(4) And yet they are outsiders, without power to inherit from the male, but they will inherit from their mother only. Whenever, therefore, the soul wishes to inherit along with the outsiders - for the possessions of the outsiders are proud passions, the pleasures of life, hateful envies, vainglorious things, nonsensical things, accusations [...] for her [...] prostitution, he excludes her and puts her into the brothel. For [...] debauchery for her. She left modesty behind. For death and life are set before everyone. Whichever of these two they wish, then, they will choose for themselves.

(90) Now thus the Child qualifies [or mixes] with the Mother, and with all Essences, till it kindles the Light of Life, and then the Child lives in its [own] Spirit, and the Mother is its Dwelling-House. But now seeing the Soul of the Child is generated out of the Limbus, and out of the Essences of the Mother, therefore it is indeed half the Mother's, though now it is become the proper own of itself.

(4) As far as respects human nature, the woman does not possess one nature, and the man exhibit another, but the same: so also with virtue. If, consequently, a self-restraint and righteousness, and whatever qualities are regarded as following them, is the virtue of the male, it belongs to the male alone to be virtuous, and to the woman to be licentious and unjust. But it is offensive even to say this. Accordingly woman is to practise self-restraint and righteousness, and every other virtue, as well as man, both bond and free; since it is a fit consequence that the same nature possesses one and the same virtue. We do not say that woman's nature is the same as man's, as she is woman. For undoubtedly it stands to reason that some difference should exist between each of them, in virtue of which one is male and the other female. Pregnancy and parturition, accordingly, we say belong to woman, as she is woman, and not as she is a human being. But if there were no difference between man and woman, both would do and suffer the same things. As then there is sameness, as far as respects the soul, she will attain to the same virtue; but as there is difference as respects the peculiar construction of the body, she is destined for child-bearing and housekeeping. "For I would have you know," says the apostle, "that the head of every man is Christ; and the head of the woman is the man: for the man is not of the woman, but the woman of the man. I For neither is the woman without the man, nor the man without the woman, in the Lord." For as we say that the man ought to be conti-nent, and superior to pleasures; so also we reckon that the woman should be continent and practised in fighting against pleasures. "But I say, Walk in the Spirit, and ye shall not fulfil the lusts of the flesh," counsels the apostolic command; "for the flesh lusteth against the spirit, and the spirit against the flesh. These, then, are contrary" (not as good to evil, but as fighting advantageously), he adds therefore, so that ye cannot do the things that ye would. Now the works of the flesh are manifest, which are, fornication uncleanness, profligacy, idolatry, witchcrafts, enmities, strifes, jealousies, wrath, contentions, dissensions, heresies, envyings, drunkenness, revellings, and such like; of which I tell you before, as I have also said before, that they which do such things shall not inherit the kingdom of God. But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, long-suffering, gentleness, temperance, goodness, faith, meekness." He calls sinners, as I think, "flesh," and the righteous "spirit." Further, manliness is to be assumed in order to produce confidence and forbearance, so as "to him that strikes on the one cheek, to give to him the other; and to him that takes away the cloak, to yield to him the coat also," strongly, restraining anger. For we do not train our women like Amazons to manliness in war; since we wish the men even to be peaceable. I hear that the Sarmatian women practise war no less than the men; and the women of the Sacae besides, who shoot backwards, feigning flight as well as the men. I am aware, too, that the women near Iberia practise manly work and toil, not refraining from their tasks even though near their delivery; but even in the very struggle of her pains, the woman, on being delivered, taking up the infant, carries it home. Further, the females no less than the males manage the house, and hunt, and keep the flocks: "Cressa the hound ran keenly in the stag's track."

(12) They likewise were of opinion that great providential attention should be paid by those who beget children, to the future progeny. The first, therefore, and the greatest care which should be taken by him who applies himself to the procreation of children is, that he lives temperately and healthfully, that he neither fills himself with food unseasonably, nor uses such aliments as may render the habits of the body worse than they were, and above all things, that he avoids intoxication. For they thought that depraved seed was produced from a bad, discordant, and turbid temperament. And universally they were of opinion, that none but an indolent and inconsiderate person would attempt to produce an animal, and lead it into existence, without providing with all possible diligence that its ingress into being and life might be most elegant and pleasing.

