ON THE LIFE OF MOSES.

infancy, he began to exercise his intellect. He did not, as some do, let his youthful passions roam at large without restraint, even though he had ten thousand incentives to do so because of the abundant means for gratification that royal life supplies. Instead, he behaved with temperance and fortitude, as though he had bound them with reins, restraining their onward impetuosity by force. He tamed, appeased, and brought under command every one of the other passions, which are naturally—as far as they are concerned—frantic, violent, and unmanageable. If any of them tried to get free from restraint, he administered severe punishment, reproving it with sharp language. In short, he repressed all the principal impulses and violent affections of the soul, keeping guard over them as one would over a restive horse, fearing lest they might break all bounds, bypass the guidance of reason, and throw everything into confusion.

For these passions are the causes of all good and all evil: they are good when they submit to the authority of dominant reason, and evil when they break out of bounds and scorn all restraint.

Very naturally, therefore, those who associated with him and everyone acquainted with him marveled at him. They were astonished as if at a novel spectacle, inquiring what kind of mind resided in his body—as if it were an image set up in a shrine—and whether it was a human mind, a divine intellect, or something combined of the two. He had nothing in him resembling the common crowd, but had gone beyond them all and was elevated to a more sublime height. He never provided his stomach with any luxuries beyond the necessary tributes nature requires, and as for the pleasures of the organs below the stomach, he paid no attention to them at all, except for the purpose of having legitimate children.

Being in the most eminent degree a practitioner of abstinence and self-denial, and being above all men inclined to ridicule a life of effeminacy and luxury (for he desired to live for his soul alone, not for his body), he exhibited the doctrines of philosophy in all his daily actions, saying precisely what he thought and performing only such actions as