Cornelius a Lapide
Table of Contents
Synopsis of the Chapter
He proposes the theme of the book: Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, and proves it first from the circulation of all things: for all things — behold, the sun, the wind, the rivers — go and come in a circle; therefore there is nothing new under the sun. Second, at verse 12, from the sciences and the desire for knowledge, in which great vanity is evident; because he who adds knowledge, adds also toil and sorrow.
Vulgate Text: Ecclesiastes 1:1-18
1. The words of Ecclesiastes, the son of David, king of Jerusalem. 2. Vanity of vanities, said Ecclesiastes: vanity of vanities, and all is vanity. 3. What does a man gain from all his toil at which he toils under the sun? 4. A generation passes away, and a generation comes: but the earth stands forever. 5. The sun rises, and the sun sets, and returns to its place: and there being born again, 6. it goes about through the south, and turns to the north: going about all things in a circuit, the spirit goes, and returns to its circles. 7. All rivers enter into the sea, and the sea does not overflow: to the place from which they come, the rivers return to flow again. 8. All things are difficult: man cannot explain them in words. The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing. 9. What is it that has been? The same that shall be: what is it that has been done? The same that shall be done. 10. There is nothing new under the sun, nor can anyone say: Behold, this is new: for it has already gone before in the ages which were before us. 11. There is no remembrance of former things: nor indeed of those things which shall be hereafter, shall there be any remembrance among those who shall exist in the last times. 12. I, Ecclesiastes, was king of Israel in Jerusalem, 13. and I proposed in my mind to seek and investigate wisely concerning all things that are done under the sun. This worst occupation God has given to the sons of men, that they should be occupied in it. 14. I saw all things that are done under the sun, and behold all is vanity, and affliction of spirit. 15. The perverse are hard to be corrected, and the number of fools is infinite. 16. I spoke in my heart, saying: Behold I am become great, and have gone before all in wisdom, who were before me in Jerusalem: and my mind has contemplated many things wisely, and I have learned. 17. And I gave my heart to know prudence, and learning, and errors, and folly: and I perceived that in these also there was toil and affliction of spirit: 18. because in much wisdom there is much indignation: and he that adds knowledge, adds also toil.
Verse 1: The Words of Ecclesiastes, the Son of David, King of Jerusalem
"Ecclesiastes," that is, Solomon. It is clear from the very tenor and sense of the words that this is not so much the title of the book, as St. Gregory of Nyssa thought in Homily 1, along with Hugh of St. Victor, Hugh the Cardinal, Denis, and others, but rather the very opening of the book itself. For the book begins here, and here at the margin the first verse of the first chapter is noted. Nevertheless from this the title and name of the book has been taken, so that it is called Ecclesiastes — a name which Luther foolishly rejects in his Table Talk, saying that this book should not be called Ecclesiastes, but Politics or Economics of Solomon: in which matter he contradicts the entire Church and all the Fathers, who called it Ecclesiastes, and with arrogant disdain accuses them of ignorance.
Words. — The word "verbum" (word) is derived from "verberatus" (striking), because all speech is produced by the tongue striking the air within the palate, as P. Consentius and St. Augustine say. Varro, however, derives "verbum" from "veritas" (truth), as if "verum" (true): because we ought to speak the truth. Such are the words of Sacred Scripture — that is, the words of God: oracles most true, most weighty, most salutary. Hence Aben-Ezra: "The words of Ecclesiastes" — that is, he says, not common words, but words ascending from the heart to the mind, inasmuch as they distinguish vanity from truth, and point out to all openly the way to true happiness with a finger directed to the source.
Ecclesiastes. — In Hebrew, Qoheleth, that is, of the assembler, collector, preacher. For the root qahal means to gather an assembly, and to address it. Hence qehilla is called a congregation, assembly, church, sermon.
You may ask first, why Solomon is here called Qoheleth in Hebrew, and from that Ecclesiastes in Greek and Latin? Jacobus Christopolitanus responds first that he is called Qoheleth, that is collector, because he heaped together and collected into one the maxims and wise sayings of David his father and of the other Patriarchs and Prophets in this book. But this is scarcely probable. For since Solomon was the wisest of mortals, he had no need to scrape together from elsewhere the wisdom with which he himself had been gifted and filled by God.
Second, Cajetan holds that Solomon is called Qoheleth, that is collector, because he collected all the modes and species of the world's vanity in this book, and set them before the eyes vividly, and, as Arias Montanus adds, because enumerating the individual things of the world, he immediately appends the cipher 0, saying and repeating: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity." For the cipher 0, if placed by itself, even if multiplied, has no value and indicates no number, and therefore is a sign and mark of vanity and nothingness. But this is too forced and too cold.
Third, others say it is because Solomon's soul (for Qoheleth is feminine in form) had gathered all knowledge into itself, or rather God had poured them gathered and collected into Solomon's bosom.
Fourth, others more rightly hold that Solomon is called Ecclesiastes because from a confused throng and tumultuous crowd he made an ordered, peaceful, and devout assembly by preaching and persuading them to leave behind vain hopes and things and to love and worship the true God. So St. Gregory, Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter IV: "This book is called the Preacher. In a public assembly a proposition is put forth, by which the opinion of the turbulent crowd may be restrained. But the truthful preacher, as if with outstretched hand, calms the tumult of all, and recalls them to one judgment, when at the end of this same book he says: Let us all hear together the end of the discourse: Fear God, and keep His commandments; for this is the whole of man."
Accordingly, Solomon here represents Christ, who as the true Ecclesiastes formed, established, and taught the holy Church both by word and by example. So Gregory of Nyssa and Olympiodorus: "He was called Ecclesiastes, as one calling all mortals into the assembly of the Church, and binding them together in harmony."
Fifth and most properly, Solomon is called Qoheleth and Ecclesiastes, that is assembler and preacher, because, having convoked an assembly of the people, he preached to them about the vanity of worldly things and about the truth of virtue and the fear of God. So St. Athanasius in his Synopsis, Salonius, St. Gregory, Book IV of the Dialogues, chapter IV, Bonaventure, and others; and because, committing the same sermon to writing, he transmitted it to the universal Church of all ages.
Furthermore, the chair from which Solomon preached was the royal throne, which he himself built for this purpose, III Kings VII, 7. A similar address of Solomon to the people at the dedication of the temple which he built is recorded in III Kings VIII, 14. Hear St. Athanasius: "He was called Ecclesiastes, because he himself preached to the people, and spoke the things of the spirit."
Thus Moses, the lawgiver and leader of Israel, frequently preached to the people when he promulgated and instilled God's law. Indeed Deuteronomy is nothing other than a fervent and impassioned sermon, in which Moses, about to die, exhorts Israel to devotion to the law and the worship of God. Similar sermons were delivered by Joshua, Job, Samuel, Mattathias, David, Hezekiah, and King Josiah. So also did Constantine the Great give an exhortation to the Fathers of the Council of Nicaea; and Jagiello, King of Poland, who by preaching with immense zeal, converted the Lithuanians from the worship of idols to the faith of Christ in the year of the Lord 1387.
Such, then, was Solomon the king as Ecclesiastes: for stirred by the fame of his wisdom, nations and princes eagerly flocked to him from the whole world to hear him teach, and among them the Queen of Sheba, III Kings IV. Therefore he preaches here not to the Jews alone, but to the whole church — that is, to a congregation gathered from all mortals — and teaches them where true wisdom lies, namely in contempt of vain things, and in the pursuit of truth and the worship of the true God.
You ask second, why is Solomon called in Hebrew Qoheleth in the feminine? I say first that Qoheleth is a masculine name, not feminine — it is the name of Solomon, who is a man, not a woman; and throughout this book masculine words and epithets are attributed to Qoheleth. I say second: The name Qoheleth, although it is masculine, nevertheless has the vowel points, form, and termination of the feminine. The reasons given are various: first, that the Hebrews are accustomed to assign the feminine gender to things of outstanding beauty; second, that wisdom is here as it were a female preacher, and preaches through the mouth of Solomon; third, that Solomon was a man but ending as a woman, since he bent his manly strength toward the love of women and became effeminate; fourth, that he learned these things from his mother Bathsheba.
The Son of David, King of Jerusalem. — St. Jerome notes that the three books of Solomon, namely Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and the Canticle, gradually advance a person toward perfection: for the first is for beginners; the second, for those making progress; the third, for the perfect. "The title of the first book calls Solomon the son of David, king of Israel; of the second, the son of David, king of Jerusalem. In the third he is not called king or son of David, because the unlearned are very many, those of the metropolis fewer, rare are those who desire only heavenly things."
He calls himself king of Jerusalem, first, because it was the capital of the twelve tribes, and consequently the head of the whole kingdom. Second, because in Jerusalem there was an academy, and the study of wisdom flourished, which Solomon teaches here. Third, because in the same city was the royal court, in which luxury, avarice, envy, pride, and every vanity of vices and desires customarily reigns, from which Solomon here calls away his citizens and courtiers.
Mystically, Ecclesiastes is Christ, who persuading His elect of contempt for the vanity of the world, and love of heaven, is king of the Jerusalemites, that is, of those who see and contemplate God, and therefore enjoy peace. For Jerusalem in Hebrew means the same as vision of peace.
Verse 2: Vanity of Vanities, Said Ecclesiastes: Vanity of Vanities, and All Is Vanity
"A truly sublime utterance," says St. Chrysostom, in his Sermon Against Concubinage, "and worthy of heaven, which Solomon, having come to his senses, and as if able at last to look up from a shadowy abyss to the light of true wisdom, finally uttered." The same author, in his Exhortation to Eutropius: "This verse, if those who are in power were wise, they would write on all their walls and on their garments, in the forum, at home, at their entrances; since indeed there are many appearances of things, many false images that deceive the unwary, one ought to sing this salutary verse daily, both at luncheons and at dinners, and in every gathering each to his neighbor, and gladly to hear it from his neighbor: Because vanity of vanities, and all is vanity."
Grammatically and etymologically vanity is emptiness, hollowness, lightness, from which a thing is called evanescent, since it quickly perishes and vanishes. Vanity therefore signifies many things: for vanity is first, emptiness; second, brevity; third, mutability; fourth, destruction; fifth, falsehood; sixth, fraud and deceit: all of which are fitting for this passage.
In Hebrew, for vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, it reads: habel habalim haccol habel. Vanity is called hebel, or habel, from the root habal, that is, he was vain, was worthless, vanished. Hence hebel, says Pagninus, is a thing that is nothing, or that quickly ceases, like vapor, or a breath that goes out from the mouth. Hence a certain ancient version of the Spanish Jews, according to Pineda, read thus: nada de nada, dijo coheled; nada e nada, todo es nada (nothing of nothing, said the Preacher; nothing and nothing, all is nothing). Hence Abel in Hebrew is called Habel, that is, vanity, because slain by Cain he quickly perished and vanished, and therefore was the first living mirror of the vanity and brevity of human life.
This maxim therefore signifies that nothing under heaven is solid, nothing stable, nothing lasting; but all things are empty, inconstant, subject to perpetual change, brief, transitory, revolving, going and coming in a circle.
The heretics cited at the beginning of Ecclesiastes objected that he seems here to condemn all creatures of vanity, although they were created true and good by the true and good God. I respond first, that creatures in themselves are indeed true and good; but if compared with God the Creator, they are vain and shadowy. For they are surpassed by God by infinite degrees. Second, St. Chrysostom responds that creatures are not so much vain as the vain pursuits of men who labor over them more than is fitting. Third, St. Athanasius responds that creatures are not condemned here, but the vanity and inconstancy of desire concerning them.
Vanity of Vanities. — Third and properly, when Solomon says "Vanity of vanities," it is a Hebraism, signifying the preeminence and summit of vanity. For the Hebrews, when they wish to signify something preeminent and supreme in some genus, double it through the genitive construction, as when one says: Canticle of Canticles, God of gods, King of kings, Lord of lords, Holy of holies. Therefore it is said: "Vanity of vanities," that is, the supreme, greatest, fullest, most vain vanity, namely this sublunary world, or all earthly things.
Take heed therefore, O children of Adam, hear Solomon, and Solomon's parent King David thundering: "Children of men, why do you love vanity and seek after falsehood?" Psalm 4. Why do you love and pursue earthly riches, honors, and pleasures, which are vain and mendacious, indeed are vanity and falsehood itself? For they immediately vanish, and thrust their lovers into the eternal fires of hell. Why do you not pursue heavenly riches and honors, which endure forever? For the world is vanity of vanities, and all is vanity; God is the truth of truths, and all is truth.
You ask, what and how many vanities are there in the world and in all created things? The answer is that they are many and almost innumerable; but that the most notable among them are twelve:
The first is smallness: every creature and created pleasure is small; for every creature receives a small amount of being from God, while God's immensity is infinite.
The second is vileness: every created pleasure, especially human and carnal pleasure, is earthy, vile, and sordid; while the uncreated pleasure that is in God is heavenly, sublime, angelic, divine. Do you love gold and silver? You love red and white earth, says St. Bernard.
The third is insatiability: every created pleasure tickles the soul, does not satisfy it but irritates it. It is like dropsy, which the more one drinks, the more it sharpens the thirst. Hear St. Augustine in Confessions book I, chapter 1: "You have created us, Lord, for Yourself, and our heart is restless until it rests in You."
The fourth is brevity: every created pleasure is temporal, transitory, momentary, and immediately vanishes; while the divine is perpetual and eternal.
The fifth is instability: every created pleasure is fluid, has no consistency, but consists in continual motion and flux. "All things pass like flowing water." Do you hunt riches, pleasures, glory? You hunt winds, you chase a shadow, you build on sand.
The sixth is falsity: no created pleasure is genuine, pure, unmixed, and clear, but is mingled with many troubles, pains, and bitternesses. In God there is pure and unmixed joy, honey without gall, wine without water.
The seventh is imperceptibility: every created pleasure does not pervade or penetrate the soul, indeed does not even touch it in itself, but only affects the body and senses. It is similar to the apples of Sodom, which as soon as they are touched turn to ash and cinder.
The eighth is unfaithfulness: every creature is unfaithful, and often does not deliver the hope it promises. But God is most faithful, He fulfills His promises, indeed exceeds them, giving more than He has promised.
The ninth is uncertainty: every creature's pleasure is uncertain. How uncertain are riches, which can be seized by a thief, burned by fire, swallowed by the sea!
The tenth is deceitfulness: every creature, separated from God, or loved contrary to God, customarily lies and deceives.
The eleventh is weakness: every created pleasure is weak. Do you love a beautiful woman? Behold, she is seized by disease, she withers, she loses her color. Do you love God? He is incorruptible, immortal, most healthy.
The twelfth is destruction: created pleasure is harmful and ruinous, and leads to present and eternal pains; but divine pleasure is most useful and salutary, and leads to everlasting joys. Therefore "scorn created pleasures, for pleasure bought with pain is harmful."
Do you want examples of the force of this statement? Let Gilimer, king of the Vandals, come first onto the stage of the world's vanity — who, conquered by Belisarius, captured, and led in triumph, standing in the hippodrome, seeing the Emperor on his lofty throne and the people standing around, neither wept nor complained; he only recalled that saying from the Hebrew books: Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity.
The Emperor Lothair, grandson of Charlemagne, after administering the empire justly and piously for fifteen years, resolved to abandon all human affairs, and to the wonder of the whole world, enclosed himself in the monastery of Pruem, where he spent the rest of his life in poverty and obedience, in the year of the Lord 855.
To St. Benedict the vanity and smallness of the world, but the truth and majesty of God, was shown by God in a vision during a rapture, as St. Gregory narrates, Dialogues book II, chapter 36: the entire world, as if gathered under a single ray of sunlight, was brought before his eyes. "Because for the soul that sees God, all creation is narrow."
So St. Francis, caught up in prayer, used to say: "Who am I, Lord, who are You? I am an abyss of vanity, ignorance, malice, and nothingness; You are an abyss of truth, wisdom, goodness, and all things. My God therefore, and my all."
St. Dominic frequently used this maxim of Solomon: therefore everywhere, both privately and publicly, with great freedom and spirit he stirred all, even the magnates, to contempt of the world and to love of Christ.
Our Thomas a Kempis, book I of The Imitation of Christ, chapter 1: "Vanity of vanities, and all is vanity, except to love God and to serve Him alone. This is the highest wisdom: to tend toward the heavenly kingdom through contempt of the world."
You therefore who read these things and store them in the depths of your mind, send vanity a farewell, lest you vanish with it; embrace truth, join yourself to God, fix your heart and mind upon eternity that ever endures. "For perpetual light shall shine upon Your saints, Lord, and an ETERNITY OF TIMES. Alleluia."
Verse 3: What Does Man Gain from All His Labor at Which He Labors Under the Sun?
Understand: more than vanity of vanities! For "labors" in Hebrew is yamal, that is, he labors anxiously and painfully; in Greek mochtho, that is, he is afflicted, he lives in hardship, he leads a toilsome life. Therefore "labor" here signifies both laborious action and suffering, and every pain, affliction, and hardship whether of body or of soul.
The meaning therefore is: Man labors continuously, and wears himself out, and afflicts himself with a thousand cares and hardships, but in vain and fruitlessly: because by all his labor, care, and affliction he acquires nothing except vanity. Hence it is clear that these words are not the words of the impious who deny the immortality of the soul, the resurrection, and future rewards; but they are Solomon's own words, and he speaks of the labor of men who gape after earthly and vain things: for this is entirely vain. Not however of the labor of the Saints, who devote themselves to piety, virtue, and the worship of God. For this is not vain, but true and useful, because it begets eternal glory, according to the saying: "The sufferings of this present time are not worthy to be compared with the future glory that shall be revealed in us," Romans 8:18.
The Hebrew iitron is of varied and ample signification: hence it means more, what remains, what survives, superabundant, surpassing, excellent, outstanding, wages, reward, etc. The multiple senses include: first, simply, what remains after continual labor except vanity? Second, what more does a man have from his labor than the labor itself — from labor man acquires nothing except labor, and from it exhaustion, pains, and torments. Third, what reward does he bring back? Fourth, what profit has he obtained? Fifth, what ample, great, and outstanding thing has he brought back from such great labors? Sixth, how little is left after such great labors?
This statement is true in life, truer in death, and truest after death. In life, after labors little or nothing remains. In death, all joy of life ends with life: "They have slept their sleep: and all the men of riches have found nothing in their hands," Psalm 75:6. After death, vain men will see in hell that by all their labor and sweat they acquired nothing except the fires and torments of hell.
Under the sun. — First, Solomon, raising his mind to heaven and thence looking down upon the earth, sees all men's labors and finds all is vain. Second, "under the sun" signifies that the sun is the moderator of labor — rising it rouses man to labor, setting it calls him to rest. Third, "under the sun" notes that those who labor have nothing more than the idle, because under the sun we all undergo a common death. Fourth, "under the sun," that is, under time; vain is the labor of man by which he labors for time, when he was born to labor and live for eternity. Fifth, and most importantly, "under the sun" notes both the place of men's labor — under the sun on earth — and the material of their labor, which consists of earthly things, and therefore worthless and vain. The worldly man labors under the sun, and prepares for himself death and hell; but the pious man labors above the sun, because he acquires the works and merits of the virtues. Hence St. Gregory Thaumaturgus: men crawling upon the earth refuse to raise the eyes of the mind to heavenly things.
Verse 4: A Generation Passes Away, and a Generation Comes: But the Earth Stands Forever
In Hebrew, an age going, and an age coming; and the earth standing forever. He explains and proves what he said in the preceding verse, that under the sun nothing remains to a man from all his labor, from the fact that one generation passes away with its labor and the fruits of its labor, and a new generation comes, which will in like manner soon pass away; but the earth always remains the same, so that it constantly receives into itself these generations continually succeeding one another.
For the earth is like a center, which contains and supports both men and the elements, the heavens, and the whole universe; therefore around this immovable center there move and revolve continually, both the generations of men and their times and ages continually succeeding one another, and the sun and the heavens, also the winds and rivers, and all things, as he explains in the following verse. All these things tend toward showing the vanity of earthly things and of men laboring upon them. Therefore nothing new arises on earth that curious men might seek; but the circuit and cycle of things and men succeeding each other is always the same.
So St. Jerome: "What is more vain than this vanity, that when some die, others are born, and man never remains? while yet the earth, which was made for man, stands forever."
And Gregory of Nyssa: "All endeavor that is concerned with the things pertaining to life is plainly a children's game in the sand (that is, the earth), in which the delight taken from what is done ceases at the same time as the effort expended on what was made. This is human life. Sand is ambition, sand is power, sand is riches, sand is whatever there is, and in these vainly laboring are childish souls."
Hugh of St. Victor asks: "What does it mean that the earth stands? It perseveres in what it was made: it keeps its nature: it does not abandon its condition: what it received, it retains uncorrupted. Why then have you not stood in what you were made to be upon the earth?" And again: "Listen, O man, and blush. The earth stands, and you cannot stand?"
And Nyssen says: "Do not be more lifeless than the earth; do not be more senseless than things that lack feeling." St. Jerome also and Albinus say: "What is more vain than this vanity, that the earth should remain, which was made for the sake of men, while man himself, the lord of the earth, is suddenly dissolved into dust?" Therefore these authors consider that the earth is introduced here so that from it we may learn the right way of living, namely that from its firmness we may learn firmness and constancy in acting and suffering. Likewise from its lowliness, humility, namely that Adam was made and named from adamah, that is, man from humus, earth-born from earth, according to the saying of the Church on Ash Wednesday: "Remember, O man, that you are dust, and to dust you shall return;" which is taken from Genesis 3:19. Again, the earth is set before us here as an arena, in which like stadium runners we race toward the goal, and like athletes we fight for the prize. So let us run, so let us fight that we may win.
Anagogically, St. Gregory on the Fifth Penitential Psalm, on those words: In generation and generation are Your years: "A generation goes, he says, and a generation comes; but the earth stands forever. For this is the unstable change of this life, that as some depart, others succeed them, and when these in turn fail in like manner, others arise under unequal conditions. Yet from all these generations, which have been or will be in the world, that living and divine generation is perfected, which will enjoy the fellowship of God's glory forever. In this therefore he says the years, that is, the eternity of God will endure, says the Prophet; namely when the generation that precedes and the one that follows have become one, since the last enemy, death, has been destroyed, which before it is swallowed up in victory, leaves nothing stable, nothing solid, nothing unharmed." So also R. Isaac, in the Midrash Qoheleth, that is in the exposition of Ecclesiastes, on this verse: "A generation goes, and a generation comes, but the earth stands forever: this means, he says, this kingdom enters, and this kingdom departs: but Israel remains. And this is what is meant by: But the earth stands forever." For those who are true Israelites, that is, the saints who rule with God, are called earth, on account of the stability and blessed eternity which they will enjoy in heaven. So Galatinus, Book VIII of De Arcanis Fidei, chapter 23.
Fifth, others consider that the demonstration of vanity is here drawn from the likeness of the earth, the sun, the winds, and the rivers, as if to say: Just as the earth always occupies the same place, and the sun, winds, and rivers always maintain the same course, so men always maintain the same tenor and course of vanity. For just as the past generation passed away and vanished, so also the present and future generation will pass away and vanish, so that from the men who existed and departed, you may form a judgment about those present and future, namely that they will similarly pass away and die. Or, as Rupert says, as if to say: Vain and senseless are the labors that greedy men spend on acquiring land, since with so many generations passing and arriving, this earth always remains, and cannot be taken away or appropriated by anyone.
Sixth, some more aptly consider that the earth, the sun, the winds, and the rivers are introduced here to prove what is said in verse 10, that nothing new happens under the sun, but all things go and return in a circle, to restrain the curiosity of men who gape after novelty and new things, which is no small part of vanity in men. Our author Pineda agrees with this, who explains it thus, as if to say: Nothing more, O man, will come to you from your labor, as you can understand from other things that are constant in nature. Does the coming generation have what the past generation did not have? What does a young man think he will find that the old have not experienced? The same earth, the same path of life is trodden by all; for the earth stands forever: the sun continually runs panting toward its setting; what does it find today anew that it did not have yesterday? Rising again, it finds the same hemisphere that it left when it set. Or by this reasoning: Nothing is great under the sun; for from no thing under the sun has the past generation derived blessedness, just as neither will the coming generation: not from the water of rivers, not from the earth; therefore since there is nothing new under the sun, future men will be no more blessed than those who are past. And do not say: I will labor more, and thus will receive more fruit than they
Allegorically, the generation of the Jews has passed, the generation of Christians has arrived; but the earth, that is the Church, stands forever: because the old and new Church are the same, on account of the same faith and the same worship of God. So St. Jerome and Origen on Psalm 89:1. The generation of tyrants and persecutors has also passed; the generation of Arians and heretics succeeded it: but against all of them the earth, that is the Church, remains unmoved.
Tropologically, some refer this to the generation and kinds of vices, whose masks and disguises man successively puts on. For, as St. Jerome says, letter 48 to Marcella: "Now anger imposes on us the mask of a lion, now excessive care contemplates what will last for many years: we rejoice at a coin, we grieve at the loss of a penny, etc. For though we were made in the image of God, through our vice we put on many masks over ourselves; and just as on the theatrical stage one and the same actor now robustly plays Hercules, now softly breaks into Venus, now trembles as Cybele: so we have as many likenesses of characters as we have sins."
Again, the generation of the old man passes, and the generation of the new arrives through baptism and penance; and so the earth, that is the soul founded in virtue, persists and remains, and is thus gifted with blessed eternity. Finally, the generation of labors passes, the generation of rewards arrives in heaven, which is the land of the living, and therefore its happiness and glory stands forever.
Of all these expositions, the one I placed first seems the most genuine and literal; for it most closely touches the aim and purpose of Ecclesiastes, which is to show that all things under the sun are vain, because all things are circular, going in a circle and departing. For this is what is meant by a generation passes and a generation comes, as if to say: The generations of all ages revolve and go in a circle, because generation continuously succeeds generation, just as the later part of a circle succeeds the earlier in a continuous series. Just as therefore the later part of a circle, as it revolves, extends beyond the earlier: so the later generation displaces every preceding one. He adds the reason saying: "But the earth stands forever," as if to say: The earth is like the center of this revolution and circle; for around it all the generations, revolutions, and successions of ages continually revolve. Just as therefore the center of a circle must remain unmoved: for one foot of the compass is fixed at the center, and the other foot, moved in a circle around the center, describes the circle: so in a wheel the axle, which is like the center, must remain unmoved, so that the wheel can rotate around it. In the same way the earth, which is the center of this circle and revolution of generations, must stand unmoved, so that in it and around it these revolutions may continually continue and be perpetuated: especially because the earth supplies the material and cause for these revolutions and generations. For all things are generated from the earth. The earth in turn receives into itself the passing generation of plants, animals, and men. For all bodies when they die return to the earth from which they arose, as to their mother, so that from it a new generation of new plants, animals, and men may continually sprout and be produced, while the earth is irrigated by rain and warmed by the sun's rays, and thus made fruitful and fertile. Therefore the earth is like a tree, which, as Pliny says, Book XVI, chapters 20 and 21: "Though it always retains its foliage, yet the same leaves do not last, but as new ones grow, the old ones wither." For in a similar way on the earth, as new men and animals are born, the old wither and die. And this is implied by the word generation: for whatever is capable of being generated is also capable of being corrupted. For things that are generated arise and grow, then decline, grow old, and perish, according to Wisdom 5:13: "We were born and immediately ceased to exist." From this conclude that men are vain who brood over a vain and corruptible world, inasmuch as it consumes and destroys all their labors and fruits: just as the dove is foolish and has no heart, as Hosea chapter 7, verse 11 says, which though it sees its eggs and chicks always taken from its nest, nevertheless daily labors to lay new ones in the same place.
From this then, as from a principle, Ecclesiastes concludes in verse 10 that there is nothing new under the sun, but all things revolve in the same way, and at the time appointed for them by God they arise and perish, going in a circle and departing. Whence in verse 11 he concludes: "There is no remembrance of former things: nor indeed will there be any remembrance of those things that are yet to come, among those who shall be in the last time." Now let us recall each word to mind and examine it more deeply.
Generation in Hebrew is dor, from dur, meaning I endure, I delay, I lead a life, also I sojourn, I dwell: therefore dor means the same as duration, age, pilgrimage, generation, epoch, the time of life in which man sojourns in the world. Hence secondly, by metonymy dor, that is generation and age, signifies the men living in that time and age: likewise all things that arise, happen, and perish in that age. Our translator aptly renders it as generation, to denote both the corruption of sublunary things: for whatever is generated is also corrupted, as I have already said; and their circulation: for the generations of things are renewed each year with the sun, and go in a circle. Finally, the generation of one thing is the corruption of another, and conversely the corruption of one is the generation of another, as Aristotle says. Hence Forerius on Isaiah chapter 38, on those words: "My generation has been taken away," derives the Hebrew dor, that is generation, from the noun dor, meaning sphere, circle, ball; whence dor, he says, signifies the course of life; for it denotes a quasi-spherical revolution: and our whole life consists in revolutions and vicissitudes, in Isaiah chapter 53, verse 8. Dor, he says, denotes to the Hebrews an age or epoch from its rolling quality, because age succeeds age and epoch succeeds epoch, so that it seems to form a circle. For, as St. Augustine says on Psalm 38, on those words: "Make known to me, O Lord, my end, and what is the number of my days," our days do not stand still, but pass away, "and all things are swept along by fleeting moments."
Passes away in Hebrew is holech, meaning goes, walks; the Septuagint has poreuetai, meaning departs, as if to say: In this world we are not stationary but walking and wayfarers; for we are continually departing and tending toward death, and through it to immortality. Hence the Arabic has: departs; the Syriac: goes away; others: passes, slips away, as if to say: All human and earthly things hasten their journey, set out, and as if they wished to fly away somewhere, they fasten winged sandals already bound to their feet, depart, and leave. Our translator aptly renders it as passes away, namely like a traveler who walks through lands, traverses, leaves behind, and passes by. For we are all pilgrims in this life, and we are sojourning away from the Lord, and, as the Apostle says: "The form of this world passes away," as I said a little earlier; because the world does not have an abiding substance, but a passing form and a fleeting shadow, according to the saying of the Christian Poet: "One day passes, the origin of the next is unknown."
And Cicero, in his book On Old Age: "Past time, he says, however long, once it has elapsed, could soothe foolish old age with no consolation;" because, as he says in the same place: "Past time never returns."
And Virgil, Aeneid VIII: O if only Jupiter would bring back to me the years that have passed. by the spirit of prophecy: The good generation of the just has departed from this world, on account of the sins of the most wicked generation of the impious, which they will commit after them; but the earth stands for ages of ages, to sustain the vengeance that will come upon the world on account of the sins of the children of men.
"But the earth stands forever." Some take earth here, just as in Genesis 11, to mean prime matter which remains the same, that is, underlies the forms of things and the generations both passing and coming. So Alexander of Hales, Bonaventure, and Albert. But this is symbolic and mystical. For it is clear that literally the element of earth is signified by earth. For forever the Hebrew is olam (whence the Latin olim), meaning age, eternity; and sometimes it signifies not absolute eternity, but relative eternity, and therefore only a long time. Whence some explain it thus: "The earth stands forever," that is, it will stand as long as men inhabit it, as long as mortals live on it. So Horace says, Book I, Epistle 10: He will serve forever who knows not how to use a little.
"But an age, says Varro, is a span of one hundred years (whence the secular games) so called from senex (old man), because this is the span of men's growing old." Nevertheless, forever can here be taken absolutely. For the earth will stand forever. So St. Thomas, Part I, Question 10, article 3: "Eternity, he says, truly and properly exists in God alone, because eternity follows upon immutability, as is evident from what has been said. But God alone is altogether immutable. Yet inasmuch as some things receive immutability from Him, to that extent they participate in some measure in His eternity; some things therefore obtain from God this immutability, that they never cease to exist, and in this sense it is said in Ecclesiastes 1 of the earth, that it stands forever; and thus eternity can be attributed to angels, according to the Psalm: You who shine wondrously from the eternal mountains."
For stands the Hebrew is amad, meaning stands, remains, perseveres, is firm and stable, like ammud, meaning a column, which stands under a house and supports and sustains it. For thus the earth like a column and like a center supports all the spheres of the elements and heavens, and the whole universe.
Again, "the earth stands" properly fits this passage, says Hugh of St. Victor: "That it may send forth those coming, carry those passing through, and receive those departing." But Salonius says: "The earth stands, he says, made the accuser against you, in which you have perpetrated wicked deeds." For on the day of judgment the earth, like a witness, will with silent voice accuse the wicked before Christ the judge, and demand vengeance upon them for having polluted, stained, and violated it, which God had created pure, with their crimes. Whence that verse, Psalm 49:4: "He shall call heaven from above, and the earth to judge his people." Hence Moses calls heaven and earth as witnesses of the law sanctified by God and violated by the wicked: "Hear, O heavens, what I speak; let the earth hear the words of my mouth," Deuteronomy 32:1. See what was said there. Hence the Chaldean renders this mystically thus: King Solomon said by
From this it is clear that some Jews were wrong to have thought that stands signifies the eternity of the earth, as if it were uncreated and had stood from eternity; these are listed and refuted by R. Moses, Book II of the Guide for the Perplexed, chapter 29; for stands means to remain, namely that the earth, after it was created by God, endures forever.
Therefore the earth stands forever signifies first: that the earth has always endured since its creation, endures now, and will endure forever, while the generations of men, animals, and all things do not endure, but as one passes another and yet another continuously succeeds. For this is the antithesis between the generations and the earth, that the latter endures while the former depart and return to the earth. For the earth endures so that it may be the mother, material, place, receptacle, and efficient cause of these generations continually succeeding one another; while old plants, animals, and men die, it sprouts and produces new ones. For all these are the offspring, progeny, and children of the earth, and therefore among themselves they are of the same kind and like brothers, as earth-born from the same mother, namely the earth, which is a great mark of man's lowliness and humiliation. Hence Empedocles said that earth and water are the matter of generable bodies, like flour and water; while air and fire are agents rather than recipients, and supply powers more than bodies to things being generated. Whence Solomon adds about these: "The sun rises and sets, etc. Ranging about in a circuit the spirit goes." For heat and fire are the companion of the sun.
