על השכר והעונש ה׳On Rewards and Punishments 5
א׳
1[28] But let us look into each of them more carefully and not be led away by mere names but with a peering eye explore the inwardness of their full meaning. Now he who has sincerely believed in God has learned to disbelieve in all else, all that is created only to perish, beginning with the forces which so loudly assert themselves in him, reasoning and sense-perception. Each of these has assigned to it a council chamber and tribunal, where they conduct their inspections, one into the conceptual, the other into the visible, one with truth, the other with opinion for its goal.
ב׳
2[29] The instability and waywardness of opinion is obvious in that it is based on likelihoods and plausibilities, and every likeness by its deceptive resemblance falsifies the original. Reason, sense-perception’s master, who thinks itself appointed to judge things conceptual, which ever continue in the same stay, is found to be in sore trouble on many points. For when it comes to grapple with the vast number of particular subjects it becomes incapable, grows exhausted and collapses like an athlete flung prostrate by superior power.
ג׳
3[30] But he to whom it is given to gaze and soar beyond not only material but all immaterial things, and to take God for his sole stay and support with a reasonableness whose resolution falters not, and a faith unswerving and securely founded, will be a truly happy and thrice blessed man.
ד׳
4[31] After faith comes the reward set aside for the victorious champion who gained his virtue through nature and without a struggle. That reward is joy. For his name was in our speech “laughter” but as the Hebrews call it Isaac. Laughter is the outward and bodily sign of the unseen joy in the mind, and joy is in fact the best and noblest of the higher emotions.
ה׳
5[32] By it the soul is filled through and through with cheerfulness, rejoicing in the Father and Maker of all, rejoicing too in all His doings in which evil has no place, even though they do not conduce to its own pleasure, rejoicing because they are done for good and serve to preserve all that exists.
ו׳
6[33] A physician treating serious and dangerous diseases sometimes amputates parts of the body, hoping to secure the health of the rest, and the pilot in stormy weather casts cargo overboard to provide for the safety of the passengers. No blame attaches either to the physician for the mutilation or to the pilot for sacrifice of property, but on the contrary both are praised for looking to what is profitable rather than what is pleasant, and for having done the right thing.
ז׳
7[34] In the same way we must always reverence all-embracing nature and acquiesce cheerfully in its actions in the universe, free as they are from all intention of evil. For the question before us is not whether the events are pleasant to us personally but whether the chariot and ship of the universe is guided in safety like a well-ordered state.
ח׳
8[35] So he too is blessed no less than the first named. He never knows gloom and depression; his days are passed in happy freedom from fears and grief; the hardships and squalor of life never touch him even in his dreams, because every spot in his soul is already tenanted by joy.