For those that are lovers of dogs, pay every possible attention to the generation of whelps, in order that they may be produced from such things as are proper, and when it is proper, and in such a way as is proper, and thus may become a good offspring. The same attention also is paid by those who are lovers of birds. And it is evident that others also who are studious about the procreation of generous animals, endeavour by all possible means, that the generation of them may not be in vain. It would be absurd therefore that men should pay no attention to their own offspring, but should both beget them casually and with perfect carelessness, and, after they are begotten, nourish and educate them with extreme negligence.

For this is the most powerful and most manifest cause of the vice and depravity of the greater part of mankind. For with the multitude the procreation of children is undertaken in a beastly and rash manner. And such were the assertions, and such the doctrine of these men, which they verified both in words and deeds, respecting temperance; these precepts having been originally received by them from Pythagoras himself, like certain oracles delivered by the Pythian Apollo.

(7) But they think [consider or imagine] only how to fill themselves and multiply, that their Life may subsist; and we also receive no more from the Spirit of the Stars and Elements. And therefore also our Children are naked and bare, with great Inability, and without Understanding; and now if the Spirit of this World had full [perfect and absolute] Power over the Essences of the Child, then he would easily put his rough Garment upon it also (viz. a rough Hide) but he must let that alone: And he must leave the Essences in the first and second Principle, to Man's own Choosing, to bind and yield himself to which [Principle] he will; which Man has (undeniably) in his full Power, which I will explain in its own Place according to its Worth, and deeply demonstrate it, in Spite of all the Gates of the Devil, and this World, which strive much against it.

(86) And as the Child is another Person than the Mother, and as the Child's Soul is not the Soul of the Mother, so also here in this Place. For the outward Virgin could not comprehend, that she did bear the Saviour of the World; but she committed that (in her Virgin-chastity) to God; whatsoever he did with her, she would still be contented with it.

(44) And so now there is a vehement Desire in the Creatures. The Spirit of the Male seeks the loving Child in the Female, and the Female in the Male; for the Irrationality of the Body in the unreasonable Creatures knows not what it does; the Body would not, if it had Reason, move so eagerly towards Propagation; neither does it know any Thing of the Impregnation [or Conception,] only its Spirit does so burn and desire after the Child of Love, that it seeks Love, (which yet is paradisical) and it cannot comprehend it; but it makes a P Semination only, wherein there is again a Center to the Birth. And thus is the Original of both Sexes, and their Propagation; yet it does not attain the paradisical Child of Love, but it is a vehement Hunger, and so the Propagation is acted with great Earnestness.

(19) The Ideal Principles entering into Matter as to a Mother affect it neither for better nor for worse.

Their action is not upon Matter but upon each other; these powers conflict with their opponent principles, not with their substrata- which it would be foolish to confuse with the entrant forms- Heat annuls Cold, and Blackness annuls Whiteness; or, the opponents blend to form an intermediate quality. Only that is affected which enters into combinations: being affected is losing something of self-identity.

In beings of soul and body, the affection occurs in the body, modified according to the qualities and powers presiding at the act of change: in all such dissolution of constituent parts, in the new combinations, in all variation from the original structure, the affection is bodily, the Soul or Mind having no more than an accompanying knowledge of the more drastic changes, or perhaps not even that. but the Matter concerned remains unaffected; heat enters, cold leaves it, and it is unchanged because neither Principle is associated with it as friend or enemy.

So the appellation "Recipient and Nurse" is the better description: Matter is the mother only in the sense indicated; it has no begetting power. But probably the term Mother is used by those who think of a Mother as Matter to the offspring, as a container only, giving nothing to them, the entire bodily frame of the child being formed out of food. But if this Mother does give anything to the offspring it does so not in its quality as Matter but as being an Ideal-Form; for only the Idea is generative; the contrary Kind is sterile.

