is totally foreign to any human lips, because it is inexpressible, so that if you
80 On Genesis: A Refutation of the Manichees the difference is between the good which it has turned its back on and the evil into which it has fallen. And this will be its tasting of the fruit of the tree ofdistin guishing between good and evil. So then, it is commanded to eat of every tree that is in Paradise, but not to eat of the tree in which good and evil are distin guished; that is, not to enjoy it in such a way as to violate and corrupt, as if by chewing it to pieces, the duly ordered integrity of its own nature.
What the rivers ofParadise indicate
10, 13. Now a river was coming forth out of Eden (Gn 2:10), that is from delights and pleasure and feasting, the river the prophet has in mind in the psalms, when he says: You will give them to drinkfrom the torrent ofyourplea sure (Ps 36:8); Eden, you see, means "pleasure" in English. This river is divided into four parts and thus signifies the four virtues, prudence, fortitude, temper ance and justice.19 The Pishon, though, is said to be the Ganges, the Gihon the Nile, which can also be noticed in the prophet Jeremiah.20 These two are now called by other names, like the river which is now called the Tiber, but was once called the Albula,21 while the Tigris and Euphrates still have the same names.
By these names, however, as l was saying, spiritual virtues are signified, as even the translation of the names themselves will indicate, if you bear in mind the Hebrew or Syriac language, just as Jerusalem, while being a visible place on earth, still means spiritually "City of Peace," and Zion, while being a mountain on earth, nonetheless means "Contemplation." This name is often applied in scriptural allegories to the understanding of spiritual things. And that man who was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, as the Lord says,22 and was attacked on the road and wounded and left half dead by robbers, certainly obliges us to understand these places, although historically speaking they are to be found on earth, in a spiritual sense.
14. So then prudence, which stands for an actual contemplation of Truth that is totally foreign to any human lips, because it is inexpressible, so that if you wished to utter it you would be in labor with it rather than actually bringing it
1 9. The four cardinal, or hinge, virtues of ancient Greek ethics, duly incorporated into Christian moral theology. 1 give them their traditional names, in this following the Encyclopedia Britannica (article, "Cardinal Virtues"), though they cover a somewhat wider ground than these names now signify in contemporary English. 20. There is no mention of this river, or its identity with the Nile, anywhere in Jeremiah; but it is mentioned in Sirach 24:27, where after naming the other three rivers of paradise, the author says that instruction will come forth like Gihon at the time of vintage—a possible allusion to the flooding of the Nile. Augustine's memory, for once, is playing him tricks. 21. See Virgil's Aeneid, V111.332. See also Augustine's greater work. The Literal Meaning of Genesis, V111,7,13. and note 25 there. 22. SeeLk 10:30.