[44] “To this one shall be given the title ‘woman’ ” (Gen. 2:23), as much as to say, for this cause shall perception be called “woman” because out of man that sets it in motion “this one is taken.” Why, then is “this one” put in? Because there is another perception, not taken from the mind, but brought into being together with it. For there are, as I have said already, two perceptions, one existing as quiescent condition, the other as activity. The one, then, that exists as quiescent condition, is not taken out of the man, that is to say the mind, but comes into being with it.
[45] For the mind, as I have pointed out, when it came into existence, came into existence in association with many potentialities and conditions, those of reason, animal life, and growth, and so with that of perception also. But the one that exists as an activity comes out of the mind. For it was extended out of the perception which is in the mind as a condition, that it might come to be an activity. Thus the second one, the one that is characterized by movement, has been produced out of the mind itself.
[46] But he is a shallow thinker who supposes that in strict truth anything whatever derives its birth from the mind or from himself. Do you not see that perception in the person of Rachel who sits upon the teraphim, is rebuked by “the seeing one,” when she imagines that movements have their source in mind? For she says, “Give me children; if you do not, I shall die” (Gen. 30:1); but he answers, “O woman, full of false fancies, the mind is the origin of nothing, but God who is antecedent to the mind is the only cause”; and so he adds, “Am I in the place of God who deprived thee of the fruit of the womb?” (ibid. 2).
[47] But that it is God who brings about birth, Scripture will give evidence in the case of Leah, when it says, “And the Lord seeing that Leah was hated opened her womb, but Rachel was barren” (Gen. 29:31). The opening of the womb is man’s proper function. But mortal kind is prone of itself to hate virtue, and accordingly God has bestowed honour upon it and vouchsafes to her that is hated to bear the first-born.
[48] He says elsewhere, “If a man have two wives, one of them beloved and one of them hated, and they shall bear children to him and the first-born son be the son of the hated wife … he shall not be able to give the right of the first-born to the son of the beloved wife, overlooking the son of the hated one who is the first-born” (Deut. 21:15, 16): for first of all and most perfect of all are the offspring of the hated virtue, while the offspring of the well-loved pleasure are last of all.