The natural gravitation of the body pulls down with it those of little mind, strangling and overwhelming them with the multitude of the fleshly eleme… - Philo of Alexandria

The majority, who through the blindness of their reason do not discern the damages which the soul has sustained, only feel the pain of external injuries, because the faculty of judgment, which alone can enable them to apprehend the damage to the mind, is taken from them.

What need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these, indeed, need the cultivator’s skill. Those who prefer idleness to labor, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labor, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings ever blooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the compound name of wholefruits. In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have their whole being transformed completely into fruits.

τὸν μὲν οὖν τῶν Πυθαγορείων ἱερώτατον θίασον λόγος ἔχει μετὰ πολλῶν καὶ ἄλλων καλῶν καὶ τοῦτ᾿ ἀναδιδάσκειν, “ταῖς λεωφόροις μὴ βαδίζειν ὁδοῖς,” οὐχ ἵνα κρημνοβατῶμεν—οὐ γὰρ ποσὶ κάματον παρήγγελλεν—, ἀλλ᾿ αἰνιττόμενος διὰ συμβόλου τὸ μήτε λόγοις μήτ᾿ ἔργοις δημώδεσι καὶ πεπατημένοις χρῆσθαι.