[30] Is, then, the fourth element in ourselves, the dominant mind, capable of being comprehended? By no means. For what do we suppose it to be essentially? Breath or blood or body in general? Nay, we must pronounce it no body but incorporeal. Do we regard it as boundary-line, or form, or number, or continuity, or harmony, or what amongst all that exists?
[31] At our birth is it at once introduced into us from without? Or does the air which envelops it impart intense hardness to the warm nature within us, such as the red-hot iron receives when plunged at the smithy into cold water? The name of “soul” would seem to have been given to it owing to the “cooling” which it thus undergoes. Again: when we die, is it quenched and does it share the decay of our bodies, or live on for a considerable time, or is it wholly imperishable?
[32] And where in the body has the mind made its lair? Has it had a dwelling assigned to it? Some have regarded the head, our body’s citadel, as its hallowed shrine, since it is about the head that the senses have their station, and it seems natural to them that they should be posted there, like bodyguards to some mighty monarch. Others contend pertinaciously for their conviction that the heart is the shrine in which it is carried.
[33] So in every case it is the fourth of the series that is beyond comprehension. In the universe it is the heaven in contrast with the nature of air and earth and water; in man it is mind over against the body, and sense-preception, and the speech which gives expression to thought. It may well be that it is for this reason that the fourth year is designated in the sacred documents “holy and for praise ” (Lev. 19:24);
[34] for among created things, that which is holy is, in the universe, the heavens, in which natures imperishable and enduring through long ages have their orbits; in man it is mind, a fragment of the Deity, as the words of Moses in particular bear witness, “He breathed into his face a breath of life, and man became a living soul” (Gen. 2:7).
[35] And each of these appears to me to be correctly spoken of as “for praise.” For it is in the heaven and in the mind that capacity resides to set forth in solemn strains hymns of praise and blessing in honour of the Father who is the author of our being. For man is the recipient of a privilege which gives him distinction beyond other living creatures, that, namely, of worshipping Him that IS; while the heaven is ever melodious,
[36] producing, as the heavenly bodies go through their movements, the full and perfect harmony. If the sound of it ever reached our ears, there would be produced irrepressible yearnings, frantic longings, wild ceaseless passionate desires, compelling to abstain even from necessary food, for no longer should we take in nourishment from meat and drink through the throat after the fashion of mortals, but, as beings awaiting immortality, from inspired strains of perfect melody coming to us through our ears. To such strains it is said that Moses was listening, when, having laid aside his body, for forty days and as many nights he touched neither bread nor water at all (Ex. 24:18).