[180] Now, the fruits were nuts, which in nature are the opposite of other fruits, for in most cases, the grape, the olive, the apple, there is a difference between the seed and the eatable part, and this difference extends to their situation, which is separate, for the edible part is outside, and the seed enclosed within. But, in the nut, seed and edible part are identical, merged in a single form, and their situation is the same inside, shielded and guarded on all sides by a double fence, composed partly of very thick shell and partly of a substance equivalent to a wooden framework.
[181] In this way, it signifies perfect virtue; for, just as in a nut, beginning and end are identical, beginning represented by seed and end by fruit, so it is with the virtues. There, too, it is the case that each is both a beginning and an end; a beginning in that it springs from no other power but itself, an end in that it is the aspiration of the life which follows nature.
[182] This is one reason why the nut is a type of virtue, but there is another given which is even clearer than that. The shell-formed part of the nut is bitter, and the inner layer which surrounds the fruit like a wooden fence is exceedingly solid and hard; and, as the fruit is enclosed in both these, it is not easy to get at.
[183] In this Moses finds the parable of the practising soul, which he thinks he can rightly use to encourage that soul to virtue and teach it that it must first encounter toil. Toil is bitter and stiff and hard, yet from it springs goodness, and therefore there must be no softening.
[184] For he who flees from toil flees from the good also, but he who patiently and manfully endures what is hard to bear is pressing on to blessedness. For in the voluptuous livers, whose souls are emasculated and whose bodies run to waste with ceaseless luxury prolonged from day to day, virtue cannot make its lodging; but it will first procure its divorce for misusage in the court of right reason, and then seek another home.
[185] But in very truth that most holy company, justice, temperance, courage, wisdom, follow in the train of the practisers and all who devote themselves to a life of austerity and hardship, that is to continence and self-restraint, together with simplicity and frugal contentment. For by these the highest authority within us, reason, advances to sound health and well-being, and brings to nought the formidable menace to the body, engineered in many a scene of drunkenness and gluttony and lewdness and the other insatiable lusts, the parents of that grossness of flesh which is the enemy of quickness of mind.
[186] Further, they say, that of all the trees which regularly bud in the spring the almond-tree is the first to blossom with a welcome promise of a plentiful crop of fruit, and the last to shed its leaves, year by year protracting the hale old age of its verdure to the longest span. Each of these facts he takes as a parable of the priestly tribe, intimating that it will be the first and last of all the human race to blossom, in that day, whenever it shall be, when it shall please God to make our life as a springtime by ridding it of covetousness, that insidious foe which is the source of our misery.