Philonis Judaei Opera Omnia (Vol. 7)

The reason, however, why each of the animals is of three years and three numbers has already been given before, but now it must be said under another species of mystery. Since it seemed that each of those things that are after the moon, such as earth, water, and air, enjoys a triple order. For the divisions of the earth are the vast dry land, islands, and peninsulas; of the water, the sea, rivers, and ponds; of the air, both equinoxes, vernal and autumnal, are held as one, for they have an equal hour of night and day, and likewise the equinoxes are neither hot nor cold: to which you must add the summer and winter solstices; for the sun is carried through these three circles in the summer, winter, and equinoctial seasons. The natural reason of this kind will therefore be paramount. The moral reason, however, properly stands thus.

In each one of us these are present: flesh, senses, and reason. Since, therefore, the heifer bears a familiarity with bodily substance; because our flesh is subdued and obeys and joins itself to the service of life; its nature is also female according to matter, knowing how to suffer and be affected rather than to act. With the community of the senses, the likeness of the goat coheres, either because individual sensible things are carried to their proper sense, or because from the imagination of things accepted through the sense, there arises an impulse and motion of the soul. This, however, follows primarily as an inflection or alienation, called by some 'occasion' original: "ἀφορμή", that is, an impulse of every kind: but since the sense is female, as suffering from the sensible, he matched the goat to it as a female animal. The ram is related to the Word (or reason); first, because it is male; second, because it is a worker; and third, because it is a cause of the world and the firmament: for instance, the ram through clothing, but the Word (or reason) in the order of life. For whatever is not disordered and absurd, immediately bears reason before itself. The species of reason is twofold: one by nature, by which the things of the sensible world are completed; the other, however, of those which are called incorporeal species, by which indeed the things of the intelligible world are completed: the dove and the turtledove are found to be like these. The dove, of course, is of physical theory, for it is a bird more familiar, just as sensible things are too familiar to sight: and the soul of the physiologist flies upward as if armed with wings and, being raised higher, is carried around the heaven, seeing the parts of all things and the reasons for each.