על החלומות, ספר ב מ״גOn Dreams, Book II 43
א׳
1[283] Third on the list were those who extended the activities of their word-cleverness to heaven itself, men who gave themselves to studies directed against nature or rather against their own soul. They declared that nothing exists beyond this world of our sight and senses, that it neither was created nor will perish, but is uncreated, imperishable, without guardian, helmsman or protector.
ב׳
2[284] Then piling enterprises one upon another they raised on high like a tower their edifice of unedifying doctrine. For we read that “all the earth was one lip” (Gen. 11:1), a harmony of disharmony, that is a blend of all the parts of the soul, to dislodge from its position the greatest binding force in the universe, government.
ג׳
3[285] And therefore when they hoped to soar to heaven in mind and thought, to destroy the eternal kingship, the mighty undestroyable hand cast them down and overturned the edifice of their doctrine.
ד׳
4[286] And the place is called “confusion,” a fitting name for wild audacious revolution. For what is more fraught with confusion than want of government? Are not houses that have no ruler full of offences and disturbance?
ה׳
5[287] Are not cities left without a king destroyed by the opposite of king-rule, the greatest of evils, mob-rule? Do not countries and nations and regions of the earth lose their old abundant happiness when their governments are dissolved?
ו׳
6[288] And why should we appeal to the case of mankind? For the other collections of animals, whether of the air, or the land or the water, do not hold together any more than men without someone to captain them, but they always desire the presence of their proper leader and pay him honour as the sole author of their welfare, and in his absence they scatter and are destroyed.
ז׳
7[289] Can we then suppose that, while the creatures of the earth, who are but a tiny portion of the universe, find in government the cause of their well-being and in anarchy the cause of their ills, the world does not owe the supreme blessedness which fills it to the leadership of God its king?
ח׳
8[290] So then these aggressors against heaven suffered a penalty befitting their attempts. Having brought disorder into the holy, they saw their own unholiness disordered by anarchy; they had wrought confusion and were confounded. But so long as they remain unpunished, puffed up by their delusion, they deal out destruction to the government of the universe with their unholy words, enroll themselves as rulers and kings, and make over the undestroyable sovereignty of God to creation which passes away and perishes and never continues in one stay.
