על החלומות, ספר ב י״טOn Dreams, Book II 19
א׳
1[133] Such is our description of the leaders of vainglory: let us now consider separately the rank and file which follow them. They are for ever plotting mischief and evil against the practisers of virtue, and when they see them zealous to brighten their life with the light of guileless truth and irradiate it with moonbeams as it were and with pure sunlight, they hinder them by deceit or violence and drive them down to the sunless region of the impious where deep night reigns and endless darkness, and innumerable tribes of spectres and phantoms and dream-illusions. And when they have brought them to their setting there they compel them to do obeisance to themselves as masters.
ב׳
2[134] For we understand by the sun the practiser of wisdom, since it provides light for material things even as the other does for the immaterial things of the soul. And by the moon we understand the instruction which serves the wise, for both render a service most pure and useful in lightening a night, while the excellent thoughts and reasonings, the children as it were of instruction and the practising soul, are the brethren. These it is who rule aright the straight path of life, but those who purpose to say nothing and think nothing that is wholesome deem well to ply them all with wrestling-grips of manifold turns and twists, with the throat-clutch which dislocates the neck, or the leg-fall which brings the wrestler with a thud to the ground.
ג׳
3[135] And therefore one of this sort is gently rebuked by his father, not Jacob, but by that right reason which is higher and greater than Jacob. “What is this dream which you dreamt?” (Gen. 37:10), he says.
ד׳
4[136] “You did not dream,” he means, “or did you suppose that the naturally free would be forced into slavery to the human, the powers which rule into subjection and, more unreasonable still, made subject not to some others but to those whom they rule, and slaves to none but those who themselves are in slavery?” That could only be if by the power of God who alone can do all things, whose right it is to move the immovable and to make stable the inconstant, the present state of things should be changed to its opposite.
ה׳
5[137] Nay, no dream! for what sense would there be in rebuking or showing anger to one who has seen an illusion in his sleep? “Was it of my free will that I saw it?” he would say. “Why charge me as you charge those who have deliberately gone wrong? I did but tell you what came upon me from without and struck my mind suddenly through no action of my own.”
ו׳
6[138] But the fact is that we are not concerned here with a dream, but with things that resemble dreams: things which seem great and brilliant and desirable to those who are not very well purified, but are small and dull and ridiculous in the eyes of uncorrupted judges of truth.