Note 85 — ON ABSTINENCE FROM ANIMAL FOOD. BOOK THE FOURTH.

These lines are from Hesiod. Oper. 116. The different ages, however, of mankind, which are celebrated by Hesiod in his Works and Days, signify the different lives which the individuals of the human species pass through; and as Proclus on Hesiod beautifully observes, they may be comprehended in this triad, the golden, the silver, and the brazen age. But by the golden age an intellectual life is implied. For such a life is pure, impassive, and free from sorrow; and of this impassivity and purity, gold is an image, through never being subject to rust or putrefaction. Such a life, too, is very properly said to be under Saturn, because Saturn is an intellectual God, or a God characterised by intellect. By the silver age, a rustic and natural life is implied, in which the attention of the rational soul is entirely directed to the care of the body, but without proceeding to extreme depravity. And by the brazen age, a dire, tyrannic, and cruel life is implied, which is entirely passive, and proceeds to the very extremity of vice. The order, also, of these metals, harmonizes, as Proclus observes, with that of the lives. “For,” says he, “gold is solar-form, because the sun is solely immaterial light. But silver is lunar-form, because the moon partakes of shadow, just as silver partakes of rust. And brass is earthly, so far as not having a nature similar to a lucid body; it is replete with abundance of corruption.”