על החלומות, ספר א י״חOn Dreams, Book I 18
א׳
1[109] This is why he adds “this garment is the only cover of his unseemliness” (Ex. 22:27). For who is there that in so fair a fashion removes from sight what might cause shame or entail reproach in man’s life, as does reason? For ignorance, the kin of the irrational nature, is a matter of shame, while culture, near akin to reason, is his proper adornment:
ב׳
2[110] “In what, then, shall he sleep?” or, in other words, wherein shall a man find calmness and complete repose, save in reason? For reason brings relief to those of us whose fate is the most grievous. Even, then, as the kindliness and companionship and courtesy of friends has many a time healed and comforted those who were oppressed by sorrows or fears or some other ills, so not often but always is it mischief-averting reason that alone dislodges the overwhelming burden laid upon us by the distresses incident to our yokefellow the body, or by the unforeseen disasters that swoop down on us from without.
ג׳
3[111] For reason is our friend, familiar, associate, comrade, bound up with us, or rather cemented and united with us by an invisible and indissoluble natural glue. That is why it both foretells what will be expedient, and, when something undesirable has occurred, is at hand with unsolicited aid, bringing not only one or other of the two kinds of help, that of the adviser who does not act, or that of the fellow-combatant who does not speak, but both of these.
ד׳
4[112] For the power which reason exercises does not work by half measures, but is thoroughgoing on every side, and if it fails in its plans or in its execution of them, it has recourse to the third mode of help-giving, namely consolation. For as there are healing applications for wounds, so are the disorders of the soul healed by reason, of which the lawgiver says that it must be restored “before the setting of the sun” (Ex. 22:26), which means before the going down of those all-illuminating rays of the God who is greatest and most present to help, who by reason of His compassion for our race sends them forth from heaven into the mind of man.
ה׳
5[113] For while there is abiding in the soul that most God-like and incorporeal light, we shall restore the reason which had been given in pledge, as a garment is given, in order that he, who has received back the possession which is man’s peculiar prerogative, may have opportunity to cover over all that is a shame to human life, to get the full benefit of the divine gift, and to enjoy calm repose through the presence of a counsellor and defender so true, so sure never to abandon the post in which he has been stationed.
ו׳
6[114] While, then, God still pours upon you the rays of His sacred light, hasten while it is day to restore to its owner the pledge you have seized. For when that light has set, you, like “all Egypt” (Ex. 10:21), will experience for ever a darkness that may be felt, and smitten with sightlessness and ignorance will be deprived of the possessions of all of which you deemed yourself master, and be perforce enslaved by Israel, the Seeing One, whom, though by nature immune from bondage, you seized as your chattel.