About the Planting of Noah (41-45)

Therefore the possessions of man have guards and keepers, very fierce beasts, for the repulse of invading and attacking enemies. But the possessions of God have rational natures for their guards. For "there," says Moses, "God placed the man whom he had made;" that is to say, he placed him among the rational virtues alone;

therefore the practises and uses of the virtues have received from God this especial honour beyond the souls of other animals. And therefore, also, it is most [*]

We cannot therefore raise any question as to why it was ordained that all the different species of animals should be collected in the ark which was made at the time of the great deluge, while more were brought into the Paradise. For the ark was an emblem of the body, which of necessity therefore contained all the most tameable and ferocious evils of the passions and vices; but the Paradise contained only the virtues: and the virtues do not receive anything savage or in short anything destitute of reason.

And Moses also speaks very carefully, not representing the man who was made after God’s own image, but the man who was formed of clay, as the one who was placed in the paradise. For the one who was made after the image of God, and stamped with the truth of God, does, as it appears to me, in no respect differ from the tree which bore as its fruit everlasting life. For they are both imperishable, and have both been thought worthy of the most central position in the dominant part of man. For it is said that "the tree of life is in the midst of the Paradise." But the other man, he of the composite and more earthly body, who has no justification in uncreated and simple nature, the cultivator of which is the only person who knows how to dwell in the house and in the courts of the Lord. For Jacob is represented "as a plain man dwelling in a house," [*] having a disposition full of ingenuity, and compounded and made up of all kinds of materials.

It was natural therefore to place and firmly root the mind in the middle of the paradise, that is, of the universal world, having in itself faculties which draw it in contrary directions, so that it should be kept in a state of doubt when called upon to discriminate as to what it should choose and what it should avoid, since if it chose the better part it would reap [*]