על החלומות, ספר א ל״הOn Dreams, Book I 35
א׳
1[201] We must search for the force and meaning of each of these births. Thoroughly-white, then, are the brightest and most conspicuous, “thorough” being often applied to what is great, whence has come the custom of calling what is largely evident and largely notable “thoroughly-evident” and “thoroughly-notable.”
ב׳
2[202] His wish then is that the firstborn progeny of the soul which has received the holy seed should be “thoroughly-white,” resembling not a dim light, but a brilliant shining, such as a cloudless ray coming from the sun’s beams would appear in a clear atmosphere at noontide.
ג׳
3It is his wish that they be also variegated, not after the fashion of foul leprosy the changeful disease, which assumes so many different forms, nor destined, owing to lack of firmness of judgement, to lead an unstable agitated life, but engraved with inscriptions, and stamped with seals differing one from another but all of them genuine, the blending and combination of their proper marks producing a harmony like that of music.
ד׳
4[203] For the art of variegation has been looked upon by some as so obscure and paltry a matter that they have relegated it to weavers. I on the contrary regard with awe not only the art itself but its very name, and most of all when I fix my eyes upon the sections of the earth, upon the spheres of heaven, the many different kinds of animals and plants, and that vast variegated piece of embroidery, this world of ours.
ה׳
5[204] For I am straightway compelled to think of the artificer of all this texture as the inventor of the variegator’s science, and I do homage to the inventor, I prize the invention, I am dumbfounded at the result, and that though I am incapable of seeing even the smallest part of it, but from the part brought within the range of my vision, if indeed it has been brought, I form in detail a conjecture about the whole on the strength of what analogy leads me to expect.
ו׳
6[205] Further-more, I admire the lover of wisdom, for having taken up this same art, in that he sees fit, when he finds a multitude of different things, to bring them together out of difference into oneness and to weave them together. For instance, he takes from the “grammar” taught to children the two first subjects, writing and reading; from the more advanced “grammar” acquaintance with the poets and a learning of ancient history ; from arithmetic and geometry absolute accuracy in matters which require a making of calculations and noting of proportion; from music rhythms and metres and melodies enharmonic, chromatic, diatonic, conjunct too and disjunct; from rhetoric, conception, expression, arrangement, treatment, memory, delivery ; from philosophy everything that has been omitted in the items given already, and all things else that constitute the whole life of men,—and from these combined he frames a single work gay and bright to a degree, blending wide learning with readiness to learn still more.
ז׳
7[206] The artificer of this fabric was called by the holy word Bezaleel (Ex. 31:2 ff.), which is when interpreted “in the shadow of God.” For it is the copies of which he is chief builder, whereas Moses builds the patterns; for this reason the one drew an outline as it were of shadows, while the other fashioned no shadows, but the existences themselves that served as archetypes.
ח׳
8[207] Now if the holy tabernacle was built by the variegator’s art, and the name of “variegator” or embroiderer is reserved for the sage in the oracles of revelation,