על הבריחה והמציאה ל״אOn Flight and Finding 31
א׳
1[170] There is besides a third mark of the direct learner, namely that which comes up of itself. For it is said in the Exhortations : “Ye shall not sow, nor shall ye reap its growths that come up of themselves” (Lev. 25:11): for natural growths require no artificial treatment, since God sows them and by His art of husbandry brings to perfection, as though they were self-grown, plants which are not self-grown, save only so far as they had no need whatever of human attention.
ב׳
2[171] His words are not those of exhortation, but of statement : for, in commanding, he would have said “do not sow,” “do not reap”; instead he says in the form of a statement, “Ye shall not sow, nor assuredly shall ye reap that which is self-grown.” For when we observe such growths as spring up spontaneously by nature, we find that we are not responsible either for their beginning or their end. Now the seed is the beginning and the reaping the end;
ג׳
3[172] and the text is better understood in this way: every beginning and every end is “automatic,” in the sense that it is not our doing but that of nature. For instance, what is the beginning of the act of learning? Evidently it is the nature residing in the pupil with its receptivity towards the several subjects of study. What again is the beginning of the completion of learning? Undoubtedly it is nature. It is within the power of the teacher to lead us from one stage of progress to another; God only, Nature at its best, can produce in us the full completion.
ד׳
4[173] The man that is nurtured on these doctrines enjoys the peace that never ends, released from unabating toils. Peace and Seven are identical according to the Legislator: for on the seventh day creation puts away its seeming activity and takes rest.
ה׳
5[174] So, taken in a symbolic sense, the words “And the sabbath of the land shall be food for you” (Lev. 25:6) are to the point; for nothing is nourishing and enjoyable food, save rest in God, securing as it does for us the greatest boon, the peace which is unbroken by war. For the peace which is made by one city with another is mixed with and marred by intestine war; but the peace of the soul has no admixture of discord whatever.
ו׳
6[175] But it is by the following that the Lawgiver seems to me most clearly to supply an example of finding without seeking: “When the Lord thy God shall have led thee into the land which He sware unto thy fathers to give thee, cities great and fair, which thou buildedst not, houses full of all good things, which thou filledst not, cisterns cut out, which thou cuttedst not, vineyards and olive-yards, which thou plantedst not” (Deut. 6:10 f.).
ז׳
7[176] Seest thou the lavish abundance of the good things showered upon them, great and ready for possession and enjoyment? The generic virtues are likened to cities, because they have the greatest expanse; the special virtues to houses, for these are restricted to a narrower compass; souls endowed with good native ability are likened to cisterns, being ready to receive wisdom as these do water; vineyards and olive-yards represent progress and growth and yield of fruits; and the fruit of knowledge is the life of contemplation, winning for us unmixed gladness as from wine, and intellectual light as from a flame which oil feeds.