על השיכרות ו׳On Drunkenness 6
א׳
1[19] Such was he who said, “who is He that I should obey Him,” and again, “I know not the Lord” (Exod. 5:2). In the first of these utterances he asserts that there is no God; in the second that even if there is a God he is not known to us, and this conclusion presupposes the assumption that there is no divine providence. For if there were such a thing as providence, God too would be known.
ב׳
2[20] As for contributions or club subscriptions, when the object is to share in the best of possessions, prudence, such payments are praiseworthy and profitable; but when they are paid to obtain that supreme evil, folly, the practice is unprofitable and blameworthy.
ג׳
3[21] We contribute to the former object by desire for virtue, by zeal for things noble, by continuous study therein, by persistent self-training, by unwearied and unflagging labour. We contribute to the opposite by slackness, indolence, luxury, effeminacy, and by complete irregularity of life.
ד׳
4[22] We can see indeed people preparing themselves to compete in the arena of wine-bibbing and every day exercising themselves and contending in the contests of gluttony. The contributions they make are supposed to be for a profitable purpose, but they are actually mulcting themselves in everything, in money, body and soul. Their substance they diminish by the actual payments, their bodily powers they shatter and enfeeble by the delicate living, and by excessive indulgence in food they deluge their souls as with a winter torrent and submerge them perforce in the depths.
ה׳
5[23] In just the same way those who pay their contributions only to destroy training and education are mulcting their most vital element, the understanding, and cut away therefrom its safeguards, prudence and self-control, and indeed courage and justice to boot. It was for this reason, I think, that Moses himself used a compound word, “contribution cutting,” to bring out more clearly the nature of the thing he was describing, because when men bring their efforts like contributions or club-money, so to speak, to bear against virtue, they wound and divide and cut in pieces docile and knowledge-loving souls, till they bring them to utter destruction.