על החלומות, ספר ב ל״וOn Dreams, Book II 36
א׳
1[237] We find, then, that stability or fixity or permanent immobility, in virtue of its immutable and unchangeable quality, subsists as an attribute primarily to the Existing Being, secondly to His Word which He calls His covenant, thirdly to the Sage, and fourthly to the man of gradual progress. What then could make the wicked mind, fit subject for every manner of curse, think that he could stand alone, when he is carried to and fro as in a flood and swept down by eddy after eddy of the torrent of which that dead burden the body is the channel?
ב׳
2[238] For “I thought,” he says, “that I stood on the edge of the river” (Gen. 41:17). River, I submit, is here a symbol of speech, since both flow outward and with a swift strong current, and both are sometimes fruitful in producing inundations, water in one case, words in the other, sometimes unfruitful when they slacken or subside.
ג׳
3[239] And both may be beneficial by irrigating, one the fields, the other the souls of docile hearers; both at times do harm, the river by flooding the adjoining land, speech by reducing the mental powers of the inattentive to chaos and confusion.
ד׳
4[240] In this way speech is like a river, but it has a twofold nature better and worse, the better beneficial, the worse necessarily injurious.
ה׳
5[241] Moses has provided examples of both, of the plainest kind to those who have the gift of vision. “A river,” he says, “goes out of Eden to water the garden; thence it separates into four heads” (Gen. 2:10),
ו׳
6[242] and he gives the name of Eden, which is by interpretation “delight,” to the wisdom of the Existent, because no doubt wisdom is a source of delight to God and God to wisdom, and so in the Psalms the singer bids us to “delight in the Lord” (Ps. 37(36):4). The Divine Word descends from the fountain of wisdom like a river to lave and water the heavensent celestial shoots and plants of virtue-loving souls which are as a garden.
ז׳
7[243] And this holy Word is “separated into four heads,” which means that it is split up into the four virtues, each of which is royal. For separation into heads or rules is not like separation into local regions but into kingdoms, and when he points to virtues he means thereby to declare that the Sage who possesses them is a king, a king appointed not by men but by nature, the infallible, the incorruptible, the only free elector.
ח׳
8[244] Thus it was said to Abraham by those who saw his worthiness: “thou art a king from God with us” (Gen. 23:6). And thus they laid down the doctrine for the students of philosophy, that the Sage alone is a ruler and king, and virtue a rule and a kingship whose authority is final.