על עבודת האדמה ל״חOn Husbandry 38
א׳
1[165] We must therefore advise those, who are beginning to learn, to decline such contests, owing to their lack of knowledge; those who are making progress, owing to their not being perfect; and those who have just attained perfection, because they are to some extent unconscious of their perfectness.
ב׳
2[166] As for those who disregard this bidding, it says of each of them, another man shall live in his house, shall become owner of his vineyard, shall marry his betrothed. This is equivalent to saying, “the faculties mentioned of keenness to learn, of improvement, of becoming perfect, shall indeed never fail, but they associate with one man at one time, with another man at another time, going about and not tenanting the same souls always and changing from soul to soul.
ג׳
3[167] In this the faculties resemble seals; for these too, when they have stamped the wax, unaffected by the impressions they have made, after engraving an image on it remain as they were, and if the impression on the wax gets blurred and effaced, other wax will be substituted for it. So do not imagine, good sirs, that the faculties decay when you do. They are immortal, and ready to welcome ten thousand others in preference to you to the fame gained from them. These are all whom they perceive not to have shunned their converse as you did, owing to your foolhardiness, but to draw near and pay great heed to safety.
ד׳
4[168] If any man be a lover of virtue, let him pray that all fair things may not only be implanted in him, but may shew themselves upon the surface of his soul, as do the exquisite proportions of beauty in a statue and a perfect portrait. Let him consider that there are myriads waiting to follow him, on whom in his stead Nature will bestow all the boons of which we have been thinking, the gift of quickness to learn, that of making progress, that of attaining perfection. Is it not better that, instead of leaving it to them, he should himself shine out and be a retentive steward of God’s gracious gifts, and that he should not, by gratuitously offering an opportunity forplunder, supply ruthless foes with booty lying ready to their hand?