If only these dimwits had actually looked at the text as a reflection of the Platonized Christianity that seems to have eminated from Alexandria from a very early period they too would have 'cracked the Secret Mark code' as I am claiming to have done right here and now.
For it just struck me as I was reading Plato's Phaedrus that Clement's reference to the Carpocratians' 'false' interpretation of LGM 1 (the first addition to Secret Mark in the Letter to Theodore) is actually a Platonic interpretation of 'true philosophy' in the Phaedrus. This follows a pattern of similar 'misinterpretations' by the Carpocrates owing to their 'over-dependance' on the Greek philosopher.
In the Stromata Book III the Carpocratians 'misinterpret' Mark 10:17 - 31 owing to a misreading of Plato:
Such, I think, is the law that Carpocrates must have given for the copulations of dogs and pigs and goats. He seems to me to have misunderstood the saying of Plato in the Republic that the women of all are to be common. Plato means that the unmarried are common for those who wish to ask them, as also the theatre is open to the public for all who wish to see, but that when each one has chosen his wife, then the married woman is no longer common to all. [Strom 3.2]It is worth noting that Marcionite asceticism and rejection of procreation is similarly attributed to a 'misunderstanding' of Plato.
Yet before we leave the topic of the Carpocratian 'misinterpretation' of Mark 10:17 - 31 it must be noted that Clement's comments seem to have been prompted also by an influential contemporary in Celsus that the gospel writer (presumably Mark) stole everything from Plato. All we have left of that original argument in Celsus is Origen's summary in Book Six of his work against Celsus's 'True Account':
In the next place, with regard to the declaration of Jesus against rich men, when He said, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God," Celsus alleges that this saying manifestly proceeded from Plato, and that Jesus perverted the words of the philosopher, which were, that “it was impossible to be distinguished for goodness, and at the same time for riches." Now who is there that is capable of giving even moderate attention to affairs—not merely among the believers on Jesus, but among the rest of mankind—that would not laugh at Celsus, on hearing that Jesus, who was born and brought up among the Jews, and was supposed to be the son of Joseph the carpenter, and who had not studied literature—not merely that of the Greeks, but not even that of the Hebrews—as the truth-loving Scriptures testify regarding Him, had read Plato, and being pleased with the opinion he expressed regarding rich men, to the effect that “it was impossible to be distinguished for goodness and riches at the same time,” had perverted this, and changed it into, “It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God!” (Origen Contra Celsus 6.16)The point that no one has recognized hitherto is that the Platonic interpretation of Mark chapter 10 was firmly established in the age. Indeed if we look at the source of the quotation cited by Celsus - i.e. the Laws Book Five - we will see that it is the same material being allegedly cited by the Carpocratians and to which Clement responds in Stromateis Book Three.
Doesn't anyone get what I am driving at here? I have noted a number of times here at my blog that if we look carefully, Clement seems to be consistently reacting to things said in Celsus's True Account. The first example we gave was the bit about King Minos the 'bosom friend' of Zeus, which Celsus said was stolen by Christians for their mysteries. There were many others, but most importantly there is the fact that Celsus clearly knows and uses the Hypomnemata of Hegesippus which contains the original mention of Marcellina the Harpocratian (this is how Celsus cites the group). All the details about homosexuality, debauchery and the like were in that tome as well as details about 'the Greater Church' (whom Celsus's apparently approved) and how it differed from the 'Marcionites,' the Carpocratians and other sects.
Ceslsus was writing the treatise in the period immediately after the revolt of the cross-dressing Boucoli of Alexandria (i.e. the very region where the Church of St. Mark was located) in 175 CE. It was published in the age which immediately followed Cassian's crushing of that rebellion and his subsequent attempt to be declared Caesar. The True Account makes explicit reference to Marcus Aurelius and his son Commodus sitting as rulers of the Roman Empire together. Clement wrote his Stromateis as the last of his three surviving works immediately following the assassination of Commodus (cf. Strom. Book 1) and the series closes with a citation of Marcus Aurelius's Meditations and an attempt to demonstrate Christianity to be fully compatible with his beliefs. The other works were written during the age of Commodus, with the Exhortation being the earliest. The Stromateis makes explicit reference to Roman persecutions in Alexandria during the reign of Commodus (these have been misread as related to those which forced Clement to leave Alexandria). Less than a generation separate the publication of Celsus's work and Clement's Stromateis.
