Having turned away from the contemplation of intelligible things, misusing the individual activities of the body, taking pleasure in contemplating the body, and seeing pleasure as good for itself, the soul was deceived. It misused the name “good” and supposed pleasure itself to be what is truly good, like someone whose mind has been deranged, who demands a sword to use against everyone he meets and thinks that this is sanity.
Once in love with pleasure, the soul began to pursue it in many ways. For since it is by nature capable of movement, even though it has turned away from good things, it does not cease to move. It now moves no longer according to virtue or so as to see God. Instead, imagining things that do not exist, it redirects its own capacity and misuses it for the desires it has devised, since it was made with free choice. Just as it can incline toward good things, so it can also turn away from them; and when it turns away from the good, it necessarily thinks about its opposites. For it cannot cease moving altogether, since, as I said, it is by nature capable of movement.
Knowing its own free choice, the soul sees that it can use the members of the body in either direction, toward what has being and toward what has no being. Good things have being; evil things have no being. I say that good things have being because their patterns are in God, who is; but I say that evil things have no being because, though they do not exist, they have been fashioned by human imaginings.
For the body has eyes in order to see creation and, through its perfectly harmonious arrangement, to know the Creator. It also has hearing in order to listen to the divine sayings and the laws of God, and hands both for doing necessary work and for stretching them out in prayer to God. But the soul, after turning away from the contemplation of good things and from its movement among them, wanders and moves toward their opposites.
Then, seeing its own capacity, as I said, and misusing it, the soul conceived that it could also move the members of the body in the opposite direction. So instead of looking at creation, it turns the eye toward desires, showing that it can do this too. It thinks that simply because it is moving, it preserves its own dignity and does not sin by doing what it is capable of doing, not knowing that it was made not merely to move, but to move toward what it ought. This is why the apostolic saying warns us: “All things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial.”
Having turned away from the contemplation of intelligible things, misusing the individual activities of the body, taking pleasure in contemplating the body, and seeing pleasure as good for itself, the soul was deceived. It misused the name “good” and supposed pleasure itself to be what is truly good, like someone whose mind has been deranged, who demands a sword to use against everyone he meets and thinks that this is sanity.
Once in love with pleasure, the soul began to pursue it in many ways. For since it is by nature capable of movement, even though it has turned away from good things, it does not cease to move. It now moves no longer according to virtue or so as to see God. Instead, imagining things that do not exist, it redirects its own capacity and misuses it for the desires it has devised, since it was made with free choice.
Just as it can incline toward good things, so it can also turn away from them; and when it turns away from the good, it necessarily thinks about its opposites. For it cannot cease moving altogether, since, as I said, it is by nature capable of movement.
Knowing its own free choice, the soul sees that it can use the members of the body in either direction, toward what has being and toward what has no being. Good things have being; evil things have no being.
I say that good things have being because their patterns are in God, who is; but I say that evil things have no being because, though they do not exist, they have been fashioned by human imaginings.
For the body has eyes in order to see creation and, through its perfectly harmonious arrangement, to know the Creator. It also has hearing in order to listen to the divine sayings and the laws of God, and hands both for doing necessary work and for stretching them out in prayer to God. But the soul, after turning away from the contemplation of good things and from its movement among them, wanders and moves toward their opposites.
Then, seeing its own capacity, as I said, and misusing it, the soul conceived that it could also move the members of the body in the opposite direction. So instead of looking at creation, it turns the eye toward desires, showing that it can do this too. It thinks that simply because it is moving, it preserves its own dignity and does not sin by doing what it is capable of doing, not knowing that it was made not merely to move, but to move toward what it ought. This is why the apostolic saying warns us: “All things are lawful, but not all things are beneficial.”