על עבודת האדמה ל״בOn Husbandry 32
א׳
1[142] And if the mind putting a still finer edge upon itself dissect the natures of things, as a surgeon does men’s bodies, he will effect nothing that is of advantage for the acquiring of virtue. It is true that, by reason of his power to distinguish and discriminate in each case, he will “divide the hoof,” but he will not “chew the cud” so as to have at his service beneficial nourishment with its wholesome reminders, smoothing out the roughness that had accrued to the soul as the result of errors, and producing an easy and truly smooth movement.
ב׳
2[143] And so multitudes of those who are called sophists, after winning the admiration of city after city, and after drawing wellnigh the whole world to honour them for their hair-splitting and their clever inventiveness, have with all their might worn their life out, and brought it to premature old age, by the indulgence of their passions, differing not at all from neglected nobodies and the most worthless of mankind.
ג׳
3[144] Excellently, therefore, does the lawgiver compare the race of sophists who live in this way to swine. Such men are at home in a mode of life not bright and luminous but thick and muddy and in all that is most ugly.
ד׳
4[145] For he says that the pig is unclean, because, though it divide the hoof, it does not chew the cud (Lev. 11:7). He pronounces the camel unclean for the opposite reason, because though chewing the cud he does not divide the hoof. But such animals as do both are, as we might expect, set down as clean, since they have escaped the unnatural development in each of the directions named. For indeed distinguishing without memory and without conning and going over of the things that are best is an incomplete good (as is memory without distinguishing between good things and their opposites), but the meeting and partnership of both in combination is a good most complete and perfect.