Christ the Educator

Chapter 10

164 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA making its own judgment for itself. To keep itself inactive would be for it to cease to exist. The soul, then, ever keeping its thoughts on God and attributing those thoughts to the body by its constant association with it, makes man equal to the angels in their loveliness. So, from its practise of wakefulness, it obtains eternal life. Chapter 10 (83) It remains for us now to consider the restriction of sexual intercourse to those who are joined in wedlock. Begetting children is the goal of those who wed, and the fulfillment of that goal is a large family, just as hope of a crop drives the farmer to sow his seed, while the fulfillment of his hope is the actual harvesting of the crop. But he who sows in a living soil is far superior, for the one tills the land to provide food only for a season, the other to secure the preservation of the whole human race; the one tends his crop for himself, the other, for God. We have received the command : 'Be fruitful,'l and we must obey. In this role man becomes like God, because he co-coperates, in his human way, in the birth of another man. Now, not every land is suited to the reception of seed, and, even if it were, not at the hands of the same farmer. Seed should not be sown on rocky ground nor scattered everywhere ,2 for it is the primary substance of generation and contains imbedded in itself the principle of nature. It is undeniably godless, then, to dishonor principles of nature by wasting them on unnatural resting places. In fact, you recall how Moses, in his wisdom, once denounced seed that 1 Cf. Gen. 1.28. 2 Cf. Matt. 13.3·24; Plato, Laws VIII 838E. CHRIST THE EDUCATOR 165 bears no fruit, saying symbolically: 'Do not eat the hare nor the hyena.'3 He does not want man to be contaminated by their traits nor even to taste of their wantonness, for these animals have an insatiable appetite for coition. As regards the hare, legend claims that it needs to void excrement only once a year, and possesses as many anuses as the years it has lived.4 Therefore, the prohibition against eating the hare is nothing else than a condemnation of pederasty. And with regard to the hyena, it is said that the male changes every year successively into a female, so that Moses means that he who abstains from the hyena is commanded not to lust after adultery. (84 ) While I agree that the all-wise Moses means, by this prohibition just mentioned, that we should not become like these beasts, I do not entirely agree with the explantion given these symbolic prohibitions. A nature can never be made to change; what has been once formed in it cannot be reformed by any sort of change. Change does not involve the nature itself; it necessarily modifies, but does not transform the structure. For instance, although many birds are said to change their color and their voice according to the season (like the blackbird which changes its black feathers to yellow, and its melodious voice to a harsh one, or the nightingale which changes its plumage and song at the same time), even so, their nature itself is not so affected that a male becomes female. Rather, a new growth of feathers, like a new garment , is bright with one color, but a little later, as winter threatens, it fades away, like a flower when its color goes. In the same' way, the voice, affected unfavorably by the cold, loses its vibrancy: the surface of the whole body contracts with the climate, and the bronchial tubes, narrowly constricted ~ Cf. Deut. 14.7; Epistle of Barnabas 10,6, 4 Ibid, 166 CLEMENT OF ALEXANDRIA in the throat, restrict the breath to the point that it is made quite muffled and capable of producing only harsh sounds. (85) Later on, in the spring, responding to the weather and relaxing, the breath is once again freed of all constraint and is carried through passages that were tightly closed but are now wide open. No longer does the voice croak in dying tones, but bursts forth clear, pouring out in full-throated voice, and now in springtime there arises melodious song from the throats of the birds.5 Therefore...