Clement of Alexandria · a new plain-English translation from the original language
It is also worth marveling at the Stoic claim that no bodily state touches the soul at all — that disease cannot push it toward vice, nor health toward virtue — declaring both to be simply indifferent matters. Yet Job, through the sheer excess of his self-mastery and the superiority of his faith, turned poor though he had been rich, dishonored though he had been honored, ugly though he had been comely, diseased though he had been healthy — and he stands recorded for us as a fine example, putting to shame the one who tested him, blessing the one who shaped him, carrying the second portion exactly as he had carried the first, and demonstrating through every circumstance that the true Gnostic can turn anything to good use. That the successes of the ancients are laid out as patterns for correcting us, the apostle states outright, saying that his chains had become evident in Christ across the entire praetorium and among everyone else, and that most of the brethren, growing confident in the Lord on account of his imprisonment, ventured all the more boldly to proclaim God's message fearlessly — since martyrdoms too stand as glorious instances of conversion. For, as he says, everything written down was set in writing for our own teaching, so that through the endurance and comfort found in the scriptures we might hold on to hope, the hope born of that comfort.
It seems that, when pain is present, the soul is somehow inclined to shrink from it and to regard release from the present distress as something precious. Indeed, at that time it also grows slack in learning, just as the other virtues are neglected as well. And we surely do not say that virtue itself suffers — for virtue does not fall ill — but the person who partakes of both virtue and disease is oppressed by what presses hard upon him; and if he does not happen to be great-souled, the one who has not yet acquired the settled disposition of self-mastery gives way, and failing to endure is found to be equivalent to fleeing.
The same reasoning applies also to poverty, since it too, among life's necessities — I mean the necessities of contemplation and of unblemished purity — burdens the soul with preoccupation, compelling someone who has not given himself over to God entirely through love to spend his energy simply earning a living; whereas, by contrast, good health together with an abundance of necessities leaves the soul free and untroubled, provided the soul knows how to put its present circumstances to good use. For such people, the apostle says, will have trouble in the flesh, but I would spare you that. For I want you free from anxiety, so that you may live becomingly and devote yourself to the Lord without distraction.
These matters, then, ought to be maintained not for their own value, but on account of the body, while the tending of the body itself happens on account of the soul, toward which everything ultimately points. For it is within the soul that the one living as a Gnostic must learn what is fitting, since it has already been granted that pleasure is not a good, simply from the fact that some pleasures are bad. Following this same logic it becomes clear that a thing good can also be bad and a thing bad can also be good. Furthermore, since we choose certain pleasures and avoid others, not every pleasure counts as a good. The identical logic governs pains as well: some we bear, others we avoid, and both the bearing and the avoiding proceed according to knowledge; so it is knowledge, not pleasure, that constitutes the good — knowledge for whose sake we will, at times, even opt for a given pleasure.
For instance, the martyr chooses the pleasure that comes through hope by means of the present pain. And if pain is conceived in connection with thirst, and pleasure in connection with drinking, then the pain that existed beforehand becomes productive of the pleasure; but the bad could not be productive of the good, so neither of the two is bad. Simonides, then, just as Aristotle does, writes that to be healthy is best for a man, second is to be born fair of form, and third is to be wealthy without deceit. And Theognis of Megara says: one fleeing poverty ought to hurl himself, Cyrnus, even into the deep-yawning sea and down from sheer cliffs. But conversely Antiphanes the comic poet says that wealth, † seeing more, takes hold of those who see and makes them blind.
For instance, among the poets a man is proclaimed blind from birth: 'and she bore him a son who never saw the sun,' says Euphorion of Chalcis. Wealth, then, was a bad training for manly virtue among men, and so were excessive luxuries, as Euripides has composed in the Alexander. And it has been said: poverty has obtained wisdom as its kin. But love of money would overthrow not only Sparta but every city. So it is not only white silver or gold that is coinage, but virtue too is coinage for mortals, as Sophocles says.
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