The library · Edition and sources
Philo: On the Birth of Abel
C. D. Yonge (1854–1855) · Translated text with edition notes
Section VIII
VIII. (39) But as those who are thus anxious to render their souls propitious must of necessity cultivate the virtues of the soul, so also they who purpose to render their bodies favourable to their objects, must cultivate health and those powers which are akin to health, and these too they cultivate with unremitting and ceaseless labours, being overwhelmed with care, arising from the faculties in them of which they are compounded. (40) You see, therefore, that all good things spring up and shoot out from labour as from one general root, and this you must never allow yourself to neglect; for if you do, you will without being aware of it, be also letting slip the collected heap of goods which it brings with it; for the Ruler of the universe, of heaven, and of the world, both himself possesses and bestows on whomsoever he pleases, his good things, with all ease and abundance.
Since formerly he created this world, vast as you see it is, without any labour, and how too he never ceases holding it together, so that it may last for ever. And absence from all labour and fatigue is the most appropriate attribute of God; but nature has not given the acquisition of good things to any mortal without labour,
{14}
{this is not only the same idea, but almost the very language of Horace in Sat. I. 9.60.}
in order that in consequence of this arrangement, God alone of existing beings may be called happy and enjoy felicity.
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