על הנטיעה מ״בConcerning Noah's Work as a Planter 42
א׳
1[173] If, just as in a court of law, we are to make use, not only of the logical or dialectical proofs, but also of the modes of persuasion that are called “inartistic,” one of which is that which employs evidence, we shall call as witnesses many distinguished physicians and philosophers, who ratify their evidence by writings as well as by words.
ב׳
2[174] For they have left behind them innumerable treatises bearing the title “Concerning drunkenness,” in which they deal with nothing but the subject of drinking wine at all, without adding a word of inquiry regarding those who are in the habit of losing their heads; thus giving the go-by altogether to intoxication as an aspect of the subject. Thus we find in these men too the most explicit acknowledgement that drunkenness was suffering from the effects of wine. But there would be nothing amiss in a wise man quaffing wine freely on occasion: we shall not be wrong, then, in saying that he will get drunk.
ג׳
3[175] But, since no one is registered as victor if he has no antagonist, and anyone engaged in such a contest would naturally be considered rather to be fighting a shadow, we must needs mention the arguments maintaining the contrary, in order that a perfectly fair decision may be reached, neither side being condemned by default.
ד׳
4[176] Of such arguments the first and most weighty is this. If one would not act reasonably in entrusting a secret to a drunken man, and does entrust secrets to a good man, it follows that a good man does not get drunk. Well now, instead of the whole series of arguments one after another, it will be better, as each is advanced, to answer it, that we may not seem tedious through making too long a story of it.
ה׳
5[177] A man may counter the arguments just mentioned by saying that according to it the wise man will never be melancholy, never fall asleep, in a word, never die. But he whom nothing of this sort befalls would be an inanimate thing or a Divine Being, certainly not a man. For reproducing the conduct of the argument, he will apply it in this way to the case of the melancholy or sleeping or dying man: No one would act reasonably in entrusting a secret to one in such case, but would act reasonably in doing so to a wise man: therefore a wise man never falls into melancholy, or goes to sleep, or dies.