על החלומות, ספר א ג׳On Dreams, Book I 3
א׳
1[14] Enough on these points. The next thing to inquire is why, when four wells are dug by Abraham and Isaac and those about them (Gen. 21:25, 26:19–23), the fourth and last received as its name “Oath.”
ב׳
2[15] Probably Moses wishes to shew us allegorically that while both the constituents of which the universe is composed, and those from which we ourselves were moulded and so fashioned into human shape, are four in number, three of them are such as can in one way or another be apprehended, but the fourth is universally held to be beyond our powers of apprehension.
ג׳
3[16] In the world, then, we find the constituents that make up the whole to be four, earth, water, air, heaven. To three of these properties have been allotted, the discovery of which may be difficult, but is not wholly impossible.
ד׳
4[17] For, as regards earth, we perceive that it is a body, heavy, indissoluble, firm, cut up into mountain-ranges and level plains, divided by rivers and sea, so that parts of it are islands, part continents; that some of it has a light thin soil, some of it a deep soil; some of it rough, stiff, stony, and altogether barren, some level and soft and very fertile. These and a thousand other points we apprehend.
ה׳
5[18] As to water again, we perceive that it has several of the properties just enumerated in common with land, and others peculiar to itself; for some of it is sweet, some brackish, other parts marked by other differences; some water is fit to drink, other water unfit. We know too it has not either of these properties alike for all; one kind of water is drinkable by some but not by others, and what is undrinkable by some is quite drinkable by others; and that some is by nature cold, some by nature hot:
ו׳
6[19] for there are a thousand springs, in many places giving forth boiling water, and that not only on land, but in the sea. Yes, there have before now appeared veins emitting boiling water in mid ocean, which all the force of the surrounding seas pouring over them from time immemorial has been powerless to quench or even in any measure to check.
ז׳
7[20] Again we perceive that the air has a nature which gives way to the pressure of the objects around it; that it is the instrument of life, of breathing, of sight, hearing and the other senses; that it admits of density and rarity, of motion and stillness, that it undergoes all kinds of change; that it is the source of winter and summer, and of the autumn and spring seasons, that is, of the constituent parts that fix the limits of the year’s cycle.