The exposition of the Catena of the Greek Fathers, which exists here in Rome in the Sforza Library, where I saw and read it, serves this point, and it reads thus: "The things made by God remain as they are; to be born from the earth, to depart into the earth, the same earth stands, the sun going around the whole earth returns again to the same terminus, etc.; but in human words much nonsense is found, and nothing of use."
The earth therefore is like a stadium for moving and running things, and hence in Hebrew it is called erets, from ruts, meaning to run (which in Italian is called ruzzolare), because all things run and are carried toward it as fixed and stable, as toward a center and place of rest, and it is like a stadium in which men run from rising to setting, as well as animals and all things. Therefore the earth stands forever, that is, it endures and remains, and does not pass away, as the generations of ages pass away, of which he said: "A generation passes, a generation comes." For he sets the earth against these as something permanent, saying: "But the earth stands forever," that is, it remains and subsists, and is not rotated around the celestial orbs rotated like the sun, about which he adds by antithesis: "The sun rises." Whence Nazianzen, Oration 4: "The earth, he says, is like the hypostasis of the generations succeeding one another," because it underlies them, and nourishes and sustains them. And Origen, Homily 14 on Numbers, says the angels promote the births of animals, the growth of shrubs and plants, as the common charioteers of the earth and world.
Hence secondly, stands signifies that the earth does not move but stands firm and unmoved, against certain ancient philosophers who thought that the heavens are at rest and the earth moves. This was, as Cicero attests in Book II of the Academic Questions, and Plutarch in Book II On the Opinions of Philosophers, chapters 13 and 15, the opinion of Nicetas of Syracuse, Cleanthes of Samos, Ecphantus the Pythagorean, Heraclides of Pontus, and in this century, Nicholas Copernicus. Hence many philosophers thought the moon was solid and that people lived on it. Hear Macrobius, Book I on the Dream of Scipio: "Indeed the physicists called the moon an ethereal earth, and named its inhabitants lunar peoples; and they showed this to be so with very many arguments." And Plato in the Symposium calls the moon a terrestrial heaven, and the earth a celestial earth. Hear also Lactantius, Book III On False Wisdom, chapter 22: "Xenophanes said that within the concavity of the moon there lay another earth, and there another race of men lived in a similar way to how we live on this earth. Those lunatic men therefore have another moon, which provides them with nocturnal light, just as this one provides it for us; and perhaps our sphere is the moon of another lower earth. Seneca says there was among the Stoics one who deliberated whether the sun also had its own peoples, etc. But I believe the heat deterred him from committing such a multitude to the danger of combustion by the sun." So far Lactantius. Recently William Gilbert, an Englishman and London physician, published a work On the Magnet to defend this opinion, where in Book VI he attempts to prove that the earth is like an enormous magnet, which not only faces the poles of the heavens but also has its own poles, around which it rotates daily and revolves in a space of 24 hours, and this for its own advantage, namely to receive the diverse aspects and influences of the heavens and stars suitable for the generation of things.
But this opinion conflicts not only with philosophy but also with Sacred Scripture, which in this passage and others asserts that the earth stands firm and unmoved, as in Psalm 93:2: "For He has established the world, which shall not be moved." Joshua 10:12, commanding the sun to stand still and cease from motion: "Sun, he said, stand still over Gibeon, and moon, over the valley of Ajalon. And the sun and moon stood still." Therefore the sun moves, not the earth. Sirach 38:26: "In his days the sun went backward, and He added life to the king (Hezekiah)," namely fifteen years of life. Baruch 3:32: "Who (God) prepared it (the earth) in eternal time," that is, who founded (for this is what the Hebrew kun, meaning to prepare, signifies) the earth to endure forever. Psalm 24:2: "For He founded it upon the seas," namely the earth. Psalm 78:69: "And He built His sanctuary like the unicorn in the earth, which He founded forever." Psalm 119:90: "You founded the earth, and it remains." Similar passages are Proverbs 3:19; Isaiah 51:13 and 16; Job 38:4, 6, and 38. To this contributes what St. Dionysius the Areopagite, in his Epistle to Polycarp, relates: that during the eclipse which occurred at Christ's Passion, the moon, being at full and exposed to the sun, immediately went back toward the sun and interposed itself between the sun and the earth, and thus caused the eclipse. Finally, the Congregation of Cardinals under Paul V, in the year of Christ 1616, on the fifth of March, with Cardinal Bellarmine present, condemned the opinion of Copernicus from this passage of Solomon, which teaches that the earth moves.
His arguments are trivial, namely: first, that all generation, he says, comes not so much from rest as from motion, without which all nature would be torpid; second, that the powers of the sun and moon produce generations: therefore the earth must be moved and rotated to place itself in opposition to them, and thus absorb and receive their influences; third, the argument is drawn from earthquakes, which we frequently experience: for these seem to issue from an internal motion of the earth, which stirs up and excites the breath of the whole terrestrial globe; fourth, that animals themselves do not live without the motion of the heart and the continual movement and pulsation of the arteries: therefore the earth, the mother of living things, must likewise have similar motions and pulsations.
To the first it is answered that the earth is not torpid because it is continually cultivated by farmers, worked, plowed, hoed, etc., so that it may bring forth crops and fruits. I pass over the blowing of winds and the changes of heat and cold, dryness and moisture, which the earth continually receives through the four seasons of the year: for alteration is a kind of motion which does not allow the earth to be torpid.
To the second it is answered that the sun and moon move in order to impress upon the resting earth their influences necessary for generation. For the efficient cause usually approaches the material, not the material the efficient cause. For the farmer goes to the field, not the field to the farmer: the smith goes to the iron, not the iron to the smith.
To the third it is answered that earthquakes do not arise from the natural motion of the earth, but from winds and exhalations enclosed within the bowels of the earth, which, when they wish to burst forth and ascend upward, shake the earth to seek an exit.
To the fourth it is answered that animals have a soul, and therefore need the pulsation and beating of the heart and arteries; but the earth is inanimate, and therefore does not need these, indeed cannot have them. For whoever attributes these to the earth must also give it a soul. See more in our Christopher Clavius on the Sphere. See also what I said about the earth on Genesis 1:1. Finally, hear St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, who translating in a paraphrase and connecting this verse with the following about the sun, winds, and rivers, and from these briefly assigns the reasons why the earth stands, in verse 7: "The things themselves, he says, are rightly compared to the flow of torrents, which plunge into the immense depth of the sea with a great roar. Yet there are things that always remain the same, such as being born from the earth, returning to the earth, the same earth perpetually enduring; the sun, when it has gone around the whole earth, returning in a completed circle to the same goal of its departure; likewise the winds standing and so many agitated rivers pouring themselves into the sea, and the rushing winds neither forcing it to overflow its bounds, nor themselves wandering from their laws. And indeed it was fitting that these things should happen thus as beneficial to this life of ours.
Again, the earth stands forever signifies that the earth does not stand upon and float on the waters, as some philosophers and theologians thought, but stands under them firmly and solidly. For Thales, who flourished under Cyrus about 500 years after David, "judged, says Seneca, Book VI of Natural Questions, chapter 5, that the whole earth is carried upon the water beneath it, floating and sustained like some great ship on the waters it presses upon." And others in Plutarch, Book III On the Opinions of Philosophers, chapter 15, think "the earth floats on the waters like plane-tree leaves or planks, and therefore moves." Their opinion was followed by St. Athanasius, Oration Against Idols; St. Clement, Book VIII of the Recognitions; St. Chrysostom on Psalm 135; St. Hilary on Psalm 135; Eusebius on Psalm 23; Procopius on Genesis chapter 1.
Moreover Anaximenes, says Plutarch, thought "the earth is carried by the air" on which it rests, and St. Basil, Ambrose, and Damascene suggest this is plausible, inferring the same from Job 26:7: "Who suspends the earth upon nothing."
But Solomon here refutes both: for stands signifies that the earth stands firm and is the foundation beneath the waters, air, and other elements and heavens, as the base and center of the universe.
The a priori argument is threefold, according to three kinds of causes. For the material cause of the earth's standing and immobility is its own opacity, density, and weight, which demands the lowest place in the universe, so that it lies beneath and under the heavens and other elements which are more transparent and light. For all heavy things tend downward, just as light things upward. That which is heaviest among the elements therefore demands the lowest place: and the earth is the heaviest. The final cause is twofold: first, that the earth be like the center of the elements, heavens, and universe; for the center must be in the middle and lowest point of the circle, so that it is equidistant from each part of the circle. Again, the center of a circle is unmoved: so the earth in the middle of the world is unmoved; for if it moved and changed its center, the whole world would likewise become eccentric and be moved out of its proper place.
The second purpose is that the earth may support men, animals, and plants, and their generations passing and arriving; hence it must stand firm and fixed. Blessed Alcuin, or Albinus Flaccus, the teacher of Charlemagne, in his Disputation with Pippin the son of Charles: "What, he says, is the earth? The mother of growing things, the nurse of living things, the storehouse of life, the devourer of all." The efficient cause is God Himself, the creator and preserver of the universe, who, like Atlas, sustains the world in the void or nothingness, and supports the earth in the middle of the world like a ball hanging in the air, stable and firm without any base or support. This is what the Psalmist says, Psalm 104: "Who founded the earth upon its stability;" Aquila and Symmachus: upon its seat; St. Jerome and the Chaldean: upon its base; others better: upon its stable place, namely so that it may stand stable and firm in its center. Whence St. Justin, Question 130 to the Orthodox: "The waters, he says, sustain the heavens, the earth sustains the waters, and the divine will sustains the earth." So also St. Basil, Homily 1 on the Hexameron, and from him St. Ambrose, Book I of the Hexameron, chapter 6, whom hear: "By the will of God the earth remains immobile and stands forever according to the teaching of Ecclesiastes; and by the will of God it is moved and shakes. Therefore it does not subsist resting on its own foundations, nor does it persevere stable on its own supports, but the Lord established it and contains it by the foundation of His will, because in His hand are all the ends of the earth."
The symbolic and theological reason is that the earth is the seat of God, indeed the footstool of God's feet; therefore it is fitting for it to be unmoved, inasmuch as it is the throne of glory and the footstool of the immovable and most firm divinity. For the same reason the empyrean heaven is immobile, because it is the throne of glory in which God sits and shows Himself to the Blessed. For it is fitting that both the throne and the footstool of the divine throne be immobile, to represent God as immovable and a most tranquil judge. And by this reasoning the world or universe is mobile, and therefore eternal: because its extreme parts, namely the highest and lowest, are immobile, even though between these the middle spheres of the heavens and elements are rotated for a time, for the use of men and animals. This is what God says, Isaiah 66:1: "Thus says the Lord: Heaven is My throne; but the earth is the footstool of My feet: what is this house that you will build for Me? And what is this place of My rest?" Following Isaiah, Orpheus in Clement of Alexandria, Book VI of the Stromata, thus sings of God: He Himself stands constant and firm in great Olympus: Golden is His throne, and the earth is set beneath His feet.
Ridiculous is what St. Epiphanius reports about Philistion and Manes, Heresy 66, against the Manichaeans: Philistion, he says, inventing the Burden-Bearer (God), teaches that He carries the whole earth on His shoulder, and every thirty years, His shoulder growing weary, He transfers it to the other shoulder, and from this earthquakes occur. He adds something similar about Manes, the parent of the Manichaeans: The moon, says Manes, waxes and wanes and fails as it is filled with the souls of those who die in the thought of his own unbelief. Then the same souls from the moon's small boat he says, are taken up into the sun and deposited in the age of the Blessed. These were the fables, according to Epiphanius, of Manes and Philistion.
Moreover, earthquakes, which we occasionally experience, do not contradict this station and rest of the earth; indeed they confirm what was said, namely that the earth stands unmoved by the will and sustaining power of God. For from this it follows that God, at His will, in order to show His power or His indignation against earth-dwellers and to strike them with fear of Himself, shakes the earth for a time, and indeed sometimes convulses the whole earth and wrenches it from its center, as Didymus in the Catena of the Greeks on Job chapter 9, and others, consider to have happened in the earthquake that occurred at the Passion of Christ, to show the indignation at the death of Christ the Son of God, and they confirm this from Job 9:6: "Who shakes the earth from its place, and its pillars tremble;" and from Sirach 16:18, and Psalm 18:8, etc.
Again, serious philosophers and theologians consider that this station, or consistency of the earth, is not disturbed by the motion of trepidation, by which learned mathematicians believe the earth is moved or balanced on account of the inequality of its parts, some heavier and some lighter, because of the supreme equilibrium of the center; because this motion is so slow and slight that it cannot be perceived by men. Just as therefore a balance is considered to remain in the same place, even though its pans are balanced and, because of inequality of weight, now rise and now descend, since notwithstanding this the balance does not change its position and place: so much more does the earth stand and remain in the same place, even if it is slightly balanced. Indeed, they say, its consistency consists in this balancing, just as the consistency of a balance consists in the balancing of its pans. To understand this, know that there are three centers in the earth: first, the center of the earth's roundness, which is the middle point in the round globe of the earth, just as the center is the middle point of a circle; the second center is the center of gravity of the earth, which is the point in the middle of the earth from which all surrounding parts of the earth are equally distant in weight, so that the center does not approach more toward one part that is lighter than another, but is precisely in the middle of the equally heavy parts and weights; the third is the center of the whole universe, which is the point in the middle of the earth equidistant from all parts of the outer sphere, or circle and circumference of the heavens. Now these three centers are sometimes actually different and distant from each other in location and position, although the center of gravity of the earth always strives and tends toward the center of the whole universe, to be at the lowest point of the world; for it seeks and demands this as its proper place. The reason therefore for the aforesaid balancing of the earth (as of a balance) is the inequality of weights, which are now greater in one pan or part of the earth, now in another, and therefore now weigh down this part, now that, and push it toward the center of the universe, or toward the middle point of the universe, which is equally distant from all parts of the outer circumference of the heavens is distant. For toward this center of the world all heavy things are carried by their own gravity, and the whole earth. Therefore the center of the earth's roundness differs from, and sometimes is distant in location and position from, the center of gravity of the earth, as I have already said, from which all parts of the earth are equally distant in gravity: for the center of gravity of the earth is, or tends to be, the center of the world: but the center of the earth's roundness is the middle point of the earth, which seems to be somewhat distant from the center of gravity of the earth, and consequently from the center of the world, because the earth is heavier on one side than on another: for it has more burdens and weights, such as mountains, rocks, the sea, etc., on one side than on another: indeed often new weights are added to one part and not another, as when the sea in its tide leaves one part of the earth and flows to another, occupying and weighing it down, and therefore the center of gravity of the earth is then somewhat changed, and consequently the earth is moved and balanced by the motion of trepidation, by which it agitates and balances itself until this new center of its gravity, by moving itself, coincides with and comes to rest at the center of the whole universe. For this center of the universe is precisely the middle point of the whole world, which is equally distant from all parts of the circumference of the celestial spheres, just as the center in a circle is equally distant; hence toward it all heavy things tend, especially the earth and all parts of the earth. Wherefore some eminent mathematicians think that this balancing of the earth is the true cause of ocean tides (and not the motion of the moon, inasmuch as at night it is very far away and is in the other hemisphere, so that since the earth is interposed between it and the sea, the moon does not seem able to act on the sea and cause ocean tides); for when the earth is balanced, the sea flows and runs to the part of the earth that is lower in the balancing, as being nearer to the center; and because in the balancing now one part of the earth is lower and now another, therefore the sea in the tide flows toward one part of the earth, and in the ebb toward another.
But against this opinion stands the fact that this balancing of the earth, varying with the weights added to this or that part, is irregular and unstable; while ocean tides are regular and stable. Other distinguished mathematicians add their view and think this was the cause of the flood in the time of Noah: namely that God then balanced the globe of the earth in such a way that He now depressed it below the center of the universe, now raised it above it. For when He depressed it, immediately the seas and all waters flowing toward the center of the universe covered the whole upper surface of the earth, as being depressed and near the center; but when He raised it, the seas and all waters flowing back to the lower surface of the earth, as being nearer to the center of the universe, covered it; and so not simultaneously but successively they covered the whole globe of the earth, so that all men and animals everywhere were successively submerged. For the rain of 40 days alone, sent by God upon the earth, was not sufficient to cover it entirely, and especially to make the water rise above the highest mountains by fifteen cubits, as is stated in Genesis 7 and 8. But this matter of the flood requires greater examination. As for the rest, this opinion about the trepidation motion of the earth is thus, among others, clearly and solidly proven from the principles of geometry by Gabriel Vasquez in I-II, volume I, disputation 81, chapter 3, number 20: For the explanation, he says, of two difficulties, a certain teaching of Archimedes, easily the foremost of mathematicians, must be noted; first, that the earth and all heavy things that rest upon the earth form one body as regards gravity, so that they are balanced by their own weights, as Ovid said, Book I of the Metamorphoses at the beginning, about the earth itself: "Balanced by its own weights." Moreover, that the earth and the other heavy things that rest upon the earth tend by their gravity and seek to be joined to the individual center of magnitude of the whole world, so that even though they rest upon another heavy body and are held back by it from penetrating and joining with the center, yet by their gravity they perpetually strive toward this, and therefore impress upon the body beneath them an impulse by which they try to tend downward and push the body beneath them to yield place to them, until they depress themselves so far downward that they are joined to the center of magnitude of the world. Nor indeed does only one body produce this effect upon another by which it is impeded and held back; but also the parts of the same body strive against each other, mutually pushing and impressing impulse toward the center of the world. This is what we observe in water itself, when a drop falls into dust: for all its parts contract and compress themselves in the shape of a sphere.
Then from the same authority it must be noted that the earth is in the center of the universe in such a way that it rests on no body, but is so equally balanced by its own weights that the center of its gravity, which is indivisible, penetrates the center of magnitude of the whole universe, and cannot tend beyond it, but must necessarily rest there. For if it did not rest in this way, it would ascend and move of itself from the center, which is impossible. The center of magnitude of the universe is an indivisible point equally distant from the outermost surface of the circle and supreme sphere on every side; and the center of gravity of the earth itself is that indivisible point from which, if lines are drawn to the whole outer circumference of the earth in a straight line, there is equal weight on each side. And this center must be found in every heavy body. When therefore this point, which is the center of gravity of the earth, penetrates the point of magnitude of the whole world, the earth is at rest. And since this center of gravity has no width but is actually indivisible, it follows that if on one side of the earth the gravity weighs more, the center of gravity is changed, and thus the earth does not rest in the state in which it was before. For it is impossible for the earth to be at rest unless the point of its center of gravity penetrates and corresponds to the point of the whole sphere; otherwise it would remain above. For to be above is the same as to rest above the center of magnitude of the universe; therefore when the center of gravity is changed, however small the change may be, the earth will be moved by a certain motion of trepidation, so that another point of gravity may correspond to and penetrate the point of the whole sphere, and thus again, balanced equally on every side by its own weights, it may rest. Moreover, the gravity of the earth on one side can weigh more, when previously it did not weigh more than on the other, either because the earth itself is made heavier on one side by its natural gravity through some physical change, or because some body is added to it; for that body resting on the earth weighs upon it and impresses impulse upon it, just as the parts of the earth itself rest upon each other and impress impulse. Therefore from the fact that some body is joined to one side of the earth, the center of gravity will be changed, and the motion of trepidation in the earth will follow, as we said; and the more that body weighs on that side, the greater impulse it will impress on the earth; and therefore that part of the earth will then be heavier, and consequently for that time the earth will be moved by a greater motion of trepidation, because the center of its gravity will be farther from the center of the world, and therefore it will tend toward it with every effort, to come to rest in it as its own ultimate center and the center of the whole world. So Vasquez, geometrically and precisely.
But this inequality of weights, and consequently the inequality of gravity on the sides of the earth, is so slight, if compared with so vast a mass and globe of the earth, that it is imperceptible and insensible. For God so placed the water opposite the earth that the earth in every part sustains and has, as it were, equal weight; therefore this motion of balancing and trepidation of the earth, if there is any, is so slight as to be insensible. Wherefore, speaking physically, the center of roundness of the earth is the same as the center of gravity of the earth, and consequently both coincide and subsist in the center of the whole universe, so that the Wise Man truly says here: "But the earth stands forever," as our Christopher Clavius learnedly teaches in chapter 1 of the Sphere.
Tropologically, Nyssen, Homily 1, explains it thus, as if to say: "Be steadfast and immovable," 1 Corinthians 15:58. "Let temperance remain unshaken in you, firm faith, immutable charity, a stable and immovable standing in every good, so that the earth which is in you may stand forever. But if anyone is greedy and gapes after more riches, and like a sea expanding an immense desire, cannot be satisfied with gains, let him look at the sea that is here and cure his disease;" just as the sea, receiving all the waters of rivers, does not overflow, because it sends them back out again through vapors, or through springs and rivers: so likewise let the rich man pour out upon the poor the wealth and profits with which he abounds.
The earth therefore teaches man constancy and perseverance in good, against all generations of persecutors. For these pass away, even though one succeeds another, so that by this reasoning the faithful man may constantly hold onto the eternity to which he aspires (of which the earth is likewise a symbol) an image, according to the saying of St. Bernard: "If you are not exalted in prosperity, nor cast down in adversity, but maintain the same constancy and tenor of mind, you will hold a certain image of eternity." The same St. Bernard, Sermon 2 on Saints Peter and Paul: "Moses, Deuteronomy 32, says of certain people: Would that they were wise, and understood, and provided for their last end! In which words indeed I see three things commended to us: wisdom, understanding, and providence. I believe they can be assigned to three times, so that a certain image of eternity may seem to be reformed in us: governing the present through wisdom, judging the past through understanding, providing for the last things for caution's sake."
Allegorically therefore the earth represents the Church in persecutions; tropologically, the holy soul constant in temptations; anagogically, the Church Triumphant enjoying constant eternity, according to the saying of the Psalmist: "I believe I shall see the good things of the Lord in the land of the living." For the land of the dying is the arena of combatants; the land of the living is the kingdom of the Saints, says St. Augustine. "In the land of the dying God is my hope, in the land of the living God is my portion," says the same in Psalm 111.
Again, the earth standing forever is the Blessed Virgin Mary, who always stood in grace, and thus stood by Christ even to the Cross and death, and always assists with Her help all who invoke Her. So St. Augustine, Book II On Genesis Against the Manichaeans, chapter 4: "A spring, he says, rose from the earth and watered the whole face of the earth, that is, the dignity of the earth, the Mother of the Lord, the Virgin Mary, is most rightly understood, whom the Holy Spirit watered, who is signified in the Gospel by the name of spring and water, so that just as from the clay of the earth, so that man would be formed, who was placed in paradise to work there and to guard it, that is, in the will of the Father, to fulfill it and keep it."
Verse 5: The Sun Rises and Sets, and Returns to Its Place: and There Rising Again
(Hebrew and Septuagint: rising)
You will ask, to what purpose are the rising, setting, and revolution of the sun introduced here? First, you may take these things plainly as they sound, as if Solomon here signifies that a certain vanity exists not only in the earth and its inhabitants, but also in the sun and heavens, so that the argument is from the lesser to the greater, as if to say: In the sun itself and the heavens there is vanity, that is, instability. For all things are continually rotated and revolve, and like things going in a circle they go and come; how much more therefore are man and all earthly things vain and unstable, and pass away and vanish! Whence Didymus and Nyssen in the Catena of the Greeks: "This, he says, is what it means: looking at the nature of this universe, whether the things in the sun, or those in the may lift itself to the contemplation of Him who made the sun. Moreover it moves with an age-long motion, as some argue from the words of Ezra saying thus: Great is the earth, and the heaven is lofty, and the sun is swift in its course, and turns in the circle of the heaven, and returns to its place in one day, as if to say: This sun too, though great, compared to the Sun of justice, is vanity. But in a mystical sense understand it thus: The sun rises in the hearts of the faithful, directing those still progressing toward what must be done; but it also sets in them, when they seek the heights of understanding, and thus it kindles in them a greater desire for knowledge." sea, or the things in the heaven, you will understand your own nature; for just as this sun has its rising and setting, so too does our nature." And St. Jerome: "He says this, he says, in order to teach that human life slips away and perishes unknowingly amid the changes of seasons and the rising and setting of the stars."
Second, this verse can be referred to the generation that passes and the generation that comes, verse 4, to signify the circulation of all things, as if to say: All things in the world are circular and go and return in a circle: therefore nothing in it is fixed and stable, to which you might attach your heart. I prove the antecedent, because generations revolve and are circular, since continually one passes and another comes. So likewise the sun revolves, while it continually rises and sets; so too the winds and rivers. And from this he concludes in verse 10 that there is nothing new under the sun, but all things go and return in a circle. Moreover, just as in the circulation of generations the earth, as the subject of them all, perpetually stands: so in the circulation of the sun, the same sun remains, and the same motion of the sun, its going and returning. The same applies to the winds and rivers, which all flow into the sea, and it receives all things, yet does not overflow.
Third, this verse can be taken more forcefully, so that just as the preceding verse gave the material cause of generations, namely the earth: so this one gives their efficient cause, namely why generations on the earth continually succeed one another. For the cause is the revolution of the sun, which now approaching brings spring with its light and warmth, by which plants sprout and animals reproduce; now withdrawing and distancing itself, it brings winter and cold, by which plants and animals wither and die. For since the sun, with panting and restless motion, continually moves, changes place, and alternates hemisphere, it is necessarily the case that sublunary things that depend on it likewise continually move, and their risings and settings alternate. Therefore the cause of the inconstancy and fleetingness of earthly things is the inconstancy and fleetingness of the sun. So St. Jerome, Alcuin, and Nyssen, whom hear: "The life of mortals is worn down by day succeeding day, by the parts and turnings of the year, and by the certain and fixed courses of the sun, now advancing, now gradually receding."
Hence the sun in Hebrew and Chaldean is called shemesh, meaning minister, because it serves as a minister to God and nature in the generation of things, and because it serves as a minister to us as we work, and as it were bears a torch before us.
Fourth, our Pineda refers this verse to the preceding human ignorance, which is noted in verse 8. For from the science of astronomy, which is the most excellent and pleasant, nothing more certain can be had about it than that the sun rises and sets together with the other stars, and always repeats the same courses.
Finally Olympiodorus: "He shows, he says, the certain and ordered course of the sun, so that we toward
Note the word rising again, that is, rising anew: for the sunrise seems to be its birth, because the sun is seen to be born from the dawn like an offspring from its mother, and is so thought by the uneducated. Whence the riddle: "I am the daughter of my mother, and the same is soon born from me;" which just as it is said of snow, which is born from water and again resolves into water, so too it can be said of the sun, which seems to be born from the dawn and day, and in turn, rising, begets the dawn and day. Indeed some philosophers and poets thought the sun truly is born from fiery vapors coming together. Whence Lucretius, Book V, depicts the dawn and sunrise thus: It brings the dawn of the ether and spreads light abroad, Or because the same sun returning beneath the earth Anticipates, trying to kindle the sky with its rays: Or because fires and many seeds come together Which always cause new lights of the sun to be born.
So also Epicurus thought the sun dies at sunset and is reborn at sunrise, as Cleomedes attests, Book II.
Allegorically, St. Chrysostom, Homily on the Turtledove, volume 5: "There has risen for us, he says, the Sun of justice, Christ, born of St. Mary according to the flesh. For Rising is His name, Zechariah 3:6. And He set when after the Cross He descended to the underworld, and He returns to His place, saying Himself: When I am lifted up, I will draw all to Myself," John 12. Of this Sun of justice Malachi also pronounces, saying in chapter 4: "In those days the Sun of justice shall rise, and healing shall be in His wings." Where I said more on this matter. Christ therefore, like the sun, rose in His birth, set in His death, and rose again, and was as it were reborn in His Resurrection, says Olympiodorus: for the sun by its light, splendor, warmth, efficacy, and life-giving power is a symbol of God and of Christ, as I showed through many analogies on Isaiah 45:1.
Again St. Ambrose on Psalm 119, octonary 12: "The sun rises, he says, for the just, but sets for the unjust; it rises for the tranquility of the pious mind, and sets for anger; whence he says: Let not the sun set upon your anger; here it can be gathered that it rises and sets for the same people, to bury their vices and illuminate their grace; for He died to sin, that He might live to God, that is, in Him we are dead to sin, that we might live to God forever. See the mystery foretold: And the sun rises, he says, and sets, and draws to its place, this is what the Lord says: When I am lifted up, I will draw all things to Myself. For He drew the pursuits of all to Himself, either to crucify our sins or to provoke our good nature to justice. Notice how He draws to Himself: Father, I will that where I am, these also may be with Me. And to the thief He says: Today you shall be with Me in paradise. Notice how He draws all things. He was lifted up on the Cross, and the whole world believed."
Tropologically, though the sun is the most splendid star of the world, "the eye of the heavens, the ruler of the seasons, the leader of the stars, the giver of life, the father of living things," as St. Nazianzen says, Oration 2 On Theology, and "the expressed image of divine goodness," as St. Dionysius says, chapter 4 On the Divine Names, yet that same sun is also a mirror and example of vanity: first, because it is unstable and always revolves, rises and sets, and this daily and very swiftly: for daily it circles the whole earth; therefore it vividly represents the brevity, rising, setting, and end of human life: for the sun by its continuous and most rapid motion describes, defines, and numbers the hours, days, months, and years of our life. So St. Jerome, Nyssen, Olympiodorus, and others.
Second, the sun is most inconstant, since at every moment it changes place and region, and in turn traverses each sign of the zodiac; therefore it is a symbol of human inconstancy, and specifically represents the inconstancy and circumrotation of desire, as the Greek text has it, Wisdom 4:12. So R. Haccados in Galatinus: "Although the sun, he says, and the celestial orbs revolve upon their axes with restless motions, they acquire nothing new, nothing of perfection: similarly indeed those who loosen the reins to their appetites and are whirled around on the same turning axes of their desires acquire nothing good or beneficial. To be a slave to the appetites of nature and the motions of the mind is therefore utterly useless vanity."
Third, the sun at times is raised to the highest point and shines dazzlingly at noon; but immediately it descends, diminishes its light and splendor for us, and loses it entirely at sunset: so likewise man at times is raised to high degrees of honors, celebrity, and glory; but soon, as the wheel of fortune turns, he is cast down, and often in life, always in death, all his beauty perishes and sets. So Nyssen. Learn therefore modesty from the sun, and "in the day of good things remember evils, and remember poverty in the time of abundance," as Sirach 18:23 admonishes; for the sun suffers darkness in the evening, indeed by withdrawing it brings darkness on. For, as Pliny says, Book II, chapter 10, it is evident "that night is nothing other than the shadow of the earth." But shadow and darkness are a type of obscurity and adversity. Again, the sun suffers an eclipse from the interposition of the moon, which is a type of failure and of human happiness. Finally Pliny, Book II, chapter 12: "Who, he says, seeing the fixed labors of the stars, would not pardon his own necessity, being born mortal?"
Fourth, the sun, though beneficial to many, is yet harmful to others, because with excessive heat it dries up and scorches: therefore the sun, by whose "rising they were scorched and withered" — the good seeds of God and the sprouts of virtues — is the devil and his temptations, as Christ explains, Mark 4:6, 15, and 17, and there also St. Chrysostom and Nazianzen, Oration 1.
Fifth, in the Hebrew the vav conversive is repeated, which turns past tenses into future. Whence you may translate from the Hebrew word for word with Pagninus thus: and the sun will rise, and will enter, or set; where the and has an emphatic force, and signifies that the sun is entirely occupied in going and returning, and this continually and constantly (for the future tense in Hebrew signifies continuation and constancy). Again, for returns the Hebrew has pants, all of which symbolically signify man carried away by his desires, entirely borne toward them, forgetful of past and future; for thus burning he is carried with the most impetuous course toward them as if boiling and panting. Hence the common folk think the sun is drawn by oxen, which in the evening, weary and panting, lead the sun with them to the stable at sunset, to rest there together, as Pliny reports, Book II, chapter 98, and Seneca, Book III of Natural Questions, chapter 26. The poets fable that the sun in the evening, panting, plunges into the sea to be refreshed and cooled, as Strabo attests, Book I. Hence that verse of Catullus, Book II: The river washes the panting horses of the sun. And that of Virgil, Aeneid XII: The day arose, when first from the deep surge The horses of the sun lift themselves and breathe out light from flared nostrils. And that of Boethius, Book III On Consolation: Phoebus falls into the western waves. But by a secret path again He turns his chariot toward the accustomed risings.
But in truth the same sun is more a figure and example of truth and true virtue for man than of vanity and vice: first, because being celestial it teaches man to think of and love celestial things; second, because by its light it teaches him to do works of light, that is, of virtue, Ephesians 5:8; third, because by its great speed, continuous and always of the same tenor, it teaches man that he must be energetic and untiring in labors, to persevere in them always at the same pace; fourth, because by its warmth, by which it gives life to all things, it teaches man charity and zeal, so that endowed with an apostolic spirit he may inflame all to the love of God; fifth, returning from sunset to its place, that is, the east, it pants (Hebrew scoeph), that is, with the utmost eagerness, with the most rapid haste, and with the most burning desire it is carried and hurried along, drawing in its breath as it were, in the manner of those who strive somewhere very swiftly, or wish to achieve the quick end of some work. This panting of the sun teaches man wearied by labor to renew his strength and spirit through meditation and prayer, by which we draw God's grace, so that through the renewal of the spirit he may sharpen pious desires and continue new works continually with new spirit, new fervor and ardor. So that as a mystical sun you may never leave the zodiac, that is, your vocation, and running through it, you may strive to enlighten all by the example of your life. Now raise yourself above things subject to corruption through exercises of prayer. Now subject yourself to your neighbors through honest actions; but after you have labored for some time, return to your place, that is, to the rest of self-examination and amendment. Say to your soul each month: "Return, O my soul, to your rest: because the Lord has done good to you," Psalm 116:7. Where note that the East is called "its place," because it is the sun's proper place: either because the sun was created by God in the East, as Severian holds; or because it rises in the East and is, as it were, born there. For the place of birth is called one's own and proper. Therefore he calls the East the cradle, as it were, of the sun and of the day: either because the sun, declining from the East and setting, always returns to the East and is reborn there; or because in the East it first presents itself to be seen and appears to us most beautiful, that is, rosy, golden-haired, and flaming. To this belongs that verse of Psalm 19 which I cited a little before: "He rejoiced like a giant to run the course," which is said literally of the sun, allegorically of Christ and the Apostles. Whence St. Gregory Nazianzen, in the Oration in Praise of St. Basil, comparing him to the sun: "The beauty and greatness of the sun, he says, are praised by David, and its course and swiftness, and its power and faculty; for it represents the Bridegroom in splendor, the giant in greatness, and advancing far and wide has such power that it equally illuminates the extremes from the extremes, nor is its fervor diminished in any way by the distances of places. But for Basil, beauty was virtue, greatness was theology, course was the perpetual exercise of virtue, bearing him through daily ascents to God; power was the seed and distribution of doctrine. And so I need not be afraid to say that his sound went forth into all the earth, and the power of his words to the ends of the world; which Paul said of the Apostles, borrowing from David."
