על שכל אדם ישר הוא בן חורין ג׳Every Good Man is Free 3
א׳
1III. [16] So much for these matters. Let us proceed to the subject of our discourse and give it careful consideration, that we may not go astray, misled by the vagueness in the terms employed, but apprehend what we are talking about, adjust our arguments to it, and so prove our point.
ב׳
2[17] Slavery then is applied in one sense to bodies, in another to souls; bodies have men for their masters, souls their vices and passions. The same is true of freedom; one freedom produces security of the body from men of superior strength, the other sets the mind at liberty from the domination of the passions.
ג׳
3[18] No one makes the first kind the subject of investigation. For the vicissitudes of men are numberless and in many instances and at many times persons of the highest virtue have through adverse blows of fortune lost the freedom to which they were born. Our inquiry is concerned with characters which have never fallen under the yoke of desire, or fear, or pleasure, or grief; characters which have as it were escaped from prison and thrown off the chains which bound them so tightly.
ד׳
4[19] Casting aside, therefore, specious quibblings and the terms which have no basis in nature but depend upon convention, such as “homebred,” “purchased” or “captured in war,” let us examine the veritable free man, who alone possesses independence, even though a host of people claim to be his masters. Let us hear the voice of Sophocles in words which are as true as any Delphic oracle
God and no mortal is my Sovereign.
God and no mortal is my Sovereign.
ה׳
5[20] For in very truth he who has God alone for his leader, he alone is free, though to my thinking he is also the leader of all others, having received the charge of earthly things from the great, the immortal King, whom he, the mortal, serves as viceroy. But the subject of the wise man’s sovereignty must be postponed to a more suitable occasion and we have now to examine his freedom carefully.
ו׳
6[21] If one looks with a penetrating eye into the facts, he will clearly perceive that no two things are so closely akin as independence of action and freedom, because the bad man has a multitude of incumbrances, such as love of money or reputation and pleasure, while the good man has none at all. He stands defiant and triumphant over love, fear, cowardice, grief and all that sort, as the victor over the fallen in the wrestling bout.
ז׳
7[22] For he has learnt to set at nought the injunctions laid upon him by those most lawless rulers of the soul, inspired as he is by his ardent yearning for the freedom whose peculiar heritage it is that it obeys no orders and works no will but its own. Some people praise the author of the line
What slave is there who takes no thought of death?
and think that he well understood the thought that it involves. For he meant that nothing is so calculated to enslave the mind as fearing death through desire to live.
What slave is there who takes no thought of death?
and think that he well understood the thought that it involves. For he meant that nothing is so calculated to enslave the mind as fearing death through desire to live.