על שכל אדם ישר הוא בן חורין י׳Every Good Man is Free 10
א׳
1X. [62] But among those who have kept little company with the Muses, there are some who have no understanding of the methods of logical deduction, but make general statements based on appearances. These people often ask “who have there been in the past, and who are there living now of the kind that you imagine?” An excellent answer is that in the past there have been those who surpassed their contemporaries in virtue, who took God for their sole guide and lived according to a law of nature’s right reason, not only free themselves, but communicating to their neighbours the spirit of freedom: also in our own time there are still men formed as it were in the likeness of the original picture supplied by the high excellence of sages.
ב׳
2[63] For it does not follow that if the souls of the gainsayers have been bereft of freedom, held in bondage to folly and the other vices, the same is true of the human race. Nor is it a matter for wonder that the good do not appear herded in great throngs. First because specimens of great goodness are rare, secondly, because they avoid the great crowd of the more thoughtless and keep themselves at leisure for the contemplation of what nature has to show. Their prayer is that if possible they may work a reformation in the lives of the others, for virtue serves the common weal. But as this is made impossible through the atrocious doings which flood the cities, gathering strength from the passions and vices of the soul, they flee right away lest they should be swept down by the force of their onrush, as by the violence of a torrent.
ג׳
3[64] But we, if we had any zeal for betterment should track them to their hiding places, and sitting as suppliants before them, exhort them to join us and humanize our bestial life, in place of war and slavery and a host of ills proclaiming peace, liberty and the overflowing abundance of all other blessings.
ד׳
4[65] As it is, for the sake of money we ransack every corner and open up rough and rocky veins of earth, and much of the low land and no small part of the high land is mined in the quest of gold and silver, copper and iron, and the other like substances.
ה׳
5[66] The empty-headed way of thinking, deifying vanity, dives to the depths of the sea, searching whether some fair treasure to delight the senses lies hidden there. And when it has found different kinds of many-coloured precious stones, some adhering to rocks, others, the more highly prized, to shells, it gives every honour to the beguiling spectacle.
ו׳
6[67] But for wisdom or temperance or courage or justice, no journey is taken by land, even though it gives easy travelling, no seas are navigated, though the skippers sail them every summer season.
ז׳
7[68] Yet what need is there of long journeying on the land or voyaging on the seas to seek and search for virtue, whose roots have been set by their Maker ever so near us, as the wise legislator of the Jews also says, “in thy mouth, in thy heart and in thy hand,” thereby indicating in a figure, words, thoughts and actions? All these, indeed, need the cultivator’s skill.
ח׳
8[69] Those who prefer idleness to labour, not only prevent the growths but also wither and destroy the roots. But those who consider inaction mischievous and are willing to labour, do as the husbandman does with fine young shoots. By constant care they rear the virtues into stems rising up to heaven, saplings everblooming and immortal, bearing and never ceasing to bear the fruits of happiness, or as some hold, not so much bearing as being in themselves that happiness. These Moses often calls by the compound name of wholefruits.
ט׳
9[70] In the case of growths which spring from the earth, neither are the trees the fruit nor the fruit the trees, but in the soul’s plantation the saplings of wisdom, of justice, of temperance, have their whole being transformed completely into fruits.