Finally, the sun seems to be a kind of god of bodies, since it eminently surpasses all bodies and bestows upon them the fullness of all goods; hence it is rightly called (because it truly is) the fountain of all bodily good, because there is nothing in the bodies subject to it that does not flow from it as from a fountain. Is life a good? But the sun gives life to all bodies capable of life. Is health a good? But by its motion it brings health to mortals. Is longevity a good? But it preserves all things. Is growth a good? But it disposes and governs all things. Is beauty a good? But it adorns all things with its splendor. Is pleasure a good? But by its loveliness it wonderfully refreshes the eyes. For light is sweet, as Ecclesiastes says, and it is delightful for the eyes to see the sun. It is the sun that makes the earth fertile with plants, metals, and animals. It is the sun that fills the water with fish. It is the sun that adorns the air with its splendor as with a garment. It is the sun that illuminates the moon, the stars, and all the celestial spheres. Finally, from the highest heavens to the lowest depths of the earth, it fills, nourishes, and protects all things with its influence. O most beautiful image of my Christ! O most lovely footprint of my Leader! I praise Him who placed His tabernacle in you; I glorify Him who created you so beautiful, so agile, so strong, so admirable, that in you and in your effects He might show me His surpassing love.
Be you also, O Christian, like Christ, as if you had been left by Him, indeed made the sun of the world. You will be a sun in heaven; for "the just shall shine like the sun in the kingdom of their Father," Matthew 13. Be therefore also a sun on earth, a sun in contemplation, a sun in action, a sun in the marketplace, a sun in the school, a sun in the temple, a sun at the table, a sun in the bedroom, so that you may enlighten, kindle, and give life to all. These and more things our Alvarez de Paz says, Book III On the Nature of Perfection, Part III, chapter 28. Thus St. Francis Xavier was a rising sun.
"It revolves through the South, and turns toward the North."
The Hebrew has: going to the South and circling to the North; the Septuagint: goes to the South and revolves to the North; the Syriac: goes to the South and circles to the North; Symmachus: goes to the South and goes around to the North; others: declines, encircles, turns, is converted to the North; the Chaldean: goes through every southern region in the equinox of April and in the solstice of June; circling around the spirit goes to the northern region in the equinox of September, and in the solstice of December it goes out from the eastern exit in the morning and enters the western entrance in the evening. The Chaldean therefore considers that in this verse the four seasons of the sun and the year are noted, namely the two equinoxes and the two solstices, the summer and winter ones.
Some think this was said according to the opinion of certain ancients, who, as Aristotle attests, Book II of the Meteorology, chapter 1, thought that the whole world rises upward on the northern side, but is depressed on the southern, not only in the celestial but also in the terrestrial globe. Therefore the sun does not go around the earth on all sides, but during the day traverses only the South, and at night turns away to the North, to hide and be concealed under its hump. They confirm this from Isaiah 14: "I will ascend to heaven, above the stars of God I will exalt my throne, I will sit on the mountain of the Covenant, on the sides of the North," as if the North were the higher part of heaven. But all these things conflict with astrology, theology, and Sacred Scripture, which teaches that the world is round, and therefore the North is not higher than the southern part, and so the sun and the heavens plainly rotate in a circle and go around the whole globe of the earth in every direction.
Again others say the sun daily moves through the South when it moves toward the meridian: for when it reaches it, it is noon; but when it passes beyond it and recedes from it, it seems to decline toward the North. But they err, because the meridian, which makes noon, is one thing; and the South, or the southern region of the world, is another. For the zodiac obliquely and laterally intersects the meridian between South and North; which causes the sun, running through the zodiac and crossing the meridian, now to tend and proceed toward the South, now toward the North, according to the southern signs which it traverses, as can be seen at a glance on a sphere.
Having dismissed both of these opinions therefore, this passage can be taken in two ways, namely first, of the daily motion of the sun; for of that he said: "The sun rises and sets," as if to say: While the sun is moved from east to west, it revolves toward the South and turns toward the North; second, of the annual motion. Of the daily motion understand St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Nyssen, Hugh, Lyra, Valesius, and Titelmann. Of the annual motion: St. Jerome, Olympiodorus, Theophilus, Epistle 3 on Easter; Cajetan, Pineda, and others. First then, Lyra and St. Thomas writing on Job chapter 37 explain it thus of the daily motion: By the North, they say, he means our hemisphere, which faces the arctic or northern pole; by the South he means the opposite hemisphere, in which are the antipodes, which faces the antarctic or southern pole, as if to say: The sun rising in our arctic hemisphere moves through it to the South, that is, it tends toward the antarctic hemisphere, namely to the antipodes; and when it reaches there, it again turns to the North, that is, it tends and returns to us and our hemisphere which is under the arctic pole. But the sun properly revolves through the South in our hemisphere while it displays to us the noon hours. The South therefore is on our horizon and a part of our hemisphere; therefore by the South he does not mean the antarctic pole and the antipodes.
Wherefore Francis Valesius, On Sacred Philosophy, chapter 62, responds more precisely and aptly that this revolution of the sun from South to North is true and truly appears to those who live under the tropic of Cancer (but not to those who live under the equinoctial in a right sphere), as the Italians, Spaniards, Syrians, and Palestinians live, among whom Solomon wrote these things. For since they have an oblique sphere, the sun moves obliquely for them, revolving toward the South and then turning toward the North. "For by an oblique and bent line it proceeds through the South to the North, and so returns to the East," says St. Jerome. And Valesius demonstrates this by this mathematical reasoning: For on whatever day a man turns his face toward the part where the sun rises, and drawing from there a line through his zenith, describes a great circle, and in imagination divides the world into two equal parts, that half of the world toward which his right hand faces he will call the South, and that toward which his left hand faces the North or Aquilo, because he will have the pole on his left, and the meridian on his right. the motion of the sun: daily indeed, after the sun has revolved through the South, intersecting that great circle (which is the line of longitude), it will turn toward the opposite half of the sky; therefore it will turn toward the North. Moreover, it is established that it intersects that line daily, because when the sun is carried through the equinoctial, it describes a great circle; and two great circles cannot fail to intersect each other through the middle; but since the sun cannot recede from the equinoctial by more than thirty degrees, and the obliquity of the sphere in the said locations is greater (as the elevation of the pole from the horizon indicates), it happens that the sun never traverses a circle that does not intersect that great circle, even if not through the middle and into equal parts. But if it intersects, it certainly turns toward the North.
Most truly therefore from the time the sun is born it revolves through the South, and turning toward the North it returns to its place. The reason therefore why for those living under the tropic of Cancer the sun, while it is in the northern signs, seems to decline toward the South and then turn back toward the North, is the obliquity of position, as well as of the zodiac. For since they live in an oblique sphere, they have a more oblique zodiac, in which the sun perpetually moves, and which therefore by circling seems to them to make an oblique course, and not by a direct motion but by an oblique one to revolve toward the South, and then revolve back toward the North, as it tends toward sunset. This obliquity is implied by the word revolves, and in Hebrew soeb, meaning goes around. For in obliquity there are turnings, bends, and circuits by which the sun wanders. For since the zodiac obliquely intersects the equinoctial, as well as the meridian, which produces noon for us, so that its upper part, where the sun rises for us, touches the tropic of Cancer and is near the arctic circle, which faces the arctic pole or the North; and its lower part touches the tropic of Capricorn and is near the antarctic circle, which faces the antarctic or southern pole. Hence it happens that the sun rising for us in the tropic of Cancer, while it is in the northern signs, seems in the morning to be carried from the northeastern rising to the meridian, that is, toward the South, and then to decline toward the North to tend toward sunset: it seems, I say, to the person who stands under the vertical circle that the meridian intersects at noon, with his face turned toward sunrise; and this is caused both by the obliquity of position and sphere, and by the curvature of the zodiacal circle and the circulation in the sun's motion. For after noon it curves and bends from the meridian and noon, and approaches and tends more toward the North to proceed to sunset; for the zodiac, in which the sun always moves along its ecliptic line, from the tropic of Cancer which faces the North, obliquely tends toward the equator and toward the meridian, and obliquely intersects it; which done, it obliquely revolves back and is turned through the North to the west, where the sun sets, while, as I said, it traverses the northern signs. With Valesius agrees our Christopher Clavius in the Sphere of Sacrobosco, chapter 2, page 145, where he teaches that the southern and northern part, or the South and North, can be taken in three ways with respect to three circles, namely the zodiac, the equator, and the vertical circle, which passes through both poles and the zenith, that is, the top of our head, and divides our hemisphere into two parts, southern, which is toward the South, and northern, which faces the North; and this third meaning of northern and southern is very useful for sundials. Hear Clavius: "By three circles, namely the zodiac, the equator, and the vertical circle properly so called, the sphere is divided by astronomers in three ways into a northern and southern hemisphere, etc. From this understanding of the vertical it follows that the sun running through the northern signs, at its rising and setting is called Northern; but for the rest of the day, before and after noon, it is called Southern." This sense of the daily and quotidian motion of the sun seems to be required by the Vulgate version, which has revolves through the south, although the Hebrew and Septuagint have goes to the south. Whence
Second, this passage can be taken of the annual motion of the sun, or of the approach and recession of the sun between the tropics of Cancer and Capricorn, so that just as by the sun rises and the sun sets he expressed the daily motion of the sun, by which daily according to the motion of the first movable it is carried from east to west through the twelve hours of the day: so by revolves through the South, or as the Hebrew has it, to the South, and turns toward the North, he expresses the annual motion of the sun, as if to say: The sun from the tropic of Cancer revolves to the South, that is, to the tropic of Capricorn, which is southern because it faces the antarctic or southern pole; and when it reaches there, it again turns and returns to the North, that is, to the tropic of Cancer, which faces the arctic, or northern and aquilonian pole. For the sun always moves between these two tropics, and when it has gone around both, it has completed its annual course and circle. For the sun never exceeds these two tropics, because these two tropics contain and bound the zodiac, in which the sun always moves. Therefore the sun, while it is at the tropic of Cancer, traverses the six summer signs (which however the mathematicians call Northern, because they face the arctic or northern pole, says Clavius in chapter 2 of the Sphere, page 112), which are: Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo; it enters Aries in March; whence on March 21 it makes the equinox almost everywhere on earth. After traversing these six it enters the tropic of Capricorn, and traverses the six winter signs (which however the mathematicians call Southern, because they face the antarctic pole, which is southern), which are: Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius, Pisces; after traversing these, having completed its course and year, it returns to the tropic of Cancer and its six summer signs already mentioned, and thus begins a new course and year. The sun enters Libra in September; whence on September 21 it makes the autumnal equinox.
THE SUN THEREFORE REVOLVES THROUGH THE SOUTH (Hebrew: to the South; Septuagint: to the South Wind, that is, to the South), AND TURNS TOWARD THE NORTH — while from the tropic of Cancer, which faces the North, it traverses the semicircle of the zodiac opposite to that tropic, and its six summer signs, and runs through them tending toward the tropic of Capricorn; for this faces the South, that is, the Antarctic or Southern pole, and when it reaches there, it again turns and revolves back to the North, that is, to the tropic of Cancer, which faces the Arctic or Northern pole. Again our Pineda explains the phrase through the South, which the Vulgate has, as if to say: From the South, or across the South, or beyond the South. Perhaps it could be more plainly explained thus: "The sun revolves through the South," that is, through the summer signs, which bring great midday heat and warmth, so that the six signs of the tropic of Cancer already listed are called by Ecclesiastes Southern, because they are summer signs (although by mathematicians they are contrarily called Northern, because they face the Arctic or Northern pole, as I said a little before), and conversely the six opposite signs of Capricorn are called by Ecclesiastes Northern, because they are wintry and cold (although by mathematicians they are called Southern, because they face the Antarctic or Southern pole). For the Hebrew darom, like the Latin meridies, often denotes the summer and warm region: for such it is at noon; while Aquilo denotes the wintry and cold region, for such is the North Wind.
Finally, many serious authors who think the world was created by God in September — for then is the time of fruits, and it is clear from the forbidden fruit that Adam ate that fruits were created at the beginning of the world (though others no less probably think the world was created in spring, when all things bloom and are pleasant, namely on the 25th of March, the day on which Christ was incarnated and after 34 years died, so that on this same day the world was created by God, and recreated and redeemed by Christ, as I said on Genesis 1 and in the Chronotaxis that I prefixed to the Acts of the Apostles at the year of Christ 34) — these, I say, who hold the world was founded in September, explain it thus, as if to say: The sun begins its course in September, and "revolves through the South," that is, runs through the six southern signs of the mathematicians already listed, which are at the tropic of Capricorn: after traversing these, "it turns toward the North," that is, runs through the six northern signs which are at the tropic of Cancer. These therefore think the beginning of the common year was originally September, although afterwards in the time of Moses God decreed that the first month be Nisan, that is, March or April, because it is the Paschal month; hence from it He commanded the Hebrews to begin their year, Exodus 12:1ff., whom the Romans afterwards followed, until Julius Caesar decreed that the year should begin from January; which Christians followed in honor of the birth and circumcision of Christ.
Therefore by this phrase, "revolves through the South," that is, toward the South, and "turns toward the North," the annual course of the sun is signified between the two tropics, namely of Cancer and Capricorn. For the sun always moves from Cancer to Capricorn, and from Capricorn to Cancer: from North to South, and conversely from South to North.
In sum, Ecclesiastes here notes a twofold motion of the sun, namely first, the common and daily motion, by which through the motion of the first movable it is daily moved from east to west, and thence returns to the east; second, its own proper and annual motion, by which in the space of one year it successively traverses the zodiac along its ecliptic line, one half of which declines from the equator toward the South, the other toward the North. Thus the sun for one part of the year moves from North to South, and is then called Northern; for the other part from South to North, and is then called Southern. It moves from North toward South when it traverses the semicircle of the zodiac from Aries through Cancer to Libra, that is, from March to September, during which time it traverses the six northern signs already mentioned. It moves from South to North while it traverses the other semicircle of the zodiac from Libra through Capricorn to Aries, during which time it traverses the six southern signs, which it does from September to March. Briefly, Ecclesiastes means to say that the sun by its proper annual course now moves to the South, now to the North, just as by its daily motion it moves from East to West, and thus successively visits, surveys, and fertilizes all regions of the world. He names the South first because the southern part of the world is more noble, more pleasant, warmer, and more fertile than the northern: yet he means only to say that the sun successively now moves to the South, now to the North, indeed now through the South, now through the North, and he does not care whether it moves first to the South or first to the North. This seems the genuine and solid exposition of this passage, according to the sense and language of mathematicians. Moreover Ecclesiastes says this to this end and purpose, says Pineda, as if to say: The sun, not content with the daily motion of one hemisphere, attempts and traverses also other opposite regions of the sky, but does not thereby gain any greater rest or happiness from its annual labor than from its daily one, finding nothing more in the South or North than in the East or West. In this you see represented the inconstancy of the human heart, and that innate, as it were, desire to change places and always seek new stations, in order to be better off and gain some profit or happier condition; but in vain, for the place does not diminish desire, nor strip the mind of its internal passions, but rather aggravates them and increases annoyances, according to the saying: "They change their sky, not their soul, who rush across the sea." See St. Basil, Letter 1 to Gregory the Theologian, and Seneca, Letter 28, who excellently proves the same from Socrates, Virgil, and Horace; and the same Seneca, On the Tranquility of Life, where among other things, Book I, chapter 12, he cites and praises that saying of Democritus: "He who wishes to live tranquilly should do few things either in private or in public that are superfluous." Therefore he who sitting in his cell with God and the angels converses, he finds rest in his God, and rejoices in and enjoys Him, and therefore his cell is for him a prelude to heaven, indeed an earthly heaven, just as for St. Bernard his cell was like heaven.
Therefore Ecclesiastes here signifies that the sun moves from east to west and revolves through the South and North, and thus traverses the four regions of the world and revolves and circles through the entire compass of the world, namely to survey, illuminate, warm, and give life to all men, and all animals and plants that dwell and live in any region of the globe, even in the other hemisphere opposite to ours: for by revolving the sun traverses and surveys that. Our Pontanus offers a clever riddle about the sun, volume III of the Progymnasmata, Part I, chapter 41: What animal would you say it is, that, wholly moving, Is all eye, and no part that has passed remains. Daily it begets offspring, created without a mother; Yet that offspring perishes on this same day. Its sister too is created in the father's absence, Sharing the brother's dominion and destruction.
For the sun is entirely eye, and by its light it begets the day, by its absence the night, which is like the sister of day; and day and night rule the world alternately, and successively destroy each other in turn.
Symbolically again, this most rapid motion and revolution of the sun denotes that man's benevolence toward all must be swift. Cyril, Book III of the Moral Apologetics, chapter 24, has a charming fable of the sun and darkness on this subject: "When the risen sun, he says, in the first beginning of the East, having poured forth the most abundant light, had soon put to flight the darkness everywhere from the inhabited hemisphere, the darkness below thus complained to it saying: Why with such a great impulse of generosity, with so sudden an outpouring, did you pour your radiant beams upon the earth? Was it not enough to flow in gradually with due moderation, and thus to drive me away more politely with a modest opposition? But the sun replied: You are darkness, and therefore filled with the blindness of ignorance, you have spoken as darkness does. Indeed you did not know the manner of a generous gift: for when the will to give is great and the ability is present, the speed of outpouring is no less. Thus he who could pour out and delayed desired what he held, and did not give with a full will. The speed of a gift poured out is a clear mirror of a free will. For what is clearly shown is that virtue, not what is given, should be loved! And virtue consists in free will. Have you not heard what is said in the Proverb: He who gives quickly gives twice; twice indeed, because he gives both the will and the pleasant thing. Or certainly he gives twice, because by will and by deed: whence he did not give by will who was slow to bestow the very same thing entirely in outward deed. For where the ability to give was present and delay intervened, there the will was not. Truly if giving is loved, it is not delayed." Then he illustrates the same by the example of springs and the heavens: "Observe, I ask, with what force the springs given by nature gush forth, the winds are poured out, the heaven revolves to give its benefit, and substantial form bestows itself entirely on matter in a point of time. Therefore the faster a benefit is given, the more willingly it is given; and the more generously, the more dearly it is taken and more joyfully possessed. When these things were said, the darkness vanished."
The word revolves signifies that the heaven is round and spherical, so that it can be revolved and circled by the sun in an orbit. Hence it is clear that there are antipodes, that is, people with feet opposite, who plant their feet facing and opposed to ours, or, as Cicero says in the Dream of Scipio: "They press footprints opposite to ours." Many formerly denied the existence of the antipodes, such as Lactantius, St. Augustine, Pliny, Aristotle, Lucretius, St. Gregory Nazianzen, St. Chrysostom, Theodoret, and Theophylact, but persuaded by different and various reasons. For the reason of Lactantius, Book III of the Institutes, chapter 24, and Book VII, chapter 23, was that he ridiculously feared that those opposite to us, as if hanging upward, would fall into the sky. Therefore he thought the heaven was not spherical and did not encompass the whole earth, but only our hemisphere and was bounded at its limits. So also St. Chrysostom, Homilies 14 and 17 on the Epistle to the Hebrews, Theodoret and Theophylact on chapter 8 of Hebrews, and St. Augustine doubts, Book II On Genesis Literally, chapter 9. St. Augustine's reason was that he thought the opposite part of the earth was covered with water and therefore uninhabitable; or if some part was not covered by water, it could not be reached because of the immense stretches of sea lying between us and it. Therefore there seemed no way that men descended from Adam could have reached it. For from Scripture it is clear that there are no other men than those who descend from Adam. So he himself says, Book XVI of the City of God, chapter 9: "It is too absurd, he says, to say that any men could have sailed across the immensity of the Ocean from this side to that and arrived there, so that there too the human race would be established from that one first man." The same was the opinion and reasoning of St. Gregory Nazianzen, Letter 71 to Posthumanus. The reasoning of Aristotle finally was that of the five zones of the earth he thought only the two lateral ones were habitable, namely those that lie under the two tropics of Cancer and Capricorn. For the middle one he thought uninhabitable because of heat, the two outermost because of cold: therefore through them there was and is no passage to another world; for no one had then sailed beyond Cadiz and the Pillars of Hercules. Whence Charles V, surpassing them, inscribed on his coat of arms: Plus Ultra. So Aristotle, Book II of the Meteorology, chapter 5, and Pliny, Book II, chapter 68.
But Ecclesiastes here demolishes all these arguments, asserting that the sun revolves around the earth through all regions of the world, to survey the antipodes. Experience teaches the same thing more clearly: for in the last one hundred and thirty years Christopher Columbus and the other navigators who followed him, Spanish and Portuguese sea captains, discovered the new world and the antipodes, namely Peru, Mexico, Brazil, etc. See our Joseph Acosta, Book I On the New World, chapter 1ff. And our Conimbricenses on Book II On the Heavens, chapter 15, Question 2, article 2, and Christopher Clavius on chapter 1 of the Sphere of Sacrobosco, pages 406 and 107, where he teaches that the earth is situated in the middle of the world and rests there immovably, so that the center of gravity is the same for the antipodes as for us.
Hence again it is clear that the heaven is spherical or round, and around it the sun revolves in an orbit. Physicists and mathematicians demonstrate this. Read the Conimbricenses, Book II On the Heavens, chapter 4, Question 1, and Clavius on the Sphere; although some Fathers seem to deny it, such as Justin, Question 130 to the Orthodox (though that work does not appear to be by St. Justin, but by another who is later than him, indeed later than Origen); St. Ambrose, Book I of the Hexameron; St. Chrysostom, Homilies 14 and 17 on the Epistle to the Hebrews; Theodoret on chapter 8 of Hebrews (who however changed his opinion, Question 20 on Genesis); Lactantius, Book III of the Institutes, chapter 23; Procopius on Genesis chapter 1, and Theophylact on chapter 8 of Hebrews.
Allegorically, Christ the Sun of justice revolved through the South when by preaching He visited Judea, which is a southern region; then He turned to the North when He sent the Apostles to the Gentiles, who were cold and rigid with unbelief and torpor, and they illuminated them with the splendor of faith and set them aflame with the warmth of charity. So St. Ambrose on Psalm 119, octonary 12: "He Himself (Christ) rising goes to the South and revolves to the North. That Rising One indeed, who says: Rising is My name; who always rises for the pious and never sets. He Himself rising for the Hebrew people went to the South, to a softer people, one slippery with the luxury of a body more burning with lust than hardened by the savagery of impiety: or certainly to a more noble people, which was the chosen nation, claiming for itself the lineage of the Patriarchs; but because it persevered in vices and did not amend its error, therefore the Sun of justice revolved to the Gentiles, who before, cheated of heavenly words, were considered savage and ignoble. For Aquilo is a heavy wind, like the peoples of the nations, but who were heavy before their faithlessness, and have now been made lighter than eagles by faith and piety, after He came who said: From the East I will bring your seed, and from the West I will gather you. I will say to the North: Bring, and to the South Wind: Do not hinder. And in the Gospel: They shall come from the East and West, from the North and South, and shall recline in the kingdom of God: and behold, the last shall be first, and the first shall be last. Finally the Psalmist himself says: Mount Zion, the sides of the North, the city of the great King; that is, those who were the side of the North have become the people of the eternal King, who alone is the great Lord." And further on after some things: "See therefore our Sun coming to the South, then revolving to the North, etc., that God might be all things and in all. Therefore the saint is called heaven, because the nearer clarity of the sun always illuminates him. He has his own domestic splendor, so that he does not feel the darkness of night. Therefore the Church is called both heaven and world, because it has saints comparable to angels and archangels, and also has many who are earthly. It is also called the world, which is founded upon the seas and prepared upon the rivers."
Again, the Sun of justice, of faith, and of the Church rose in the East, namely Judea: thence it was translated to the West when St. Peter migrated from Syria to Italy and transferred the Papal See from Antioch to Rome. The same revolved to the South when around the same time He illuminated Egypt through St. Mark, Ethiopia through St. Matthew, and Africa through other Apostles; thence it turned to the North, but more slowly, when St. Boniface with his companions and followers around the year of the Lord 700 converted Germany, Frisia, Saxony, Denmark, Poland, Russia, and other northern regions. The Apostles therefore and apostolic men are Samsons and suns of justice. For, as Varro says: "As small circles were called little rings, so great ones were called years." For just as the sun in Hebrew and Chaldean is called shemesh, meaning minister, from shamas, which in Chaldean and Syriac means to minister, because as a minister it imparts warmth and life to all creatures, and by its excellence represents to them the excellence of God its Lord: so likewise the Apostles rendered the same service specifically to all men and nations; and therefore they are Samsons. For the Hebrew Samson means the same as little sun, who shone upon the Hebrews longing for light in the darkness of captivity and by his strength freed them from the Philistines.
Tropologically, Olympiodorus takes the four regions of the world through which the sun passes as the four cardinal virtues, which the Sun of justice, Christ, inspires in the faithful, namely: through the South, which blows from the warm region of the world, prudence, which inspires warmth and rational life in all actions; through the North, fortitude: for this is a sharp, ready, and rigid wind; through the East Wind or sub-solar wind, which blows from the East and arises as the sun rises, as Pliny says, Book II, chapter 27, justice, which passes through and extends to all virtues; through the West Wind or Libs, which blows from the West, temperance, which cools bodily pleasures and dries them out. Therefore, illuminating all regions of the soul, the Sun of justice radiates with internal splendor. So Olympiodorus.
Again, the place of the sun is the mind, and the sun is spiritual intelligence. This rises when it is inspired by God in the heart, and sets when the ray of light is withdrawn either as punishment for our imperfections or by God's disposition. It returns to its place when the mind returns to consideration of its own weakness; and afterwards we are reborn when again it ascends from itself to know higher things. It revolves through the South when it contemplates the blessedness of the Blessed spirits; it turns to the North when it considers the suffering of the damned.
Finally, the continuous revolution of the sun and the year vividly represents the circuit and circulation of all things, especially human things, namely that all things go in a circle as if revolving, depart, and new ones return. Whence Nyssen: "In the likeness of the sun, he says, our nature too has its rising and setting: there is one way for all, one entrance to life and one exit." And Blessed Antiochus, Homily 30: "What else, he says, is the life of man but a wheel that turns in perpetual rotation?" And the etymology of the word year signifies this. For year in Hebrew is called shanah, from iteration and revolution: shanah means to repeat, change, revolve; in Greek the year is called eniautos, from the phrase 'being in itself,' because it goes into itself like a wheel, according to the saying of Seneca in Hercules Furens: "The wheel of the headlong year revolves." In Latin it is called annus, says Servius, as if annus, that is annulus (ring), because it returns into itself. Whence the Poet: And the year revolves upon its own footsteps.
For, as Varro says: "As small circles were called little rings, so great ones were called years." Or from ananeousthai, that is, from renewal. Atteius Capito says that year signifies the circuit of time, from am, meaning around. Am, says Priscian, Book XIV, in ancient usage means around. Whence Cato said am terminum, meaning around the boundary; hence ambio, meaning I go around; ambesus, meaning eaten around; ambustus, meaning burned around. Varro and Festus teach the same; and our Goropius Becanus derives year from the ancient Cimbric word ama, meaning circle. For anna is a circular word. Whence if you reverse it and read it in retrograde order, it will likewise sound anna. Hence among the Romans Anna was called the goddess Perenna, according to the verse: On the Ides is the birthday festival of Anna Perenna. For they invoked this goddess as the guardian of years, that by her help they might arrive at the new year. Elegantly St. Isidore of Pelusium, Book II, Letter 138: "Time, he says, imitates the appearance of a wheel, inasmuch as it twists and rolls upon itself." For as Seneca says in On the Shortness of Life: "The present time is very brief, so much so that to some it seems to be nothing: for it is always in motion, flowing and rushing on; it ceases to be before it arrives." Moreover this wheel of life is for man a wheel of labors and sorrows, on which he is continually turned and tormented like Ixion, who the poets relate was bound to a wheel by Jupiter for his crime and is perpetually turned and tortured on it. Whence Seneca, On the Happy Life, chapter 28: "What then, he says, is it not even now, even if you scarcely notice, that a certain whirlwind turns your minds and wraps them up, fleeing and seeking the same things, and now carries them bound on high, now dashes them to the depths?" And St. Gregory Nazianzen in his Poems: "O World, my friend, he says, yet not entirely my friend, why do you turn me like some spinning top when I strive to go in the opposite direction?" The same, in his Letter to Sophronius: "You see, he says, what the condition of our affairs is, and how a certain wheel of human affairs is driven round in its course, now some flourishing and others fading, since neither adversity nor prosperity is constant for us, but changes and leaps to the opposite as quickly as possible, so that one may trust water and letters written on water sooner than human happiness." This is the vertigo of human affairs: how foolish are those who trust in it and fix their hearts on it as if it would last forever, forgetful of true eternity.
The same, in the Oration On Love of the Poor: "Nature, he says, has nothing in human affairs that is firm, equal, durable, and constantly remaining in the same state; but our affairs roll as on a certain wheel, sometimes bringing changes often on one and the same day, and even sometimes in an hour." St. Ambrose, in the book On Abraham: "The goods of this age, he says, are unstable, and roll like wheels with the age itself." St. Nilus in the Exhortation: "Compare both the sad and glad things of this life to shadows and wheels; for like shadows they do not remain, and like wheels they turn;" and thereupon they drive men and their heroes into the vertigo of pride or despair, pervert and overthrow them, as St. Peter Damian laments, Letter 15: "Indeed even the rulers of the Churches, he says, upon whom the care of this matter should most particularly fall, are daily turned by so great an impulse of worldly vertigo that the tonsure indeed distinguishes them from the laity, but not their conduct." And St. Augustine on Psalm 20:8: "Some in chariots and some on horses," that is, he says, "some are dragged along by the rolling succession of temporal goods, and some are puffed up with proud honors, and they exult in these." More wisely, Willigis, the first Archbishop of Mainz, the son of a cart-maker, in order to keep himself humble with the lowliness of his birth, had wheels painted everywhere throughout his chambers, and frequently said to himself: "Willigis, remember what you were, what you are, what you will be." So Bruschius in On the Bishops; and recently Leo XI, when on the 27th day of his Pontificate he was departing from his rank and life, said to his confessor with great feeling: "How much better it would be for me now if I had held the keys of a monastery rather than of heaven!"
He therefore who desires stability, so that he may not be whirled about with the world and time, but may always persevere stable and like himself amid all the storms of the age, let him fix the foot of his mind in God and in His stable eternity, who, as Boethius says: Bids time proceed from eternity, And remaining stable gives all things their motion.
For God is the base of the world, the center of the sun and stars, the axis of the ages. Around God and His eternity, as around an unmoved axis, the sun, the stars of heaven, the elements, and all the times and ages of the world continually revolve, and are contained and sustained by Him. Do you wish therefore to be stable in the world? Fix your heart in Him, ascend above the heavens with your mind, trample the earth beneath your feet. Live for God, live for eternity. "What is sweeter for man?" says St. Bernard, treatise On Charity, chapter 18, "What is more pleasant than to despise the world and consider oneself higher than the age, and to stand on the summit of a good conscience, and to have the world under one's feet, seeing nothing in it to desire?" And St. Nilus in the Exhortation: "Blessed is he who tramples upon pleasures; for the demons fear to take up the contest with him."
Verse 6: Ranging over All Things in a Circuit the Spirit Goes
The Hebrew has: going around, going around (that is, continually going around) the spirit goes, and to its circuits or revolutions the spirit returns; the Septuagint: revolving in revolution, the spirit goes, and to its circles the spirit returns. So also the Syriac, except that for goes it translates departs; and for to circles it has to its circles; the Arabic translates: encircles surrounding, namely the sun that preceded. Then it adds about the spirit, that is, the wind: The winds depart, and to their circles the winds return; Symmachus: walking about the wind goes, and through what it had circled the wind returns; the Zurich Bible: winds rising from opposite regions of the world go forth, and to their circles the winds return; another: hastening around in its turning the air goes, and according to its circuits the air returns. The Chaldean version I cited above.
You will ask, who is this spirit? First, many take spirit to mean the sun, because the sun is called a spirit, both on account of its velocity, and the subtlety of its rays and light, and its power and efficacy of action; for the sun surveys all things and illuminates them with its light, and returns to its circles. So St. Jerome, Olympiodorus, Albinus, Hugh, Dionysius, Titelmann, and our Conimbricenses, Book II On the Heavens, chapter 1, Question 2, article 4. Hear St. Jerome: "The sun is called a spirit because it animates, breathes, thrives, and completes the annual courses of the world, as the Poet says: Meanwhile the sun revolves through the great year. And elsewhere: And the year revolves upon its own footsteps. Or because the moon's shining globe and the Titan stars A spirit within nourishes, and a mind infused through the limbs Stirs the whole mass and mingles with the great body." St. Dionysius, chapter 4 On the Divine Names: "The sun contributes, he says, to the generation of visible bodies, and moves to life itself, and nourishes, and increases, and perfects, and cleanses, and renews," like a spirit. Hence some think the sun is animate; and St. Thomas attributes this view to St. Jerome, Part I, Question 70, article 3. However, St. Jerome frees himself from this error, Letter 59 to Avitus, and on Isaiah chapter 45, where he criticizes Origen for attributing rational souls to the heavens. Hear Isidore clearly teaching this, On the Nature of Things chapter 27, where he thinks the sun is animate based on St. Augustine: "Solomon, he says, when he said of the sun: Revolving in revolution the spirit goes and returns to its circles, showed that the sun itself is a spirit, and that it is a living being, and breathes, and is vigorous, and completes its annual orbits in its course, as the Poet also says: Meanwhile the sun revolves through the great year. And elsewhere: The moon's shining globe and the Titan stars a spirit within nourishes."