Now here comes our discovery.
Origen decided to undertake a full response to Celsus's work again over a half century after its initial publication. He was assigned this duty by his patron Ambrose who was the deacon of the same Church of St. Mark in the Boucolia. Clearly Celsus's book was a thorn in the side of the Alexandrian community. Origen gave up his initial attempt to develop a response after yet another Roman persecution in Alexandria and he finally completed the job in relative safety overseas. Origen is very shrewd in his response to Celsus's original charges. We spend more time hearing his impressions of Celsus was driving at rather than whole sections of the original work. It is really - a line of Celsus here followed by two sometimes three paragraphs of scriptural exegesis followed by two lines of Ceslus in the following section followed by four paragraphs of exegesis on Origen's part.
We really don't get the whole 'gist' of whatr Celsus is on about. Origen is very careful to cite just enough so that we think we know what Celsus was saying. However, does anyone really believe that all that Celsus said about Mark 10:17 - 31 was that the Christians stole the idea that "“it was impossible to be distinguished for goodness, and at the same time for riches" from Plato? Here is the original passage from Plato's Laws Book Five in its entirety:
Further, the law enjoins that no private man shall be allowed to possess gold and silver, but only coin for daily use, which is almost necessary in dealing with artisans, and for payment of hirelings, whether slaves or immigrants, by all those persons who require the use of them. Wherefore our citizens, as we say, should have a coin passing current among themselves, but not accepted among the rest of mankind; with a view, however, to expeditions and journeys to other lands-for embassies, or for any other occasion which may arise of sending out a herald, the state must also possess a common Hellenic currency. If a private person is ever obliged to go abroad, let him have the consent of the magistrates and go; and if when he returns he has any foreign money remaining, let him give the surplus back to the treasury, and receive a corresponding sum in the local currency. And if he is discovered to appropriate it, let it be confiscated, and let him who knows and does not inform be subject to curse and dishonour equally him who brought the money, and also to a fine not less in amount than the foreign money which has been brought back. In marrying and giving in marriage, no one shall give or receive any dowry at all; and no one shall deposit money with another whom he does not trust as a friend, nor shall he lend money upon interest; and the borrower should be under no obligation to repay either capital or interest. That these principles are best, any one may see who compares them with the first principle and intention of a state. The intention, as we affirm, of a reasonable statesman, is not what the many declare to be the object of a good legislator, namely, that the state for the true interests of which he is advising should be as great and as rich as possible, and should possess gold and silver, and have the greatest empire by sea and land;-this they imagine to be the real object of legislation, at the same time adding, inconsistently, that the true legislator desires to have the city the best and happiest possible. But they do not see that some of these things are possible, and some of them are impossible; and he who orders the state will desire what is possible, and will not indulge in vain wishes or attempts to accomplish that which is impossible. The citizen must indeed be happy and good, and the legislator will seek to make him so; but very rich and very good at the same time he cannot be, not, at least, in the sense in which the many speak of riches. For they mean by "the rich" the few who have the most valuable possessions, although the owner of them may quite well be a rogue. And if this is true, I can never assent to the doctrine that the rich man will be happy-he must be good as well as rich. And good in a high degree, and rich in a high degree at the same time, he cannot be. Some one will ask, why not? And we shall answer-Because acquisitions which come from sources which are just and unjust indifferently, are more than double those which come from just sources only; and the sums which are expended neither honourably nor disgracefully, are only half as great as those which are expended honourably and on honourable purposes. Thus, if the one acquires double and spends half, the other who is in the opposite case and is a good man cannot possibly be wealthier than he. The first-I am speaking of the saver and not of the spender-is not always bad; he may indeed in some cases be utterly bad, but, as I was saying, a good man he never is. For he who receives money unjustly as well as justly, and spends neither nor unjustly, will be a rich man if he be also thrifty. On the other hand, the utterly bad is in general profligate, and therefore very poor; while he who spends on noble objects, and acquires wealth by just means only, can hardly be remarkable for riches, any more than he can be very poor. Our statement, then, is true, that the very rich are not good, and, if they are not good, they are not happy. But the intention of our laws was that the citizens should be as happy as may be, and as friendly as possible to one another. And men who are always at law with one another, and amongst whom there are many wrongs done, can never be friends to one another, but only those