על הנטיעה ה׳Concerning Noah's Work as a Planter 5
א׳
1[18] Now while others, by asserting that our human mind is a particle of the ethereal substance, have claimed for man a kinship with the upper air; our great Moses likened the fashion of the reasonable soul to no created thing, but averred it to be a genuine coinage of that dread Spirit, the Divine and Invisible One, signed and impressed by the seal of God, the stamp of which is the Eternal Word.
ב׳
2[19] His words are “God in-breathed into his face a breath of Life” (Gen. 2:7); so that it cannot but be that he that receives is made in the likeness of Him Who sends forth the breath. Accordingly we also read that man has been made after the Image of God (Gen. 1:27), not however after the image of anything created.
ג׳
3[20] It followed then, as a natural consequence of man’s soul having been made after the image of the Archetype, the Word of the First Cause, that his body also was made erect, and could lift up its eyes to heaven, the purest portion of our universe, that by means of that which he could see man might clearly apprehend that which he could not see.
ד׳
4[21] Since, then, it was impossible for any to discern how the understanding tends towards the Existent One, save those only who had been drawn by Him—for each one of us knows what he has himself experienced as no other can know it—He endows the bodily eyes with the power of taking the direction of the upper air, and so makes them a distinct representation of the invisible eye.
ה׳
5[22] For, seeing that the eyes formed out of perishable matter obtained so great reach as to travel from the earthly region to heaven, that is so far away, and to touch its bounds, how vast must we deem the flight in all directions of the eyes of the soul? The strong yearning to perceive the Existent One gives them wings to attain not only to the furthest region of the upper air, but to overpass the very bounds of the entire universe and speed away toward the Uncreate.
