[140] Again, he says that he whose offerings are wineless shall not even die; meaning that instruction entails immortality, but its absence entails death. For as in our bodies disease is the cause of dissolution, while health preserves them, so in our souls the preserving element is prudence, which is, so to speak, mental health, while the destroying element is folly inflicting incurable malady.
[141] This, he says, is “an eternal statute,” and the words mean what they say. For he does hold that there is a deathless law engraved in the nature of the universe which lays down this truth, that instruction is a thing which gives health and safety, while its absence is the cause of disease and destruction.
[142] But there is also a further explanation in the words to this effect. A statute which is law in the true sense is thereby eternal, since right reason, which is identical with law, is not destructible; for that its opposite, the unlawful, is ephemeral and of itself subject to dissolution is a truth acknowledged by men of good sense.
[143] Again, it is the special task of law and instruction to “distinguish” the profane from the sacred and the impure from the pure, just as conversely it is the way of lawlessness and indiscipline to mix and confuse everything and thus force under the same head things which are in conflict with each other.