This, I think, is why the doctors of old, teaching through symbols and mystic representations, exhibit the ancient Hermes with the generative organ always in active posture; this is to convey that the generator of things of sense is the Intellectual Reason Principle: the sterility of Matter, eternally unmoved, is indicated by the eunuchs surrounding it in its representation as the All-Mother.

This too exalting title is conferred upon it in order to indicate that it is the source of things in the sense of being their underlie: it is an approximate name chosen for a general conception; there is no intention of suggesting a complete parallel with motherhood to those not satisfied with a surface impression but needing a precisely true presentment; by a remote symbolism, the nearest they could find, they indicate that Matter is sterile, not female to full effect, female in receptivity only, not in pregnancy: this they accomplish by exhibiting Matter as approached by what is neither female nor effectively male, but castrated of that impregnating power which belongs only to the unchangeably masculine.

(460) The proper officers will take the offspring of the good parents to the pen or fold, and there they will deposit them with certain nurses who dwell in a separate quarter; but the offspring of the inferior, or of the better when they chance to be deformed, will be put away in some mysterious, unknown place, as they should be. Yes, he said, that must be done if the breed of the guardians is to be kept pure. They will provide for their nurture, and will bring the mothers to the fold when they are full of milk, taking the greatest possible care that no mother recognises her own child; and other wet-nurses may be engaged if more are required. Care will also be taken that the process of suckling shall not be protracted too long; and the mothers will have no getting up at night or other trouble, but will hand over all this sort of thing to the nurses and attendants. You suppose the wives of our guardians to have a fine easy time of it when they are having children. Why, said I, and so they ought. Let us, however, proceed with our scheme. We were saying that the parents should be in the prime of life? Very true. And what is the prime of life? May it not be defined as a period of about twenty years in a woman’s life, and thirty in a man’s? Which years do you mean to include? A woman, I said, at twenty years of age may begin to bear children to the State, and continue to bear them until forty; a man may begin at five-and-twenty, when he has passed the point at which the pulse of life beats quickest, and continue to beget children until he be fifty-five.

(39) This Figure does not (as many judge) go into the Abyss, but as the Parents were, so is also their Figure; for this Figure is the Parent's, till the Kindling of its Life, and then it is no more the Parent's, but its own. The Mother affords but a Lodging, and the Nutriment; and therefore if she destroys it willingly in her Body, she is a Murderer, and the divine Law judges her to the temporal Death.

(50) Thus the Birth gets an Essence that has Sharpness from the Harshness, and Sweetness, Thinness, and Expansion from the Light. And now when the Flash of Fire comes into its Mother, and finds her so sweet, thin, and light, P then it loses its own Propriety in the Qualification, and flies aloft no more, but continues in its Mother, and loses its fiery Right [or Propriety,] and trembles and rejoices in its Mother.

(30) We must consider in the Virtue [or Power] of the Virgin, that the Will first is threefold, and each in its Center is fixed [stedfast or perfect] and pure, for it proceeds out of the Tincture. In the first Center there springs up between the Parents of the Child the Inclination [or Lust,] and the bestial Desire to copulate; this is the outward elementary Center, and it is fixed in itself. Secondly, there springs up, in the second Center, the inclinable Love to the Copulation; and although they were at the first Sight angry and odious one to another, yet in the Copulating the Center of Love springs up, and that only in the Copulating; for the one pure Tincture receives [or catches] the other, and in the Copulating the tMass receives them both.

(4) And we must here know, that our Life, which we get in our Mother's Body [or Womb,] stands merely and only in the Power of the Sun, Stars, and Elements; so that they not only figure [or fashion] a Child in the Mother's Body, and give it Life, but also bring it into this World, and nourish it the whole Time of its Life, and bring it up, also cause Fortune and Misfortune to it, and, at last, Death and Corruption; and if our Essences (out of which our Life is generated) were not higher, in their first Degree out of Adam, [than the Beasts,] then we should be wholly like the Beasts.

