The Instructor 2.10.102

to pleasure crowns his life.” It is not right, then, to be overcome by sexual pleasure, nor to gape after desires, nor to be driven wild by irrational appetites, nor to desire to be defiled. Only the married man is permitted to sow, like a farmer, at the time when the season receives the seed. For the rest of incontinence the best medicine is the Word; and lack of surfeit helps too, by which desires, inflamed, leap after pleasures. Nor, then, should we lay claim to costly clothing, any more than to varied food. The Lord himself, dividing his precepts into soul, body, and third, external things, advises us to provide external things for the body, and to govern the body by the soul; and he instructs the soul, saying: “Do not be anxious for your soul, what you will eat, nor for your body, what you will put on; for the soul is more than food, and the body more than clothing.” And he adds a clear example of the teaching: “Consider the ravens: they neither sow nor reap, they have no storeroom or barn, and God feeds them. Are you not worth more than the birds?” This about food; and likewise he gives charge about clothing, which belongs to the third class, external things: “Consider the lilies, how they neither spin nor weave; and I tell you, not even Solomon was clothed like one of these.” And King Solomon prided himself greatly on his wealth.