But it is now the doctrine of the Church, that is, of the Fathers in the Fifth Ecumenical Council, and of all theologians and philosophers, that neither the sun nor the heavens are animate. More plausibly St. Thomas, Opusculum 10, thinks the sun is called a spirit because it has a spirit or intelligence not informing it but assisting, moving, and directing it: where by spirit St. Thomas seems to mean an angel who assists the sun and turns it.
Second, Valesius, Sacred Philosophy chapter 62, Aben-Ezra, and others take spirit to mean fire. For thus, because of its purity, subtlety, and power to ignite, it seems to be spiritual; and again by its heat it produces the generations and transmutations of things. Whence it is the noblest and most necessary element, and thus Solomon here assigns fire among the three other elements as their prince. But this seems far-fetched and forced.
Third, properly and genuinely by spirit is understood air and wind, which the sun causes, about which the discourse just preceded. For, as Seneca says, Book V of Natural Questions, chapter 6: "Sometimes the sun itself is the cause of the wind, melting the stiff air and unfolding it from its dense and compressed state." Pliny, Book II, chapters 47ff., teaches that winds are not only driven but also generated by the sun: "The sun, he says, both increases and compresses the breezes. It increases them at rising and setting, compresses them at midday in summer, and therefore at midday or midnight they usually die down, because they are dissolved either by excessive cold or heat; and by rains the winds are lulled." Hence Symmachus translates spirit as wind. So also the Zurich Bible, Vatablus, and others. This is the opinion of St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, Hugh of St. Victor, Cajetan, John Ferus, Pineda, and others. The sense is therefore, as if to say: The spirit, that is, the impelled air, or the wind, blowing through all things and all regions of the world, runs about and circuits, and returns in circles, that is, to its starting point, from which it again circles around and, as it were, completes its circle. The wind, I say, the same not in number but in species or kind; as if to say: All things in heaven, as well as on earth, are circular, not stable; indeed the sun itself, which is like the king of the heavens, the wind itself which rules on earth like a king, the sea itself and the rivers, as well as all earthly generations, have their vanity, namely circulation, change, a restless state, flight, decline, destruction. Others explain by antithesis, as if to say: In the sun, winds, and rivers the motion and course of nature is stable: but the revolutions, changes, desires, and fantasies of men are unstable and uncertain, and always fluctuate.
He mentions air and wind because it serves and is very useful for the generation of things and human life, both for fanning the air, which grows torpid and putrid in stillness; and for dispersing noxious vapors; and for man's respiration and cooling, and for sharpening and strengthening his vital spirits lest they grow sluggish. Whence Aristotle, Book VI of the History of Animals, chapter 29, and Book IV On the Generation of Animals, chapter 2, teaches that when the North Wind blows strong and keen, males are generated, but when the South Wind blows gently and warmly, females are generated. Finally, "wind is a river of air," says Apuleius. It therefore aptly represents the thinness, inconstancy, and flux of human affairs.
Solomon therefore introduces the spirit, or wind, here on the stage, both because it is one among the causes of the generation of things and their variety; and because by its invisible thinness, extreme speed, impulse, and instability, it is a clear symbol of human instability, inconstancy, and unhappiness. For just as when the East Wind blows from the East, the West Wind immediately opposes it blowing from the West, and the South Wind breaks this blowing from the South, which the North Wind soon opposes blowing from the North: so likewise adversity immediately opposes prosperity, envy opposes virtue, poverty opposes wealth, calumny opposes glory, disgrace opposes honor. Again, just as winds are sometimes pestilent and blow diseases upon men, so likewise earthly things not rarely bring pestilence and death to man, especially if he uses them immoderately.
Moreover this spirit, that is, the air and wind, is said to survey all things and return to its circles, both because the air by its subtlety pervades and penetrates all things on and around the earth, and as it were surveys them; and because the air, being near the heavens, is carried in a circle by the motion of the heavens, and returns to its circles just as the heavens do; and because the winds are sometimes circular, and drive things in circles, such as whirlwinds and typhoons; and finally because the winds have their own order, which goes and returns in a circle: for now the East Wind blows from the East, soon the South Wind succeeds it from the South, then the West Wind takes over from the West, then the North Wind from the North, and many others between these are intermediate and collateral. Hence sailors construct the compass rose from 32 collateral winds: for they describe a circle in which at the four regions of the world they place the four primary winds blowing from them, and to each they add eight other collateral winds, so that in total there are 36.
Tropologically, what many think is the literal meaning, by spirit you may understand the restless, wandering, and inconstant spirit of man: for such is the imagination, and the desire that follows it in man, so that now he thinks and wills this, now something else and something else again, and again returns to the first things he thought and willed, and thus continually revolves and turns in his circles. So Nyssen. St. Bernard graphically depicts this instability of the heart and spirit in his Meditation, chapter 9: "Nothing, he says, is more fleeting in me than my heart, etc. And while it seeks rest through diverse things, it does not find it; but it remains miserable in labor and empty of rest, not agreeing with itself, discordant from itself, recoiling from itself; it changes its wishes, alters its plans, builds new things, destroys old ones, rebuilds what it destroyed, and again changes and orders the same things in one way and another, because it wills and does not will, and the heart never remains in the same state. For just as a mill turns swiftly and rejects nothing, but grinds whatever is placed in it; but if nothing is placed in it, it consumes itself: so my heart is always in motion and never rehas rest, but whether I sleep or wake, it always dreams and thinks of whatever occurs to it. And just as a mill, if sand is placed in it, wears it out; if pitch, it is polluted; if chaff, it is blocked: so bitter thoughts disturb my heart, impure ones stain it, vain ones disquiet and goad it." And further on after some things: "And when it is snatched by these and wrapped up in those, vanity receives it, curiosity leads it on, desire allures it, pleasure seduces it, lust pollutes it, envy torments it, anger disturbs it, sadness tortures it, and thus it is submerged in all vices by miserable chances, because it abandoned the one God (who could have sufficed for it). It is scattered among many things, and here and there seeks where it might find rest, and finds nothing that suffices for it, until it returns to Him."
Blessed Peter Damian, Opusculum 12, chapter 13, describes this vertigo, rotation, and circulation of the spirit on a similar theme: "A millstone, he says, is turned in a circle and flour is produced; and every action of this world is a millstone, which, while it heaps up many cares, turns human minds as if in a circle, and casts from itself, as it were, flour: because it always begets the most minute thoughts for the seduced heart," especially when it is turned and agitated by the wind of vanity and pride: for this is the whirlwind of minds.
Others by the alternating and often contrary winds understand the contrary and changeable turns of fortune, indeed the adverse blows of fortune, against which Boethius offers this shield, Book II On Consolation, prose 1: "Finally you must bear with equanimity whatever happens within fortune's domain, once you have submitted your neck to her yoke; for if you wished to prescribe a law of staying and departing for her whom you freely chose as your mistress, would you not be unjust, and would not your impatience make worse a lot you cannot change? If you committed sails to the winds, you would be carried not where your will wanted, but where the wind drove; if you entrusted seeds to the fields, you would weigh fertile and barren years against each other. You have given yourself to fortune to govern: you must obey your mistress's ways. But you try to hold back the momentum of the turning wheel. O most foolish of all mortals, if fortune begins to stay, she ceases to be fortune."
Verse 7: All Rivers Enter into the Sea, and the Sea Does Not Overflow
The Hebrew has: all the torrents go to the sea, and the sea is not filled; the Septuagint: it is not filled; the Syriac: all the torrents rush into the sea, and it is not filled; the Arabic: and the sea is not gathered full; the Chaldean: all the torrents and springs of water go and run to the Ocean sea which circles the world; or, whose circuit contains the world like a ring, as our Costus translates. For torrents, rivers is a more apt translation, because rivers are born from converging torrents, and these flow into the sea, while torrents are absorbed by the thirsty earth or dry up before reaching the sea. Following Ecclesiastes, Sirach 39:11 says: "All things, he says, that are from the earth shall return to the earth, and all waters shall return to the sea."
"Just as he said of the sun and wind that they revolve and return to their orbits: so here he says of the torrents and the rivers born from them, that all flow into the sea and thence flow back to the origins of the rivers, so that by these examples he represents the vanity, flow, and circulation of human life and of all earthly things. Whence St. Jerome: "The Hebrews, he says, think that under the name of torrents and sea, men are signified by metaphor, because they return to the earth from which they were taken, and are called torrents, not rivers, because they quickly perish, yet the earth is not filled with the multitude of the dead." Hence St. Gregory Thaumaturgus paraphrases: things themselves are rightly compared to the flow of torrents, which plunge into the immense depth of the sea with a great roar. The woman of Tekoa used the same comparison, 2 Samuel 14:14: "We all die, she says, and like waters we slip into the earth, which do not return."
Blessed Alcuin Flaccus, disputing with Pippin the son of Charlemagne: "What, he says, is the sea? A path of daring, the boundary of the earth, the divider of regions, the inn of rivers, the source of rains, a refuge in perils, a grace in pleasures. What are rivers? An unfailing course, the refreshment of the sun, the irrigation of the earth."
Moreover the sea, from so many rivers flowing into it, is not filled, does not grow, does not overflow, so as to pour itself over the shores or flood the land, but like an insatiable whirlpool it swallows everything and gapes to swallow always: hence they think the Pontus is so called from pepotai, because it always drinks waters. Aristotle gives the cause, Meteorology II, chapter 2: that waters are drawn out of the sea by the power of the sun and are either dried up or turned into vapors and clouds; and that the sea is so vast that rivers in comparison are like a few drops. Ecclesiastes will give another cause in the following verse. Hence the Proverbs: To carry water to the sea, Wood to the forest, Owls to Athens, Grain to Egypt, Saffron to Cilicia: which are said of those who do useless and superfluous things.
Tropologically, the insatiable sea denotes the insatiable desire of man, which always drinks pleasures yet always thirsts, according to what Solomon adds, verse 8: "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing." So Nyssen. Whence St. Ambrose, book On Tobias, chapter 13, teaches that the insatiable sea is the heart of the miser: "All the torrents, he says, go to the sea, and the sea is not filled. This sea is the money-lender of all, it absorbs estates like waves, and itself knows not how to be sated. Yet most people use the sea for profit, but no one uses a money-lender except to his loss. That is the advantage of many, this is the shipwreck of all.
In a similar way gluttony, luxury, and ambition is a sea that swallows all: for the glutton and the lustful man, as well as the proud man, is a devourer of patrimonies and a whirlpool of wealth and all things.
Symbolically, the Rabbis in the Midrash Qoheleth, that is, the Exposition of Ecclesiastes, explain it thus, as if to say: "Rivers enter the sea, and the sea does not overflow," that is, all the dead tend toward the underworld, and the underworld is never filled nor overflows, according to Proverbs 30:15: "Three things are insatiable, etc., the underworld, and the mouth of the womb, and the earth which is not satisfied with water." So Galatinus, Book VI On the Mysteries of the Faith, chapter 7. In a similar way the sea is a type of death and the grave: for toward both all men flow like rivers, indeed like torrents they are carried most swiftly. See 1 Samuel 14:14. Hear St. Augustine on Psalm 110, on the verse: He shall drink from the torrent by the way: "Just as a torrent, he says, is gathered from rain waters, overflows, roars, runs, and by running runs its course, that is, finishes its race: so is this whole course of mortality: men are born, they die, and as some die others are born, succeed, arrive, depart, and will not remain. What is held here? What does not run its course? What does not go into the abyss as if gathered from rain? For just as a river suddenly gathered from rain, from drops of showers, goes into the sea; and does not appear, because it did not appear before it was gathered from rain: so this human race is gathered from hidden things and flows forth into death. Again it tends toward the hidden; the middle sounds and passes. From this torrent Christ drank, that is, He was born, destined to die."
Again Richard of St. Victor, Treatise 1 On the State of the Interior Man, chapter 10: "All rivers, he says, are carried into the sea, and all sweet water is changed into bitter; because delight is turned into disgust, and all pleasure of the flesh ends in bitterness," according to the saying: "Grief occupies the extremes of joy."
Finally, hear Marcus Aurelius the Emperor, surnamed the Philosopher, Book IV of his Life: "Time, he says, is a kind of rapid flood of things that happen; for each thing appears and passes at the same time, and another follows, and soon yet another will succeed. Everything that happens to us is as customary and familiar as roses in spring and fruits in summer. The same applies to disease, death, calumny, plots, and all those things that bring either joy or sorrow to fools." And after some things: "The saying of Heraclitus must always be kept in memory: that the death of earth is water, of water air, of air fire, and this in turn." And with much intervening: "Consider also those whom you yourself knew, dead one after another, whose funerals you yourself attended; and what was yesterday a fish will tomorrow be salt-fish or ashes. Therefore it must be considered that a momentary time has been established by nature, and we must depart from life with equanimity; just as if an olive, having achieved ripeness, should fall, praising and giving thanks to the tree that bore and produced it. You should be like a promontory, against which waves continually crash; yet it stands firm, however much the surging waves are borne around it." Whence he concludes: "Whenever anything happens that provokes you to pain, remember this precept: That it should not be called a misfortune, but should be attributed to good fortune, that you bear it bravely." The same, Book IX: "Soon the earth will hide us all: afterwards it too will be changed, and then other things will likewise be changed to infinity. Indeed, he who considers the waves of changes and motions, and their speed, will despise all mortal things. Like a torrent the cause of the universe snatches all things. To the place from which the rivers go out they return, to flow again." And St. Basil: "Time is like a river, passing by the sluggish and idle person; and just as it is impossible for you to stop the course of a river, and to make use of its water for necessities, unless you draw it at the first encounter and where it presents itself: so neither can you restrain time, driven by its necessary revolutions, nor recall what has already elapsed to its beginning, nor have the use of it, unless one seizes it when it presents itself."
For where they go out the Hebrew is scheholechim, meaning where they go: where, that is, to which place, or from which place. Hence there is a twofold translation here and a twofold meaning: the first, to signify the terminus toward which the rivers flow; the second, to signify the terminus from which they issue and proceed.
Following the first, the Septuagint translates: to the place where the torrents go, there they return to the same; or, as the Venetian version has it, to the place, I say, of the sea the rivers proceed, to return again and flow. And the Syriac: to the place where the torrents go, there they return to go again. And the Arabic: to the place to which the torrents go, to it their spirit returns: for they go. So also Pagninus, the Zurich Bible, and others.
Our translator followed the second, translating: to the place from which the rivers go out. St. Jerome in the Commentary from Symmachus: to the place from which the torrents go out, there they return to enter again; the Chaldean: as if to the place to which the torrents go and flow, thence they return and flow through the cataracts of the abyss. Or, as Costus translates: and when through tunnels and passages of the abyss the rivers are carried to the same place from which they flowed, the Ocean itself is in no way filled.
The meaning of the first version is this, as if to say: Rivers are carried by continuous course to the sea and pour themselves into it, which causes them to flow again and again always: for new waters continually flow in, which flow into the sea: for if their flow into the sea were stopped, they would cease and prevent others from flowing in, since they would be occupying and filling their own channel and bed. Whence from the Hebrew some translate thus: to the place where the torrents go, there they are directed to the same, as if to say: Rivers flowing continuously follow their channels and beds, and constantly retain the one through which they once began their course, and never change it, which is indeed remarkable.
Titelmann and some others assign this meaning to the second version, so that it coincides with the first, as if to say: "To the place from which the rivers go out," that is, to their springs and origins, "they return," that is, new waters of the rivers again flow in, to flow again; as if he assigns the cause of the rivers' perpetual flow, namely this, that as their waters flow away, new ones flow in from the mountains, which through springs again issue forth and flow into the sea.
But this meaning seems rather cold and narrow: for this is not properly a return of the rivers to the place from which they go out. Add that it seems to be a tautology: for to say the springs and rivers flow perpetually is the same as saying that as the waters of the rivers flow away, others continually flow in; for the perpetual flow is not a return to their source.
Tropologically, man is like a river continually flowing toward death, so that through it he may flow back to God who is immortal, who alone possesses stable, constant, and eternal being. Hear Eusebius, book XI of the Preparation for the Gospel, chapter 7: "For since all sensible things are in flux, they are continually coming into being and being destroyed, and can never remain the same. Indeed, to enter the same river twice is impossible, according to Heraclitus. Wherefore if you consider mortal substance repeatedly, you will not say it is the same in condition, but by the marvelous speed of change it is now dispersed, now contracted." From which he infers: "We are therefore ridiculous, we humans, fearing one death, who have already died many times and die often, etc. For the youth is corrupted into the man, the man into the old man, the boy into the youth, the infant into the boy; and he who was yesterday passes into him who is today, and he who is today into tomorrow: yet no one remains the same. No one is the same; but in a single moment, around phantasms, around one common matter flowing in and flowing out, they are changed at every moment. For how, if we are the same, do we rejoice in different things than before? Now we love and hate different things, praise and blame different things, use different words, are moved by different passions, not having the same form, nor the same judgment about things? For it is impossible to be moved now by different things than before without change; nor is he who changes from one thing to another truly the same. But if he is not the same, he does not even exist, but flows in continuous change; and the sense is deceived by ignorance of the being itself, and thinks that to be which is not; who then truly is? That which is eternal, which has no origin, which is incorruptible, which is changed by no time." And in chapter 6, he proposes Plato's riddle: "Plato also says: What is that which always is, and has no origin? And what is that which always becomes, but never is?" And he answers that the former is God, who always is, and never came into being; the latter is the creature and body, which is always becoming, and never stands firm or stable in its own state, but is continually changed, flows and ebbs away.
The same point, with the appended parable of the sea monster and the fisherman, surrounded by a chorus of parables, Cyril illustrates in book I of the Moral Apology, chapter 8, whose title is: Fix the anchor of your hope only in everlasting goods: "Upon the wave of the sea, he says, a most enormous whale, raised up into the likeness of an island, when it feigned the appearance of dry land; a fisherman, tossing about in his little boat, desirous of land, arrived at this deceptive port, and immediately descending there, having slightly lifted the skin with his hand, with a fire kindled from stone and iron,
More aptly, therefore, and more connectedly, profoundly, and forcefully you may explain it thus: that here he gives the reason not only for the perennial nature of springs and rivers, but also why the sea does not overflow from so many and such great streams flowing into it. For this is more admirable than the perennial nature of rivers. The reason is that the rivers flowing down into the sea in turn return from it and run back to their sources from which they came, so that they may flow again; they return, I say, by equivalence, namely not the same water in number, but in what is similar to it, or of the same kind: for the water of the river that enters the sea does not exit as the same water numerically, but another similar to it, namely the water of the sea that is near the land and the abyss. For thus the sea is discharged on the other side, and the springs of the rivers are again filled, so that they may continuously pour forth waters and flow perpetually.
That this is the meaning is clear: first, from the word "they return"; second, because this is the adequate reason why the sea does not overflow from so many and such great rivers -- which would make a sea, indeed many seas -- flowing into it, namely because just as much flows out from the sea downward as flows in upward; third, because Ecclesiastes here demonstrates the vanity of human affairs from their circulation and rotation, namely that they always revolve and go in a circle. He proves this circulation from the sun, the heavens, and the elements, namely that the sun and heavens revolve in a circle; that the air and wind return to their cycles; that the generations of men, animals, and plants are nourished from the earth and return to the earth, so that from it they may again come forth and sprout. Therefore, since he adduces rivers to prove the same circulation, and says they return to their sources, it is necessary to understand this properly, namely that it happens through a circulation by which the waters are sent back from the sea to the springs of the rivers. For thus the sun, the heavens, and the winds return to their sources and their risings.
Finally, St. Jerome, the author of our version, explains this return in exactly this way, as do St. Basil, Theodoret, and very many others soon to be cited.
Briefly, but forcefully, St. Augustine, book III of On the Trinity, chapter 6: "There is everywhere, he says, a continuous circulation, as it were a river of hidden things, from the hidden to the visible, from the visible to the hidden."
Elegantly, Ovid, book XV of the Metamorphoses: All things flow, and every wandering form is shaped. Times themselves also glide by with constant motion, Not otherwise than a river; for neither a river Nor a fleeting hour can stand still, but as wave is driven by wave, And the same coming is pressed on, and presses the one before. being kind to himself, he began to warm his little body, stiff with cold, weary from labor, and dried out from hunger. But when the sharp heat of the fire, having passed imperceptibly through the fat of the fish, finally descended as a sensation of burning into the sensitive flesh, immediately the fish moved, and the stupid sailor, thinking it was an earthquake, abandoned everything and ran to his raft. Thus, safe from there on his little boat, having discovered the creature was alive, he said to it lamentably: Why, having displayed your enormous bulk and having lethally feigned stability, did you, with your painted skin, pretend to be a port? If indeed the floating timber had not immediately come to my rescue, you would have submerged me, trusting in you, snatched away suddenly no less than in a shipwreck. To which the fish replied: But you -- why did you come down to rest upon a changeable thing? And he: Certainly because you appeared to be land, not an animal. Then the other: Does everything that appears exist? Or do you not know that many things are founded in mere appearance, and not in truth? For a sophist appears to be a philosopher, and a hypocrite appears to be a saint." From which he draws this moral, declaring the end and fruit of the fable: "For this reason, dearest one, you who as a dweller of the sea are tossed about in perilous waves, and besieged on every side by the camps of destruction, you are surrounded by a most fragile piece of wood -- to which you may flee in necessity, to which you may entrust yourself, and where you may more securely place your confidence -- first examine with ruminating diligence, and attend with clear circumspection of prudence. For if you err completely even once, overtaken by death, there will be no place for correction afterwards. Therefore, seeking a safe port of perpetual stability, prudently choose this better one, the best among better goods, where you may rest in secure confidence. Does not a wise architect, digging in firm ground, seek a more stable foundation? And does not the ever-watchful helmsman of a ship, before he sets his anchor, searching the deep with a leaded cord, seek the most secure bottom? For foolish is he who builds upon an unstable base; and utterly mad is he who entrusts himself to soft things to be supported by the same. Go, therefore, and hence learn never to trust in perishable things, but henceforth fix the anchor of your hope only in eternal things. Instructed by these words, the sailor departed consoled."
You ask first, by what means do the rivers return from the sea to their sources?
I answer first, that from the sea every day very many vapors are drawn up by the power of the sun, which, carried into the air and there condensed by the cold into clouds and resolved into water, flow down into rivers and fill them, so that they may flow again. So say Olympiodorus, Procopius, Rupert, Isidore, Cajetan, Vatablus, and others; hence the Hebrew word for "rivers" here is "torrents": for these properly come from rains or snows melted into water, and thus the sea does not overflow, because a great part of the sea evaporates; for just as much, they say, departs from the sea in vapors as enters it from the rivers.
But this explanation is remote and less proper.
Second, properly and proximately, because the rivers flowing into the sea return from it through subterranean channels and channels they gradually return to their sources. The manner in which this happens I shall explain shortly. That this is the meaning is clearly evident from St. Jerome in his Commentary, who interprets his Vulgate version in this way, as also from St. Basil, homily 4 on the Hexaemeron, Theodoret, sermon 2 On Providence, indeed even from Plato in the Phaedo, and Seneca, book III of Natural Questions, chapter 15.
Hear each one: St. Jerome: "Some think, he says, that the fresh waters which flow into the sea are either consumed by the sun burning above, or serve as food for the saltiness of the sea. But our Ecclesiastes, and the very Creator of those waters, says that they return through hidden channels to the heads of the springs, and from the womb of the abyss they always bubble up to their origins." St. Basil asserts that by God's command waters ascend from the sea to the tops of mountains: "The waters, he says, flow downward by their propensity to descend, about to pause until they were poured out to their full extent, where, as if bound by fetters, no longer spreading out nor overflowing with a running flood, but flowing beneath the sea, conveyed upward through narrow pipes, driven on high by the stirring spirit, they burst forth and spring out where the surface of the earth is forcefully broken open, and they lay aside their saltiness and bitterness through filtering, and become drinkable." Theodoret: "Do not suppose that the nature of water climbs to a height of its own accord, but that, obedient to the word of God, it occupies the highest peaks of the mountains. For to the Creator it is most easy to do: to convey the nature of water not only to the peaks of mountains, but also into the middle of the air, and to conceal bitterness in sweetness, etc., and to show that whose natural motion carries it downward running upward instead."
Plato in his Phaedo follows the opinion of Moses, or of the oracle of sacred Scripture, as in very many things, saying: "The springs from that immense abyss which is within the earth, partly through certain open pores, partly filtered through the solid earth, thus flow again, so that as much flows in on one side, just as much flows out on the other." Seneca reports the same from the same source: "Some judge that the earth receives back again whatever waters it has sent forth, and for this reason the seas do not grow, because what has flowed in, they do not convert to their own use, but immediately return. For by a hidden path it enters beneath the earth, secretly returns, and the sea is filtered in its passage, which, beaten through the manifold windings of the earth, lays aside its bitterness, and in such great variety of soil strips off the foulness of its taste, and passes into pure water." Add Rupert and Hugh of St. Victor.
Rupert: "The founder of the earth, he says, drove away the abyss, and abundantly distributed a suitable supply of water through its inmost veins; and the earth, drawing waters into all its veins, sucked the bountiful breast of the abyss." Hugh of St. Victor on Genesis II: A spring ascended from the earth, etc.: "This spring, he says, can be understood as the abyss, that is, the womb of all waters, from which all springs of waters and rivers go forth." I shall cite more shortly.
You ask second, what is the origin and cause of springs and rivers, and of their perennial nature; namely, why do they continually pour forth waters? I answer that various origins and causes are given by various authors.
First, Aristotle, Meteorology I, chapter 13, with his followers holds that springs and rivers arise from air and vapor resolved into water by the force of cold. Hence in the Alps and other mountains most rivers originate, because around mountains and cliffs many vapors gather, which are condensed by the cold, and resolved into water flow down into the valleys, and there coming together they form torrents and rivers, as I observed with my own eyes while I was crossing the Alps.
In Rome a certain distinguished mathematician from our Society assured me that he had thoroughly examined the Alps and the salt works of the Alps, and at their summit had seen enormous caverns in the rocks, intersected by very many cracks, so that abundant air could enter through them, in which the vapor and air, having been warmed, then condensed by the cold of the rocks and stones, was resolved into water and flowed down, forming a perennial stream, by which the salt that was mined from the same rock below was dissolved. For air continually succeeded air to prevent a vacuum, and this was immediately resolved into water; just as we see in winter that columns, marble, and walls in churches continually sweat and drip drops, namely from air resolved into water. Moreover, around the summits of mountains there are perpetual vapors, which gather and, as it were, collect at them, and these, being dewy, are immediately resolved into water by the rock; and these, flowing together from various places into one stream, and then into a torrent, soon augmented by the influx of many more, form a river.
The second cause of rivers is rains and snows: for rains in winter, frequent and abundant, pour down a great quantity of water, which, collected in the many and ample caverns of the mountains, gradually flows out through narrow channels and the narrow mouths of springs, and thus provides continuity to the rivers. Moreover, snows in the Alps, continually melted by the heat of the sun during the day, bring a great quantity of water to the rivers, so much so that wise men, among whom was our Father Leonard Lessius, consider the principal cause of rivers to be this continuous and orderly melting of snows. For there is an enormous and immense quantity of snow in the Alps, which extend in length and breadth for many hundreds of miles (indeed, I with my companions, riding through the Alps near Trent, was scarcely able to cross them in breadth in ten days, though we covered about 30 miles each day); therefore, snows falling by night upon the Alps, melted by day by the power of the sun, form continuous torrents, and these, flowing together, form continuous rivers. The proof is that when there are heavy rains toward winter, the rivers swell to double or triple their size, indeed overflow, and flood widely all around, as we experience in Rome with the flooding of the Tiber. The same happens when the Alpine snows melt in March; for then the Meuse, the Rhine, the Inn, the Main, the Adige, and other rivers that originate in the Alps swell wonderfully and often
But these causes do not seem to suffice for the perennial nature of so many and such great rivers, some of which are exceedingly vast and extend twenty and more miles in breadth (such as the river they call the Silver River in India), so that they seem to be not so much rivers as seas. For no vapors, no snows, and no rains seem to suffice for their perennial course, so ample and vast: especially because rains in summer are rare and slight. Add that many springs and rivers arise at the summit of the highest mountains, near which there are no higher mountains, where there cannot be such great cavities and reservoirs for snows and rains; while others arise in the depths of valleys, where there are no neighboring mountains, no snows, no caverns of rainwater, and this with such an abundance of water that they are immediately navigable. Hence also many wells are very deep, at the bottom of which living waters spring from the deepest veins of the earth, which supply the wells with perennial water. Finally, Scripture in this passage, and in Genesis I, 9, and elsewhere, seems to assign another more universal and more adequate cause for springs and rivers.
The third cause, therefore, full and adequate, is this: the matrix of springs, rivers, and other waters is the sea. To understand this, it must be noted first that God on the first day of the creation of water and the world, or rather on the third day, when He separated the waters from the land, produced beneath the earth certain immense chasms or reservoirs of water, which Scripture calls "the abyss," the Philosophers call the barathrum, and our Translator in Deuteronomy 33:13 calls the abyss lying beneath, where in the Hebrew it is: the abyss crouching below.
God did this for the following purpose and end: first, so that the immense mass of water which at the beginning of the world covered the earth He might partly conceal within it, partly place in the very channels of the sea, which He also made at that time and excavated from the earth, but not so large nor so deep that they alone could contain all that mass and volume of water; for sailors find the bed of the sea in many places to be very shallow and not very deep. Second, He did this, says the Philosopher in his book On the Making of the World, so that He might water the earth with the moisture of water, lest it should crack from dryness, and hold it together and bind it. Third, so that from the earth, soaked with watery moisture, metals and stones might coalesce. Fourth, for the production of plants, herbs, and shrubs, and likewise of rivers, springs, and all water, both spring water and well water.
Read St. Basil, homily 4 on the Hexaemeron, St. Ambrose, books II and III, Theodoret, sermon 8 On Providence, and Seneca, book IV of On Benefits, chapters 5 and 6.
It must be noted second: Just as the earth is the mother of living things and terrestrial compounds, so the sea is the mother of aquatic creatures, namely of so many kinds of fish, oysters, shells, etc. Therefore, just as in the mother's and in any human body there is a great supply of blood in the liver and heart, and from there it is distributed through very many veins to each limb and the whole body: in exactly the same way, says Seneca, book III of Natural Questions, chapter 15, those immense cavities or chasms beneath the earth, filled with water, are, as it were, the liver of the earth, from which waters are distributed through hidden channels and tunnels, as if through veins, to all parts of the earth and the whole world, and in certain places they burst forth into springs and rivers, either in the creation of the world or in later ages, having made a path. For this is the work of the providence of God, who for the uses of the earth already mentioned, everywhere among the nations in fixed places mixed in and interspersed springs and rivers, just as He likewise apportioned and distributed winds in fixed places and times. Hence those expressions: "The earth has its veins: a vein of living waters: a vein of sulfur, of quicksilver, of gold, of brass," etc. For the earth is like a kind of animal, composed of four humors aptly distributed, just as conversely man is like the earth, and hence a microcosm. So Seneca, book III of Natural Questions, chapter 15, and Plutarch in the Life of Paulus Aemilius.
Therefore I assert that the matrix of waters is the abyss, that is, the sea both open and public, and hidden and concealed in the caverns, caves, and veins of the earth. For this is the abyss established by God at the beginning of the world, which God initially filled with the primordial, and therefore fresh, water; and as this flowed out through various caverns and veins toward the sources of rivers, water from the sea entered in its place, and continually enters: and by this means water is always supplied from this abyss, or barathrum, to rivers and springs. Hence all seas, and especially the Caspian Sea, which the intervening land separated from the rest of the sea, are joined to the Ocean through subterranean channels, and adhere to it as to a matrix -- as the geographers Pliny, Strabo, Dionysius, and Mela have discovered by clear indications; especially from the fact that many great rivers flow into it, yet it, though small, does not overflow, because the same waters flow out from it through subterranean channels into the Ocean. The Ocean, therefore, is the matrix of all rivers and springs, that is, of all living and flowing waters.
That this is so is proved first, because this is the plain and obvious meaning of this passage, as the interpreters commonly teach. The same is indicated in Sirach 24:39: "From the sea, he says, his thought abounded, and his counsel from the great abyss. I, Wisdom, poured forth rivers. I, like a channel from an immense stream of water. I, like the river Dioryx, and like an aqueduct, went forth from paradise." And chapter 40:11: "All things that are from the earth shall be turned into the earth, and all waters shall return to the sea." And Genesis 1:9: "God said: Let the waters that are under heaven be gathered together into one place, and let the dry land appear: And it was so. And God called the dry land earth, and the gatherings of the waters He called seas." For the sea with its abyss, or caverns, constitutes one place; the waters return therefore from the sea through subterranean cavities.
Second, because this must necessarily be said of the river of paradise, which was divided into four immense rivers: for God had not yet rained upon the earth, so that it could not have been generated from rain or vapor, Genesis 2:10, as Rupert rightly observed there. Therefore God drew it from the sea. The same seems to be said, by parity or similarity, of the remaining springs and rivers of the earth, at least the principal and larger ones. For just as God on the third day of the world adorned the earth with mountains, trees, plants, herbs, and other seeds: so He also adorned the same, as well as the sea, with springs and rivers proceeding from the marine abyss, to irrigate and nourish the trees, plants, herbs, and sprouts He had produced, so that they might bear flowers and fruits; and Scripture plainly signifies this, Genesis 2:4-6: "These, it says, are the generations of heaven and earth, when they were created in the day that the Lord made heaven and earth; and every shrub of the field before it sprang up in the earth; and all the land of the region before it sprouted: for God had not yet rained upon the earth, and there was no man to till the earth; but a spring ascended from the earth, watering the whole surface of the earth." And Sirach 24:39, in the words cited a little earlier. Again, Genesis 7:11, it is said that "all the fountains of the great abyss were broken up," that is, of the barathrum already mentioned, to bring about the universal flood upon the earth; for the rain of forty days alone did not suffice for this.
