אליגוריות החוקים, ספר א י״אAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book I 11
א׳
1[28] “And a spring went up out of the earth and watered all the face of the earth” (Gen. 2:6). He calls the mind a “spring” of the earth, and the senses its “face,” because Nature, exercising forethought in all things, assigned this place to them out of all the body as most suitable for their special activities: and the mind like a spring waters the senses, sending to each of them the streams suitable to it. See then, how, like links in a chain, the powers of the living creature hold on to each other; for mind and ‘sense-perception’ and object of sense being three, ‘sense-perception’ is in the middle, while mind and object of sense occupy each extreme.
ב׳
2[29] But neither has the mind power to work, that is, to put forth its energies by way of ‘sense-perception,’ unless God send the object of sense as rain upon it; nor is any benefit derived from the object of sense when so rained down, unless, like a spring, the mind, extending itself to reach the ‘sense-perception,’ stir it out of its repose to grasp the object presented to it. Thus the mind and the object of sense are always practising a reciprocity of giving, the one lying ready for sense-perception as its material, the other, like a craftsman, moving sense-perception in the direction of the external object, to produce an impulse towards it.
ג׳
3[30] For the living creature excels the non-living in two respects, in the power of receiving impressions and in the active impulse towards the object producing them. The impression is produced by the drawing nigh of the external object, as it stamps the mind through sense-perception; while the active impulse, close of kin to the power aforesaid, comes about by way of the mind’s power of self-extension, which it exercises through sense-perception, and so comes into touch with the object presented to it, and goes towards it, striving to reach and seize it.