על השכר והעונש י״אOn Rewards and Punishments 11
א׳
1[61] In each of the three the literal story is symbolical of a hidden meaning which demands examination. Thus everyone who is taught, when he passes over to knowledge, must abandon ignorance. Ignorance is multiform and therefore it is said of the first of the three that he was the father of many children but did not deem any of them worthy to be called his sons save one. For the learner may also be said to disown the offspring of ignorance and discard them, seeing their hostility and ill will.
ב׳
2[62] Again naturally all we men, before the reason in us is fully grown, lie in the borderline between vice and virtue with no bias to either side. But when the mind is fully fledged when it has seen and absorbed into every part of its vitality the vision of the good, it ranges freely and wings its way to reach that vision and leaves behind good’s brother and birth-fellow evil, which also flies away straight on in the opposite direction.
ג׳
3[63] This is what underlies his saying that the possessor of a highly gifted nature was the father of twins. For the soul of every man from the first as soon as he is born bears in its womb the twins good and evil as I have said and has the vision of both before him, but, when it comes to have happiness and bliss for its lot, it inclines uniformly to the god, never swaying in the other direction nor oscillating into equilibrium between the two.
ד׳
4[64] Once more if the soul has received a good nature, good instruction and thirdly therewith exercise in the principles of virtue, none of them fluid and superficial, but all cemented within it, firmly impressed and strung as it were into a unity, it wins health, wins power, and to these are added the fine hue of modesty and a robust and comely form.
ה׳
5[65] This soul through the triple excellence of nature, learning and practice becomes the plenitude of virtues, leaving no empty room within itself where other things can enter, and it engenders sons twice six in number, the perfect number, the copy and likeness of the zodiac cycle, a source of increased welfare to things here below. This is the household, which kept safe from harm, perfect and united both in the literal history and in the allegorical interpretation, received for its reward, as I have said, the chieftaincy of the tribes of the nation.
ו׳
6[66] From this household, increased in the course of time to a great multitude, were founded flourishing and orderly cities, schools of wisdom, justice and religion, where also the rest of virtue and how to acquire it is the sublime subject of their research.