Third, because no other adequate reason can be given why the sea does not overflow from so many rivers, except that which the Wise Man gives here, namely that as much water as flows into the sea from the rivers, just as much flows out into the abyss; for the reason Aristotle gives, namely that the sea is exceedingly vast and therefore the rivers add little to it and quickly evaporate, does not satisfy. For very many and very great rivers continually pour their floods into the sea: therefore in one year, one month, indeed one week, by their continuous flow in so vast a flood of waters which they continually pour into the sea, they would create many seas, since we see that vapors in the air and sea are often small or nonexistent; nor does the earth, which evaporates more than water, lose anything of its quantity. Certainly the continuous inflow of so many and such great rivers into the sea over so many years, indeed over so many ages and thousands of years, would create an abyss and surpass the sea itself. Why then does the sea not swell above all hills and mountains? Indeed, the Black Sea increases from the access of rivers, and for that reason discharges itself into the Propontis, as Pliny testifies, book II, chapter 79. The reason, therefore, why the sea does not overflow from so many rivers is that one part of it departs into vapors and clouds, which, resolved into rains and snows, flow to the heads of springs and rivers, and form streams; but another part of it partly goes into lakes and rivers which originate from the sea,
And Psalm 32:7: "Gathering the waters of the sea as in a wineskin, placing the abysses in storehouses." therefore from the sea through subterranean cavities. Again, Asclepiodorus relates that envoys sent by Philip of Macedon to search for treasures and veins of gold walked through a subterranean cave for many days, and saw immense rivers and enormous reservoirs of stagnant waters. At other times our scholars at Coimbra in their commentary on the Meteorology, tract. 9, chapter 4, narrate that floods at Valencia and elsewhere were caused by this barathrum of waters.
Finally, this is the express opinion of St. Jerome, St. Basil, Theodoret, Plato, Seneca, Rupert, Hugh of St. Victor, whose words I recited a little earlier; likewise of Tertullian, Against Hermogenes, Salonius and Albinus on this passage, Procopius, St. Augustine, Bede on Genesis II, 8, St. Gregory, book XXX of the Morals, II; Damascene, book II of On the Faith, chapter 9; Isidore, Etymologies III, 20; Pliny, book II, chapter 65; Philo, book On the Making of the World; the Master of the Sentences in II, dist. 14, at the end; St. Thomas, in II, dist. 17, Question III, art. 2, ad 4, and Part I, Question 69, art. 1, ad 2, 3, and 4; St. Bernard, sermon 13 on the Song of Songs, at the beginning; Albert in Meteorology II, tract. 2, chapter 11; Dionysius on Proverbs chapter 8; Valesius, Sacred Philosophy, chapter 63; the Coimbra scholars, cited above; Pineda and Lorinus here; Francis Suarez, book II of On the Work of the Six Days, chapter 6, at the end; indeed Aristotle, Meteorology I, 13, says this is the common opinion of the ancient philosophers. Hence Homer, Iliad XIV and XXI, calls the Ocean "the source of rivers and of all things, indeed the parent of the Gods." Strabo, book I, calls the same "the crown of the earth;" others call it "the belt and girdle of the world;" others, "the breast of the living."
Hear Philo, in his book On the Making of the World: "It is clear that the moist essence is necessarily a part of the earth that brings forth all things, just as women need their menstrual flow; and to every mother, as a supremely necessary part, nature added breasts that spring forth, preparing nourishment for the infants to be born. But the earth also appears to be a mother; wherefore it also pleased the ancients that she be called Demeter, a name composed from 'mother' and 'earth': for it is not the earth that imitates the woman, as Plato said, but the woman that imitates the earth. Justly, therefore, to the earth, the most ancient and most fertile of mothers, nature gave as breasts the streams of rivers and springs, so that the plants might be watered and all animals might have abundant drink."
Aristotle objects against this Platonic barathrum: The origin of rivers is higher than the sea itself, because rivers flow down and descend into the sea as into a lower place: therefore it cannot be that the waters ascend again from the sea upward to the source of springs and rivers. For this is against nature, according to the saying: "Rivers uphill." Hence the reason why perpetual springs cannot be made by art is that water cannot ascend higher than its source.
The answer is: The same difficulty exists in Aristotle's and everyone else's opinions. For certain springs arise at the very summits of the highest mountains, higher than any sea or land, so that the water must necessarily ascend there from its source or matrix, whatever that may be assigned to be; some rivers, however, which proximately and openly originate from the sea, are lower than the sea itself.
Therefore Julius Scaliger, exercise 46, responds that the water is outside its natural place, because it occupies the place of air: the upper water, therefore, he says, presses upon the lower, desiring to return to the place due to it, and by pressing expels it, and causes the compressed water to spring forth in the mountains through springs and rivers. For since from the first creation of God, by which it should have covered the whole earth, afterward for the habitation of animals a part of the earth was freed from water, hence that water must be accumulated upon other water, and raised up to occupy the place of air, so that there the water is outside its natural place: therefore by its own weight it presses upon the water that is in the caverns, so that it may recover its natural place; and the water compressed in the caverns, through channels, as it were tubes made by God, bursts forth in the mountains higher than the pressing sea, because the weight of the sea is greater, because it forces the water to burst out through narrow channels, since there is no other place to burst forth. For thus we see in great aqueducts, if the channels are narrowed so that they cannot discharge all the water at once, the water, thrust forward by the force of the incoming waters, springs from the channels higher than usual.
To this some Doctors add their opinion that water is higher than the earth, and has a different center from the earth, and therefore rises higher in the earth.
Here also belong certain Fathers, who consider water to be higher than the earth, and therefore to be restrained by divine power as if by a bridle, through a perpetual miracle, lest it overwhelm the earth, and lest it do so, sand is cast before it and set against it by God as fetters. So hold St. Basil, homily 4 on the Hexaemeron, St. Chrysostom in the Catena on Job, Theodoret on Psalm 103, St. Ambrose, book III of the Hexaemeron, chapters 2 and 3, St. Thomas, in the passage already cited. The same was the opinion of Lucretius and Cicero, book II of On the Nature of the Gods. But mathematicians, philosophers, and theologians refute this very position, teaching that water is not higher than the earth, but together with it forms one globe, and therefore has one center with it. So Clavius in chapter 1 of the Sphere, Pererius, book I on Genesis, Molina and Valentia on the Work of the Third Day, the Coimbra scholars, book III of On the Heavens, Question 4, and others throughout.
The true answer and cause, therefore, of why water from the sea creeps upward and ascends to the sources of springs, is the will, ordination, and provident distribution of God, who, as I have said, distributed and apportioned water through all places, upper and lower, for the necessary or convenient uses of the earth, of men, and of animals (just as water-seekers and water measurers distribute water through channels and springs to cities, fields, and gardens), just as He distributes blood in the human body. For just as the liver distributes blood, which by its nature is heavy and tends downward, naturally by the power of the soul, not only downward into the thighs, shins, and feet, but also upward into the chest, neck, and head: so likewise the sea, naturally, by the power implanted in it by God, distributes waters through veins and channels to all parts of the earth, upper as well as lower. For the natural place for each thing is that which God assigns to it, says St. Thomas. And what wonder that water ascends above the mountains, when originally it ascended above the heavens, and still remains there? For the firmament divides the waters above from those below, Genesis 1:6. Moreover, mountains are made of earth and are earthy, and therefore the natural place of the sea requires it to be above them, to subject them to itself. For earth demands the lowest place, water the second, air the third: hence at the beginning of the world the waters covered the whole earth; therefore this ascent of water is not violent, but natural, both because it is done by God the author of nature; and because water demands to be above the earth, of which the mountains are a part; and because this ascent of water occurs for the good of the universe, toward which all its parts incline, and consequently water too, which is one part of the universe; and finally because water from the sea through veins distributes and disperses itself to the whole earth and to each of its upper and lower parts, in the same way that blood from the liver through veins pours itself out and communicates to all the upper and lower limbs through the mutual union and sympathy of the members.
But by what skill and method does God make the waters ascend to the sources of springs? Various authors assign various methods.
First, some hold it probable that water ascends by the suction of the earth and the attraction of its spongy veins, just as we see a dry sponge draw moisture from a vessel by its suction to the upper parts, and a cloth placed in a barrel gradually drains it. For if from a height a linen or woolen strip hangs into a vessel full of water or other liquid, the lowest part of the strip sucks water from the vessel, and from the lowest part the next part above it sucks, and from that the next part adjacent, and so on; and in this way the water gradually creeps upward and ascends, until it climbs to the top of the strip, where, following the strip as it bends back and hangs downward, it drips into the earth, and thus draws out all the water from the vessel, and deposits it drop by drop into the earth. Lyranus adds that waters of the sea, filtered through the earth, become lighter and can ascend higher than the height of the sea. Albert adds that water heated in the veins of the earth evaporates, and thus through vapors ascends upward to the heads of springs, and there the vapors are resolved into water by the cold, and form springs. Thus the veins by their suction draw blood from the liver upward to the chest and head. For this reason God made various spongy cavities in the earth, and therefore cavities that attract water, which gradually suck water from the sea all the way up to the highest mountains, as if through siphons, says Pliny; I say "as if," because in siphons the nose, and so to speak the proboscis, that is, the outer pipe projecting from which water flows down into the earth, must be longer and lower than the inner pipe which sucks the water from the vessel; for if the outer is not longer, the inner one will not suck water. But in mountains the opening of springs is not lower, but higher than the sea from which it sucks water. In this, therefore, springs differ from siphons. The reason is that in siphons, into the outer pipe, through which water is drawn by suction from the vessel, unless it is longer, air enters, and thus prevents a vacuum in the pipe; to prevent which, if it is longer, the water ascends, since the air cannot enter it and prevent its vacuum. It is otherwise in the veins of water, so wide and vast in the earth and mountains. Thus, therefore, the waters are transmitted upward from the caverns of the earth, and not only up to the level of the sea, but also penetrate and rise up to the highest mountains. Therefore, just as God implanted in the magnet the power of attracting iron: so in the veins of the earth there is an attractive power for waters, and as it were a magnetic one.
Second, others hold that water ascends upward from the barathrum to the heads of springs by the force of subterranean blasts, winds, and spirits enclosed in the earth. For thus the sea, agitated by winds, sometimes swells to a great height and lifts its waves to the stars. What wonder, then, if agitated by the same surging it raises waters through channels to the heads of springs? So St. Basil, St. Jerome, Plato, Pliny, Valesius, and Pineda. Hear Pliny, book II, chapter 65, who with geometric subtlety drawn from the Greeks reasons thus: "Therefore all the waters from every part incline toward the center, and thus do not fall, because they press toward the interior, which the artificer of nature must have so arranged; since the dry and parched earth could not hold together by itself without moisture, nor again could water stand unless the earth sustained it, both joined in mutual embrace -- the earth opening its hollows, and the water permeating it throughout, within, without, above, veins running like bonds, and even bursting forth on the highest ridges, where, driven by breath and pressed out by the weight of the earth, it gushes forth in the manner of siphons, and is so far from the danger of falling that it leaps to the very highest and loftiest points." From which reasoning it is clear why the seas do not increase from the daily access of so many rivers.
Third, others attribute this ascent to the heavens and the stars; for thus the moon causes the tides of the sea. So St. Thomas.
Moreover, there are many other modes of raising water, as is evident in pumps, and in the Ctesibian machine, through which, in enclosed vessels full of air, if water is poured in through an opening from elsewhere, we see the air shoot upward the waters in another vessel placed above it, so that it may find a place for itself, and enter into the place of the waters.
Finally, this ascent of waters, and their equal distribution through the whole earth, just like the regular generation of winds, rains, lightning, hail, snow, etc., and their division through individual provinces, is a special work of divine providence, says Theodoret, sermon 2 On Providence, providing the whole universe with water, healthfulness, and fertility -- a work more to be venerated through wonder, contemplation, and thanksgiving
Fifth, the same is evident from the sympathy of many rivers which are less distant from the sea or are less filtered through the earth: for some are salty like the sea; some imitate the tides of the sea, as one in Cadiz, another in Bordeaux, a third in Antwerp.
Sixth, experience supports this: for during the Mithridatic War, at Apamea, a city of Phrygia, which nevertheless is far distant from the sea, Nicholas of Damascus writes that new lakes and springs emerged, and from them one salty river, which produced a great abundance of oysters and sea fish. It issued forth through action, than to be scrutinized by an overly exact and curious investigation, as he adds in Ecclesiastes 5:8 and 7:24; for it is God's wisdom and providence which, in Proverbs 8:28, says that from the beginning it balanced the fountains of waters, or, as it is in the Hebrew, the fountains of the abyss, thus raising and suspending the waters, both in the clouds and especially in the matrix of springs -- the abyss -- as it itself speaks, so that the course of springs and rivers may never be stopped, by which, as if by breasts, the earth as a mother gives drink to all living things and provides them nourishment, says Philo in his book On the Making of the World. Here is relevant Psalm 103:6: "The waters shall stand upon the mountains;" the Chaldean renders: pools of water shall burst forth upon the mountains.
You object second: The water of springs and rivers differs greatly from seawater, both in sweetness, and in color, and in lightness, and in other qualities; therefore it does not seem to be the same, nor to proceed from it.
I answer first: In the creation and making of the world, one did not differ from the other; for the water of all was the same, and it was fresh; otherwise, by its saltiness it would have made the earth, which it covered, dry, sterile, and parched. Therefore on the third day of the world, when the water was separated from the earth and drawn into its channels and cavities, and became the sea and received the name of sea, it became salty, and this for the following purposes: first, lest, by always standing and not flowing (as the sea stands), it should putrefy; second, for the natural generation and nourishment of the fish that are born from the sea; third, for easier navigation: for seawater, because it is salty, is heavier than fresh water, and therefore more easily bears and sustains ships and their enormous cargoes. So the Coimbra scholars, tract. 10 on the Meteorology, chapter 9. However, the fresh water that was originally in the springs, rivers, and subterranean hollows remained fresh, and as it flowed through its veins into the various regions of the earth, salty seawater succeeded it, which in the same manner, filtered through the various passages and windings of the earth, becomes fresh, as Aristotle teaches, light, and of a different color and quality from the sea, especially when it flows through the minerals of sulfur, iron, copper, gold, vitriol, etc., whose properties it absorbs and contracts, and therefore becomes medicinal, as is evident in the springs of Spa, the hot springs of Aachen, and other similar ones, which accordingly differ and disagree both among themselves and from the sea in many qualities.
Symbolically again, this perennial flow of rivers into the sea signifies that man's beneficence ought to be perennial. On this topic Cyril, book III of the Moral Apology, chapter 23, has an apt fable of the Danube and the sea, rich with many parables of things, whose title is: How the gift of a generous person should be perpetual: "To the ever-flooding Danube, he says, the sea spoke thus: When will the rush of your outpouring cease? When will the inflow end? How long will you give waters? But the Danube, a little indignant, replied: You speak exactly like a sea; because you insatiably receive all rivers, you receive, and yet you have not justly grown. Surely then the inflow of my generosity will cease when the appetite of your insatiability comes to an end. For the strength of virtue is no less than the decline of vice; and for this reason, just as nothing is enough for greed, so there is no end to generosity. Answer me: how, from what source, for what reason, and what does the generous person give. Does he not do this from the inclination of virtue, communicating himself entirely by reason of delight? Because virtue, just as nature inclines it, always acts, and is never idle. Hence, always humbly inclined, he is just, innocent, upright, merciful, prudent, pious, generous, beneficent, and lavish. Likewise true love is without end. For charity never fails, and he who is a friend loves perpetually, and is never drawn back from love, unless the love itself should end. For love works great things, if it exists; but if it ceases to work, it is not love." Then he teaches the way in which anyone, even a poor person, can always be generous: "Yet the generous person never lacks a gift to give, since he is richest in virtue and love. For if money fails, the tongue is present: if income is lacking, the hand is present. If the cellar is empty, counsel is not diminished. For riches never fail virtue. Therefore let the virtuous will not fail, because the fruitful capacity will not be lacking."
Finally, by the example of nature, the heavens, and the sun, he confirms the same point: "Consider, I ask, how perpetual are the emanations of benefits from generous nature. Does not heaven always pour vital powers upon lower things? The sun perpetually pours forth light, and the ever-grateful earth always produces pastures; and as long as the heart lives, does it not warm each individual limb, nourish the liver, animate the brain? Therefore the flow of generous beneficence is perpetual. When these words were spoken, the Danube overflowed all the more."
Mystically, the fullest and most immense sea of wisdom, virtues, and all graces is God and Christ. Hence He Himself says, John 7:38: "He who believes in me, etc., rivers of living water shall flow from his belly." Likewise the Blessed Virgin Mary. Hence St. Bonaventure, On the Praises of the Virgin, chapter 7: "All the rivers enter the sea, and the sea does not overflow" -- he explains this mystically: "Just as in the sea there are gatherings of waters, so in Mary there are gatherings of graces." Moreover, the sea is wisdom, as she herself says in Sirach 24:39. See what was said there.
Furthermore, the springs and rivers are the preachers and teachers, indeed all the just and holy, and even sinners, who through prayer, thanksgiving, or repentance return to God the source of all good in all things, so as to obtain new light and grace. Hence St. Thomas, on Romans chapter 1, lecture 5: The rivers return, he says, that is, benefits return through gratitude to their source from which they came, namely to God the giver; and thus they flow again, because gratitude for gifts received provokes the generosity of God to give new ones. For, as St. Chrysostom says, homily 26 on Matthew: "The best guardian of benefits is the memory of benefits, and the perpetual confession of thanksgiving." And again the same author, homily 2 to the People of Antioch, calls "the giving of thanks" "a great treasure, an inexhaustible good," as if he were saying, "perennial streams." For otherwise, if the river did not return, the sea would dry up: to the ungrateful, God also dries up.
For, as St. Bernard says: "Ingratitude is a burning wind, drying up the fountain of piety, the dew of mercy, and the streams of grace." And again: "It blocks the ways and (hidden) channels of grace;" which he transcribed from Augustine in the Soliloquies, chapter 18.
Indeed, rivers return more to the sea than we return to God; for they return the thing itself, while we return only words and verbal thanksgiving. Let us therefore imitate the rivers in their most rapid course to the sea, so that with the most intense affection of heart, if not with the effort of works, we may run back to God through love, confession, and praise. Hear St. Bernard, sermon 13 on the Song of Songs, at the beginning: "The origin of all springs and rivers is the sea; of virtues and knowledge, it is Jesus Christ the Lord. For who is the Lord of hosts, if not the King of glory Himself? But also, according to the canticle of Hannah, the same God is the Lord of knowledge. Continence of the flesh, industry of heart, rectitude of will -- they flow from that spring. And not only these, but if anyone excels in talent, if anyone shines in eloquence, if anyone pleases by his conduct, it is from there. From there comes the word of knowledge, from there the word of wisdom. For all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge are hidden there. What? Pure counsels, just judgments, holy desires -- are they not little streams from that fountain? And if the abundant waters by secret and subterranean channels unceasingly seek the seas again, so that from there they may again burst forth to our sight and use in constant and insatiable service, why should not also the spiritual streams, so that they may not cease to water the fields of minds, let them be returned without fraud and without interruption to their own source? To the place from which they go out, let the rivers of graces return, so that they may flow again. Let the heavenly outpouring be sent back to its source, so that it may be more abundantly poured back upon the earth. How, you ask? As the Apostle says: In all things giving thanks. Whatever of wisdom, whatever of virtue you trust yourself to have, attribute it to the power of God and the wisdom of God, that is, to Christ."
Again, St. Gregory, book III of the Morals, chapter 2, or according to another edition book IV, by the sea understands the contemplative life, to which the rivers, that is, the preachers and other saints who lead the active life, must frequently return, so that from it they may draw and absorb the power of action; the rivers, he says, are lightning bolts, of which Job says, chapter 28: "Will you send forth lightning, and will they go; and returning will they say to you: We are here;" because after the external works which the saints perform, they always return to the bosom of contemplation, so that there they may rekindle the flame of their ardor, and as it were catch fire from the touch of the heavenly brightness, etc.
To the place, therefore, from which the rivers go out, they return, so that they may flow again; for they are rivers there who here are called lightning bolts: for because they water the hearts of their hearers, they are called rivers; but because they set them on fire, they are called lightning bolts. Of whom it is elsewhere written: The rivers have lifted up, O Lord, the rivers have lifted up their voices. And again: His lightning bolts have illuminated the earth. To the place, therefore, from which the rivers go out, they return, because the holy men, even though from the presence of their Creator, whose brightness they strive to behold with their mind, they come forth for our sake to the ministry of the active life, yet they unceasingly return to the holy pursuit of contemplation; and if in their preaching they outwardly pour themselves through bodily words upon our ears, yet with their silent mind they always return to contemplate the very fountain of light."
Elegantly and forcefully, St. Bernard writes to the Brothers of Mont Dieu: "It is not idle, he says, to be free for God; indeed it is the business of all businesses, since from this, strength comes for business;" and he who knows how to rest wisely for a time will know how to labor vigorously and usefully afterward.
Verse 8: All Things Are Difficult: Man Cannot Explain Them in Speech. The Eye Is Not Satisfied with Seeing, nor Is the Ear Filled with Hearing
The Septuagint has: all words are weighty; a man will not be able to speak; and the eye will not be satisfied with seeing, nor will the ear be filled with hearing. The Syriac: all answers are laborious; a man will not be satisfied with speaking, nor will the eye be satisfied with seeing, nor will the ear be filled with hearing. The Arabic: all words are divided, one can only speak; and the eye is not satisfied with sight, and the ear is not filled with hearing. Others: the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing.
For "all things are difficult" the Hebrew has: all words iegeim; the Septuagint bareis, that is, laborious, weighty, difficult; the translator of Nyssus renders: laboring. Less correctly the Complutensian and Royal editions read enkopa, with omega, and translate: entangled -- for enkopos with omega is unused by the Greeks and unknown to lexicographers; Symmachus has kopodeis, that is, toilsome, troublesome; Aquila has kopiosin, that is, they bring labor; others: full of labor, failing from weariness, vexed, fatigued.
First, many explain this maxim of the sciences, as if to say: All sciences, both philosophical and natural, as well as theological and supernatural, which are taught by the discourse of the teacher and explained to the students, are difficult and laborious. For the teacher labors to express them appropriately to the capacity of the students; and the student also labors to absorb and grasp them, and to conform and adapt his understanding to the understanding of the teacher. This labor is experienced by the masters of our schools, as well as by the students. So St. Jerome, Olympiodorus, Salonius, Lyranus, Hugo, Cajetan, and others.
On the other hand, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus holds that here the words and deeds of men are contrasted with the rotation of rivers, winds, and the sun: because the latter is stable and most useful for human life, while the former are unstable and useless. Hence he translates thus: "The sun, winds, and rivers do not exceed their boundaries, nor do they stray from their laws; but what is elaborated by men, whether words or works, knows no measure or limit. For how copious is the hodgepodge of speeches and foolish trifling? Yet without any benefit. Nevertheless, the human race is such that it cannot be satisfied by hearing and telling stories, and by the views, however uncertain, of passing things."
Again, the Chaldean limits this maxim to prophecies and foreknowledge of future things; for these are obscure and difficult. Hence he translates thus: in all the words that are prepared to come to pass in the world, the ancient Prophets were wearied, and could not find their limits: truly indeed a man does not have the ability to speak what will come after him; and the eye cannot see all that is to come to pass in the world; and the ear cannot be filled with hearing the words of all the inhabitants of the earth.
Second, "words" can be taken for the things that are explained by words, by a metonymy common to the Hebrews, as our Translator has taken it; hence you may translate: all things are laborious, that is, they labor, weary themselves, sigh and, as it were, groan; for iaga means to labor with panting, to be wearied, to sigh, to groan, so that the meaning is, as if to say: Just as the sun, rivers, and winds already reviewed, so also all other things are continually moved, agitated, and labor, and from their labor seem to be exhausted, to sigh and groan, so much so that man cannot worthily and fully explain in words their labor and groaning. For consider the labor that oxen, horses, donkeys, camels, and other animals and beasts of burden undergo in plowing, carrying loads, pulling carts, running, competing, fighting, etc., and you will see that all things often sigh and groan under their burden, and from time to time collapse and expire. This is what the Apostle says, Romans 8:20: "The creature was made subject to vanity, not willingly, but because of Him who subjected it in hope; because the creature itself also shall be delivered from the servitude of corruption into the liberty of the glory of the children of God; for we know that every creature groans and is in labor until now." So our Pineda.
Third and genuinely, the labor of things here is taken not in the proper and passive sense, but in the improper and active sense, as if to say: All things are laborious, that is, burdensome to man, because they weary him, both in their acquisition, possession, use, and enjoyment; and in the knowledge of them, which follows from possession and use. For all things exhaust man, so that he may grasp them, possess them, use them, and taste them, and thus know and understand them through experience; especially because after the great labor by which man obtains them, they immediately depart or perish, and thus they provide man with but a small use and taste of themselves, nor do they satisfy his eyes with beholding, or his ears with hearing. For they are like lightning, which shows itself in a moment and immediately passes away and vanishes. Hence Fonteius translates:
All things perish to our eyes and ears: And they flee so quickly, that you cannot hold any in your mind Nor gaze at them long, nor say anything of them Fittingly or with certainty, nor dare to if you are wise.
Hence our Translator renders: all things are difficult, namely both for possessing and enjoying, and for knowing; for "difficult" is the same as laborious, troublesome, miserly, peevish, so that they grudgingly and sparingly grant access to themselves, and having barely been seen and tasted, they flee away. For such are all earthly things. Thus Cicero calls difficult old men "peevish and troublesome." And the Comic Poet calls difficult courtesans "miserly," who do not grant their favors except for great pleas and prices. For they are skilled in this art of extracting money, if they present themselves as difficult; and therefore all other enticements of the world are very similar to them.
The meaning, therefore, is, as if to say: The sun, winds, and rivers go and pass in a circle, and entangle and involve themselves in their rotations: therefore to stop them and enjoy them in a fixed state is impossible; and to explain and unravel them is exceedingly difficult; just as to unravel and disentangle a ball of thread that is tangled and intricate is difficult, even for those skilled in spinning: so it is difficult to explain the circuits of the rivers, winds, and sun through the zodiac, and to give the reasons and causes for them, namely why they go in a circle and return every year; why, though rivers enter the sea, it nevertheless does not overflow; why the winds go in a circle, now blowing from the East, now from the West, now from the North, now from the South: thus all other things too are difficult both to grasp and to know. Hence "words," as it is in the Hebrew, or "things," as our Translator renders, Olympiodorus translates as "reasons": "All reasons, he says, are difficult." For who can assign the reasons and causes of all things and changes?
That this properly pertains to knowledge and the understanding of things is clear from the word "laborious words," as the Hebrew, Septuagint, Chaldean, Syriac, and Arabic have, and from what he adds: "Man cannot explain them in speech." And: "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing."
Therefore, besides the vanity of things consisting in their perpetual agitation, inconstancy, and circulation, he here assigns another vanity in man, which follows from the former, namely, that man, partly from the blindness and ignorance innate to him, partly from the instability of things themselves, cannot fix the eye of his mind upon them and fully perceive and understand them. They themselves, therefore, are "difficult," that is, harsh, miserly, denying access to themselves, so that they flee and flit past however avidly one gazes with the eyes and listens with the ears; therefore man cannot fix his mind upon them and find rest in them, since they are vain and immediately vanishing; but he must seek the good, true, stable, and eternal -- namely God -- in whom he may plainly find rest. For since man is a rational animal, he naturally desires to know, says Aristotle, and therefore man's good and perfection, as man, consists in knowledge and understanding. Hence Herillus placed the highest good in knowledge, as Lactantius testifies, book III, chapter 3. But because man's soul is immersed in a wretched body, and is therefore the lowest in the order of spiritual creatures, and through original sin lost original justice, which not only conferred grace but also perfected nature and intellect, hence there is in him a great blindness, ignorance, and difficulty in knowing things both natural, and much more supernatural and divine; which is his great vanity and misery. Hence Socrates, as Laertius testifies in his Life, used to say "that he knew only this, that he knew nothing, and that our knowledge should rather be called learned ignorance than perfect knowledge;" following whom, Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa wrote three books On Learned Ignorance; indeed even the philosophers called Academics, or Skeptics, denied that man could have certain knowledge of things, since they have only doubtful opinion. Hence one of them (Empedocles, if I remember correctly) used to say that snow is not really white, but only appears white to man.
Mystically, Olympiodorus explains this variously: "All principles, he says, both those pertaining to secular wisdom and those pertaining to divine wisdom, cannot be transmitted without labor; yet secular and worldly knowledge mostly brings harm to learners. But the knowledge of God and the divine word is always useful; which, however, a man will not be able to explain worthily, even if he is otherwise prudent, unless he has received the gift of teaching, the word of wisdom. Otherwise: The teachers of the divine word almost always labor and are in distress, and are mostly drawn back from the very act of teaching, when they see themselves laboring in vain and gaining only toil because of the disobedience or sloth of their hearers. Therefore the office of preaching deters those who are heard with negligence. Otherwise: One must first do, and then teach others. The labor, therefore, is not ordinary or slight, but very perilous -- for anyone to teach others things which he himself has not first practiced. For this reason, a perfect and prudent man, when he contemplates the magnitude of the task, recoils and draws back from preaching itself."
And St. Jerome: "It must be noted, he says, that all words are weighty and are learned with great labor, against those who think that knowledge of the Scriptures comes to them while they are idle and merely making vows." Hence St. Basil, epistle 68, refutes Eunomius who claimed to have comprehended the truth, indeed God, by proposing to him minute questions about the nature of the ant. and from this he concludes: "But if by your knowledge you have not yet grasped the nature of the tiniest ant, how do you boast that the incomprehensible patience of God has been comprehended by your imagination?"
Moreover, the reasons why all things are difficult for man to understand, and consequently to express and explain, are various. The first is that the intellect of man is bound to the body, and to the imagination and senses. Hence it understands nothing of which it does not have a mental image in the imagination: and it imagines no mental image of any thing unless it has seen it with the eyes, or heard it with the ears, or perceived it with another sense. But the senses perceive only the accidents of things: sight perceives color, hearing perceives sound, taste perceives flavor, smell perceives odor, touch perceives heat, etc. The senses, therefore, do not penetrate the innermost qualities of things, namely their essences, properties, and essential differences, which the Angels penetrate. Hence it comes about that man knows very few natures of things, but only their accidents, from which, as if by footprints, and as if by a shadow, reasoning from these he conjectures about the natures and substances in which they inhere. Moreover, the senses, unless from nearby, do not reach to subtle and remote things, such as Angels, souls, air, winds, heavens, sun, moon, and stars, which nevertheless man supremely desires to know and plainly understand, as well as to express; but he cannot, because expression corresponds to concept and understanding, and therefore does not adequately represent the thing. For the word of the mouth corresponds to the word of the mind, indeed often does not adequately represent it. For we conceive many things that we cannot express. But our concept does not adequately represent the thing itself, especially regarding its essence and substance; for it beholds and conceives this only through the veil of accidents.
The second reason is the very agitation, instability, and rapid rising and setting of things. For they do not long grant access to themselves for examining them with the eyes and investigating them with the other senses. Hence Hippocrates at the beginning of the Aphorisms: "Art is long, he says, life is short, time is swift, experiment is perilous, judgment is difficult." Hence Isidore and Campensis paraphrase: for they do not stand still until the eyes of even the most diligent observer, or the ears of the most avid listener, are satisfied. An example is the hyacinth gemstone, which, as Pliny says, book 37, chapter 9: "Pleasing at first sight, it vanishes before it satisfies, and so little does it fill the eyes that it scarcely reaches them, fading more quickly than the flower whose name it bears."
The third cause is the depression, dullness, ignorance, and blindness of the human soul, especially after sin, of which I have already spoken. Hence Seneca, epistle 89: "If I believe Protagoras, he says, nothing in the nature of things is anything but doubtful; if Nausicyphanes, this one thing is certain, that nothing is certain; if Parmenides, nothing exists except one; if Zeno, not even one."
THE EYE IS NOT SATISFIED WITH SEEING, NOR IS THE EAR FILLED WITH HEARING. -- In Hebrew: the eye is not satisfied by seeing, nor the ear from hearing. He draws this maxim from the preceding one, as if to say: Because all things are difficult to understand and to express, hence the eyes are not satisfied by beholding them, nor the ears by hearing them, and much less is the curiosity, or the desire to see and hear, which is immense in man, satisfied. The reason is that man has a rational mind, which is capable of infinite things, because it was created in the image of God, and therefore can be satisfied and filled by no thing except God alone. This insatiability of the eyes and ears in man, therefore, does not come from the sensitive faculties themselves, as the Philosophers note, because these in themselves are limited. Hence in brute animals, sight and hearing, indeed the eagerness to see and hear, are limited and easily satisfied, when through them they obtain food and other things suitable to their nature. It comes, therefore, from the conjunction with the intellect and will, which in man is insatiable.
The meaning, therefore, is, as if to say: So greatly are the rotations of the heavens, winds, sun, and rivers, and all other varied and difficult things, that they always hold the eyes and ears captive with wonder at them, and do not satisfy their desire and their thirst for sensing and knowing. Hence St. Augustine in the Soliloquies, chapter 30: "When the soul, he says, desires a creature, it has a continual hunger; because even though it obtains what it desires from creatures, it nevertheless remains empty, because there is nothing that can fill it except You, O Lord, in whose image it was created."
Fittingly for his purpose, Ecclesiastes names the eyes and ears above the other senses, because these two are the noblest and the most apt for knowing. Hence sight and hearing are the two senses of learning, because above the others they are the swiftest, the most certain, and the most effective. For they sense at a great distance, with little change in themselves, and with a greater impression on the imagination. Hence they have received their name. "The name of the ears, says St. Isidore, Etymologies book 11, chapter 1, is derived from the drinking in of sounds. Hence also Virgil: And I drank in the voice with these ears. Or because the Greeks call the voice itself aken, from hearing. For by a change of letter, 'ears' (aures) were named as if 'audes.' For the voice, reverberating through their windings, makes a sound by which they receive the sense of hearing." And a little above: "The eyes, among all the senses, are the nearest to the soul. For in the eyes is all the judgment of the mind: hence also the disturbance or joy of the spirit appears in the eyes." "The eyes, says Cicero, book II of On the Nature of the Gods, as it were sentinels, occupy the highest place, from which, beholding very many things, they perform their duty."
Hear Olympiodorus: "The senses of hearing and seeing are the chief and royal ones, and the most rational among all the other senses: for they perform their proper operations, most useful and necessary for human life, without any satiety. But taste, smell, and touch are more quickly fatigued and affected by weariness. The reason is that sight and hearing are more spiritual, while the remaining senses are more bodily and coarser."
