On the Allegories of the Sacred Laws (2.73-2.77)

God, who created all the animals on the earth, arranged this order very admirably, for he placed the mind first, that is to say, man, for the mind is the most important part in man; then outward sense, that is the woman; and then proceeding in regular order he came to the third, pleasure. But the powers of these three, and their ages, are different only in the night, for in point of time they are equal; for the soul brings forward everything at the same moment with itself: but some things it brings forward in their actuality, and others in their power of existing, even if they have not yet arrived at the end.

And pleasure has been represented under the form of the serpent, for this reason, as the motion of the serpent is full of many windings and varied, so also is the motion of pleasure. At first it folds itself round a man in five ways, for the pleasures consist both in seeing, and in hearing, and in taste, and in smell, and in touch. But the most vehement and intense are those which arise from connection with woman, through which the generation of similar beings is appointed by nature to be effected.

And yet this is not the only reason why we say that pleasure is various in appearance, namely, because it folds itself around all the divisions of the irrational part of the

Why need we enlarge on the pleasures of the belly? For we may almost say that there are as many varieties of pleasure as there are of gentle flavours which are presented to the belly, and which excite the outward sense. Was it not then, with great propriety that pleasure, which is derived from many varied sources, was presented to an animal endowed with varied faculties?

On this account, too, that part in us which is analogous to the people, and which acts the part of a multitude, when it seeks the houses in Egypt,[*] that is to say, in its corporeal habitation, becomes entangled in pleasures which bring on death; not that death which is a separation of soul and body, but that which is the destruction of the soul by vice. For Moses says, And the Lord God sent among the people deadly serpents, and they bit the people, and a great multitude of the children of Israel died.[*] For in real truth there is nothing which so much bringeth death upon the soul as an immoderate indulgence in pleasures.