על עבודת האדמה ד׳On Husbandry 4
א׳
1[17] These, then, are the offers held out by soul-husbandry in its inaugural proclamation: “The trees of folly and licentiousness, of injustice and cowardice I will wholly cut down; I will moreover extirpate the plants of pleasure and desire, of anger and wrath and of like passions, even though they be grown up to heaven; I will burn up their very roots, letting the rush of fire pursue them even to the depths of the earth, that no part or trace or shadow of them whatever be left behind.
ב׳
2[18] These I will destroy, but I will plant for souls in their childhood suckers whose fruit shall feed them. These suckers are the learning to write easily and read fluently; the diligent search of what wise poets have written; geometry and the practice of rhetorical composition; and the whole of the education embraced in school-learning. For souls at the stage of youths and of those now growing into men I will provide the better and more perfect thing suited to their age, the plant of sound sense, that of courage, that of temperance, that of justice, that of all virtue.
ג׳
3[19] If, again, some tree among those that belong to what is called wild wood does not bear edible fruit, but can be a fence and protection of such fruit, this tree also will I keep in store, not for its own sake, but because it is adapted to do service to another that is indispensable and most useful.”