אליגוריות החוקים, ספר ג ע״אAllegorical Interpretation of Genesis, Book III 71
א׳
1[200] And to the woman He said, “I will greatly multiply thy sorrows and thy groaning” (Gen. 3:16). Woman, who is, as we have seen, Sense, is the subject of an experience peculiarly her own, namely grief, which is called “sorrow”; for there is a quarter of our being in which gladness takes rise, and in that same quarter does grief also take rise: but it is through the senses that we feel gladness, so that of necessity we feel grief also through them. But the excellent and cleansed Mind grieves least, for the senses assail him least. But the foolish Mind experiences grief abundantly, having no antidote in the soul, with which to repel the deadly ills that come from the senses and their objects.
ב׳
2[201] The athlete and the slave take a beating in different ways, the one submissively giving in and yielding to the stripes, while the athlete opposes and withstands and shakes off the blows that are falling upon him. You crop a man in one way, a (sheep’s) fleece in another. The sheep has the role of mere passivity, whereas, in the man’s case, there is not only an active reciprocity, but his very submission is, so to speak, also reciprocal, as he adapts his position and posture to the process of being cropped.
ג׳
3[202] Just in the same way the man who does not reason yields to another as slaves do, and submits to sorrows as intolerable mistresses, and is powerless to look them in the face, not able to draw forth free and manly reasonings, and accordingly a vast mass of painful experiences pours in upon him through the senses. The man of knowledge on the contrary, stepping out like an athlete to meet all grievous things with strength and robust vigour, blows a counter-blast to them, so that he is not wounded by them, but regards each of them with absolute indifference; and, methinks, he might with youthful spirit address to grief the proud vaunt in the play, saying:
ד׳
4Burn me, consume my flesh, drink my dark blood,
Take fill of me; for sooner shall the stars
Go ’neath the earth, and earth go up to sky,
Than thou shalt from these lips hear fawning word.
Take fill of me; for sooner shall the stars
Go ’neath the earth, and earth go up to sky,
Than thou shalt from these lips hear fawning word.