among whom crimes and lawsuits are few and slight. Therefore we say that gold and silver ought not to be allowed in the city, nor much of the vulgar sort of trade which is carried on by lending money, or rearing the meaner kinds of live stock; but only the produce of agriculture, and only so much of this as will not compel us in pursuing it to neglect that for the sake of which riches exist-I mean, soul and body, which without gymnastics, and without education, will never be worth anything; and therefore, as we have said not once but many times, the care of riches should have the last place in our thoughts. For there are in all three things about which every man has an interest; and the interest about money, when rightly regarded, is the third and lowest of them: midway comes the interest of the body; and, first of all, that of the soul; and the state which we are describing will have been rightly constituted if it ordains honours according to this scale. But if, in any of the laws which have been ordained, health has been preferred to temperance, or wealth to health and temperate habits, that law must clearly be wrong. Wherefore, also, the legislator ought often to impress upon himself the question-"What do I want?" and "Do I attain my aim, or do I miss the mark?" In this way, and in this way only, he ma acquit himself and free others from the work of legislation. [the Laws Book 5.14 - 17]It is universally acknowledged that Celsus thinks that Christians stole their teaching from Mark 10:17 - 31 from this Platonic text. Yet what hasn't been noticed of course is that the exact same text is at the heart of the Carpocratian sect's interpretation of Mark 10:17 - 31 and which forms the basis to Clement's response in Quis Dives Salvetur, parts of the instructor and the first half of Book Three of the Stromateis.
The last book is of critical importance because alongside the debate with heretics over this passage from the Laws there appears a criticism of the Carpocratians for misinterpretation a section of text which appears a paragraph earlier in the same book:
The first and highest form of the state and of the government and of the law is that in which there prevails most widely the ancient saying, that "Friends have all things in common." Whether there is anywhere now, or will ever be, this communion of women and children and of property, in which the private and individual is altogether banished from life, and things which are by nature private, such as eyes and ears and hands, have become common, and in some way see and hear and act in common, and all men express praise and blame and feel joy and sorrow on the same occasions, and whatever laws there are unite the city to the utmost-whether all this is possible or not, I say that no man, acting upon any other principle, will ever constitute a state which will be truer or better or more exalted in virtue. Whether such a state is governed by Gods or sons of Gods, one, or more than one, happy are the men who, living after this manner, dwell there; and therefore to this we are to look for the pattern of the state, and to cling to this, and to seek with all our might for one which is like this. The state which we have now in hand, when created, will be nearest to immortality and the only one which takes the second place; and after that, by the grace of God, we will complete the third one. And we will begin by speaking of the nature and origin of the second. Let the citizens at once distribute their land and houses, and not till the land in common, since a community of goods goes beyond their proposed origin, and nurture, and education. [ibid 11]
Now we have to remember that Clement not only attacks people who see Mark 10:17 - 31 as holding the what Celsus cited earlier from the Law but now in Book Three what is expressed in the section just cited:
These are the doctrines of our noble Carpocratians. They say that these people and some other zealots for the same vicious practices gather for dinner (I could never call their congregation a Christian love-feast), men and women together, and after they have stuffed themselves ("The Cyprian goddess is there when you are full," they say), they knock over the lamps, put out the light that would expose their fornicating righteousness," and couple as they will with any woman they fancy. So in this love-feast they practice commonality. Then by daylight they demand any woman they want in obedience – it would be wrong to say to the Law of God – to the law of Carpocrates. I guess that is the sort of legislation Carpocrates must have established for the copulation of dogs, pigs, and goats. I fancy he has, in fact, misunderstood Plato’s dictum in the Republic that wives are to be held in common by everyone. Plato really meant that before marriage they are to be available to any who intend to ask them to marry, just as the theatre is open to all spectators; but that once a woman has married she belongs to the particular man who secured her first and is no longer held in common by everyone. [Stromateis 3.2]To be sure the original reference to this idea appears in Plato, Republic 5.457 D. Yet the Laws reflects Plato revisiting his original conception with as a kind of impossible dream nonetheless. It is simply impossible to believe that Clement and Celsus could have independently decided that Mark 10:17 - 31 should be interpreted by means of Book Five of Plato's the Laws. And then the next section of the Stromateis Book Three confirms our theory - viz. Clement was responding to something he read in Celsus's widely influential True Account.
