[49] What we arrive at is this: the wise man, when seeming to die to the corruptible life, is alive to the incorruptible; but the worthless man, while alive to the life of wickedness, is dead to the life happy. For, when we are thinking of living beings, or material forms generally, which are separate from one another, it is possible, nay easy, for the active to be one set and the passive another. For, when a father beats a son by way of correction or a teacher a pupil, he that beats is one, and he that is beaten another. But when we are thinking of beings or bodies which are not separate, then action and passivity are found in the same subject. And they are found not at different times and in relation to different subjects, but at the same time and in relation to the same subject. For example, whenever an athlete rubs himself down for purposes of training, there is no question that he is rubbed down; and if a man strikes or wounds himself, he is struck or wounded, for even he who maims and kills himself is maimed and killed.
[50] What am I driving at in saying this? That the soul, not coming under the head of persons or things distinct and separate from each other but under that of those which form a single whole, must needs suffer what it seems to do, as of course in the present instance; for when it seemed to destroy the doctrine most dear to God, it turns out to have destroyed itself. This is proved by Lamech, the offspring of Cain’s impiety, who, addressing his wives, who are two ill-judging judgements, says: “I have slain a man to my wounding, and a young man to my scourging myself” (Gen. 4:23).
[51] For it is clear that if a man slays the principle of courage, he wounds himself with the opposite disease of cowardice, and if a man does away with the strength that is attaining its prime in a training for noble deeds, he inflicts upon himself blows and great indignities with no small shame. Indeed she who represents patient waiting (Rebecca) says that, if training and gradual progress be done away with, she loses not one progeny only but the rest as well, and incurs complete childlessness (Gen. 27:45).