The library · Edition and sources
Philo: On the Posterity of Cain and His Exile
C. D. Yonge (1854–1855) · Translated text with edition notes
Section XLIX
XLIX. (170) Therefore the mind having generated the foundation of good [...]
{71}
{there is again an hiatus in the text here. Mangey conjectures diagoµgeµs, "way of life," to be the word which has fallen out.}
and the primary principle of virtue, namely Seth, or irrigation, boasts with an honourable and holy boast; for she says, "God has raised up to me another seed, instead of Abel whom Cain Slew,"
{72}
{genesis 4:25.}
for it has been said with great exactness and neatness, that no single divine seed ever falls to the ground, but that they all rise up from the things of earth, and leave them, and are borne upwards to heaven; (171) but the seeds which are sown by mortals, whether for the generation of animals or of plants, do not all come to perfection; but we must be content if more are not wasted than those which remain above; and God sows nothing in our souls which is incomplete; but his seed is all so seasonable and so perfect that every one of them is at once borne forward to produce abundance of its appropriate fruit.
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