על השיכרות ט״זOn Drunkenness 16
א׳
1[68] What, then, can we say but that such as these are condemned by the rules that obtain among men, for they have for their accuser their mother, custom, the politician and demagogue, but are acquitted by the laws of nature, for they have the support of their father, right reason?
ב׳
2[69] For it is not human beings, as some suppose, who are slain by the priests, not living reasoning animals composed of soul and body. No, they are cutting away from their own hearts and minds all that is near and dear to the flesh. They hold that it befits those who are to be ministers to the only wise Being, to estrange themselves from all that belongs to the world of creation, and to treat all such as bitter and deadly foes.
ג׳
3[70] Therefore we shall kill our “brother”—not a man, but the soul’s brother, the body; that is, we shall dissever the passion-loving and mortal element from the virtue-loving and divine. We shall kill, too, our “neighbour,” again no man, but the troop and company of the senses. That company is at once the close intimate and the enemy of the soul, spreading its gins and snares for her, in order that, overwhelmed by the flood of sense-perceived objects, she may never lift her head heavenwards nor welcome those natures whose divine forms are grasped only by the mind. Again we shall kill our “nearest”; and nearest to the understanding is the uttered word, which through the specious, the probable and the persuasive implants in us false opinions for the destruction of our noblest possession, truth.
