Perhaps we shall never know the why and the wherefore, Eleazar said, it being against our rules to absent ourselves without permission from the cenoby, and if we were to break this rule, Hazael might refuse to receive us again.  We should wander on the hills seeking grass and roots, for our oaths are that we take no food from strangers.  Yet I’d give much to hear how our brethren, for they are our brethren, fare with their wives.

And when they met on the balcony, the elder members of the community, Hazael, Mathias, Saddoc and Manahem, like the younger members conferred together as to whether any good could come to those that had taken wives to themselves for their pleasure.  Not for their pleasure, Hazael said, but that holiness may not pass out of the world for ever.  But as holiness, Mathias was moved to remark, is of the mind, it cannot be affected by any custom we might impose upon our corporeal nature.  Whereupon a disputation began in which Manahem urged upon Mathias that if he had made himself plain it would seem that his belief was that holiness was not dependent upon our acts; and if that be so, he asked, why do we live on this ledge of rock?  To which question Mathias answered that the man whose mind is in order need not fear that he will fall into sin, for sin is but a disorder of the mind.

A debate followed regarding the relation of the mind to the body and of the body to the mind, and when all four were wearied of the old discussion, Saddoc said:  is it right that we should concern ourselves with these things, asking which of the brothers have taken wives, and how they behave themselves to their wives?  It seems to me that Saddoc is right, these matters don’t concern us who have no wives and who never will have.  But, said Manahem, though this question has been decided so far as our bodies are concerned, are we not justified in considering marriage as philosophers may, no subject being alien to philosophy?  Is not that so, Mathias?  No subject is alien to philosophy, Mathias agreed, to which Saddoc replied:  we could discuss this matter with profit if we knew which of the brothers had taken to himself a wife; but only rumours reach us here; and the brethren looked across the chasm, their thoughts crossing it easily and passing over the intervening hills down into the plains and over Jordan.  We should no doubt be content, said Manahem, with our own beliefs, and abide in the choice that we have made without questioning it further, as Hazael has said.  Yet it is hard to keep thoughts of the brethren we have left out of our minds.  How are we, Hazael, to remain unmoved when rumours touching on the lives of those we have left behind reach us?  Is it not merely natural that we should desire to hear how our brethren fare in married life?  Dost think, Hazael, that those we left behind never ask each other how we fare in our celibacy?  Man is the same all the world over inasmuch as he would like to hear he has avoided the pitfall his brother has