[217] The actual words of the story are an encomium on Abraham as a man; but, according to those who proceed from the literal to the spiritual, characters of soul are indicated also, and therefore it will be well to investigate them too.
[218] Such characters are numberless, proceeding from numberless starting-points and arising from every kind and variety of circumstance; but those now to be examined are two only, one higher and senior and one lower and junior. The senior is that character which honours things primal and dominant in their nature, the junior that which honours things subject and lowest in the list.
[219] Now the senior and dominant are wisdom and temperance and justice and courage and virtue regarded as a whole and actions inspired by virtue, but the junior are wealth and reputation and office and good birth, good not in the true sense but in the sense which the multitude give to it, and everything else which coming after the things of soul and body takes the third place which is necessarily also the last.
[220] Each of the two characters possesses what we may call flocks and herds. The devotee of things external has silver, gold, raiment, all the materials of wealth and the means for procuring them, and again arms, engines, triremes, cavalry, infantry and naval forces, the foundations of sovereignty which produce security of power. The lover of moral excellence has the principles of each separate virtue and the truths discovered by wisdom itself.
[221] Now those who preside and have charge over each of these two are, as it were, herdsmen of cattle. The externals are cared for by lovers of wealth or glory, the would-be generals and all who hanker for power over multitudes, the things of the soul by lovers of moral excellence and virtue, who prefer the genuine goods to the spurious and not the spurious to the genuine.
[222] So there is a natural conflict between them since they have no common principle but are for ever jangling and quarrelling about the most important thing in life, and that is the decision what are the true goods.
[223] For a time the soul was in a state of war, and was the scene of this conflict, for as yet it was not perfectly purified, but its passions and distempers still prevailed over its healthy principles. But from the time when it began to grow more powerful and demolish by superior strength the works with which the opposing doctrines threatened it, it spreads its wings, and, its spirit grown to fullness, sets a wall and barrier between it and that side of its character which has given its admiration to the gear of external things. And it talks with it as with a man and says:
[224] “It is impossible that thou and the lover of wisdom and virtue should have a common home and common ties. Away, change thy dwelling and betake thyself afar off, for thou hast not, or rather canst not have, fellowship with him. For all that thou holdest to be on the right he thinks to be on the left, and conversely what to thee is on the wrong side in his judgement stands on the right.”