Moreover, the reason why the eyes and ears of men are insatiable, while in brute animals they are easily satisfied, is, as I have said, the infinite amplitude of the mind, and its desire, which, since it desires to know infinite things in order to fill its immense capacity, and cannot know them unless it first absorbs their forms, and thus perceives them through the ears and eyes, hence it craves to see infinite things with the eyes and hear infinite things with the ears. This, therefore, is their vanity in this life, which in the future life the immense truth of God seen face to face will fill. There is added to this the slightness and fleetingness of things that are seen and heard, which do not satisfy sight and hearing, but rather irritate and torment them.
Hence St. Augustine, sermon 23 On the Words of the Apostle: "Temporal goods, he says, do not cease to inflame us when coming, corrupt us when present, and torment us when passing away; desired things wither, obtained things become cheap, lost things vanish."
Seneca gives a notable example, epistle 73: "Attalus, he says, used to employ this image: Have you ever seen a dog catching with open mouth morsels of bread or meat thrown by its master? Whatever it catches, it immediately devours whole, and always gapes in hope of the next. The same happens to us: whatever fortune throws to us as we wait, we let go without any pleasure, immediately raised up and stunned (others read: attentive) to seize the next. This does not happen to the wise man: he is full; and even if something comes his way, he receives it calmly and stores it away, enjoying the greatest, continuous, and genuine happiness."
Here is relevant Proverbs 27:20: "Hell and destruction are never filled; likewise the eyes of men are insatiable." And Sirach 14:9: "The eye of the covetous is insatiable; he will not be satisfied until he has consumed and dried up his own soul." See what was said in both places. Hugh of St. Victor says admirably: "The heart of man, he says, is not enough for the whole world; because all things are difficult, man cannot comprehend them: and conversely the whole world is not enough for the heart of man, because the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing." And St. Ambrose, book On the Good of Death, chapter 7: "He receives his soul in vain (to speak now of the troubles of this life) who builds worldly things, who constructs bodily things. Every day we rise to eat and drink, and no one is so filled that he does not hunger and thirst again after a moment. Every day we seek gain, and no limit is placed on desire. The eye, he says, will not be satisfied with seeing, nor the ear with hearing. He who loves silver will not be satisfied with silver. There is no end of labor, and there is no fruit of abundance. We desire to know new things every day, and what is knowledge itself, except the addition of daily sorrow?"
Hear this whole passage of Ecclesiastes vividly explained by our Martin de Roa, book II of Singularia, chapter 1: "All things are difficult, man cannot explain them in speech; the eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor is the ear filled with hearing" -- that is, all things are hard, peevish, miserly: they never give themselves, never grant access to themselves, nor do they leave any place or power to enjoy them; and thus "man cannot explain them in speech," that is, when he has barely tasted them, barely received them with his eyes, barely with his ears, he cannot explain what good or evil is in them, or what sort of things they finally are. For however attentively one contemplates or however swiftly one gazes, they flee from his sight, and flit past the ears of even the most avid listener. "The eye is not satisfied with seeing." Since they are comprehended neither by the eyes nor by the mind, nor is there anyone who can explain them in speech. "Nor is the ear filled with hearing." On the contrary, the things that are from God are good, are true, and they satisfy the heart. "I shall be satisfied, says David, when Your glory shall appear." Hear the Prophet Esdras, book IV, chapter 10, whom God commands to enter His temple, and to feed his eyes and also his ears upon its splendor, magnitude, and beauty at will: "Therefore, He says, do not fear, nor let your heart be dismayed; but enter, and see the splendor and magnitude of the building, as much as the power of your eyes is capable of seeing; and after this you shall hear as much as the desire of your ears desires to hear."
Verse 9: What Is It That Has Been? The Same That Shall Be: What Is It That Has Been Done? The Same That Shall Be Done
Some translate from the Hebrew assertively, but with the same meaning: that which was, the same shall be; and that which has been done, the same shall be done. The Syriac: what is the same, is what has been done, and it shall be done. The Arabic obscurely: what thing forming, forms its own soul by doing the same. The Chaldean: what already existed from ancient times, the same will certainly come to pass hereafter; and what was done in those first times, the same will also be done at the end of the ages, nor will you find anything new here under the sun.
Eusebius skillfully distinguishes, book XI of the Preparation for the Gospel, chapter 6: "that which was" from "that which has been done," or being from having been made, and by "that which is" or "was" he understands incorruptible things, such as the sun, heavens, elements, and Angels: for these have stable being; hence the name of the most stable God is: "I am who I am;" but by "that which has been done" he takes corruptible things, which nature or art produces.
He proves that nothing under the sun is new by an argument from analogy, as if to say: Just as an incorruptible thing is numerically the same that was, and that shall be -- for example, the present and future sun is the same -- so a corruptible thing is the same in species that has been made and that shall be made: for to one passing generation of men and animals another and another continually similar, and of the same species, succeeds; whence he concludes: Therefore nothing is new under the sun.
The Hebrews, according to Rabbi Moses, book II of the Guide of the Perplexed, chapter 29, and Hugo, hold that here Solomon asserts the eternity of the world, not from his own opinion, but from that of the Gentiles, and especially of his foreign wives, whom he did not dare to offend. Following these, Cajetan, misled by his Hebrew interpreter, holds that Solomon "argues from the eternity of time that all things consist in circular motion, both according to being and according to becoming; and that Solomon speaks as a preacher, using an opinion, although false, yet probable according to what is more probable from sensible things. For natural reasons suggest the eternity of the world."
But he errs in three ways: first, in asserting that the opinion about the eternity of the world is probable; second, in saying that it is established from sensible things, when rather from these the origin and creation of the world is concluded; third, in holding that Solomon, indeed the Holy Spirit, who dictated these things through the mouth of Solomon, used a false reason, though probable in appearance, of the eternity of the world, to prove the circulation of all things: for this is unworthy of the Holy Spirit.
Here belongs the error of Origen, writing on this passage, as Methodius testifies, in the book On the Resurrection and in book III of the First Principles, who holds that here is established the Great Year of Plato, by which he thought that after twelve thousand years (as Cicero testifies, book II of On the Nature of the Gods) all past things would be recalled to become present, namely that after some ages we who now live would return, and repeat and do again what we now do; indeed that those damned in hell would then be saved. For he believed that before this world others had preceded, and after it others would follow, citing for this Isaiah 65: "Behold, I create new heavens and a new earth." Some think this error was foisted upon Origen by forgers and inserted into his books, because he himself in book IV Against Celsus seems to condemn it. Be that as it may, it was the error of the Origenists, whom St. Jerome refutes in his letter to Avitus, and St. Augustine, book XII of The City of God, chapter 13.
Thus Epicurus, says St. Jerome, asserts that through innumerable periods the same things happen in the same places and through the same agents; and Pythagoras held that souls migrate and remigrate into one body after another.
Setting aside these manifest errors:
First, Rabbi Moses, in the passage cited, holds that this is said to signify the eternity of the world from the later part, namely that the world will henceforth endure forever. But what has this to do with the purpose of Ecclesiastes, namely to prove the vanity, that is, the instability, of the world? For the stability and eternity of the world is directly opposed to this.
Second, better and from the opposite direction, Eusebius, book XI of the Preparation for the Gospel, chapters 5, 6, and 7, holds that this is said to note the flux, flight, and corruption of the world, namely that the things of the world continually flow and pass away with time, and others succeed them, and in the future others will succeed which will likewise flow and pass away, and therefore nothing under the sun is new, but all things grow old, age, and perish.
Third, Lyranus holds that here, after the circulation of the sun, winds, and rivers, three other arguments are proposed to prove the vanity of the world: the first being that all things of the world are obscure for enjoyment and knowledge, when he says: "All things are difficult," etc.; the second, that they do not satisfy the eyes and heart of man, when he says: "The eye is not satisfied with seeing, nor the ear filled with hearing;" the third, that there is nothing new in them, but all things are ancient and old, when he says: "There is nothing new under the sun."
Fourth, others refer these words to sciences and opinions, as if to say: There are no new opinions and sciences, but those which now seem to arise, the same existed long ago, even though they were abolished in time, according to the saying of the Comic Poet in the Eunuch: "Nothing is said that has not been said before." "Hence my teacher Donatus, says St. Jerome, when he was explaining that very verse, said: Perish those who said our things before us." Here is relevant that saying of Plato, book III of the Republic: "Nothing unheard of." And Aristotle, book I of On the Heavens, text 22, and book I of the Meteorology, chapter 3: "It is necessary, he says, that the same opinions recur infinitely, assuming the eternity of the world, which he himself assumes and constantly affirms."
But this meaning is too narrow and less fitting; for Ecclesiastes speaks not of the knowledge or opinion of things, but of the things themselves when he says: "Nothing under the sun is new," even though this maxim can be extended to sciences and opinions, since they themselves are things and real qualities.
Fifth and genuinely, Ecclesiastes here returns to the theme proposed at the beginning, namely to prove that all things in the world are vain, from the fact that all things go in a circle and depart. He proved this from the continuous rotation of the sun, winds, and rivers; now he proves the same from the rotation of the remaining things, namely that all things go and pass away with time; and therefore after past things come present and future things, which will likewise pass into the past. Even though future things may appear new to those who did not see the past, they are nevertheless old things already seen and worn out by those who lived long ago: for past things, in their similar successors that follow, seem new, but are not, because they merely rise again and are reborn; hence Thuanus translates:
Indeed all things which we now Marvel at, were seen and heard in ancient ages.
And Horace in the Art of Poetry: Mortal deeds shall perish; Many shall be born again that have already fallen, and those shall fall Which now are in honor.
So explain St. Jerome, Olympiodorus, Albinus, and St. Augustine, book XII of The City of God, chapter 13.
Ecclesiastes says this to blunt the vanity of men and their vain curiosity, by which, disdaining old things, they always gape for new ones; and therefore they wander about to gather new things, but in vain, since there is nothing new under the sun, because all things are in a circle and return. For this is the theme which from the beginning he has been striving to prove up to this point; even though in the preceding verse he incidentally, as if in a parenthesis, introduced another argument of vanity, namely the difficulty of things for enjoyment and knowledge, and that the ear is not filled with what is heard, nor the eye with what is seen; to which, however, these verses also can be referred, so as to show that the ears and eyes, being curious and eager for new things, are not satisfied, because there is nothing new under the sun, as if to say: You labor in vain, O man; in vain you torment and torture yourself, while you wander through all things to satisfy the curiosity of your ears, eyes, and heart, greedy for new things, since you will find nothing new, even if you travel from East to West, but all things are ancient and old. For this is the condition of the aging world, this is the nature and character of time and of all temporal things alike, namely that they consist in continuous flux and rotation, and that past things depart, present things succeed them, future things follow, which, when they have passed into the past, other present things will succeed, and other similar future things will follow. This is the perennial circle of time and temporal things, this is the rotation and revolution.
Therefore Ecclesiastes, after having described the circular motion of the parts of the universe, namely of the heavens and sun, of the air and winds, of rivers and springs, now describes the same from the perspective of time, to which all things are subject, and with which they revolve and pass away, as if to say: Nothing is stable, nothing constant under the sun; but all things, just like the time to which they are subject, are circular and flow past. Do you wish to know, then, O curious man, what you will achieve by all your curious and troublesome labor? Look at those who came before and what they achieved; for what they achieved, you will achieve, nothing else; in vain you seek new things which do not exist, neither have existed, nor will exist. Hence Nyssus says: "To the question, he says, the answer is brief: Think about what the future will be, and you will know what the past was," as if to say: Men are always stirred by the appetite for future things; for they disdain present things, as if sated with their possessions: they pant after future things, as if curious for novelties. Occupied with new desires, says Seneca, book III of On Benefits, chapter 3, we look not at what we have, but at what we seek; we are intent not on what is, but on what we crave. This vanity of theirs deceives them, because nothing new happens under the sun: those who came before had nothing extraordinary, and we who come after will have nothing better; from the past, therefore, you will gather and measure what kind and how great a good time and life will give you; those who come after will similarly gather from us.
Nyssus and both Hugos, namely the Cardinal and the Victorine, note that no mention of the present time is made here, but only of the past and future, because from the present we have nothing except a single indivisible "now": therefore the present immediately passes into the past; it pertains, therefore, to the past or to the future, as the bond and link of both, because the present connects the past to the future.
Symbolically, certain Rabbis (who think this is the genuine and literal meaning; but they err), according to Galatinus, book X, chapters 3 and 4, take this of the new law foreshadowed in the old law, as if to say: That which was foreshadowed by so many figures in the Mosaic Law, is to be fulfilled in reality by Christ in the Gospel Law. So Rabbi Barachias in the same place: "What is it, he says, that was? the same that shall be; just as there was a first redeemer, that is Moses, so there shall be a last redeemer," namely the Messiah, or Christ.
And Procopius on Isaiah 48: "Some ask, he says, how He can assert that He has made new things, when, as Ecclesiastes teaches, there is nothing new under heaven; therefore he understood the mystery of Christ, far greater than the visible creation, which is called hidden even by Paul." The Chaldean adds, who translates verse 11 thus: The memory of past nations does not exist, nor will there be remembrance of those which shall come after for those who shall live in the times of King Messiah.
Anagogically, Olympiodorus applies these words to the merits of the present life and the rewards of the future; for whatever and however great a merit preceded on earth, only the corresponding reward follows us in heaven.
Again, St. Jerome, St. Augustine, book XII of The City of God, 13, and Hugo hold that Ecclesiastes speaks (in the mystical and anagogical sense) of the presence and predestination by which those things that are to come have already been done. "For those, says St. Jerome, who were elected in Christ before the foundation of the world, already existed in prior ages," namely in the mind and predestination of God.
Finally, Nyssus notes that "that which was" is said mystically of the soul, because it was created; "that which has been done" is said of the body, which was formed from the earth; the soul, therefore, is said to be about to become what it was through sanctification: for through this the grace lost through the sin of Adam is restored to it; the body, however, is said to be about to become what was made through the resurrection, by which those once made and born, but dead, will rise again; and for this to happen happily, the soul and body must return to the state they previously had, namely to the purity and holiness in which they were created by God in the first-formed Adam.
Verse 10: There Is Nothing New Under the Sun; nor Can Anyone Say: Behold, This Is Recent
The Septuagint: there is nothing at all (that is, nothing is) recent under the sun; who shall speak and say: See this, it is new? It already existed in the ages which were before us. The Syriac: which were from eternity, that is, from the ancient and earliest times of the world. The Chaldean: for let there be given a thing of which someone readily declares: See, a new thing has been found; yet the memory of the ancients records that it once happened. The Arabic: and everything renewed under the sun cannot speak and say: Consider this thing, because it is new, which was already done in the past in the ages before us.
You ask, how is there nothing new under the sun, when many new things are made through newly invented arts, when new prodigies occur, when the new Christ gave a new law and in it new precepts, Sacraments, and rewards; there are also new miracles, about which Sirach 36 says: "Renew Your signs and change Your wonders?" St. Thomas answers first, Part I, Question 73, art. 1, ad 3, that all these things existed beforehand, and were once done either in themselves, or in their causes, or in their likenesses: "They preceded, he says, according to likeness, as the souls which are now created. And similarly the work of the Incarnation, because, as it says in Philippians 2: The Son of God was made in the likeness of men. Spiritual glory also preceded according to likeness in the Angels; bodily glory, however, in heaven, especially the empyrean."
Second, St. Jerome restricts this to man, as if to say: Nothing new happens to man; for man alone, he says, can speak and say, as the Hebrew has: See this new thing.
Pineda agrees, who refers this to the morals of men, as if to signify that the pursuits and efforts of mortals toward happiness are not new, nor are new paths to tranquility of mind being entered upon by the men of our own age. Everything has already been tried by the ancients laboring under the sun for happiness, but with fruitless labor. The interpretation of Thaumaturgus supports this: "What can be done in the future that has not already been accomplished, or is being done by men? What is new that has not yet been discovered by experience, provided it is noteworthy and memorable?"
Third, plainly and genuinely, refer these words to nature and art, or to the ordinary works done by nature or art, as if to say: Nothing is new under the sun, that is, nothing new happens in the natural course of things, namely of the heavens, elements, stars, winds, sea, men, and animals; likewise in the arts necessary for human life, which nature requires, such as smithing, agriculture, commerce, tailoring, baking, etc. Therefore nothing prevents not only new prodigies and miracles from occurring, but also wonderful new arts from being invented, such as artillery, printing, etc., although both of these existed among the Chinese for many centuries before they were discovered in Europe, even if in an inferior form, as the histories of the Chinese relate, especially the one written by our Nicholas Trigault. Read Polydore Vergil On the Invention of Things, who names the inventors of individual arts, namely those known to us and our age. St. Augustine, book XII of The City of God, 13, adds that the prodigies and marvels that now occur were once done, if not the same, certainly similar or related to them.
He addresses the curiosity of idle men, who are displeased with their own lot and present condition, and prefer what is foreign and remote: therefore they wish to see other ages, and say: If only I had lived in the age of Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ, Constantine! Or if only I could live in the following age! I would certainly experience many new and better things. Others wish and say: If only I had seen Noah, Abraham, Moses, Christ! Or if only I could see the kings, pontiffs, heroes who will come after this age! If only I could see the new things done under them, or that will be done! For in their idleness they imagine marvelous things that never existed nor will exist. Solomon here blunts these wishes, saying: Why do you vainly desire to see past or future things? Be content with the present, because these are similar, indeed the same, as the past and future; for there is nothing new under the sun. You wish to see Noah, Abraham, Moses, etc.: but they were men similar to our own. You see learned, holy, apostolic men; think that in them you see Noah, Abraham, Moses. You see the same sun, the same sky, the same earth that they saw. You see similar trees, plants, grains, fruits, houses, arts, and artisans, such as they saw, and such as posterity will see. What new thing, therefore, do you seek, when in the world there is nothing new? For art and nature have produced, and will always produce, the same things they now produce.
Furthermore, it is established that supernaturally, in the new law, many things were made by Christ, and new things are done by Christians, and in heaven all things will be new, according to Revelation 21: "Behold, I make all things new." For the mysteries of the Incarnation of the Word, of His death, of the Cross, of the Eucharist, although they were faintly prefigured by many types of the ancients, were nevertheless in reality plainly new, stupendous, and unheard of, when they came to be in Christ; Christ, therefore, a new man, by a new law and grace made man new. For, as St. Augustine says, sermon 39 On the Seasons: "He who came, through the mockery of the Cross, to destroy the corruption of the flesh, and to dissolve the old age of the bond of our death by the newness of His own death, by a new commandment made man new. For it was an old thing that man should die; and lest this should always prevail in man, a new thing was brought about: that God should die." This is what Jeremiah predicted in chapter 31: "The Lord will create a new thing upon the earth: a woman shall encompass a man." So Olympiodorus: "Nothing, he says, is new in the successions of men, animals, and plants." And St. Thomas in IV Sentences, dist. 48, Question II, art. 1, ad 1, says that Ecclesiastes speaks of the natural course of things, and of those things that are made by the sun and depend on the sun's power. So also St. Augustine, book XII of The City of God, chapter 13.
Hence our Joseph de Acosta, book I On the New World, and Pineda, book IV On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 15, show from Plato, Seneca, and others that the new world, or the Indies, was known to the ancients; and this is clear from the fleets of Solomon going to Ophir; but afterward the path and memory of this journey was obliterated.
Hence some hold that the ancients likewise knew the nautical needle, or the magnetic compass and the magnetic force; for through this, since it always always inclining toward the pole, sailors know the pole and the elevation of the North Pole, and consequently the other three regions of the world; hence they know in what part and region of the world they are, and in what direction they must head to reach their appointed destination. Many authors, however, deny that the nautical needle was known to them; for they hold it to be a recent and modern invention: but they grant them other instruments, arts, and methods for navigating and directing their course over the sea, and especially the astronomy of the Chaldeans and Egyptians, by which, accurately observing the position and movement of the moon, stars, and constellations, they directed their journey accordingly. See Pineda, book IV On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 15, verse 4 and following. Certainly our Clavius, at the beginning of his book On the Astrolabe, teaches that the astrolabe was known to the ancients, and specifically to Ptolemy, and was called by him a planisphere.
Verse 11: There Is No Remembrance of Former Things
That is, in later time. For the Hebrew word acharon, which our Translator usually renders as "last," means the same as "later, following." The Septuagint: there is no memory for the first, and indeed for the last, when they shall have been, there will be no memory of them with those who shall be in the last time. The Chaldean: there is no memory of former generations (Costus translates: nations), nor of later ones that shall be, will there be remembrance with the generations that shall be in the days of King Messiah. The Arabic: no remembrance is found of past ages, nor of those to be done most recently. Vatablus: the memory of former things does not endure, nor will the memory of things that shall come after endure among posterity.
This maxim can be taken both of all former and later things. For there is oblivion of all these among those who follow and among posterity. Hence our Translator renders in the neuter gender: nor shall there be any remembrance of things that are to come; and also properly of men and the words and deeds of men, which are likewise immediately consigned to oblivion: hence St. Jerome and the Septuagint translate in the masculine: nor shall there be any memory of those who are to come. Ecclesiastes says this, first, to meet a tacit objection. For someone might say that many new things are done under the sun, because we have not read or heard that similar things were once done. Ecclesiastes answers that they were done, but consigned to oblivion, because the memory of things slips away and vanishes together with the things themselves, especially after many years and ages. Hence Thuanus translates:
Time brings on the forgetfulness of old things past; Of things that shall be done hereafter, Scarcely the smallest fame will trickle down to late descendants.
Second, to mock the vain desire in man for fame, remembrance, and glory among posterity. For since man knows that he must die and cannot live forever, he therefore wishes to live at least in the memory and fame of posterity; but in vain, because this too quickly fades and perishes. This, therefore, is a new vanity of human affairs, which induces contempt for them, namely that man, quickly dying and vanishing, does not even leave a lasting memory of himself among posterity, but that memory rotates with time and departs. Hence the Hebrew word for "age" is olam, as if "hidden," or as if olem, that is, hiding and concealing, from the root alam, that is, he hid, because the deeds of a prior age are hidden and concealed from the following age. See Wisdom 5:10 and following.
Ecclesiastes speaks of the memory of natural and vain things, which vain men pursue, not of the memory of virtues and works of grace, especially heroic ones; for this endures through many ages, as can be seen in the Martyrology and the feasts of the Church, which every year celebrates the memory of the Apostles, Patriarchs, Prophets, Martyrs, and Virgins, both to honor them and to propose their virtues for the faithful to imitate. Of these, therefore, Christ said: "Rejoice that your names are written in heaven," Luke 10:20; and the Psalmist: "The just shall be in everlasting remembrance," Psalm 111:6; and Sirach 44:14: "Their name lives from generation to generation."
The just, therefore, are written in heaven, because their memory and glory will be everlasting. But the vain and the wicked are written in earth and water, because their name and fame are immediately trampled, erased, and washed away, according to Jeremiah 17:13: "Those who depart from You shall be written in the earth;" and Psalm 9:8: "Their memory has perished with a noise;" and Proverbs 10:7: "The name of the wicked shall rot." For although Alexander, Julius Caesar, Pompey, and Nebuchadnezzar have memory and fame among posterity, yet it is rotten and infamous, namely that they were tyrants, plunderers, impious, and wicked.
Ecclesiastes speaks of the whole genus, or of what happens for the most part and to the majority, even though there is an exception in a few cases, as if to say: All kinds of things, words, deeds, animals, and men that existed in the prior age are consigned to oblivion in the following age, even though certain individual men may have posthumous fame through many ages on account of extraordinary wisdom, eloquence, or some other gift, such as Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, etc. But these are very few, and the memory of them is faint and rare, existing only among a few learned persons, and that memory is stained with the blemish of many errors and vices, such as lusts and the worship of false gods. Hence the Apostle, in Romans 1, thunders against them, saying: "Who, although they knew God, did not glorify Him as God, etc. For professing themselves to be wise, they became fools, etc. For which cause God delivered them up to the desires of their heart, to uncleanness, to dishonor their own bodies" through pederasty and other infamous lusts, which he recounts there.
A living example and mirror of this oblivion of former ages is Rome. When I entered it eighteen years ago, I asked men well versed in its antiquity in what part of the City the houses and palaces of Julius Caesar, Augustus, Pompey, Scipio, Vespasian, Trajan, etc., had once stood, and I received the answer that about many it was entirely unknown, and about a few there was only an obscure and uncertain conjecture that they had been in such-and-such a place. I searched for the ancient statues, mausoleums, inscriptions, pyramids, temples, and basilicas of the heroes, and of them all I found scarcely anything intact except the Pantheon of Marcus Agrippa, but sunk into the ground under the rubble of ancient ruins and largely buried. Where then are the trophies and monuments of Romulus, Numa, Servius, Tullius, Tarquinius, Collatinus, Brutus, Metellus, Corvinus, Publicola, Torquatus, Camillus? They have vanished as if they never existed; indeed the names of very many are unknown, and of few there is only a faint memory. The most ancient and noble Roman families, such as the Cornelii, the Lentuli, the Fabii, the Pisones, the Cicerones, the Servii, the Scipiones, and all the rest without exception, have so completely died out that none at all survives, indeed the name of most is unknown. Assuredly the new Rome has buried the old, the Christian the pagan, the holy the profane, and "in Rome, Rome lies buried." Go now, vain mortals, eternalize your names with the Romans, carve them in marble, raise them in statues, set them up in colossuses; in a short time the oblivion of the succeeding age will erase them all. "Alas, how quickly among men does favor for the dead fade and seem deserted," says Euripides in his Ajax. And Ovid, book XV of the Metamorphoses:
Time, devourer of things, and you, envious old age, You destroy all things.
And Horace, book II, epistle 2:
Tropologically, St. Jerome translates from the Septuagint thus, and explains: "There is no memory for the first, and indeed for the last who shall be, there will be no memory of them with those who shall be in the last time" -- that is, the Gospel sense is that those who are first in this age shall be the last of all. And because God, as benign and merciful, remembers even all the least, He will not give as much glory to those who deserved to be last on account of their vice, as to those who, humbling themselves, willed to be last in the world. Hence it says in what follows: There is no memory of the wise together with the fool forever." He alludes to the parable of the first and last laborers, Matthew 20.
On the other hand, others refer this to the decrees of forebears and ancestors, which later descendants overturn and obliterate. When King Agis was told by a certain old man who saw the ancient laws growing weak and corrupt ones creeping in, that at Sparta things were being turned upside down, he said in jest: This, if it is happening, is happening according to reason; for I myself as a boy heard from my father that things were turned upside down in his time, and he said that he as a boy had heard the same from his father. It is not surprising, therefore, if later things turn out worse than earlier ones; but rather if at any time they should turn out better or similar. So Plutarch in the Laconic Sayings.
Verses 12-13: I, Ecclesiastes, Was King of Israel in Jerusalem, and I Proposed in My Mind to Seek and Investigate Wisely Concerning All Things That Are Done Under the Sun
The Septuagint: to inquire into and consider in wisdom all things that are done under the sun. So also the Syriac. But the Arabic: I, the gatherer (others: I, the preacher) became king over Israel in Jerusalem, and I changed my heart so that it might seek and perceive with wisdom concerning all things created under the sun. The Chaldean adds much of his own, which I shall soon review.
The Rabbis fable that Solomon said these things after his fall, when, having abdicated the kingdom and become poor and almost a beggar, he gave himself over to the service and teaching of the demon Asmodeus, who presided over treasures. Hence Elias Levita in the Tishbi, under the word Asmodai, reads from the Targum thus: I, Koheleth, Asmodai, king of demons -- as if Solomon here speaks from the mouth of a demon, or the demon speaks through Solomon's mouth. Francis George, following the Hebrews as is his custom, Problem 82, says these words were spoken by Solomon: "When he was in the desert in a cage, and was dealing with Asmodai." But hear at length the Chaldean, following and expressing the trifling notions of the Rabbis: "When King Solomon had sat on the throne of his empire, puffed up beyond measure by his prosperity, he transgressed the decree of God, and gathered horses, litters, and many horsemen; moreover he collected a great mass of gold and silver; and he was joined by marriage with foreign nations: wherefore the Lord, greatly moved against him, sent against him Asmodeus, king of demons, who would deprive him of his kingdom and extract the ring from his hand; and it came to pass that he wandered as a vagrant and fugitive through the world, rebuking men, and going to the provinces and places of the land of Israel, unable to restrain his tears, he cried out thus: I, Ecclesiastes, once called Solomon, was king of Jerusalem, and I applied my mind to request prudence from the Lord, on that very day when He appeared to me at Gihon, to test me and inquire what it was that I thought I should ask of Him. And I sought nothing else from Him than wisdom, so that I might apply judgment and knowledge to distinguish between the honorable and the base in all those things which are accustomed to occur under the sun, and I observed those wicked works of men, a certain evil given to men by God, that they might wear themselves out in it," etc. So reads the version of the Chaldean made by Peter Costus and the Complutensians, although in the Royal Bibles much of this, because it is fabulous, has been removed from the Chaldean: setting aside these trifles and fables.
First, the Rabbis and some Catholics, according to Hugh of St. Victor, homily 5, hold that these words are those of Solomon repenting of his fall: "For this reason, they say, he did not wish to say: I am king in Jerusalem, because, having laid aside the royal purple, he had already descended from his throne, and having despised the power he had badly held, in the garb of penitence he was lamenting his guilt, and therefore he says: I was king." Bede adds at the end of volume VII, in the chapter A Judgment on Solomon: "The books of the Hebrews say, he reports, that Solomon was dragged five times through the streets of Jerusalem as a penance. They also say that he came to the temple which he himself had built, with five rods, four of which he gave to the lawyers, that he might be beaten by them, but they by common counsel said that they would not lay a hand on the Lord's anointed; whence, frustrated by them, he deposed himself from the kingdom." But this narrative of the Hebrews seems to be a fable fabricated by them in their customary way, to establish Solomon's repentance and reputation. And it seems to contradict Sacred Scripture, which narrates that Solomon continued as king until his death, and that his son Rehoboam succeeded him. More probably, others hold that Solomon, while retaining the kingdom and scepter, repented, and as a penitent said these things. Hence Hugo weighs the word "was"; for this word seems entirely to express contempt for kingdom and world, as if what he previously valued so highly, he now counts as nothing, indeed testifies it is nothing: "I was, he says, now I am not, because even though I am the same, I now recognize that what I am is nothing."
Second, plainly and genuinely, these words are those of Solomon who in his kingdom and the riches of the kingdom experienced the vanity of the world; and therefore he says: "I was," to demonstrate that in the past years of his reign he had received full experience of this vanity. Therefore Solomon here descends from the thesis to the hypothesis, that is, from the general vanity of the world to particular vanities, and to confirm them, he asserts that he has experienced them all and has discovered vanity in all of them. So St. Jerome, St. Gregory Thaumaturgus, and others.
He says, therefore: I, Ecclesiastes, that is, the preacher, who preach here to Israel and the whole world about the vanity of the world, so as to lead all from love of it to the worship of God, have for many years been king of Israel, that is, king of the Jewish people, or of the twelve tribes, residing in their capital city, namely in Jerusalem: for there in the royal throne I sat after David my father; and therefore in all these years of my reign I saw many things, heard many things, and through the wisdom implanted in me by God I surveyed all things, examined all things, and in all things recognized sheer vanity. "I proposed in my mind to seek and investigate wisely concerning all things that are done under the sun."
First, some hold that Solomon here confesses his curiosity, by which he wished to scrutinize and understand all things, even the smallest, too curiously, and therefore adds: "This worst occupation (of curiosity) God has given to the sons of men, that they should be occupied in it." For the curious scrutinize useless and often harmful things, such as the magical arts, which some not improbably maintain Solomon learned when he worshipped idols, that is, demons; for, as St. Jerome teaches, in the Preface to the Epistle to the Ephesians: Curiosity in the magical arts is usually joined to idolatry, and is, as it were, its appendage. Hence of Manasseh, turning to idols, it is said in 4 Kings 21:6: "He built altars, etc., he practiced soothsaying, observed auguries, and made pythons, and multiplied soothsayers." So also Julian, having become an apostate and worshipping the gods of the Gentiles, consulted through magicians and demons about his affairs, and specifically about the outcome of the Persian War, in which he himself perished, as Baronius teaches from Procopius and others. Again, sorcery is usually joined to unchastity. Hence Quintilian, Declamation 4: "Sorcery, he says, is the entire life of a harlot;" and the Author of book IV to Herennius: "Our ancestors, he says, judged that a woman they had found unchaste was also condemned of sorcery." For, as Apuleius says in book IX: "These are the familiar arts of women;" and Solomon was supremely given to women and unchaste. So holds Pineda, book VII On the Affairs of Solomon, chapter 12.
Here belongs the exposition of St. Jerome, whom Albinus, Hugo the Cardinal, Dionysius, and Arboreus follow, namely that Solomon here accuses his curiosity in investigating, not so much natural things, as fortuitous things subject to God's providence: why, that is, this man is rich, honored, fortunate; that man poor, lowly, unfortunate; why this man is a prince, a prelate, a king; that man a private person, a citizen, a peasant; why the impious are exalted, while the pious are oppressed and afflicted. Hear St. Jerome: "Ecclesiastes gave his mind first of all to seeking wisdom, and extending himself beyond what is lawful, he wished to know the causes and reasons why little children were seized by the demon; why shipwrecks swallowed up the just and the impious alike; whether these and similar things happened by chance, or by the judgment of God? And if by chance, where is the providence of God? If by judgment, where is the justice of God? Desiring to know these things, he says, I understood that a superfluous care and solicitude, tormenting through various things, was given by God to men, that they might desire to know what it is not permitted to know."
Second, others better hold that verse 7 is being treated here. wisdom, and its lawful use, whether acquired through study by Solomon, as Lyranus and Cajetan hold; or rather infused by God at his request: for with this wisdom he wisely investigated all things, both natural and divine, which are done under the sun. So Olympiodorus. The Chaldean agrees, who translates: nor did I ask anything else from God than wisdom, that I might apply judgment and discernment between the honorable and the base in all those matters which customarily occur under the sun.
