על בריאת העולם נ״אOn the Account of the World's Creation 51
א׳
1[145] Of the beauty of the first-made man in each part of his being, in soul and body, we have now said what falls perhaps far short of the reality but yet what for our powers was possible. It could not but be that his descendants, partaking as they did in the original form in which he was formed, should preserve marks, though faint ones, of their kinship with their first father. Now what is this kinship?
ב׳
2[146] Every man, in respect of his mind, is allied to the divine Reason, having come into being as a copy or fragment or ray of that blessed nature, but in the structure of his body he is allied to all the world, for he is compounded of the same things, earth, water, air, and fire, each of the elements having contributed the share that falls to each, to complete a material absolutely sufficient in itself for the Creator to take in order to fashion this visible image.
ג׳
3[147] Moreover, man is at home in all the elements named, as in places fully congenial and akin to him, ever changing his sphere and haunting now one, now another of them. Thus we can say with strict propriety that man is all four, as being of land and water and air and sky. For in so far as he dwells and moves upon the ground, he is a land-animal; so far as he often dives and swims and often sails, he is a water-creature—merchants and shipmasters and fishers for purple-fish and oyster-dredgers and fishermen generally are the clearest evidence of what I have said—; so far as his body ascends and is raised aloft from the earth, he would justly be said to be an air-walker. He may besides be said to be heavenly, for by means of sight, the most dominant of his senses, he draws near to sun and moon and each of the other planets and fixed stars.