על הזיווג לשם ההשכלה (על לימודי היסוד) כ״הOn Mating with the Preliminary Studies 25
א׳
1[139] Do not suppose that by the words “When she saw that she had in the womb” (Gen. 16:4), it is meant that Hagar saw that it was so with herself. It is her mistress Sarah who saw, for afterwards Sarah says of herself, “Seeing that she had in the womb, I was dishonoured before her” (Gen. 16:5).
ב׳
2[140] Why is this? Because the lower arts, even if they see their own products, which are carried in their womb, necessarily see them but dimly, while they are clearly and very distinctly apprehended by knowledge in its various forms. For knowledge is something more than art, as it has in addition a stability which no argument can shake.
ג׳
3[141] The definition of art is as follows: a system of conceptions co-ordinated to work for some useful end, “useful” being a very proper addition to exclude mischievous arts. Knowledge on the other hand is defined as a sure and certain apprehension which cannot be shaken by argument.
ד׳
4[142] We give the name of arts therefore to music, grammar and the kindred arts, and accordingly those who by means of them reach fulness of accomplishment are called artists, whether they are musicians or grammarians; but we give the name of knowledge to philosophy and the other virtues, and that of men of knowledge to those who possess these virtues. Those only are prudent and temperate and philosophers who without exception do not err in the dogmatic conclusions belonging to that form of knowledge which they have mastered by their diligence in the way that the above-mentioned err in the more theoretical conclusions of the lower arts.
ה׳
5[143] The following illustration may serve. The eyes see, but the mind through the eyes sees further than the eyes. The ears hear, but the mind through the ears hears better than the ears. The nostrils smell, but the soul through the nose smells more vividly than the nose, and while the other senses apprehend the objects proper to them, the understanding apprehends with more purity and clarity. For we may say quite properly that the mind is the eye’s eye and the hearing’s hearing and the purified sense of each of the senses; it uses them as ushers in its tribunal, but itself passes judgement on the natures of the objects presented, giving its assent to some and refusing it to others. In the same way, what we call the lower or secondary arts, resembling as they do the bodily faculties, handle the questions which they answer without involved consideration, but knowledge in each case does so with greater accuracy and minute examination.
ו׳
6[144] What the mind is to sense, that knowledge is to art; for just as, to repeat the statement, the soul is the sense of the senses,[so knowledge is the art of arts.] So each of the arts has detached and annexed some small items from the world of nature which engage its efforts and attention: geometry has its lines, and music its notes, but philosophy takes the whole nature of existing things; for its subject matter is this world and every form of existence visible and invisible.
ז׳
7[145] Why wonder, then, if when it surveys the whole of things it sees also the parts, and sees them better than those others, furnished as it is with stronger eyes and more penetrating sight? Naturally then will the pregnancy of the handmaid, the lower instruction, be more visible to the mistress philosophy than it is to the handmaid herself.