If we look at the very beginning of the Book Three Chapter Three of the Stromateis Clement switches from attacking the Carpocratians to the Marcionites but the topic is still 'borrowing from Plato.' We read:
If even Plato and the Pythagoreans, like the followers of Marcion later (though he was far from maintaining that wives should be held in common), regarded birth as something evil, Marcion’s followers held natural processes as evil because they were derived from matter that was evil, and from an unrighteous creator. On this argument they have no wish to fill the cosmos the creator brought into being, and choose to abstain from marriage. They stand in opposition to their creator and make haste towards the one they call god, who is not (they say) god in another sense. As a result, they have no desire to leave anything of theirs behind them here on earth. So they are abstinent not by an act of will but through hatred of the creator and the refusal to use any of his productions. But in their irreverent war with God they stand apart from natural reason. They despise God’s generous goodness. Even if they choose not to marry, they still use the food he has produced, they still breathe the creator’s air. They are themselves his works and live in his world. They say that they have received the gospel of an alien knowledge. In one respect they ought to recognize the grace of the Lord of the cosmos; it is here on earth that they have received the gospel. [Stromaties 3.3]It was Chadwick who notes that Clement is referencing the same part of Celsus's work that cited by Origen in Against Celsus 6.53, 8.28. Anyone who has ever read Book Eight of this series will recognize that the language is appropriated from that text. All of which takes us back to our original citation of Clement's echo of Celsus's original argument regarding a contemporary Alexandrian exegetical method which used Plato's the Laws to clarify important passages from the Gospel of Mark especially.
One can't overstate how false Clement's interpretation of Plato is in Book Three of the Stromateis. Clement’s version is a total misrepresentation taken from the Stoic Epictetus, the teacher of Marcus Aurelius:
"What then, are not women common by nature?" So I say also; for a little pig is common to all the invited guests, but when the portions have been distributed, go, if you think it right, and snatch up the portion of him who reclines next to you, or slyly steal it, or place your hand down by it and lay hold of it, and if you cannot tear away a bit of the meat, grease your fingers and lick them. A fine companion over cups, and Socratic guest indeed! "Well, is not the theatre common to the citizens?" When then they have taken their seats, come, if you think proper, and eject one of them. In this way women also are common by nature. When, then, the legislator, like the master of a feast, has distributed them, will you not also look for your own portion and not filch and handle what belongs to another. "But I am a man of letters and understand Archedemus." Understand Archedemus then, and be an adulterer, and faithless, and instead of a man, be a wolf or an ape: for what is the difference? (Discourses 2.4.8-10)In Plato, of course the "communism" applies only to the ruling class where men and women have equal status, and neither possesses the other; there is sexual abstinence and no promiscuity; copulation is permitted at festivals with a partner allocated by lot. Yet I don't think that Clement is channeling Epictetus at all but rather the work of Celsus who likely sat in the court of Marcus Aurelius, when he was sick and dying and composed this vicious attack against the Alexandrian Christian tradition knowing the influence Epictetus had over him as a youth and more importantly how important his father's opinion was for the immature Commodus who was being thrust into the role of Emperor while still unprepared.
The point here is that if we can begin to see that Clement's works were ultimately a response to the wicked things that Celsus was saying about Christianity through what he had read in the Hypomnenata attributed to Hegesippus, then the source of all the slanderous things that were being said about the Carpocratians ultimately came from Celsus's work. Clement clearly read the True Account. I am now suggesting that the arguments formulated in Clement's various writings were a way of saying, 'oh that stuff that you heard about us promoting religious communism or sharing our wives in common because of Plato - that's not true. That's this other sect, the Carpocratians.'
