על החלומות, ספר ב ל׳On Dreams, Book II 30
א׳
1[196] When then folly overshadows and masters the whole soul and suffers no part of it to go at large and in freedom, it compels him to commit, not only such sins as may be remedied, but also such as are incurable.
ב׳
2[197] The sins which admit of healing treatment are described as the lightest and first in the list; those that are beyond treatment as hard indeed and coming last, thus corresponding to roots.
ג׳
3[198] And just as wisdom begins its benefits with the lesser of right actions and ends with them at their highest point, so folly, I think, forces the soul down from the height and little by little removes it from instruction and sets its dwelling far apart from right reason and brings it in ruin to the uttermost extremes.
ד׳
4[199] After the roots the dream shewed him the vine blossoming and sprouting and bearing fruit. “It was blossoming itself, having put forth shoots. The grapes of the cluster were ripe” (Gen. 40:10). Would that fruitlessness might be its lot, that it might never put forth green shoots and remain withered for all time,
ה׳
5[200] for what greater evil could there be than that folly should blossom and be fruitful?
ו׳
6Again, the cup of Pharaoh, the receptacle of senselessness and wine-frenzy and ceaseless life-long intoxication, is, he says, “in my hand” (Gen. 40:11), that is, in the enterprises which I take in hand, in my projects and faculties, for without the activities of my mind passion by itself will make little headway.
ז׳
7[201] The reins should be in the hands of the driver, and the rudder in the hands of the pilot, since only so can the chariot go aright in the race or the ship on its voyage. Even so in the hand and power of the craftsman, who produces one form of belly-gorging, namely wine-bibbing, is the task of filling the incontinent man.
ח׳
8[202] But what was he thinking of, that he did not shrink from boasting over an action which called for denial rather than confession? Were it not a better course, instead of confessing that he was the teacher of incontinence, to ascribe the incentives to passion to the incontinent one himself as inventor and author of his own base,
ט׳
9[203] unmanly, invertebrate life? But the fact is that folly prides herself on matters which should make her hide her face in shame. In this case she not only glories in carrying round the cup, the receptacle of the incontinent soul, and displaying it to all, but in squeezing the grapes into it, and this means manufacturing the stuff which brings passion to its fullness and drawing it out of concealment into the light.
י׳
10[204] For just as babes who want to be fed, when they are going to suck the milk, squeeze and press the nurse’s breast, so the maker of incontinence presses hard on the fountain from which the curse of wine-bibbing pours like rain, to find in the squeezed droppings a nourishment of delicious sweetness.