Thirdly, and most excellently and genuinely, you may understand these words of the wise consideration of the actions and occupations of men, by which various people variously occupy themselves under the sun in this life, as if to say: I Solomon, through the wisdom bestowed upon me, wisely scrutinized the individual occupations, businesses, cares, and pursuits of men under the sun, to see whether I could find in them anything solid, good, joyful, or felicitous; I found nothing of the sort, but rather in all things vanity and affliction of spirit. That this is the meaning is clear from what follows, in which he extensively enumerates in order the individual occupations, pleasures, and pursuits of men, and records that through experience in each one he found nothing but vanity and affliction.
He says: "Of all things which are done under the sun," to show that he surveyed all things, with absolutely nothing excepted. Again, to indicate that he perceived them exactly and clearly, as if in solar light, as if to say: Just as the sun clearly surveys and illuminates all things, so I too clearly perceived these same things by the sun's illumination; indeed, as if standing at the rising of the sun's orb, I looked upon and looked down upon all earthly things far below me, as if they were trifles. St. Chrysostom says splendidly, in Epistle 3 to Theodorus Lapsus: "All things, he says, are shadow, dreams, a race. Life is a racecourse. As if someone holding the peak of a lofty cliff should survey the entire sea, and see many sailors submerged by the frequent waves of the deep, others dashed against the rocks of a steep mountain, some hastening to reach other shores, some defended from death by the help of a single plank from the fragments of a discovered ship, sometimes using only their hands as rudder and oars, and should see others carried by turbulent waves bearing corpses in manifold and multiple fashion. So it is with one who serves God: when he has separated himself from the storms and whirlwinds of this life, he stands always in a lofty and safe place, secure. For what can be higher, what safer, than to bear only one concern — how we may please God? You have seen shipwrecks of this kind; avoid the sea and the waves, and seek that lofty navigator above such a sea, and occupy the high place, free from the danger of captivity."
God Gave This Worst Occupation to the Sons of Men, That They Might Be Occupied in It
The Septuagint renders: because God gave an evil distraction to the sons of men, that they might be distracted in it; the Syriac: the Lord gave an evil occupation to the sons of men, that they might be anxious in it; the Arabic: for God gave confusion to the sons of men, that they might be occupied in it; others: that they might be afflicted in it; others: that they might become gentle in it; others combining both: that they might respond to Him (God) with labor, solicitude, and gentleness, and give satisfaction. Hence R. Haccados translates: that they might humble themselves, namely before God their Creator. For the Hebrew word ענה signifies to be afflicted, prostrated, oppressed, humbled, to become gentle, to respond gently. Hence from ענה is derived ענין inian, that is, affliction, solicitude, care, humiliation. Our translator renders it occupatio pessima, that is, a most laborious and burdensome occupation, which continually afflicts, torments, and tortures a man as on a rack or in a treadmill. Others translate: wretched business. "The Septuagint, says St. Jerome, Aquila and Theodotion, translated it περισπασμόν, which the Latin translator expressed as distentio, because the mind of man, stretched in various anxieties, is torn apart." The translator of Nyssa renders it distraction, by which the mind is pulled apart and cut up into various parts, as it were: for περισπασμός is distraction, tearing apart, stretching, by which a person is pulled in many directions, is distracted, is busy. For this is what περισπᾶσθαι means. Furthermore, περισπασμός can be translated as circumflexion, to persist in the metaphor of the circulation and revolution of ages, times, men, and all things, as if to say: In this wheel of earthly occupation, labors, and sorrows, men are continually bent around, turned, and revolved, like Ixion, as I discussed at greater length in verse 9.
Again, the Septuagint, in chapter 5:2, translates the Hebrew inian as πειρασμός, that is, temptation. You will ask: what is this "worst occupation" given to man by God? First, St. Jerome, whom Albinus, Hugo Cardinal, Dionysius, and Arboreus follow, answers that it is the curiosity of knowing things of little use, or even forbidden things: "That they might desire to know, he says, what it is not lawful to know" — that is, that they might wish with excessive, difficult, prolonged, and proud curiosity to scrutinize all things equally, both bad and good, which are done under the sun, and stop there, without tending or rising to the knowledge of the Creator. And God gave this to men both positively, because He implanted in man a great zeal for knowledge, which nevertheless must be moderated by the reins of discreet reason, but man abuses it for excessive curiosity; and objectively, because He set before the eyes and mind of men all the things of the world, and, as it says in chapter 3:11: "He delivered the world to their disputation," as if proposing it as a riddle for men, who are curious by nature, to scrutinize.
Secondly, others better understand this occupation as study, or the speculation of things for knowing them and drawing out knowledge of them. For God implanted this desire for knowing in man, so that He might call him away from carnal things and lead him to the contemplation of sublime things, especially heavenly and divine ones. This same occupation is the worst and most burdensome because it is most laborious, and so often exhausts the spirit and strength, weakens the stomach and brain, and diminishes or takes away life. So Lyranus and St. Cyril, in Book VII Against Julian, and our Lorinus. They prove this because the preceding discourse was about wisdom and the wise investigation of things, as if to say: I Solomon gave myself to the wise speculation of things, because God implanted this occupation in man when He implanted in him a rational mind eager to scrutinize and know all things. Symmachus supports this, who translates it ἀσχολίαν, that is, literary leisure, so called because it is the highest business, as Seneca says in his book On the Shortness of Life, chapters 13 and 14, rejecting all other external affairs and needing relaxation as well; hence σχολή is school, about whose etymology Ausonius sings thus, in Idyll 32: And one may rest: by Greek name it is called 'school,' That just repose may be granted to the laborious Muses.
Hence again Hugh of St. Victor says this occupation is called distentio by the Septuagint, because the pursuit of knowledge stretches men so that they swell outwardly but become empty inwardly, so that they appear greater on the outside but lose solidity within, being unable to consider themselves. For "knowledge puffs up (as wind inflates a wineskin and bellows), charity builds up," 1 Corinthians 8:1. But it is somewhat unfitting that the wisdom of Solomon, infused in him by God and most excellent, by which he wisely, usefully, and pleasantly contemplated all things done under the sun, should be called the worst occupation.
That this is the meaning is clear from the Hebrew הוא hu, which is exegetical; for it explains "everything that is done under the sun" by men through "the worst occupation," making it an epexegesis or apposition. Hence from the Hebrew you would translate precisely with Vatablus: that I might investigate every deed done under the sun, which is a wretched occupation, which God gave to men that they might be occupied in it, as a kind of parenthesis. In Latin it could be rendered: for this is the wretched occupation with which God willed to occupy men. Or, as the Zurich version has it: which laborious occupation God enjoined on men, that He might thereby make them humble. Hence the Chaldean also translates: and I saw that all the works of the sons of men are the worst occupation, which God gave to the sons of sinful men, that they might be afflicted in it. St. Gregory Thaumaturgus says: "Indeed, by diligent investigation I observed the condition of things done on earth to be most varied, and I learned especially that man is born for labor and is occupied in vain with very many things." Then he connects and renders the following verse thus: "For all these lower things stretch the spirit with a heavy, bitter, and abominable feeling." Olympiodorus also says clearly: "God gave a laborious occupation to the sons of men for their great benefit; because in acquiring riches and in obtaining empty glory, and also in those things which gratify the belly and the palate, one must labor exceedingly. For if we undergo such great labors and distresses to possess what is vain, to what extent of wickedness would we progress if these things came to us of their own accord while we were idle? Therefore each person has been thrust into his own treadmill."
For this worst occupation is like a rack, on which they are stretched, as the Septuagint translates, and like a treadmill, in which mortals are forced to turn the millstone continually. Hence Thuanus translates thus in paraphrase: For this treadmill the ruler of Olympus Gave to mortals as punishment for all of life, To be turned without end, to be moved without end.
And St. Paulinus, Epistle 4 to Severus: "Consider, he says, the life of mortals of this kind, and the whole appearance of a beast at the mill will present itself to you: as the one has the eyes of the body covered with rags, so the other has the eyes of the mind sewn shut by the filth of his life through the errors of his senses, as if about to turn around the windings of millstones in a laborious and wretched station." In ancient times captives in war, that is, slaves, were customarily condemned (as Samson was condemned by the Philistines, Judges 16:21) to the treadmill to turn the millstone, and St. Augustine writes in Epistle 50 that this was practiced in his own time; and the Saracens still do the same to this day. Just such a treadmill is this miserable life, to which we are all condemned for sin, like Ixion. And yet there are some "who consider turning the millstone of business a pleasant delight," says Blessed Peter Damian, Opuscule 13, On the Perfection of Monks.
Following Solomon, Sirach graphically depicts this grievous occupation in chapter 40:1: "A great occupation, he says, has been created for all men; and a heavy yoke is upon the sons of Adam, from the day of their coming out of their mother's womb, to the day of burial in the mother of all." And then he enumerates the parts or species: "Tumult, agitation, anger, fury, jealousy, fear, strife, death, the sword, oppression, famine," etc.
The word occupatio signifies first, that it is not of one hour or one day, but continuous, constant, and perpetual throughout all of life; second, that it occupies and engages the whole man, so that he neither wishes nor is permitted to be free for other things; third, that man, occupied and as it were overwhelmed by so many labors and sorrows of this life, finds no consolation in it; and therefore must lift the eyes of his mind to God, and humbly implore His help and consolation. For it was sent upon him by God as punishment for sin, so that he might humble himself before God and suppliantly beg pardon and help. Olympiodorus suggests other causes and purposes for which God sent this upon man, namely that man, from this very occupation, so harsh and burdensome, might reason with himself thus: If wherever you turn, you must labor about both good and evil, one must choose labor and occupation about the good, which is followed by ineffable pleasure. For wise is the Sage's saying: "Do not labor without reward;" much more: "Do not make labor the reward of labor," as do those who labor in vice and crime: for by this they bring upon themselves nothing but labors and sorrows.
Again, of two evils the lesser is to be chosen; therefore choose the occupation and labor about virtue, because it is less than the labor spent on vice, both because of the honesty of virtue and because of the joy and reward that follows from virtue. Therefore let the Wise Man say to himself: All this life of mortals is heavy with sorrow and grief, it is a rack, it is a treadmill; why then should I occupy myself with it? The future life is rich with every joy and jubilation; why then should I not seek it? Why should I not devote all my effort to it? Whoever acknowledges yourself born for and destined for heaven, despise the earth, despise earthly things, live for God, live for heaven, live for eternity.
Do you wish to know what all the riches, pleasures, and honors of the world are? Hear the answer of St. Gregory Nazianzen in his Poem on the Journeys of Life, as he assigns these epithets to them: Down, a phantom, dew, a light shadow and vapor, A river's flow, a flow of the sea, Dreams, the tracks of a wave-tossed ship, wind, A swift flying feather, dust and a light breeze. A circle that turns all things with equal motion, Constant and revolving, fixed yet perishing. Hence he concludes: But Christ provided that nothing here be firm, So that love of firm things might touch your heart.
And St. Athanasius in the Synopsis of Sacred Scripture, on Ecclesiastes: "All is vanity, he says, and affliction of spirit, and nothing more than vanity of counsel and a vain effort of the will, signifies the eternity of future goods; therefore, transcending all things, he exhorts us to preserve the memory of eternal things."
Verse 14: I Saw All Things Which Are Done Under the Sun, and Behold All Is Vanity and Affliction of Spirit
These words depend on verse 12: "I Ecclesiastes," etc. For verse 13 was inserted as if by way of parenthesis, as I said there; others less fittingly refer and restrict those words to the following verse, as I shall explain there. The Arabic translates: And I knew all the arts which are done under the sun; behold, all are empty, and anguish of spirit. For vanitas Aquila translates ἀτμίς, that is, vapor. See what was said at the beginning of the chapter, verse 2.
For afflictio spiritus the Hebrew is רעות רוח reut ruach, where reut is explained differently by different interpreters according to different roots. First, if you derive reut from רוע roa, meaning to be evil, to be crushed, to be afflicted, it will be the same as malice (that is, misery), crushing, affliction, as our translator renders it. Hence the Syriac translates: solicitude of spirit; the Arabic: anguish of spirit; the Chaldean: crushing of spirit; or, as Costus translates: vexation of the soul; others: irritation of spirit; others: weariness of spirit; Vatablus: breaking of spirit, as if to say: I Solomon, contemplating all the pursuits, all the occupations and labors of men, find all things to be not only vain, that is, undertaken with futile effort, wasted labor, and empty or no result; but also to afflict, torment, and crush the spirit, that is, the mind of man: for each thing brings so many cares, anxieties, miseries, troubles, and labors to man that they seem born to afflict his soul. So St. Jerome: "I found nothing else, he says, than vanity and malice, that is, miseries of spirit, by which the soul is afflicted with diverse thoughts."
Again, others explain malice of spirit thus, as if to say: All things that are in the world are full of a maleficent and, as it were, poisonous spirit, because they afflict, torment, and kill man. Hence Thaumaturgus translates, as Brigitanus renders it: all these lower things stretch the spirit with a heavy, bitter, and abominated feeling — stretch apart. But others translate: all these lower things are full of a prodigious and accursed spirit, to such a degree that no one can comprehend, nor even conceive, how great an absurdity has invaded human affairs, as if to say: The evil spirit, namely the devil, who after sin rules over man and this air, mingles himself with all the enticements of the world and makes them appear far more beautiful and delightful than they truly are, and thus lures men to fill themselves with them and sin, and then instills his venom through them both into the body and into the soul of man, so as to afflict and torment the body with diseases and the soul with grief and remorse, and with the other punishments of sins.
Hence also St. Jerome on the following verse: "All things, he says, which have been done under the sun have been overturned by the will of the devil and the spirit of malice; since at his instigation sins are heaped upon sins."
Secondly, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, deriving reut from רעה raa, meaning to feed, translate it νομή, or βόσκησις, that is, feeding or pasture of the spirit, that is, of wind. Now feeding can be understood in three ways: first, objectively, as if to say: All the honors and enticements of the world are nothing but blowing winds, which distend the soul but cannot feed and satisfy it, according to Jeremiah 14:6: "The wild donkeys stood on the rocks (where winds blow more strongly), they drew in the wind like serpents;" therefore such people are like the chameleon, which, as Pliny says in Book 8, chapter 33, "always with gaping mouth, alone among animals is nourished neither by food nor drink, but by nothing other than the nourishment of air." Secondly, actively, as if to say: He who pursues the vain riches and honors of the world is like a shepherd who pastures not sheep but winds, that is, like one who attempts a useless and impossible thing. For who can feed and govern the winds? — according to Proverbs 21:4: "He who relies on lies feeds the winds; and the same one pursues flying birds." Thirdly, feeding can be taken as devouring, as if to say: All the things of the world are nothing other than the devouring, destruction, ruin, and consumption of the spirit. For just as an ox devours grass, so these things devour and consume all the powers of the soul, all spirits, all joy.
Thirdly, רעה raa in Syriac-Chaldean means to think: hence רעות reut is translated by Pagninus as cogitation, by the Septuagint as προαίρεσις, that is, free choice and will. There is an allusion to the Hebrew רעה raa, meaning to feed, because thought is the nourishment of the mind, or because the mind feeds and governs its thoughts, as a shepherd does his sheep; the meaning therefore is, as if to say: All the enticements of the world, which seem excellent to the covetous, are nothing but their own thought and imagination, which desire produces; for from that desire they imagine that there are in these things immense joys, satisfaction, and happiness, which in reality are not there: therefore those enticements feed nothing but their imagination; indeed, in reality they are nothing other than imaginings, imaginary joys, and dreams. For just as a dreamer seems to himself to feast, to drink, to dance, but in reality he does not feast, does not drink, does not dance — whence when he wakes, he finds himself more hungry, thirsty, and troubled than before — so likewise the delights of the world seem to cheer and satisfy the mind, but in reality they do not cheer and satisfy, nor do they give the mind solid joys. Hence Plato: "The hopes of mortals, he says, are the dreams of the waking." And following Plato as usual, Philo, in his book On Joseph: "The imaginations of the waking, he says, are most similar to dreams; they come, they go, they approach, they flee, and before they can be grasped they fly away." Again, προαίρεσις is free will, choice, purpose, selection, opinion of the mind, school of thought. It therefore means, says St. Jerome, "that each person does what he wishes, and it seems right to him, and men are carried in different directions by free will: and all things under the sun are vain, since we mutually displease one another in our understanding of good and evil." Therefore each person in the world acts as he pleases and follows the lead of his most corrupt will: from which it happens that this world is like a certain prison of madmen, each one raving with his own particular errors and false opinions. And what is remarkable, while all are insane, each one thinks that he alone is wise and the rest are insane; as is written in Proverbs 18:2: "The fool does not receive the words of prudence, unless you say those things which are in his heart." So Pineda.
Olympiodorus agrees, who places the supreme vanity in this: that pleasure-seekers embrace unlawful pleasures not out of necessity, but by free choice, by which they bring upon themselves the eternal torments of hell. Furthermore, προαίρεσις can be translated as presumption of spirit, that is, the audacity and pride by which the elated dare and presume many great things, even forbidden things and things beyond their strength. So St. Augustine, Homily 1 on the Sermon on the Mount: "Commonly, he says, the proud are said to have great spirits, and rightly, since indeed spirit is called wind." And Nazianzen, Oration 10: "Presumption, he says, of spirit is a certain rash impulse of the soul, and a drawing of man perhaps punished for his ancient fall." Where Elias of Crete explains Nazianzen as speaking "of the soul rashly and thoughtlessly impelled toward the vanity of the world, and condemned to the labor and miseries of this life for violating God's commandment."
Fourthly, others in Pagninus's Lexicon translate reut as companionship or friendship: for רע rea means companion or friend, as if to say: When you seek the friendship of men or the fellowship of creatures, you seek nothing other than friendship and fellowship with spirit, that is, with wind, which you cannot see or hold so as to enjoy it, since it blows away faster than a word, and dissipates and passes. From this vanity and affliction of things, St. Cyprian, Book 3 of Testimonies to Quirinus, chapter 11, concludes that the faithful ought to think only of heavenly and spiritual things, and not attend to the world: inasmuch as he has already renounced it in Baptism — and confirms this with many testimonies of Scripture.
Truly St. Chrysostom says, Epistle 3 to Theodorus Lapsus: "Just as a child in the womb, so we live in the world enclosed in many straits, unable to behold either the splendor or the brightness of the age to come." And indeed Pindar, Pythian Ode 8: "Briefly, he says, does the delight of mortals grow; and likewise it falls to the ground, shaken by unhappy counsel; men are creatures of a day. What is someone? What indeed is no one? Men are a dream of a shadow. But when a light given by Jove has come, bright is the light of men and sweet is life."
Verse 15: The Perverse Are Corrected with Difficulty, and the Number of Fools Is Infinite
The Hebrew literally has: what is depraved or perverted, no one can set right; and what is diminished or deficient cannot be numbered. So Vatablus. Others: crookedness cannot be straightened, and deficiency cannot be numbered; others: what is crooked cannot be rectified, and what has a defect cannot be numbered or come into reckoning; the Septuagint: what is perverse cannot be adorned, and what is diminished cannot be numbered; others: what is perverse cannot be composed, restored, fitted, prepared, amended, suitably arranged, or equalized. For all these things are signified by the Hebrew תקן takan, namely to correct, raise up and fit, compose what is distorted, bent, crooked, or depraved, to reduce inequality to equality, crookedness to straightness, deformity to conformity and agreement, so that the parts may be congruent and consistent with each other. Hence the Hebrew is translated: to regulate, or to rectify; the Arabic: what is perverse cannot be straightened, nor can what is diminished be gathered together. Our translator skillfully and clearly translates the neuter into the masculine, that is, perversum [what is perverse] into perversos [the perverse], and takes diminution or defect to mean deficiency of wisdom, namely the foolishness that is in fools. Hence he translates stultorum [of fools]. For these are diminished not in head but in brain, that is, in sense and wisdom. Hence the Syriac also translates: the disturbed cannot be made firm; and the foolish cannot be numbered. The Chaldean agrees, whose version I shall cite below. For stultus [fool] the Hebrew is חסרון chesron, that is, defective, deficient, wanting; also defect, penury, poverty. It is a metonymy frequent among the Hebrews, by which the abstract is put for the concrete, namely defect for those deficient in sense. Again it is an auxesis: for the fool lacks wisdom and consequently all good things, to such a degree that he himself can be called chesron, that is, poverty itself; just as the heresiarch Ebion was so called, as if from אביון ebion, that is, poor, from the extreme poverty which he himself bore as if zealous for perfection, or rather because he thought most poorly about Christ, denying His divinity, as St. Ignatius says, Epistle to the Philadelphians: "If anyone, he says, confesses that Jesus Christ is merely a man, etc., he is destitute of sense, surnamed Ebion."
For chesron the Septuagint translates ὑστέρημα, that is, deficiency. So also Symmachus: "The deficiency, he says, cannot fill up the number." Therefore the Complutensian and Royal editions less correctly translate ὑστέρημα as posterity: Posterity, they say, cannot be numbered; for the Hebrew chesron and the Greek ὑστέρημα signify defect, want, penury, and the hinder parts of one who fails and is defeated, not progeny or posterity.
Now if you read the neuter with the Hebrew and others — what is perverse cannot be set right, nor can deficiency be numbered — first, some judge this to be said against those who thought the world was made by chance and therefore was imperfect; and that the sentence must then be read with an interrogation, thus: What is found in this world that is imperfect and perverse, or such that it needs to be amended? What indeed is lacking in the whole world that needs to be added and counted? St. Jerome uses this passage to refute those heretics who introduced certain natures that could not receive healing: For straight things, he says, receive ornament, and crooked things correction, nor is anyone called perverse unless he has been depraved from what is right.
Secondly, others on the contrary judge these words to pertain to the vanity of sublunary things, about which the preceding verse spoke, and to explain and confirm it from the fact that all these things, especially after Adam's sin, have been depraved and imperfect in punishment of his sin, diminished, deficient, evanescent — things which no one can restore so that they would be complete and perfect in all their parts and numbers; no one can perfect or attain them so as to enjoy them happily: because what is depraved in them cannot be corrected; what is lacking in them (and very much is lacking) does not come into reckoning: for what does not exist but is lacking cannot be estimated and counted. St. Gregory Nazianzen says splendidly in his Oration on the Care of the Poor: "Nothing in human affairs is stable by nature, nothing equitable, nothing sufficient, nothing remaining in the same state; but all things revolve as on a certain wheel, bringing different changes often on each day and even each hour, so that more trust should be placed in unstable winds, in the wake of a ship cutting the sea, in the deceptive dreams of the night whose charm is brief, and in what children fashion in play on the sand, than in the present prosperity of men. Therefore those act prudently who, because they do not trust present things, consult their interests for the future; and because of the unstable condition of human happiness, embrace benevolence and mercy, which never fails."
Hence again the defects of sublunary things cannot not be numbered, because they are very many and innumerable, and yet though they teem with so many defects and destitutions, they display and promise an abundance and plenty of things that might satisfy and fill man's desire, just as in Proverbs 9:13, that harlot "foolish and loud and full of enticements, and knowing nothing at all;" or, as the Septuagint reads, a woman unwise and bold, and in need of a morsel, yet ambitiously and deceitfully invites to sweet bread. No differently does the world, in need of bread, killed by hunger, consumed by thirst, falsely advertise a splendid and sumptuous banquet, rich and overflowing with every delight. This therefore is their vanity. So Pineda.
To these are added those who refer the first part of the verse to the untamable stubbornness of the perversity and malignity of things, and the latter part to the multitude of fools who obstinately gape after them, as if to say: All things in the world are vain, that is, troublesome, absurd, perverse; to which is added the vanity and foolishness of men who foolishly gape after them, and thereby deprave both themselves and the things even more. Hence Thaumaturgus translates: "And indeed such a great disorder of things has been reached that the world cannot be restored to a complete state of goodness, nor can it be conceived how many absurdities human affairs are entangled in." And St. Jerome, who here gathers together various meanings: "So great is the malice, he says, that exists in the extent of this world, that the world can scarcely return to the complete state of goodness; nor can it easily recover the order and perfection in which it was first created. Otherwise: When all have been restored to wholeness through penance, the devil alone will remain in his error. For all things that have been done under the sun have been overturned by his will and the spirit of malice, since at his instigation sins are heaped upon sins. Finally, the number of those who have been seduced, and of those who have been snatched from the Lord's flock by him, is so great that it cannot be comprehended by calculation."
Moreover, all things have been depraved through sin: partly by God, so as to be a punishment and scourge for man, as is clear from Genesis 3:18; partly by the devil, because he displays their appearance as more enticing than it really is, to lure man to sin, as I said on the preceding verse; partly by man's concupiscence, which abuses them and depraves and corrupts them, so as to take more pleasure and satisfaction from them. For gluttony invents new enticements of dishes, new mixtures, new seasonings and innumerable ones, by which the simple nature of food is corrupted and perverted. Lust invents new and monstrous forms of debauchery. Pride invents new titles, new pomp, new displays of arrogance. Curiosity invents new fashions of clothing, new outfitting of horses and carriages, and in short novelty in all things. Hence
Thirdly, some refer this maxim to the depravation of human nature through sin, as if to say: God created man, namely Adam, upright and whole, both in nature and in holiness and grace. For original justice not only sanctified Adam, but also healed, corrected, and perfected human nature in him, which is in itself imperfect and, so to speak, maimed, inasmuch as in it the sensitive appetite often opposes reason and mind, because the soul of man is partly animal, having the same carnal appetites as animals, and partly rational and spiritual, having the same spiritual appetites as angels; this conflicting and, as it were, maimed nature of man, fighting and warring within itself, original justice healed, corrected, and perfected, subjecting all appetites to reason and mind. But when this justice was removed through sin, man relapsed into the natural imperfection of his nature, so that the senses rebel against reason, concupiscence against the will, appetite against the law. Therefore Solomon says that this depravation of nature is so great that it cannot be corrected and restored by any man or angel, and that its defects, propensities to all vices, miseries, and afflictions are so many and so great that they cannot be enumerated by anyone; therefore the grace of Christ is needed to restore all these things: for His grace heals all these things in an incipient way in this life, and will perfectly heal them in future glory. Philosophers saw this depravation of nature, but they were ignorant of its cause, namely original sin. Hence some impiously accused God for having created man so wretched; others accused nature, as if she were a stepmother rather than a mother of men, as Cicero says in Book 3 of the Republic, which St. Augustine cites in Book 4 Against Julian, chapter 12.
Hence Nyssa explains thus, as if to say: The vanity just described occurred not from nature, not from God, but from man's choice, as the Septuagint translates. Because our spirit, freely departing from its ornament and integrity, became perverse, deficient, distorted; and "what is perverse cannot be adorned," that is, this corruption and depravation of man through sin is not fitting, nor does it accord with the nature originally established by God and adorned with original justice, and directed, as it were, precisely by the rule of reason and the law of God.
Fourthly, the Donatists wrongly argue from this passage that baptism conferred on one who believes wrongly, or administered by one who believes wrongly, namely by a heretic, is perverse, and therefore cannot be restored but must be repeated and conferred anew. Hear Parmenian objecting to St. Augustine, Book 2 Against Parmenian, chapter 16: "He who believed wrongly cannot obtain the sacrament of baptism; because it is written: You cannot adorn what is perverse." To which St. Augustine responds: "You cannot adorn what is perverse; because the Sacrament which he had received would not avail him as an ornament if he persisted in perverse faith, but rather for punishment: yet the sacrament itself per se remained whole even in the perverse person, whom it did not adorn but judged, and therefore in no way should the holiness of that sacrament be violated, even when the perversity of that man needed to be corrected." Therefore the baptism of heretics and impious persons is perverse, not in substance, because if they preserve the due matter and form, it is a true and valid sacrament, and therefore cannot be repeated without sacrilege so that someone be rebaptized; but in use, because both the one who confers it impiously and the one who receives it impiously sins gravely: therefore it does not confer grace, but imprints a character, through which it will also confer grace when the obstacle of sin has been removed through penance.
Fifthly, Pagninus in his Lexicon translates and explains it in the formal sense: perversity can never be rectitude, that is, vice can never be virtue; or, as the Greeks in the Catena say: "One who is perverse and has fallen into malice, while he is in malice, cannot receive virtue" — namely in the composite sense, as long as he persists in malice. Cajetan, however, renders: what is twisted cannot be fitted; which he understands not only of morals but also of physical things, e.g. "that a lamb is seized by a wolf, that crops are destroyed by rains or by heat;" for no one can restore a lamb torn by a wolf, or repair crops scattered by rain or burned by heat. But this meaning is foreign, futile, and irrelevant. Therefore the meaning listed in the second place is above all the genuine one, and then the third.
But according to the Vulgate, which has: the perverse are corrected with difficulty, and the number of fools is infinite. Various connections and meanings of this sentence present themselves. First, some judge it to be a response by which Solomon addresses a tacit objection. For someone will say: If all things in the world are vain and afflict the man who indulges himself, then why do rational men, seeing and hearing this vanity, nevertheless obstinately gape after them? He answers that the cause is the perversity and foolishness of men who have been ensnared and maddened by the enticements of the world, by which, like unbridled and raging horses, they rush into their own ruin and destruction; for they themselves, being blind with desire, do not see these things; occupied by their concupiscence, they do not sense them beforehand, but afterwards they feel the punishment and repent too late. Here Solomon concludes: Therefore do not believe them, as they are foolish, but rather me, a wise man, who with calm and right judgment examined all things and judged all things to be vain.
Secondly, both Hugh Cardinal and Hugh of St. Victor along with Lyranus judge this maxim to be connected to the preceding one: for it completes it, as if the vanity of which the preceding verse spoke is here understood only as that which wise men, especially rulers and kings, such as Solomon was, experience in governing — namely the difficulties of correcting the desires and vices of subjects, because the perverse are corrected with difficulty. But this meaning restricts the preceding maxim about the vanity of things too much, since it is in itself indefinite, broad, and general. Others agree who connect this maxim to verse 13, and there understand the worst occupation as the pursuit of knowledge and speculation of the mind, as if to say: Not only does knowledge and speculation have its own vanity and affliction of spirit, but also practice: for the wise man would try in vain to correct the morals of perverse men and is therefore afflicted.
Thirdly, others judge that the vanity of things is here proven from the vanity and perversity of men, who, depraved by their foolish desires, decline from their end and happiness, and cast themselves into eternal torments. For what is more vain than to wander from one's end? What more foolish, what more wretched, than to bring upon oneself perpetual fires? Others on the contrary judge that the cause of the vanity of things is here attributed not to God the Creator, but to the choice, as the Septuagint has, and perversity of men, who by their misuse twist good things created by God into evil and deprave them, and thus "vitiate the harmonious concert of the world and make it discordant," say the Fathers in the Greek Catena.
Fourthly, the Chaldean refers these words to those dying in sin; for after death they cannot repent and be corrected: "A man, he says, whose ways are perverse in this age, and who dies in them and turns to penance, does not have the power to correct himself. And a man who is deficient in the law and precepts during his life, after his death does not have the power to dwell with the just in the paradise of pleasure." But this meaning is mystical rather than literal. To this is added that exposition of St. Jerome, among others, reviewed a little before, namely about the wicked, whose leader and author is the devil, who, being incapable of penance, remains in his error. And that of the Greek Catena: "One who is perverse and has fallen into malice, while he is in malice, cannot receive virtue; and one who is destitute of the grace of God can by no means be numbered among the pious worshippers of God."
Fifthly, and genuinely, Ecclesiastes here assigns, by way of example, one outstanding vanity and affliction of spirit among others, which wonderfully afflicts and torments the Preacher, that is, a wise man and preacher, especially a ruler and king, upon whom lies the care of the republic and the salvation of subjects — namely that out of both duty and zeal he supremely desires to reform the republic, and to lead his subjects from the perverse love of vanity and vain things to the chaste love of the true good, namely God, virtue, and happiness, yet he cannot achieve this by all his labor and effort except in a few cases, because very many are perverse and allow themselves to be corrected only with difficulty, and the number of fools serving vain and foolish desires is infinite, according to Jeremiah 13:23: "If the Ethiopian can change his skin, or the leopard his spots, then you also will be able to do good, when you have learned evil."
For those are perverse who have put on the habit of malice by sinning and have grown hardened in it. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: I Ecclesiastes, king of Israel, considered all things that are done under the sun, all the morals of men, all their pursuits, and I saw that in all of them there is vanity and affliction of spirit; and among others I saw one outstanding one, which most greatly afflicts and stings me and kings and rulers like me — namely that by all my preaching, every law and command, all my labor and effort, I make little progress and with few people; because the far greater part of men, ensnared by the painted and deceitful appearance of vanity and of vain riches, pleasures, and honors, perversely and obstinately gapes after them, and therefore refuses to be corrected; therefore the number of fools who devote themselves to the vain and foolish enticements of the world, and intoxicate and madden themselves with them, is innumerable.
He calls fools not in the physical but in the ethical sense: those who err and rave not in speculative but in practical truth, namely the impious who are enslaved to their desires, who judge wrongly about things to be done, preferring vain goods to true ones, brief ones to eternal, earthly to heavenly; for this is an enormous foolishness. Again he calls fools those who in action are rash, reckless, audacious, furious — such as the powerful and wealthy often are, who sit on and abound in the vain riches of the world. Eugubinus, Book 7 of On Perennial Philosophy, chapter 9, attempts to refute Cotta's argument in Cicero against providence, which argues that, since the number of fools is so great, the world does not seem to have been made by God for their sake, and therefore came into existence by chance, not from Him. For he strives to show that there was a great multitude of the upright in every age, that the greatest multitude of sinners repent, that few are prodigiously wicked, and that very few are those who, even if they live most depravedly, do not at some time acknowledge and confess God. More successfully, another way of answering Eugubinus presents itself: granting that the wicked are more numerous, but that one upright person counts for more with God than a thousand wicked ones. So Lorinus. Finally, God made the world primarily for Himself, to display in it His power, wisdom, and goodness; secondarily for angels and men, especially the upright, but also for the wicked, so that by recognizing from the world the goodness of the Creator toward them they might love Him in return, and thus attain His grace and glory: but if they refuse, they may experience His justice and vengeance, in which, just as in the mercy shown to the upright, God is glorified.
Moreover, how small the number of the wise, that is, the upright and those to be saved, and how great the number of fools, that is, the impious and the reprobate, is clear from the words of Christ: "Many are called, but few are chosen," Matthew 20:16; and from: "Enter through the narrow gate, for wide is the gate and spacious the way that leads to destruction, and many there are who enter through it. How narrow the gate and strait the way that leads to life, and few there are who find it!" Matthew 7:13.
