על החלומות, ספר א כ״זOn Dreams, Book I 27
א׳
1[166] The notable examples which may be used to shew these are countless. The text just quoted is one of them. For the oracle spoke of the man, who in kin was the Practiser’s grandfather, as his father; but did not, when mentioning his actual father, give him the title of parent. The words are: “I am the Lord God of Abraham thy father”—and yet he was his grandfather—and again, “the God of Isaac” (Gen. 28:13), without the addition of “thy father.”
ב׳
2[167] Now, is it not worth while to investigate the cause of this? Assuredly it is. So let us carefully inquire what it is. The lawgiver says that virtue is gained either by nature or by practice or by learning, and has accordingly recorded the patriarchs of the nation as three in number, all wise men. They had not at the start the same form of character, but they were all bent on reaching the same goal.
ג׳
3[168] Abraham, the earliest of them, had teaching as his guide on the way that leads to the good and beautiful, as we shall shew to the best of our ability in another treatise. Isaac who comes between him and Jacob had as his guide a nature which listens to and learns from itself alone. Jacob, the third of them, relied on exercises and practisings preparatory for the strenuous toil of the arena.
ד׳
4[169] There being, then, three methods by which virtue accrues, it is the first and third that are most intimately connected; for what comes by practice is the offspring and product of that which comes by learning; whereas that which comes by nature is, to be sure, of kin with them, being like a root at the bottom of all three, but the prerogative allotted to it is one which none contests and which needs no effort.
ה׳
5[170] Thus it is quite natural to say that Abraham, who owed his improvement to teaching, was father of Jacob, who was shaped and drilled by exercises, meaning not so much that the man Abraham was father of the man Jacob, as that the faculty of hearing which is a most ready instrument for learning begets and produces the faculty of exercise and practice so serviceable in contest.
ו׳
6[171] If, however, our practiser exert himself and run to the end of the course, and come to see clearly what he formerly saw dimly as in a dream, and receives the impress of a nobler character and the name of “Israel,” “he that seeth God,” in place of “Jacob,” “the supplanter,” he no longer claims as his father Abraham, the man who learned, but Isaac the man who was born good by nature.
ז׳
7[172] This is not a story invented by me, but an oracle inscribed upon the sacred tables. For we read that “Israel took his journey with all that he had, and came to the well of the oath, and offered a sacrifice to the God of his father Isaac” (Gen. 46:1). Do you by this time perceive that the discourse before us is not about mortal men, but, as already stated, about the facts of nature? For you observe that the same subject is at one time named Jacob, with Abraham as his father, and at another is styled Israel with Isaac as his father, the reason for this being that which has been set forth in detail.