על הנטיעה י״טConcerning Noah's Work as a Planter 19
א׳
1[79] Those who thoroughly investigate the nature of existing things, and prosecute their inquires into each one of them in no indifferent spirit, act as those do who dig wells; for the investigators, like the well-diggers, are in search of hidden springs. And all have in common a desire to find water, but in the one case it is water naturally adapted to the nourishment of the body, in the other to the nourishment of the soul.
ב׳
2[80] Now just as some of those who open up wells often fail to find the water of which they are in search, so those, who make more than ordinary progress in various kinds of knowledge, and go deeper into them than most of us, are often powerless to reach the end they aim at. It is said that men of great learning accuse themselves of terrible ignorance, for all that they have come to perceive is how far they fall short of the truth. There is a story that one of the men of the olden days, when people marvelled at his wisdom, said that he was rightly marvelled at; for that he was the only man who knew that he knew nothing.
ג׳
3[81] Choose, if you will, whatever science or art you may be minded to choose, be it a small one or a greater one, and the man who is best and most approved in this art or science. Then notice carefully whether the professions of the science are made good by what its votary does. If you look you will find that the one fails of the other not by short but by long distances. For it is practically impossible to attain perfection in respect of any science or art whatever, seeing that it is being continually replenished, as a spring is, and ever welling up results of thought and study of many a kind.
ד׳
4[82] That is why the name of “Oath” given to it was so perfectly suitable: for an oath represents that surest form of trustworthiness which carries with it the testimony of God. For as the man who swears calls God as a witness of the points in dispute, there is no point on which it is more possible to take a sure oath than upon the fact that no subject of knowledge whatever is found to have reached the goal of perfection in the person of him who is an expert in it.
ה׳
5[83] The same principle holds good for almost all the other faculties which we possess. For, just as in the well that we read of we are told that no water was found, so neither is sight found in eyes, nor hearing in ears, nor smelling in nostrils, nor, to say all at once, is sense-perception found in organs of sense; and apprehension in like manner is not found in mind either.
ו׳
6[84] For how would it ever happen that we should see or hear or conceive amiss, if the power to apprehend each object had been inherently fixed in the several organs, instead of the power to apprehend springing from the seed of certitude sown upon the organs by God?