על הבריחה והמציאה ל״בOn Flight and Finding 32
א׳
1[177] In what preceded we have spoken about finding, having previously dealt with flight. We will now pass on in turn to the points which follow next in our plan of treatment. We read, then, “An angel of the Lord found her at the water-spring” (Gen. 16:7). “Spring” is a word used in many senses. In the first place, our mind is so called; secondly, the reasoning habit and education; thirdly, the bad disposition; fourthly, its opposite, the good disposition; fifthly, the Maker and Father of the Universe Himself.
ב׳
2[178] The proofs of this statement are supplied by the Oracles of Scripture: let us see what they are. There is one such declaration in the beginning of the Book of the Law, immediately after the record of the Creation of the World, running as follows: “A spring went up out of the earth and watered all the face of the earth” (Gen. 2:6).
ג׳
3[179] Those who are unversed in allegory and the nature-truth which loves to conceal its meaning compare the spring mentioned with the River of Egypt, which rises in flood yearly and turns the plain into a lake, seeming to exhibit a power well-nigh rivalling the sky.
ד׳
4[180] For what the sky is in winter to other countries, this the Nile is to Egypt in the height of summer: the one sends the rain from above upon the earth, the other, strange to say, rains up from below and waters the fields. This afforded Moses ground for branding the Egyptian character as atheistical in its preference for earth above heaven, for the things that live on the ground above those that dwell on high, and the body above the soul.
ה׳
5[181] However, it will be possible to speak of this hereafter, when opportunity permits. At present the need for aiming at brevity compels me to take up the interpretation of the passage allegorically, and to say that “a spring going up and watering all the face of the earth” has the meaning I am about to give.
ו׳
6[182] Our dominant faculty resembles a spring: and from it like the spring water through the veins of the earth well up many powers which it sends forth till they reach the senses, eyes, ears, nostrils, and so on. Every animal has those in its head and face. Thus the dominant faculty in the soul waters, as from a spring, the face, which is the dominant part of the body, extending to the eyes the spirit of vision, that of hearing to the ears, to the nostrils that of smelling, that of tasting to the mouth, and that of touch to the whole surface.