrupulous to separate the profane from the sacred in our thoughts of God. And again Memory, of which the ruminating camel is a figure, is a fine thing, but the camel’s undivided hoof makes him unclean, and that reminds us that Memory must reject the bad and retain the good; for practical purposes, not for sophistical hair-splitting. Sophists are swine; they divide ad nauseam, but for perfection we must con over and take in (125–146).

Sections 147 to 156 shew that the conditions of exemption from military service laid down in Deut. 20:5 and 7 cannot be literally meant. In 157 ff. the acquired possessions which exempt a man are interpreted as faculties which must be enjoyed and fully realized, before he who has acquired them is trained and fit for the warfare with the sophists.

Right ending must crown good beginning. We miss perfection unless we own that that to which we have attained is due to the loving wisdom of God. And wilful refusal to acknowledge God as the Giver of success is far worse than involuntary failure.

“All this about start and goal has been suggested,” Philo tells us, “by the statement that Noah began to be a husbandman or gardener.”