Origen repeats over and over again in his response to Celsus's work that the pagan usually doesn't specify which group is saying the things he is writing about. He attributes them to 'Christianity' as such, and presumably 'Alexandrian Christianity.' I think it is very important to keep an eye on this 'Platonic undercurrent' to the so-called Carpocratians. Irenaeus and Epiphanius, drawing from the same mid-second century report used by Celsus speak of the Carpocratians adorning images of Jesus set alongside the philosophers (Irenaeus AH 1.26.6) and homosexual orgies to attain the Platonic hope of the true philosophy - "the plain fact is that these people perform every unspeakable, unlawful thing, which is not right even to say, and every kind of homosexual union and carnal intercourse with women, with every member of the body and that they perform magic, sorcery and idolatry and say that this is the discharge of their obligations in the body, so that they will not be charged any more or required to do anything else reason the soul will not be turned back after its departure and go on to another incarnation and transmigration." (Panarion 27.4.4 - 7)
It is only when we emphasize the underlying Platonic interest of the Carpocratians that the original report of their 'misinterpretation' of LGM 1 becomes apparent. Celsus was clearly interpeting the 'love' shared by Jesus and the youth in terms of the 'true philosophy' of the Phaedrus. This is undoubtedly one reason why Clement specifically references this terminology after his dismissing of the Carpocratian exegesis of the passage:
But "naked man with naked man," and the other things about which you wrote, are not found ... [and] the many other things about which you wrote both seem to be, and are, falsifications. Now the true exegesis and that which accords with the true philosophy (την αληθη φιλοσοφιαν) ... [to Theod. 3.13 - 18]Yet isn't it interesting in the very next line after Celsus's attack against Mark 10:17 - 31 and the claim that all of it was stolen from Plato, Origen makes reference to two other passages that Celsus cites from Plato but won't repeat them to his readership:
Since Celsus, moreover, from a desire to depreciate the accounts which our Scriptures give of the kingdom of God, has quoted none of them, as if they were unworthy of being recorded by him (or perhaps because he was unacquainted with them), while, on the other hand, he quotes the sayings of Plato, both from his Epistles and the Phædrus, as if these were divinely inspired, but our Scriptures were not, let us set forth a few points, for the sake of comparison with these plausible declarations of Plato, which did not however, dispose the philosopher to worship in a manner worthy of him the Maker of all things
Now it is pointless to speculate about what might have been in these references. But the Phaedrus is a very short treatise, primarily concerned with love and by the end, defines the highest form of 'love' - the true philosophy - as something related to pedastry. My point of course isn't to shock my readership with this information but rather to use this knowledge to ask - was the Carpocratian interpretation of LGM 1 shaped by the same Platonic exegesis that Clement attacks in the Stromateis Book Three?
As A W Price notes in his Love and Friendship in Plato and Aristotle:
I shall not pursue the details of the mythical eschatology (cf. Phaedrus 24933-5). Instead, I shall consider two disputed questions: whether philosophers must not make love, and whether they must love boys. A modern moralist is likely to insist neither upon chastity nor upon pederasty; Plato was not a modern. The orthodoxy, that the Platonic lover achieves (so far as is possible for a man) a kind of sexlessness, has been unsettled by by Gregory Vlastos: 'That form of passionate experience invented by Plato ... is a peculiar mix of sensuality, sentiment and intellect - a companionship bonded by erotic attraction no less than by intellectual give-and-take. Body-to-body endearment is one of its normal features, though always subject to the constraint that terminal gratification will be denied." ('The Individual as Object of Love in Plato', in Platonic Studies (Princeton, 1981), 30-1) Nussbaum agrees precisely (op. cit. 217), with the extra thought that there is a kind of personal understanding that will otherwise be lacking: 'The lovers are ... encouraged in any sensuous exploration of the other person that stops short of an act which they see as potentially selfish and/or violent' (ibid. 220). Both suppose that the foreplay of Phaedrus 255e2-256a5 is continued even after the victory of the higher elements of the mind (a8). I prefer Meredith:The point of this discussion is to ask - have all of our presuppositions about what Christianity should be about unduly influenced our avoidance of apparent homoerotic themes in Secret Mark. There can be no doubt that Clement was totally influenced by Plato, so too the Carpocratians and earliest Alexandrian Christianity. If Plato defined the highest form of love - the 'true philosophy' as such - in these terms, why would it be so surprising that the evangelist Mark, whom Celsus accuses of stealing all his ideas from Plato, of injecting something which - if not homoerotic, could have lent itself to such an interpretation owing to the recognition of the gospel writers ultimate influence?
I am not of those miserable males
Who sniff at vice and, daring not to snap,
Do therefore hope for heaven
(Modern Love 20:1 - 3)
It is hard to conceive how a perilous policy of deliberate mutual arousal without gratification could actually further a life of happiness and harmony (a8-o), of self-control and inner peace (bi-2). Even if it came off, it could only generate an obsessive sexual heroism; what motivation could these philosophical lovers have for making things so difficult for themselves? The bad horse must be reduced again to a state of fright (cf. 254e8), which is not one of titillation induced by petting. Plato is demanding; we need not suppose him so innocently unwise.
