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Rh temple of God and an only-begotten world" (μονογενῆ τε κόσμον: cf. Plut. ii. 423, ἕνα τοῦτον [τὸν κόσμον] εἶναι μονογενῆ τῷ θεῷ καὶ ἀγαπητόν).

We have a curious piece of psychological theory in the account of the passions attributed to the Basilidians (οἱ ἀμφὶ τὸν Β.). They are accustomed, Clement says (Strom. ii. p. 488), to call the passions Appendages (προσαρτήματα), stating that these are certain spirits which have a substantial existence (κατ οὐσίαν ὐπάρχειν), having been appended (or "attached," or "adherent," various kinds of close external contact being expressed by προσηρτημένα, cf. M. Aur. xii. 3, with Gataker's note, and also Tertullian's ceteris appendicibus, sensibus et affectibus, Adv. Marc. i. 25, cited by Gieseler) to the rational soul in a certain primitive turmoil and confusion, and that again other bastard and alien natures of spirits grow upon these (προσεπιφύεσθαι ταύταις), as of a wolf, an ape, a lion, a goat, whose characteristics (ιδιώματα), becoming perceptible in the region of the soul (θανταζόμενα περὶ τὴν ψυχήν), assimilate the desires of the son to the animals; for they imitate the actions of those whose characteristics they wear, and not only acquire intimacy (προσοικειοῦνται) with the impulses and impressions of the irrational animals, but even imitate (ζηλοῦσι) the movements and beauties of plants, because they likewise wear the characteristics of plants appended to them; and [the passions] have also characteristics of habit [derived from stones], as the hardness of adamant (cf. p. 487 med.). In the absence of the context it is impossible to determine the precise meaning and origin of this singular theory. It was probably connected with the doctrine of metempsychosis, which seemed to find support in Plato's Timaeus 42, 90 f.), and was cherished by some neo-Pythagoreans later in the 2nd cent. (cf. Zeller, Philos. d. Gr. v. 198 f.); while the plurality of souls is derided by Clement as making the body a Trojan horse, with apparent reference (as Saumaise points out, on Simplic. Epict. 164) to a similar criticism of Plato in the Theaetetus (184 ). And again Plutarch (de Comm. Not. 45, p. 1084) ridicules the Stoics (i.e. apparently Chrysippus) for a "strange and outlandish" notion that all virtues and vices, arts and memories, impressions and passions and impulses and assents (he adds further down even "acts," ἐνεργείας, such as "walking, dancing, supposing, addressing, reviling") are not merely "bodies" (of course in the familiar Stoic sense) but living creatures or animals (ζῳα), crowded apparently round the central point within the heart where "the ruling principle" (τὸ ἡγεμονικόν) is located: by this "swarm," he says, of hostile animals they turn each one of us into "a paddock or a stable, or a Trojan horse." Such a theory might seem to Basilides an easy deduction from his fatalistic doctrine of Providence, and of the consequent immutability of all natures.

The only specimen which we have of the practical ethics of Basilides is of a favourable kind, though grossly misunderstood and misapplied by Epiphanius (i. 211 f.). Reciting the views of different heretics on Marriage,

Clement (Strom. iii. 508 ff.) mentions first its approval by the Valentinians, and then gives specimens of the teaching of Basilides (οἱ ἀπὸ Β.) and his son Isidore, by way of rebuke to the immorality of the later Basilidians, before proceeding to the sects which favoured licence, and to those which treated marriage as unholy. He first reports the exposition of Matt. xix. II f. (or a similar evangelic passage), in which there is nothing specially to note except the interpretation of the last class of eunuchs as those who remain in celibacy to avoid the distracting cares of providing a livelihood. He goes on to the paraphrase of I. Cor. vii. 9, interposing in the midst an illustrative sentence from Isidore, and transcribes the language used about the class above mentioned. "But suppose a young man either poor or (?) depressed [κατηφής seems at least less unlikely than κατωφερής], and in accordance with the word [in the Gospel] unwilling to marry, let him not separate from his brother; let him say 'I have entered into the holy place [τὰ ἅγια, probably the communion of the church], nothing can befall me'; but if he have a suspicion [? self-distrust, ὑπονοίαν ἔχῃ], let him say, 'Brother, lay thy hand on me, that I may sin not,' and he shall receive help both to mind and to senses (νοητὴν καὶ αἰσθητήν); let him only have the will to carry out completely what is good, and he shall succeed. But sometimes we say with the lips, 'We will not sin,' while our thoughts are turned towards sinning: such an one abstains by reason of fear from doing what he wills, lest the punishment be reckoned to his account. But the estate of mankind has only certain things at once necessary and natural, clothing being necessary and natural, but τὸ τῶν ἀφροδισίων natural, yet not necessary" (cf. Plut. Mor. 989).

Although we have no evidence that Basilides, like some others, regarded our Lord's Baptism as the time when a Divine being first was joined to Jesus of Nazareth, it seems clear that he attached some unusual significance to the event. "They of Basilides (οἱ ἀπὸ Β.)," says Clement (Strom. i. 146, p. 408), "celebrate the day of His Baptism by a preliminary night-service of [Scripture] readings (προδιανυκτερεύοντες ἀναγνώσεσι); and they say that the 'fifteenth year of Tiberius Caesar' (Luke iii. I) is (or means) the fifteenth day of the [Egyptian] month Tybi, while some [make the day] the eleventh of the same month." Again it is briefly stated in the Excerpta (16, p. 972) that the dove of the Baptism is said by the Basilidians (οἱ ἀπὸ Β.) to be the Minister (ὁ διάκονος). And the same association is implied in what Clement urges elsewhere (Strom. ii. p. 449): "If ignorance belongs to the class of good things, why is it brought to an end by amazement [i.e. the amazement of the Archon], and [so] the Minister that they speak of [αὐτοῖς] is superfluous, and the Proclamation, and the Baptism: if ignorance had not previously existed, the Minister would not have descended, nor would amazement have seized the Archon, as they themselves say." This language, taken in conjunction with passages already cited from Hippolytus (c. 26), implies that Basilides regarded the Baptism 