על השיכרות ב׳On Drunkenness 2
א׳
1[4] Moses uses strong liquor as a symbol for more than one, in fact for several, things: for foolish talking and raving, for complete insensibility, for insatiable and ever-discontented greediness, for cheerfulness and gladness, for the nakedness which embraces the rest and manifests itself in all the qualities just mentioned, in which condition Noah was, we read, when intoxicated. All these we are told are produced by wine.
ב׳
2[5] Yet thousands of those who never touch strong drink and consider themselves sober are mastered by similar emotions. We may see them in some cases mad and foolish, in others under the dominion of complete insensibility, in others never filled but always thirsting for impossibilities through lack of knowledge, or on the other hand full of gladness and exultation, finally in the true sense naked.
ג׳
3[6] The folly is caused by indiscipline in its noxious form, by which I mean not the mere unacquaintance with discipline but aversion to it; insensibility is caused by ignorance (always) blind and (often) with a will for evil; greediness by that most painful of the soul’s passions, lust; while gladness arises both from the winning and the practice of virtue. Nakedness has many causes: incapacity for distinguishing between moral opposites, innocence and simplicity of manners, truth, that is, the power which unveils what is wrapped in obscurity. At one moment it is virtue that she uncovers, at another vice in its turn.
ד׳
4[7] For we cannot doff both of these at the same moment any more than we can don them. When we discard the one we necessarily adopt and assume its opposite.
ה׳
5[8] The old story tells us that God when He fastened the naturally conflicting sensations of pleasure and pain under a single head, caused them to be felt at different times and not at the same moment, and thus decreed that the banishment of the one should involve the restoration of the other. Just in the same way, from a single root in our dominant part spring the two shoots of vice and virtue, yet never sprouting or bearing fruit at the same moment.
ו׳
6[9] For when one sheds its leaves and withers, its opposite begins to exhibit new life and verdure, so that we might suppose that each shrinks and shrivels in resentment at the thriving of the other.
ז׳
7And so it is in full agreement with philosophical truth that Moses represents the outgoing of Jacob as being the incoming of Esau. “It came to pass,” he says, “that as soon as Jacob went out Esau his brother came in” (Gen. 27:30).
ח׳
8[10] For so long as prudence has its lodging and scene of action in the soul, so long is every friend of folly an outcast from her borders. But when prudence has changed her quarters, the other returns with glee now that the bitter enemy, who caused his expulsion and life of exile, no longer dwells where he did.
