על הזיווג לשם ההשכלה (על לימודי היסוד) ה׳On Mating with the Preliminary Studies 5
א׳
1[20] The primary characteristic marks of the lower education are represented by two symbols giving its race and its name. In race it is Egypt, but its name is Hagar, which is by interpretation “sojourning.” The votary of the school studies, the friend of wide learning, must necessarily be associated with the earthly and Egyptian body; since he needs eyes to see and read, ears to listen and hear, and the other senses to unveil the several objects of sense.
ב׳
2[21] For the thing judged cannot be apprehended without one to judge it, and it is sense which judges the sensible, and therefore without sense it is always impossible to obtain accurate knowledge of any of the phenomena in the sensible world which form the staple of philosophy. Sense being the bodily part of the soul is riveted to the vessel of the soul as a whole, and this soul-vessel is symbolically called Egypt.
ג׳
3This, [22] then, is one of the marks of the handmaid of virtue, namely that of race. Let us now consider the nature of the other mark, that of name. The lower education is in the position of a sojourner. For knowledge and wisdom and every virtue are native born, indigenous, citizens in the truest sense, and in this they are absolutely alone; but the other kinds of training, which win second or third or last prizes, are on the border-line between foreigners and citizens. For they belong to neither kind in its pure form, and yet in virtue of a certain degree of partnership they touch both.
ד׳
4[23] The sojourner in so far as he is staying in the city is on a par with the citizens, in so far as it is not his home, on a par with foreigners. In the same way, I should say, adopted children, in so far as they inherit from their adopters, rank with the family; in so far as they are not their actual children, with outsiders. Sarah, virtue, bears, we shall find, the same relation to Hagar, education, as the mistress to the servant-maid, or the lawful wife to the concubine, and so naturally the mind which aspires to study and to gain knowledge, the mind we call Abraham, will have Sarah, virtue, for his wife, and Hagar, the whole range of school culture, for his concubine.
ה׳
5[24] He then who gains wisdom by instruction will not reject Hagar, for the acquisition of these preliminary subjects is quite necessary,