The Corruption of Choice and Wealth

Something greater happens. He does not remember many things, but has hope only for the present, saying, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die' (Isa 22:13). Therefore, is this what it means that 'God distracts him' (Ps 39:6)? He distracts him in these things, since he does not want to acquire the preceding things, nor does he labor for the taking up of them. So that the soul does not become motionless, other things are given to it. And I said this at the beginning of the book, when I had it: 'God gave a wicked distraction.'

Therefore, the ascent: 'that he does not remember many of the days of his life, because God distracts him in the joy of his heart' (Ps 39:6). To live according to philosophy and virtue is the chief and true life. And men do not remember many things, nor do they do much regarding that; they attend only to those who distract them and bring pleasant things, and they strive only about those things which they collect. But it was necessary to remember many things of those which will be useful to his life truly.

And here, then, is the common life, according to which we feel, according to which we have the soul yoked to the body, and according to which irrational animals move and perceive. The divine life, according to reason and contemplation, is the particular life of this man. Therefore, does he not remember this? He does not remember those things contributing to this life, if he has something futile.

Again, here 'heart' for us means the true mind, which sees God. For instance, the saint says 'with boldness' to God: 'my heart was not stuck to me through scandal' sic. Again, others have 'fleshly hearts, in which the Spirit of the living God writes.' And he says 'fleshly' meaning those receptive to the writing of the Spirit. It is also possible, according to the literal sense, that he rejoices in his own heart. For he desired to have a heart feeding on pleasure.

One must take the words toward those speaking. If the speaker is wise, one must listen to them wisely. If, being wise, he personifies another face and brings it appropriately to that man, one must again listen to the conversation in that person. Since the apostle himself says: 'whether we eat or whether we drink, we neither lack nor exceed' (1 Cor 10:31), whether we are Christians or wise.

Or 'slaves of Christ', we have neither addition nor subtraction from the eating of anything still. But when he says, 'Let us eat and drink, for tomorrow we die' (Isa 22:13), it is the same scribe, the same one speaking, but not from his own person, not as an apostle speaks, but he took the persona of those saying that beyond this present life, there is no life after these things.

It is an evil that I saw under the sun (Eccl 1:9), and it is much among men; a man, to whom God will give wealth and substance and glory. These are held by evils; and this evil I 'saw under the sun' (Eccl 1:9) and especially it abounds among men. And in irrational animals one finds difference; not all horses are so loved as those standing by for contests or for wars. And likewise with donkeys and dogs.

But the difference is great concerning man. For those things indeed act differently. That kind of resting... is the one being expelled. Here, however, choice is a distracted choice, a choice unable to judge what is profitable and what is not profitable; knowledge is an error, to suppose that one is able to produce something from wealth and glory among men, when he sinks from opposites, from injustice and poverty. It is therefore great, since it is taken through choice. And it seems to take that which is neither good nor bad; but it does not bear this evil which one is able to take.

If he has a right thought, it seems that the 'man' has something advantageous compared to the whole race of men. The woman is not so as the man, nor the boy as the one who has come to manhood. If then the 'man' carries these things well, those who are inferior to the man have much more. 'There is' for him, he says, 'wealth and glory', and he has nothing more of these. He used to have more of them. The wise man, if he has 'wealth', uses the wealth differently than the many-man; the one having 'glory' does not think greatly upon the glory, but also adorns it along with himself. Joseph once had glory, and his own virtue adorned it. And the other wise men did this according to us. But he who has thought about the walls and otherwise about the passers-by, caring for them little, that one founders in these things.