More difficult to decide about, in my view, is the necessity of pederasty. A special dispensation from the ban on returning to heaven within ten thousand years is promised to the soul of 'the man who has lived the philosophical life without guile or who has united his love for a boy with philosophy' (Phaedrus 24931-2). Regrettably, 'or' is crucially ambiguous: it may introduce an alternative, or a gloss. Even if philosophy is compulsory, pederasty optional, 'the eschatological status of philosophical paiderastia is still remarkable', as Dover remarks (GH, 165, n. 18). Can we even make intelligible a thought that mixing 'the philosophical sin' (to use an eighteenth-century French euphemism) with one's philosophy might go to prove a love of wisdom without ulterior motives?
Less surprising glosses on honest philosophizing can be found elsewhere: fear of death proves that one loves the body, and not wisdom (Phaedo 86b8-cI); one is an impostor with no share at all in true philosophy if one is not devoted to the truth, that is to 'the nature of each thing in itself as opposed to 'the many particulars that are opined to be real' (Rep 6.490ai-b4). How might pederasty supply another gloss? This may depend on where one places the emphasis within the phrase 'uniting his love for a boy with philosophy.' If the stress is on philosophical pederasty, the thought could be rather simply (to transpose it into terms more familiar to most men nowadays) that it proves quite a commitment to philosophy if one talks philosophy even with one's girl. (Plato may simply be assuming that the reader, at least within his circle, will love a boy, the question being how.) If, instead, the stress is on pederastic philosophy, the thought cannot be so commonplace; but there seem two ways of bringing out, to begin with, the interpersonal demands of philosophy. We may compare the philosopher-kings of the the Republic who, while reluctant to rule as a distraction from philosophy, nevertheless prove the sincerity of their commitment to philosophy by respecting the call of the Good itself to be a a pattern for governing their state and educating their successors (7.54037-457). They show that philosophy comes first by not treating it as the servant of 'some senseless and childish opinion about happiness' (5.466b7-8) that would lead them to subordinate the impartial demands of Goodness to their own interests, narrowly conceived. The matter is notoriously difficult; but it must, somehow, be only a superficial paradox that the genuine philosopher cannot be content to do philosophy, in our sense, but must also enact it. We may compare, in the Phaedrus, soul that is perfect, moving on high with wings unimpaired, still governs the whole world (246b7~C2). In another way, interpersonal relationships may be not a corollary, but an aspect of philosophy. As Carl Schirlitz puts it in a good discussion, there may be no real separation possible between Lernen (learning) and Lehren (teaching). That is one reason, he suggests, why it was not frivolous of Plato to present his thinking in dialogue-form. In the possibly Platonic Seventh Letter we explicitly read of philosophy, 'Only after long partnership in a common life devoted to this very thing does truth flash upon the soul, like a flame kindled by a leaping spark' (341c6-di). If so, a commitment to another person may fall inside a commitment to philosophy: philosophizing with and for another may be the only way of philosophizing oneself.
But why should the relationship be erotic? The Phaedrus makes the answer easy: it has described how personal physical beauty alerts, and (we may suppose) keeps alert, the whole soul to the world of Forms. A pure course in philosophy, even if itself successful (which Plato would never conceive), could not convert the soul as a whole; and it is the tripartite soul that has to regain its way to heaven. 'Why particularly pederasty?', we may still ask. Plato may not even have been conscious of provoking that question. He was, in that respect, conventional enough. So Dover (GH, 164) : 'It is ... easy to see why an eros which perpetually restrained itself from bodily gratification should be homosexual: it was after all the prescribed role of women to be inseminated, whereas popular sentiment romanticized and applauded the chastity of an eromenos and the devotedly unselfish erastes.' Contingently (not that Plato approved), boys were educated, and girls not. Further, whatever speculations may suggest themselves to us about Plato's personal penchants (Vlastos romances, op. cit. 25-6), he clearly assumed that an instinct towards sexual reproduction was always liable to be dominant in relation to the opposite sex. (p. 89 - 92)
More tomorrow ...
dating back to conversations with his grandfather, Gaston Frank. "He said we represent one of the last descendants of the Frankist Jewish faith in the world," he muses. "I grew up thinking that our family was something like the Last of the Mohicans."