על שכל אדם ישר הוא בן חורין י״אEvery Good Man is Free 11
א׳
1XI. [71] Having then in us such potentialities, should we not blush to denounce the human race as lacking in wisdom, wisdom which the bellows could kindle into a blaze like the spark which smoulders in the firewood? And yet these things for which we should strive eagerly, things so closely akin to ourselves, so truly our own, we treat with great slackness and constant indifference and thus destroy the germs of excellence, while those things in which deficiency were a merit we desire with an insatiable yearning.
ב׳
2[72] Consequently land and sea are full of the rich, the distinguished and the men of pleasure, but of the wise and just and virtuous, the number is small. But this small body though scanty is not absolutely non-existent.
ג׳
3[73] For this we have the testimony, both of Greece and the world outside Greece. In Greece there flourished the sages known also by the appropriate name of the Seven, and we might expect that both before them and after them, others had their day, though the memory of the more ancient has vanished in the lapse of many years, and is dimmed in the case of those whose lives are still recent through the widespread neglect of their contemporaries.
ד׳
4[74] In the outside world where are those who spread the message by words and deeds, we find large associations of men of the highest excellence. Among the Persians there is the order of the Magi, who silently make research into the facts of nature to gain knowledge of the truth and through visions clearer than speech, give and receive the revelations of divine excellency. In India, too, there is the order of the Gymnosophists, who study ethical as well as physical philosophy and make the whole of their lives an exhibition of virtue.