Hence St. Chrysostom, Homily 40 to the People: "How many, he says, do you think in our city (Antioch, in which there were more than a hundred thousand people) will be saved? What I am about to say is distressing; but I shall say it nonetheless. Among so many thousands, not a hundred can be found who will be saved, and indeed I doubt even about these." He adds the reason: "For how great, I ask, is the malice in the young? How great the torpor in the old? No one cares for children, no one has zeal," etc. See what was said on James, chapter 2, 13. What Prelate, perceiving this, would not mourn and afflict himself? How greatly the foolish blindness of the Jews resisting the Gospel and their own salvation afflicted Paul! Hear him pouring out his grief pathetically, Romans 9:1: "I speak the truth in Christ, I do not lie, my conscience bearing witness to me in the Holy Spirit, that my sorrow is great and the pain in my heart is unceasing. For I myself wished to be anathema from Christ for my brethren, who are my kinsmen according to the flesh, who are Israelites," etc.
Anagogically, the sons of Israel, that is, the faithful and holy, are numbered by God alone and inscribed in the book of life: but the sons of Esau, that is, the unfaithful and wicked, are not counted, nor do they come into God's number, but will be written in the book of death and the devil. Hear the Fathers in the Greek Catena: "The number by which God counts the saints signifies a certain spiritual and definite ordering: For, He says, He numbers the multitude of the stars. With this same number the Lord also commands Moses to number the sons of Israel. But what does David say about men? There are reptiles without number. And Solomon in Proverbs: For he has struck down many wounded, and innumerable are those he has killed. What then is now called ὑστέρημα, that is, deficiency? And those who are killed and those who are called reptiles are of the same condition, namely that which by no means accords with the spiritual number."
St. Jerome says similar things, when he says that males, that is, the strong and noble, are numbered by God; but females, that is, the soft and effeminate, do not come into the number.
Morally, learn here how great is the force of habit, whether for good or for evil: for just as those accustomed to doing good are with difficulty perverted, so the perverse who are accustomed to doing evil are even more difficult to convert. "For a long time, says Seneca, Epistle 59, we have lain in vices; it is difficult to be washed clean. For we are not merely stained but dyed through — lest we pass from one image to another — so tenaciously does folly hold us." And St. Jerome, or rather Rabanus (for he is the author of the Commentary), explaining Jeremiah 13:23: "If the Ethiopian can change his skin," etc., says forcefully: "For whatever is learned is not of nature but of effort and one's own will, which by excessive habit and love of sinning is in a certain way converted into nature." And St. Chrysostom, on 2 Corinthians 4: "Great is the tyranny of habit, and so great that it compels just as nature does."
For habit binds a man and, as if with chains, constrains him to repeat and pursue that to which he has become accustomed, and so seems to be converted into nature. Hence Isaiah 5:18: "Woe, he says, to you who draw iniquity with cords of vanity, and sin as with the rope of a cart." And St. Augustine, having experienced this himself, Book 8 of the Confessions, chapter 5: "I was bound, he says, not with another's iron but with my own iron will. The enemy held my willing, and from it had made a chain for me and bound me: for from perverse will lust was born; and while lust was served, habit was born; and while habit was not resisted, necessity was born." See St. Bernard, Sermon on the Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit.
The same St. Augustine in the Enchiridion, chapter 80: "Sins, he says, however great and horrible, when they have become habitual, are believed to be either small or nothing, to such an extent that they seem not only not to be hidden, but even to be proclaimed and spread abroad."
And St. Gregory, Book 4 of the Morals, chapter 18: "By as many repetitions of wicked practice as a man is bound, by so many chains, as it were, is he tied to his mind."
AND THE NUMBER OF FOOLS IS INFINITE. — The word et among the Hebrews is often causal, and has the same force as nam [for] or quia [because]. Therefore it gives the reason why the perverse are corrected with difficulty: namely because they are fools. And this, first, because they sin; for sin is the supreme folly, because it prefers sense to reason, desire to virtue, creature to Creator — that is, a penny to a million, a grain to a field of crops, a drop to the sea, a little ball of earth to the whole heaven. What could be more foolish? Secondly, because by repeating their sins they bring upon themselves the habit and, as it were, necessity of them. Thirdly, because they persevere obstinately in them, and gradually praise them, and do not regard them as sins but as virtues. Fourthly, because they do not allow themselves to be corrected, but scorn and ridicule those who teach and admonish rightly. Hence by Solomon this moral folly is called "poverty of the heart," and fools are called "those lacking heart," that is, deprived of mind, that is, of the right use of reason and mind, namely destitute of true prudence and sound judgment of the mind, as is clear from Proverbs 10:13 and 21. Thus Rehoboam is called by Sirach 47:28 "the foolishness of the nation, and diminished in prudence."
Differently, R. Haccados as cited by Galatinus, who translating from the Hebrew — the poverty of men cannot be numbered — explains thus: Most men are poor, who have not experienced the vanity of riches and pleasures; hence they think these are a great good and consider themselves happy if they can obtain them; but they err, because they judge perversely about things unknown to them, of which they have no experience, just as the blind judge about colors. Therefore one should not trust them, but me, Solomon, who am the richest and had all abundance of human things, and having experienced and scrutinized all things, found in them no happiness but mere vanity. But this meaning is feeble and cold.
Morally, learn here, first, that prudence and virtue make a man wise, but imprudence and desire make him foolish and stupid, as Solomon everywhere here and in Proverbs calls both and distinguishes by these names: I reviewed the causes there. Philosophers saw the same through a shadow, indeed they learned it from Solomon, as is clear from Socrates and Plato everywhere in the Dialogues and from Aristotle, Book 3 and 9 of the Ethics. Truly Dionysius, Oration 20, thus defines: "A fool is one who is not master of his own mind; for he is spun around and easily drawn by any trivial occasion and conversation." And Seneca, Epistle 9, teaches: "The wise man, content with himself, needs nothing, and yet many things are useful to him; on the contrary, the fool needs nothing: for he knows how to use nothing, yet he lacks everything." The same, Epistle 15: "What life, he says, do you think is called foolish? Ours: whom blind desire casts headlong into what will harm us, certainly what will never satisfy us; for whom, if anything could have been enough, it would have been; who do not consider how pleasant it is to demand nothing, how magnificent to be full and not depend on fortune. The life of a fool is ungrateful, trembling, entirely carried toward the future."
Secondly, learn from this that concupiscence is a pure and great folly; for it makes its adherents in vices into fools. This is evident in anger, which deprives a man of reason and makes him rage like a madman; in lust, which drives the wise mad, as it maddened Solomon, Samson, and David: for love is blind and insane, and therefore makes lovers insane, as we see prostitutes and girls captivated by love of some young man lose their reason and judgment, and become, as it were, powerless in mind and insane with love; in pride, which inflates the proud so that they think themselves wiser, richer, more powerful than everyone, even though they are most foolish, most poor, and most base. Is not that saying of the king of Babylon foolish, like a new Lucifer: "I will ascend into heaven, I will exalt my throne above the stars of God, I will sit on the mountain of the covenant, on the sides of the north, I will ascend above the heights of the clouds, I will be like the Most High"? Isaiah 14:13. And that of Pharaoh: "The river is mine (the Nile that fertilizes Egypt), and I made myself," Ezekiel 29. So in avarice, sloth, gluttony, envy, and the other vices, and in the avaricious, gluttons, slothful, envious, etc., themselves, you will find many judgments and works equally foolish and stupid, so that if you judge honestly, you must say they appear to be out of their minds, foolish, delirious.
Thirdly, conclude from this that the multitude is not to be followed, for it belongs to fools; but rather the minority, for it belongs to the wise: "The number of fools, he says, is infinite" — infinite, that is, very great and practically innumerable, as the Hebrew has. Again "infinite" syncategorematically, because continually every year, indeed every day, new fools arise and succeed, and such will always succeed, as long as this human life in the world endures.
This is what is said in the old adage: "One should speak as the many, but think as the few." For the common people often judge wrongly about things, especially about things to be done; they have erroneous judgments, minds cast down and immersed in earthly things; they abound in vices and scandals and are devoid of wisdom and true virtue, as I showed with many maxims and examples of the Fathers on Numbers 11:4 and 20:3. For this reason wise men, such as the Essenes, Ascetics, and Anchorites of old, fled crowds and cities, and conversed in solitude with a few saints, indeed with God and the angels. Hence St. Anthony used to say that "water is nourishment for fish, and solitude brings adornment to monks; and fish that linger on dry land die, and monks who linger outside the cell grow slack."
Verse 16: I Spoke in My Heart: Behold I Have Become Great, and I Have Surpassed in Wisdom All Who Were Before Me in Jerusalem
The Hebrew has: and my heart saw much wisdom and knowledge. So also the Septuagint, the Chaldean, the Syriac, the Arabic, and the rest. The Zurich version: and I drew up such an account in my mind: Behold, I have accomplished great things and increased wisdom above all, etc.
Up to this point Ecclesiastes has proved his theme, namely that all things of the world are vanities, through generic and universal arguments; now he proves the same through specific and particular arguments: therefore from the whole genus of things he descends to the individual species of things, and demonstrates the vanity in each. This is therefore an induction, by which he proves the vanity of individual things, and from this induces and concludes that all things under the sun are vain, and that nothing from them can satisfy and make happy the mind of man. He begins with wisdom, both because it excels all other things in dignity and seems to have more truth and less vanity; and because philosophers placed all their study and all their glory in wisdom. Hence Seneca, On the Shortness of Life: "Without the pursuit of wisdom, he says, there can be no true and solid happiness of the mind;" and finally and above all, because Solomon was most zealous for wisdom, and asked for and obtained it from God above all other things, and through it studiously contemplated the occupations, pursuits, and cares of all men,as he himself says in verse 13, and in this contemplation he nourished and delighted his mind: therefore in it he seemed to himself to be a great wise man and a happy one. But reflecting here upon wisdom itself and his own consideration, he found that in it too there was vanity and great affliction of spirit. Therefore he says:
I SPOKE IN MY HEART. — First, the meaning is, as if to say: Avoiding the crowd of the perverse and foolish, about which the preceding verse spoke, I withdrew into the secret chamber of my heart, and there conversing with wisdom itself, through it I wisely surveyed, considered, and weighed all things. "A person is said to speak in his heart, says Olympiodorus, when he applies his mind to thinking, and disputes and reasons with himself." Secondly, to speak in the heart denotes great attention of the heart, that is, of the mind, to what a man says and thinks to himself, the kind that deep thinkers, the sad, and the melancholy have. Thirdly, it denotes emotion and pathos, namely either immense joy and applause, or sadness and vexation. Both are noted here in Solomon, as if to say: I spoke in my heart, secretly rejoicing and applauding myself for the great wisdom infused in me from heaven; but while through it I surveyed the vain and vexatious pursuits of men, I inflicted upon myself vexation and affliction of mind, as I shall shortly show more fully. Thus Hannah, bitter in heart and weeping profusely, and praying attentively, spoke in her heart: "For out of the abundance of my sorrow and grief I have spoken," as she herself said to Eli, 1 Samuel 1:13 and 16.
BEHOLD I HAVE BECOME GREAT. — Great in wealth, great in power, great in spirit, great in empire, great in works and the building of the temple, great in wisdom, great in banquets and courses, great in retinue and pomp of horses, chariots, servants and soldiers, great in fame and glory: for Solomon was the wisest, wealthiest, most powerful, most pleasure-loving, most magnificent, most famous, most glorious of all kings, as is clear from 1 Kings 10 and 11. Hence he was called "the great king and king of kings," according to Eusebius, Book 9 of the Preparation, last chapter. Both Hugh Cardinal and Hugh of St. Victor think these words are said by Solomon in boasting and vain self-complacency. Others better judge these words to be said by him out of sincerity of soul and gratitude toward God. Hence he does not say: I made myself great, but "I have been made great," namely by God. The translator reads with the Septuagint הוגדלתי hogdalti in the hophal passive, that is, I have been magnified: but now they read הגדלתי higdalti in the hiphil active, that is, I have magnified;namely myself, or rather my wisdom, as follows. Hence the Chaldean translates: I increased and added wisdom above all the wise who were before me (others: who presided) in Jerusalem; others: I magnified and increased wisdom, etc.; others: I advanced and excelled all the wise; Vatablus: I accomplished great things.
AND I SURPASSED IN WISDOM ALL WHO WERE BEFORE ME IN JERUSALEM. — In Hebrew: above Jerusalem, that is, those who presided over Jerusalem and Judea either as kings, like David and Saul; or as judges and princes, like Othniel, Gideon, Samson, Jephthah, Eli, etc.; or as teachers and lawyers, or as priests and high priests: therefore when I excelled them in wisdom, I surpassed all other kings and philosophers of the world as well; because the Jews, especially the lawyers and high priests, were wiser than all philosophers. Hence in 1 Kings 3:12, Solomon hears from God: "I have given you a wise heart, so that none like you existed before you, nor shall one arise after you;" therefore Solomon was wiser overall than Adam, Abraham, Moses, Joseph, David, and all the other Patriarchs and Prophets, even though St. Jerome denies this at this passage. Granted that in a certain category — for example, in prophecy he was surpassed by the Prophets, in psalmody and holiness by David. And soon God adding the rest says: "I have given you, He says, riches and glory, so that none has been like you among kings in all the days past."
For surpassed in wisdom, the Hebrew has: I added wisdom, as if to say: I greatly increased the wisdom implanted in me from heaven through experience and daily speculation of things. So Olympiodorus. Hence Symmachus translates: I excelled in wisdom. How ample Solomon's wisdom was, he himself explains at length in Wisdom 7:17 and following. See Sixtus of Siena under the entry Solomon, and Pineda, Book 3 of On the Affairs of Solomon.
AND MY MIND HAS CONTEMPLATED MANY THINGS WISELY, AND I HAVE LEARNED. — "Has contemplated" — through speculation and meditation; "I have learned" — through experience. Hence Origen in his Prologue to the Song of Songs teaches that the wise men of the Greeks drew their philosophy from Solomon: for they lived after him, as Clement testifies, Book 5 of the Stromata. For in natural knowledge — namely of physical, ethical, economic, and political matters — Solomon surpassed all men: in supernatural and divine knowledge he was surpassed by Moses, the Prophets, and the Apostles.
Verse 17: And I Gave My Heart to Know Prudence and Learning, and Errors and Foolishness
The Syriac: perturbation of spirit; the Septuagint: choice or presumption of spirit; others: irritation of spirit; Aquila: feeding of wind. See what was said on verse 14. Foreign to the text is the interpretation of Cajetan: "Here, he says, is delivered the fruit of knowledge — that the very pursuit of knowing is the breaking of the spirit, or the chief means of breaking the spirit. For the ignorant follow their own spirits and are driven by their own impulses." For this is truth, not vanity; benefit, not harm and worthlessness; holy stability, not quarrelsome lightness — whereas Solomon here on the contrary asserts the vanity and harmfulness of knowing.
For errors the Hebrew is הוללות holelot, which the Septuagint translates as parables; the Syriac and Arabic: proverbs; our translator and Aquila: errors; Theodotion: fallings; Cajetan: trifles, or entanglements of works and affairs, in which many entangle themselves to such an extent that they cannot extricate themselves; others: follies; Arias: trifles; Fonteius: furies; Vivianus: arro-gance; Thuanus: the insane passions of the heart; the Chaldean: and I gave my heart to know wisdom and the foolishness of the kingdom, and I tested knowledge and understanding, and I recognized that this too is a crushing of spirit for a man who labors diligently to find these things.
For stultitiam [foolishness] the Hebrew is סכלות sichlut, which if written with samech signifies foolishness; but if with sin (which has the same value as samech), it signifies prudence and understanding, as the Septuagint and the Chaldean translate, namely that the vain lovers of worldly things, while thinking themselves wise in acquiring those things, become foolish and rave before God. For, as St. Paul says: "The wisdom of this world is foolishness before God," 1 Corinthians 3:19.
By repeating, Ecclesiastes amplifies and emphasizes his study in investigating wisdom and knowledge, to show that he thoroughly examined both and found vanity and affliction in both. For prudentiam et doctrinam [prudence and learning], the Hebrew has wisdom and knowledge. Wisdom, say St. Augustine and the theologians, is the knowledge of the highest things, namely divine and heavenly; knowledge, however, is of natural and human things, especially concerning morals and things to be done. To wisdom he opposes errors, that is, the false opinions of the ancients, whether philosophers or heretics, says R. Haccados — such as heresies about God and His providence, omnipotence, omniscience, etc. To knowledge he opposes foolishness, by which a person foolishly judges about things to be done and acts foolishly, pursuing vice instead of virtue, indeed as if it were virtue. Again, wisdom can be understood practically, as supernatural prudence for rightly knowing, worshipping, and loving God through the theological virtues; knowledge, however, as natural pru-dence for living honestly, through the moral virtues, by which a person becomes brave, temperate, chaste, just, etc. Conversely, by errors you may understand superstitions, idolatry, and the false worship of deities, opposed to the true worship of God: by foolishness, however, imprudence and incontinence of living: gluttony, lust, fraud, theft, etc. For Solomon throughout Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, and Wisdom by wisdom and knowledge understands not so much speculative as practical knowledge, namely ethics, which conforms morals to the proper worship of God and to legitimately loving oneself and one's neighbor equally, according to the standard of right reason and divine law: and Solomon especially aimed at and pursued this, so as to teach the same to others, as he does in these books. The meaning therefore is, as if to say: With the greatest effort I applied myself to investigate wisdom and knowledge, both speculative and especially practical, and to separate it from errors and foolishness — that is, to distinguish and differentiate the virtues pertaining to God and to man and neighbor from the vices opposed to them; so that by this means I might trace the way to true happiness of the soul, and know what in this life could make a man blessed and happy. But after long study and examination, I found that in these things too there is their own vanity and affliction of spirit, because "in much wisdom there is much vexation; and he who adds knowledge, adds sorrow": for labor and sorrow attend upon knowledge and study; therefore he who adds knowledge adds sorrow, both because as long as knowledge lasts, so does labor; and because as study increases, there equally increases the fatigue, labor, and pain of the head and whole body, as the vital spirits are exhausted.
Verse 18: Because in Much Wisdom There Is Much Vexation, and He Who Adds Knowledge Adds Also Labor
So read the codices corrected at Rome. Others from the Hebrew read: and sorrow; both are true, and the matter amounts to the same: because all labor is sorrow, and all sorrow is labor. Aquila translates: and torment. The Septuagint translate the Hebrew מכאוב macob as scourges, Psalm 31:10. The Zurich version translates: he who increases knowledge, at the same time increases what torments him.
For indignatio [vexation] the Hebrew is כעס caas, that is, anger, indignation; the Syriac: fury; the Septuagint: knowledge; the Arabic: for in the abundance of wisdom learning is multiplied, and as learning increases, sorrow increases. The Chaldean understands these words of the anger of God: "For a man, he says, who multiplies knowledge and sins, if he does not turn to repentance, multiplies wrath before the face of the Lord; and he who adds knowledge and dies in his youth, adds sorrow to those close to him." Costus translates the last part from the Chaldean thus: he brings upon himself the envy and anger of the Lord, by whom he had been increased in knowledge; and if he dies at an early age, he increases for himself the internal vexation of the soul. The author of the Greek Catena says: "He who inquires into the causes of deeper things and does not find them, this one adds labor. This by no means happens to those who study superficially."
You will ask how in much wisdom there is much vexation, and in knowledge sorrow? For, as St. Thomas teaches, III, Question 38, article 4: "in the contemplation of truth, the greatest delight consists. Moreover, every delight mitigates sorrow, and therefore the contemplation of truth mitigates sadness or sorrow, and all the more so, the more perfectly someone is a lover of wisdom: and therefore men rejoice in divine contemplation and in the contemplation of future blessedness even in tribulations, according to James 1:2: Count it all joy, my brothers, when you fall into various temptations," etc. So St. Thomas.
The Chaldean answers that by indignation one should understand the wrath and vengeance of God, as if to say: God is angry with the wise who, though they know what they ought to do, nevertheless do not do it, but live perversely and do not repent. So also R. Solomon, and partly St. Jerome, Olympiodorus, and Albinus, although they lean more toward another interpretation. Again others take indignation to mean the anger and envy of rivals, who envy the wise for their wisdom, fame, and honor, as if to say: When someone by studying becomes wise and learned, he excites the envy of others, who take it badly that he is preferred to them in learning and fame; therefore they detract from his wisdom and fame and suppress it. Hencefor they rush forward and are carried along like ships without restraints, and turn out furious rather than strong."
But better, others understand the indignation of the wise man himself, and the sorrow of the knowledgeable one. First therefore: "In much wisdom there is much indignation and sorrow, says St. Thomas in the cited passage, response to objection 1, either because of the difficulty and failure of finding the truth, or because through knowledge man comes to know many things that are contrary to his will, and thus on the part of things known, knowledge causes sorrow; but on the part of the contemplation of truth, delight." For the study of wisdom calls the mind away from all sensual pleasures, and gathers and compels it entirely to contemplation. Hence the studious and speculative, by speculating, consume the best spirits, and summon the natural heat from the stomach to the brain for speculation: whence it happens that the stomach, deprived of heat, cannot digest food, but transmits undigested food and raw juices to the liver and members, from which are generated catarrhs, gas, fevers, ill humors, migraines, and many other illnesses, and subsequently consumption and phthisis, or dropsy from an excess of phlegm. And this is the reason why most men of letters suffer from the stomach, as St. Gregory, St. Chrysostom, St. Jerome, St. Bernard, etc. suffered. "Labors are the companions of knowledge," says Nyssa, and adds that Solomon did not give himself to pleasures "before he had tasted a more austere and severe life, when he had proved himself averse to laughter, grave and constant — by which the discipline of wisdom is most cultivated by the studious;" but wearied of this severity, he loosened the reins to pleasure and concupiscence. Add the nocturnal vigils and burning of midnight oil by the studious, their abstinence and fasts, their varied and manifold reading, which dry out, inflame, and weaken the brain, so that it is immediately stirred to bile.
Secondly, because the very studious and wise either are born, or through constant study and speculation become, melancholic, morose, and gloomy, as Aristotle teaches in Section 30 of the Problems, chapter 1, where he teaches that the greatest wise men and philosophers were melancholic, and that no great genius existed without an admixture of madness (for melancholy is a kind of insanity). Again, the ingenious, on account of the multitude, fervor, and speed of their spirits, says Pineda, combined with wisdom, which does not need a long space for deliberation, are more agitated and prone to indignation. This is what Aristotle said is found in those in whom "black bile is very abundant and hot" and extremely flatulent, who become "passionate and clever lovers, prone to every outburst of anger and desire, and some even more talkative." On this matter Plato wisely discourses, Book 2 of the Republic, and in the Theaetetus: "It is exceedingly difficult, he says, to find a man who is both ingenious and at the same time gentler than others: for the sharp and sagacious, the retentive and teachable, are for the most part prone to anger and rash impulses:as it says in chapter 7, verse 8: "Oppression disturbs the wise man."
Thirdly, because in the sciences there are innumerable complications, obscurities, contradictions, and difficulties, which make the studious man gloomy, peevish, and irascible, especially when he sees that he labors in vain and does not attain the truth, when he sees so many opinions and views fighting among themselves, and cannot discern in them what is true and certain, but all is doubtful and entangled. Again, the more he learns, the more new questions and difficulties unknown to him he notices arising, and so the more he knows, the more he perceives that he is ignorant: which causes him vexation and bile. Moreover, when he sees his own opinion contradicted by others and refuted, he is distressed. So St. Jerome, Thaumaturgus, Albinus, Olympiodorus, and Vatablus. Hear St. Jerome: "The wise man grieves that wisdom lies hidden as if in a secret and profound place, and does not present itself to minds as light does to sight, but comes through certain torments and intolerable labor, by constant meditation and study." Therefore you would see the wise during their very vigils and late-night studies almost boiling over and growing indignant against those very difficulties of understanding things, which they cannot either reach or overcome, and, as usually happens in a long struggle and combat, now they despair of victory, now they attack again and fight, now weary and exhausted they pause and rest a little, now they rise up again and renew the struggle with the knowledge of the most difficult things. So Pineda. Therefore great as the learning of scholars is, yet it is not so much full knowledge as learned ignorance. For the more scholars advance in investigating the knowledge of things, the more they discover themselves to be learnedly ignorant or ignorantly learned, because they can scarcely see clearly the natures of any things, but only their accidents, which are evident to the senses.
Fourthly, because knowledge puffs up and makes a man swollen and proud: and the proud are prone to anger, especially when they see themselves opposed and contradicted either by arguments or by men, or obstacles placed against their pretension, so that they cannot achieve the firm assertion of their opinions or the rewards they had presumed upon through it. Again, the wise man seems to deserve honor and eminence: therefore when he is despised, ridiculed, or reproved by the less wise or by rivals, he considers that a grave injury is done to him, and therefore grieves, becomes impatient and angry. See Plato in the Theaetetus. So both Hugh Cardinal and Hugh of St. Victor, Lyranus, Cajetan, and others. Thus we see very learned men to be inclined to anger, impatience, and anxiety, and to be excited to it by a light word.
Fifthly, the wise man is indignant with himself, when he sees his own blindness and weakness for searching out so many and such great truths of hidden things, including ethical and practical ones, and when he perceives a far greater diffi-culty in fulfilling them in practice. Hence St. Jerome and Olympiodorus: "The more, they say, someone has attained wisdom, the more he is indignant that he is subject to vices and is far from the virtues that he requires; and therefore he grieves over his sins, since he knows that from him to whom more is given, more is required, and that the powerful will suffer powerful torments." He adds that from the acquisition of knowledge comes a greater awareness of the nobility of one's soul; whence one is indignant to be occupied with lower things that are less worthy of it. Added to this is the perverse distaste of some for the most noble study of Sacred Letters, just as the Hebrews once grew nauseous over divine food. Again, an honest nausea and abomination toward foul pleasures, from having tasted the sweet savor of spiritual things. Finally, anger with indignation against oneself, against the devil, against vices, against all those things that provoke us to sin, if much wisdom is present, that is, knowledge of divine things and great skill in living well. The same judgment applies to the indignation and just sorrow that we feel against the sins of others. "If I grieve you, said the Apostle, and who is there who makes me glad, but the one who is grieved by me?" 2 Corinthians 2:2. So Lorinus.
Again, the wise man is angry with his disciples and others, whom he sees to be devoid of wisdom and prudence, and often incapable of instruction and incorrigible. For he sees that the greater part of men is vicious, indulging their concupiscence and vices, and scorning the sound counsels of wisdom and the precepts of virtue — which greatly torments and afflicts the wise man, especially one who is a ruler and teacher, as Solomon was.
Sixthly, St. Jerome, Epistle 30, speaking of Fabiola, places the sorrow in the desire for knowledge: "Good Jesus, he says, with what fervor, with what zeal she was intent upon the divine volumes! etc. Nor was she satisfied in her desire for hearing, but adding knowledge she added sorrow, and as if adding oil to a flame, she desired the fuel of greater ardor." St. Gregory Nazianzen agrees, who in his Apologeticus explains thus, as if to say: As much pleasure as one draws from studying, from what he finds, so much grief he bears, from what he cannot attain — just like a thirsty man torn away from tasted waters: for the water which he thinks he has, he cannot hold in his hands; or just like one illuminated by the splendor of lightning, who is immediately abandoned when it disappears.
Finally, Ecclesiastes here most greatly and principally intends to signify that the study of wisdom and knowledge, both speculative and practical, is vain, laborious, and afflicting, so long as it consists in mere speculation and knowledge of natural and ethical things, namely of virtues and vices, and does not pass to the actual operation and exercise of virtues, so as to become practically practical. For virtue and true wisdom and knowledge, which give the soul rest and sat-isfaction, resides not in arid speculation but in honest action and practice; and if it lacks this, it is vain and mere head fatigue, because it is deprived of its end and fruit, which is an honest action and life that leads to happiness. This is what Solomon properly aims at here: namely, that bare wisdom and ethical knowledge do not satisfy, ennoble, or make man happy, but only the fear and love of God and the pursuit of virtues; everything else is vain. Hence in chapter 12:13, concluding, he says: "Fear God, and keep His commandments: for this is the whole of man." Olympiodorus adds that men are not born wise but become so by effort and labor. Again, once wisdom has been acquired, it goads and torments a man to carry out in practice what through wisdom he knows must be done — namely, to resist his desires, to undertake the arduous labors of virtue, in which he feels great difficulty and affliction of spirit, like Ezekiel, who in chapter 3, verses 3 and 14, at God's command ate a scroll in which were lamentations, song, and woe, and it was in his mouth as sweet as honey, but afterwards he went away bitter in the indignation of his spirit; and like St. John, who in Revelation 10:9 took a book that was sweet as honey in his mouth but made his stomach bitter. Such is knowledge, which delights at the beginning but afterwards generates sorrow and labor. Now hear Olympiodorus: "He does not say that wisdom and knowledge are vanity, but a choice of spirit, warning us that men do not at all become wise by the benefit of fate, but by the desire and labor of wisdom, obtaining wisdom sought from the Lord God. And if anyone still desires to have more knowledge, let him add, he says, also studious labors. Or understand it also thus: He who, having acquired knowledge and understanding, then sins, is to be punished far more; therefore he who adds knowledge adds also sorrow."
Tropologically, you may understand these words of self-knowledge: for a man considering himself and his infirmities with a view to contemplation and, much more, to right action (which is true wisdom and knowledge) sees so many and such great ones that he conceives immense sadness and anger against himself, as the author of the book On the Soul and Spirit fully explains, in St. Augustine, volume 3, chapter 49. "He who adds knowledge adds also sorrow: because, he says, the more a man understands his evils, the more he sighs and groans: for meditation begets knowledge, knowledge begets compunction, compunction begets devotion, and devotion perfects prayer;" which he then pursues at length. And St. Gregory, Book 28 of the Morals, chapter 24: "He who adds knowledge adds also sorrow; because the more a man begins to know what he has lost, the more he begins to mourn the sentence of his corruption which he has found. For he considers whence and to where he has fallen: that from the joys of paradise to the miseries of the present life, from the companionships of the angels he has come to the cares of necessities. He weighs in how many dangers he now lies, who previously scorned to stand without danger; he mourns the exile whichthe condemned man suffers, and he sighs for the state of heavenly glory, which he could have enjoyed in security if he had not willed to sin." Therefore you, O student, O religious, O master, O doctor, who have spent many years in arid speculation, consumed your life, exhausted your strength — consider, I ask, how alien you are from true wisdom, if you do not join virtue to your knowledge of human and divine things, and knowing how to argue, you are ignorant of the way of humility and perfect charity. For if true wisdom (as Lactantius said) cannot come to anyone without knowledge and virtue, how shall I call you wise, whom inflating knowledge holds demented, and whom edifying charity does not retain in its fellowship? If wisdom (as Nazianzen says) does not raise one up to the love of God, and from servants now makes friends and sons, by what reason shall I consider you wise, whom the true love of God does not know as a servant, and whom Christ acknowledges neither as friend nor as son?
Therefore one must walk by another way to true wisdom that may make you happy — namely the way of humility, charity, contempt of the world, etc. — as the repentant doctor Lanfranc did, the antagonist and conqueror of the heresiarch Berengar, who, having been captured by robbers in the Alps and unworthily mistreated, and having borne this injury too impatiently, came to his senses and, accusing and punishing his own foolishness, gave himself to the monastic life in the monastery of Bec to learn true wisdom, namely patience, where he lay hidden unknown for many years; finally recognized, he was made Prior, then Abbot, and at last Archbishop of Canterbury, and left as his successor his disciple St. Anselm, around the year of our Lord 1060. So Trithemius, tract On Illustrious Men of the Order of St. Benedict, chapter 99.
Anagogically, St. Augustine, Book 4 of On the Trinity, chapter 1, teaches that knowledge of one's own infirmity adds sorrow to one's pilgrimage, and this from the desire for the heavenly homeland and its Creator: "He preferred knowledge to knowledge, he says, he preferred knowing his own infirmity to knowing the walls of the world, the foundations of the earth and the heights of the heavens: and by adding this knowledge he added sorrow — the sorrow of his pilgrimage from desire for his homeland and its Creator, his blessed God. In this kind of people in the family of Your Christ, O Lord my God, if I groan among Your poor, give me of Your bread to answer those in name who do not hunger and thirst for justice, but are satisfied and abound: but it is their phantasm that satisfies them, not Your truth, which by repelling they rebound from and fall into their own vanity. I certainly perceive how many fictions the human heart produces. And what is my heart, if not a human heart?"
And St. Gregory on Ezekiel, Book 1, Homily 10: "The mind, he says, which the Holy Spirit fills, He moves to bitterness over temporal things and delight in eternal things, etc. It quarrels with itself about the things it recalls having done wrong, and is displeased with itself, when He who created all things has begun to please it. It yearns for heavenly things and already tramples all earthly things through contempt of mind." And shortly after: "Therefore it disdains to be subject to temporal things, and ardently sighs for eternal ones. Hence it is rightly said through Solomon: Because in much wisdom there is much indignation, and he who adds knowledge adds sorrow. For those who know heavenly things disdain to subject their mind to earthly ones. And when we begin to think more wisely about the things we have done badly, we are angry with ourselves, and in much wisdom there is much indignation: because the more we advance in knowledge, the more we are indignant with ourselves about perverse deeds. And sorrow grows with knowledge; because the more we know eternal things, the more we grieve that we are in the misery of this exile — or as it is said in another translation: And he who adds knowledge adds sorrow. For to the degree that we begin to know what the heavenly joys are, to that degree, so that we may escape the snares of our errors, we labor by weeping. In much wisdom therefore there is much indignation: because if we already have the taste of eternal things, we disdain to desire temporal ones. If we already have the taste of eternal things, we despise ourselves for having done what could separate us from the love of eternity. Conscience reproves itself, accuses what it has done, condemns through penance what it accuses; a quarrel arises in the soul, giving birth to peace with God." Therefore he who adds knowledge, namely of higher things, adds sorrow, namely over lower and earthly things; for, as St. Isidore says, Book 3 of the Sentences, chapter 20: "To the extent that anyone has been able to know the heavenly things he should desire, to that extent he ought to grieve more sharply over the lowly things to which he clings."