[9] This is why Moses does not say that Sarah did not bear, but only that she did not bear for some particular person. For we are not capable as yet of receiving the impregnation of virtue unless we have first mated with her handmaiden, and the handmaiden of wisdom is the culture gained by the primary learning of the school course.
[10] For, just as in houses we have outer doors in front of the chamber doors, and in cities suburbs through which we can pass to the inner part, so the school course precedes virtue; the one is a road which leads to the other.
[11] Now we must understand that great themes need great introductions; and the greatest of all themes is virtue, for it deals with the greatest of materials, that is the whole life of man. Naturally, then, virtue will employ no minor kind of introduction, but grammar, geometry, astronomy, rhetoric, music, and all the other branches of intellectual study. These are symbolized by Hagar, the handmaid of Sarah, as I shall proceed to shew.
[12] For Sarah, we are told, said to Abraham: “Behold, the Lord has shut me out from bearing. Go in unto my handmaid, that thou mayest beget children from her.” In the present discussion, we must eliminate all bodily unions or intercourse which has pleasure as its object. What is meant is a mating of mind with virtue. Mind desires to have children by virtue, and, if it cannot do so at once, is instructed to espouse virtue’s handmaid, the lower instruction.