(3) But they who approve of marriage say, Nature has adapted us for marriage, as is evident from the structure of our bodies, which are male and female. And they constantly proclaim that command, "Increase and replenish." And though this is the case, yet it seems to them shameful that man, created by God, should be more licentious than the irrational creatures, which do not mix with many licentiously, but with one of the same species, such as pigeons and ringdoves, and creatures like them. Furthermore, they say, "The childless man fails in the perfection which is according to nature, not having substituted his proper successor in his place. For he is perfect that has produced from himself his like, or rather, when he sees that he has produced the same; that is, when that which is begotten attains to the same nature with him who begat." Therefore we must by all means marry, both for our country's sake, for the succession of children, and as far as we are concerned, the perfection of the world; since the poets also pity a marriage half-perfect and childless, but pronounce the fruitful one happy. But it is the diseases of the body that principally show marriage to be necessary. For a wife's care and the assiduity of her constancy appear to exceed the endurance of all other relations and friends, as much as to excel them in sympathy; and most of all, she takes kindly to patient watching.

(28) For behold, when the Gate of this World in the Child is made ready, so that the Child is [become] a living Soul out of the Essences, and now [henceforth] sees only [by or] in the Light of the Sun, and not in the Light of God, then comes the true Artificer, instantly in the Twinkling of an Eye, when the Light of the Life kindles, and figures [that which is] his; for the Center breaks forth in all the three Principles. First, there are the four Essences in the Fiat in the stern Might of God, which there are the Child' own, the Worm of its Soul, which stands there in the House of the great Anxiety, as in the Originality. For the Seed is sown in the Will, and the Will receives the Fiat in the Tincture, and the Fiat draws the Will to it inwardly, Or give himself into the Imagination. and outwardly [draws] the Seed to a rMass; for the inward and outward Artificer is there.

(24) Therefore we say now, according to our high Knowledge, that the Source [or active Desire] of all the three Principles does imprint itself together with the Child's Incarnation [or becoming Man,] in the Mother's Body. For after that Man is figured [or shaped] from the Stars and Elements, by the Fiat, so that the Elements have taken Possession of their Regions, [Kingdoms, or Dominions,] viz. the Heart, Liver, Lungs, Bladder, and Stomach, wherein they have their Regions, then must the there stands now the Image of God, and the Image of this World, and there also is the Image of the Devil. Now there must be Wrestling and Overcoming, and there is Need of the Treader upon the Serpent, even in the Mother's [Womb or] Body.

(45) When I behold the future parents in union, Let it come that I behold them as the [Divine] Pair, the Conquerors, the Peaceful and the Wrathful Father and Mother; Obtaining the power of being born anywhere, for the good of others, Let it come that I obtain the perfect body, adorned with the signs and the graces.

(2) 'And he who desires the world of the mothers, by his mere will the mothers come to receive him, and having obtained the world of the mothers, he is happy.

(6) O Covetousness, that mortals dost ingulf Beneath thee so, that no one hath the power Of drawing back his eyes from out thy waves! Full fairly blossoms in mankind the will; But the uninterrupted rain converts Into abortive wildings the true plums. Fidelity and innocence are found Only in children; afterwards they both Take flight or e'er the cheeks with down are covered. One, while he prattles still, observes the fasts, Who, when his tongue is loosed, forthwith devours Whatever food under whatever moon; Another, while he prattles, loves and listens Unto his mother, who when speech is perfect Forthwith desires to see her in her grave.

(27) And now when the Hands (in the Will) reach after the Children of the Earth (which [Reaching forth] yet is no other than a Will in the Spirit of the Child in the Mother's Body) then the Fiat is there, and makes a great Room in the Courts of the three Elements, and a tough firm Inclosure round about it, that they may not touch the Flesh: For the Flesh is afraid of the Children of the Earth, because the Earth is thrown away (for its rough stinking Darkness) and it trembles for great Fear; and it looks still about after the best [Means,] (lest the Children of the Earth should be too rough for it, and might cause a Stink) that so it might have an Opening, and might cast away the Stink and the Filth, and [so] it makes out of the Court (which is the Maw [or Stomach]) an Out-let and Gate, and environs the same with its tough [sour] Harshness, and so there is a Gut.